George Browne: The Art of the Bodge - Rural Problem Solving at its Finest [9 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

Living and working in the countryside often requires a creative approach to problem-solving, best demonstrated by the improvised solutions we come up with. They may not be pretty, or even terribly safe, but they get the job done

You will, I am sure, be familiar with the concept of a ‘life hack’. Social media and the press are awash with videos and listicles called things like ‘The 93 life hacks that will change your life’. Many of these hacks use standard household items for a purpose different to the one for which they were originally designed. Using a loo-roll tube to subdue the vipers’ nest of cables behind your telly or desk, for example.

I’ve never seen a ‘hack’ that made me think that using it would ‘change my life’. Indeed, a great many of them seem not only too trivial to be truly life changing, but also, frankly unhinged, such as the one that I saw suggesting that you employ a power drill to make peeling apples quicker.

However, being a country lad, brought up on a farm, I am no stranger to an improvised solution or two. This is not lifehacking, though; this is the oft underappreciated art of The Bodge. For many, the term might be considered a bit pejorative, indicative of a slapdash approach, but to me the ability to bodge shows creativity, a can-do attitude and problem solving skills, as well as frugality.