A Year of Living Simply: The joys of a life less complicated (Kate Humble)

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Don’t you just hate blurbs which start with soundbites from celebrity reviewers? Possibly even colleagues? Fortunately the netgalley blurb put them last, I think. Or else I was so taken with the idea of Kate Humble living simply and telling us what her inner responses were, that I ignored them.

It seems people are as fascinated by Kateas she is by them. I bring up her status as a bitof a sex symbol, to which she absolutelyscreams with laughter. ‘Are you thinking of adifferent Kate?’ she guffaws. ‘That’s hilarious.I smell of pig s***! How does that work withbeing a sex symbol? I’m now of the age wherequite handsome slightly younger men will comeup and say my dad really fancies you, somaybe I’m a sex symbol for people who are 80or above and who can’t really see any more. Ademographic? Well, you could call it that – thederanged and desperate, possibly. I think Ludowould be in hysterics at the thought of mebeing a sex symbol – as am I!’ Most people will recognise Kate Humble from telly. She’s a well-known face; honest, appealing, the kind of person you’d like to sit down and have a cuppa with and chat, knowing you’ll come away enriched by the experience. It’s thus a joy that Humble’s new book, A Year of Living Simply, reflects her broadcasting style. It’s conversational, thoughtful, funny, at times even profound, and just strips away a lot of the nonsense we’ve been obsessed with in our twenty-first century, all singing all dancing world, to what really matters: being happy and how we achieve it. At the beginning of the book Kate recounts her favourite holiday in the South of France some years previous. In which she stayed in a log cabin with very basic facilities and no technology. Totally isolated, with time to walk, swim in the lake, read, sleep and eat delicious food collected from the local market.Unfortunately, Kate gets carried away and fills her garden, and a newly installed greenhouse, with loads of unusual and exotic fruit and veg, most of which I’d never heard of. Surprisingly, she also employs the help of a gardener. This resulted in alot of hard work and expense and rather missed the point I think.

In a world that’s strange, unsettling and not a little mad, joy, happiness, just feeling better about ourselves, our world, our future, being able to take a breath, are all vital and Kate Humble’s book is a precious guide to helping us achieve all that. Kate’s book has the warmth and calming effect of a log fire and a glass of wine. Unknit your brow and let go. It’s a treat.’– GARETH MALONE Early on in the book the author visits Satish Kumar and he neatly sums up a key problem that we face as a society when he says: “It’s innate. It’s intrinsic to human nature. Our hands are made to make. But our society and the way we educate our children dismisses manual labour – it is only for those who have failed, who are not intellectually up to doing anything else. And because of this attitude, instead of being a society of makers we are a society of consumers, dependent on buying everything we need and easily swayed into buying so much we don’t.” Kate Humble’s new book is a lesson in moving on from a tragedy and finding our place in the world’– WOMAN & HOME On 16 Feb 2009, she showed up in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner. On 3 Oct 2009, Humble was designated President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. As a Writer

The last person you textedMy friend Emma. She is staying at mycabin in France and had seen akingfisher for the first time in her life! Using a variety of different methods from death cleaning, to gardening and to meeting people who have changed their whole way of life to live a more simple existence, I found so much to relate to within this book. I often find myself at my happiest when I'm in my garden pottering, or with my nose in a book, and it looks at those simple pleasures and those distractions that help take you away from all the negatives and shift your mind into a happier state.

I also loved how she shared her own personal memories of happy times with friends and family, and how things have changed over the years that people seem to value things differently now.In this year of living simply, she does a lot of journeying. I didn’t expect that. So for the first two-thirds of the book I was trying to reconcile her trips to see people doing wonderful things that recycle, or reuse on a grand scale, especially housing. She describes it as ‘fate’ that she ended up infront of the camera in the first place, a job shenever particularly wanted, instead favouringthe anonymity of work behind the scenes. Itwas her boss on The Holiday Programmewho changed her career path at the end ofthe 90s, asking her to do a screen test for apresenting role on her second day on the jobas a researcher for the show. She said noinitially, horrified at the thought of subjectingherself to the scrutiny of celebrity. But eventuallyshe relented and has been presenting a varietyof different shows ever since, although you stillget the impression that the job needs her morethan she needs it.