Remoteness?

Where we live is considered by some city dwellers to be isolated and remote but it doesn’t feel this way to us and our nearest town is within easy reach by car, about twenty minutes if we don’t stop for a chat with neighbours met on the road.

If we were riding horses, or relying on bicycles or even a donkey/horse and cart as was the case just one or two generations ago then it would very quickly seem different for us.

However I know from talking to the older people who still live near here or those who are sometimes driven up here by family on a sunday outing to reminisce about the old times that it did not seem so isolated or remote to them.

I have spoken with a man who used to work as a telegraph boy over fifty years ago, he had very fond memories of the long cycle up here to deliver news because the family used to give him a lovely cup of tea and biscuits, common enough now but the biscuits were a very rare treat in his youth and of course the road home to town was mostly downhill.

What would happen if (when) fuel were to became so expensive that we had to ration our use of it? This is not as ridiculous as it might have seemed some 20 years ago when we first watched the movies Mad Max and later on Waterworld 🙂

Isn’t it odd that those films seemed like such far-fetched fiction and now do not seem so outrageous.

Of course we now have alternative technologies such as electric vehicles but they are not in common use – why?

It’s obvious that peak oil has passed, I think that there are no rational thinking people who deny this any longer. We rely on oil for far more than just transport so why have we not started to replace it’s use where we can?