Due to front room being covered in soot, blown down chimney in gale, it’s currently out of bounds while we await insurance assessors, carpet cleaners and so on. This means no one can access the television. Why is this so liberating? I may be imagining this but I’m sure we’ve all become more socialable as a result.

I have a theory of ‘community building’ which runs thus; if major utilities such as water were occassionally turned off (with of course back ups of water wagons, stand pumps and so on) then everyone would go outside and discover who their neighbours were.

This has happened very occassionaly. When I lived in Clapton in East London, Thames Water decided to do an experiment in our street and surrounding ones to test new ways of installing water pipes. This meant for six weeks there was access only for cars (no through traffic) and about once a week the water was turned off for a few hours and you had to go and fill up buckets from a big tanker. It was true; everyone started (or a lot of people did) meeting each other in a shared activity and started talking to each other. It encouraged a atmosphere of friendliness, rather than suspicion. The news on the street became dominated by the stories of the people who lived there; not the amplified hysteria of tabliod newspapers or the celebrity news from television (including sadly, the BBC).

Another example was the so called ‘fuel crisis’ in 2001 (?) - remember; when we had protests, mainly of people who seemed to be driving SUVs, complaining about the price of petrol. As the threat got worse, I vividly remembering cycling through central London (I’m fairly sure this was a Wednesday evening) and get a sensation of London without cars as more and more people were leaving them at home. Whole streets were opening up in new and more interesting ways. With another few days they would have effectively become pedestrianised.

‘Community building’ usually seems to be centred on ‘adding things’ - but what about taking away some of the things that atomise communities - such as the motor car and the television?