Day 1 - The New Normal?

So many observations to make from day one of our challenge:

1) Cereal is too expensive and I will be having toast for breakfast tomorrow.

2) Taking time to prepare a cheese sandwich made it much more delicious, as did eating every crumb.

3) Sharing an apple between 4 of us ( one member of the family declined a community fruit)

4) Meal times are controversial.

Actually meal times generally are controversial in the Hall Household and I guess that springs from a) mum not being a domestic goddess and not having the weekly meals planned out and b) being a family cursed by post modernity where there is no absolute and everyone has a preference. There are other reasons too, but not relevant to this challenge.

I think that for a family of individuals, living on £1 a day is easy, but the challenge surrounding it is not.

Bad planning has lead to issues of people doing their own thing meaning the our main meal this evening was a bit of a mess and even this morning, we began to divert from the 'basics' menu - Can I have Nutella instead of Butter? How much is a tea bag and does a splash of milk count? etc

The other issue is that the rules of the challenge to Live on £1 do not reflect the reality of extreme poverty on the UK, in our experience, while recognising that we have very little experience.

People living on the streets in Romford only relating to the issue of food, often get bought cups of tea and coffee by members of the public and can pop into the SA for a meal and on Sunday Mornings, for a coffee and slice of cake. The rules forbid us accepting food from anyone, and this has been mentioned more than once today. I think that this suggests that we are already missing our tea, coffee and cake!

So we wondered if we were replicating the dilemmas of those living in Africa for example - the families that Joe met in Zambia who eat Sheema every day. Are we prepared to eat the same meal everyday?

We reasoned though that communities might pool their resources and do they measure and cost it out to the last .4 of a penny as we have done today? The fact is, we don't know.

Also, are we working as a team of as a group of individuals and does my need for everyone to 'eat something' mean that I am constantly going to be worried about food and everyone else be just getting on with it?

Then there was conversation about the way we use language and how that reflects 'power'. Who is powerful in my family, and if it's not me, how do I feel about it?

Tomorrow is Joe's 17th Birthday ( but that's on hold anyway owing to exam/ revision pressure, Elyse is off out in the evening for a sleep over and I have holiday time. We are planning to pop down to Maldon and......not go into the lovely Deli for lunch :(

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