The Good Life

It seems that we've crossed some cultural line. We've crossed over from being just a regular little family, to one who does all manner of strange things - chooks, a veggie patch and a solar hot water system was normal for a home, but a waterless toilet, a massive investment in solar panels, growing chickens to eat and getting a milking goat seems to have taken us over the line. People seem to enjoy watching the progress ( are they waiting for us to fail?), but there is a definite air of "better you than us" or "it's a phase" about them.

On several occasions, usually after asking us how much land we've got (a regular 1/4 acre block), people have asked us "Have you seen the show 'The Good Life'?" Stu and I have seen odds and ends of the show. Reruns on the ABC of course ( the show ran its full course before we were born), but we'd never sat down to watch it and since there is rarely anything good on tv these days, we decided it was worth the effort to track it down.

We started watching it last week with our kids. I was concerned that the out of date humour (the episode entitled "The weaker sex" for example) would make it not worth watching for the kids, but they LOVE it and we have to pause the show frequently and wait for them to get over their uncontrollable giggles so we can hear the dialogue!

Stu and I have found the pace in which the Goods change their lifestyle amusing. It is tv of course, but in 2 days, they went from a regular couple (he working, she at home) with nothing in their backyard, to them both being home, their entire yard turned over to veggie garden and the proud owners of 12 chickens and a goat! They get pigs in episode 4. If only change really happened that fast!

We can see why people keep asking us if we've seen the show, and that's ok with me. They Good's are a couple (albeit a tv couple) that I'm happy to be compared to. And in the meantime, I'm thoroughly enjoying some light and funny tv that comes with the bonus of gorgeous 70s styling ( is it odd that I long for Barbara Good's clothes?).

If you haven't seen it, or haven't watched it for a long time, it's definitely worth tracking down. Our library had the DVDs.

This image was from the episode in which they were desperately trying to turn their goat milk into butter. They failed of course, my goaty research tells me that due to the natural homogenisation of goats milk, you can only make butter if you first separate the cream from the milk with a (expensive) cream separator. I tried to tell them (husband yelling at the umpires while watching footy on tv style), but 40 years and different continents (oh and the tv vs real life thing) didn't help.