Free The Moneyless Man by Mark Boyle

going to put a lot of additional pressure on what was going to be a very labor-intensive way of life.

5
THE FIRST DAY
     
THE FREECONOMY FEAST
     
    My first day without money.
    It felt like it had been coming for an eternity. For weeks, when people had met me, the only thing they would talk about was my impending moneyless year. It had become all-consuming. Every sentence, not just from reporters, but also from my friends, seemed to end in a question mark. ‘Why are you doing it? How will you do it? Will you smell?’ I completely understood and expected this, but it didn’t make it any easier. Sometimes I just wanted to have a normal conversation about something other than money or the lack of it. It was a relief finally to get going.
    Knowing how much I had to get done before eight o’clock, I had set the alarm for 5.30am. Usually, when it goes off, I let it ring and vibrate for many minutes before I clamber out of bed. This time, I was up like a shot, not fired by enthusiasm to startliving without money, but in my eagerness to conserve as much battery power as possible. It was good to start as I meant to go on; this year was going to be busy and sleep-ins were probably going to be a treat. One of the oddest sensations was not having anything in my pockets, as I had given up using keys weeks before. I had decided never to lock my trailer, as I wanted to start trusting the world more. To be honest, there wasn’t much to steal anyway.
    The most urgent task of the day was to get the remainder of the veggies we needed for a three-course meal for somewhere between one and two hundred people. I had planned to go with Claire, who had a lot of experience in liberating good food from trash cans, before the sun came up. But just as we were about to start, I realized that, given the rules I had set myself, I couldn’t actually get in the van. In an act full of ridiculousness, Fergus agreed to do my fuel-burning dirty work for me, with Claire. This was great. For the first time in my life, standing up for what I believed in had got me out of some work. Just minutes into my year, the experiment was affecting how I lived. This turned out to be a blessing, as it gave me a few clear moments to contemplate the year ahead. I felt just as excited as I did anxious, but my intuition was that I was going to have a lot of fun.
    The day ahead didn’t bother me from the point of view of survival, as I would be surrounded by tons of food and lots of people. However, the thought of organizing a three-course meal, possibly for over a hundred and fifty guests, without being able either to spend or accept a penny, didn’t exactly leave me relaxed. The challenges of the first day weren’t related to moneyless living, although making five hundred dishes is always a bit easier if you have a few pennies handy. If anything, it was going to be the easiest day of the year, as I would have plenty of food to eat and no spare second to contemplate buying anything. I felt the pressure of making the day come together. I didn’t just want tomake lots of people a half-decent meal; I wanted to make them the most delicious feast they had ever had. One of my goals was to show that you can thrive, not just survive, without money. If this meal were mediocre, people would be grateful but they wouldn’t feel more attracted to freeconomic living and that would be a lost opportunity.
    Just as the BBC Breakfast team arrived, Claire and Fergus came back and told me all they’d got was one plum. My heart sank. I’d told the world about this and we had no food. Then they opened the back doors of the van and revealed several hundred pounds of waste vegetables and fruit. The BBC Breakfast team loved this, as it highlighted the very serious issue of the amount of food we waste. They asked us to take it all out of the van to use as a backdrop for the interview. The team decided they wanted two interviews, the second twenty minutes after I was meant to open up the kitchen