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The Moneyless Man

For most of us it seems that money makes the world go round. However, not for Mark Boyle who has turned his life into a radical experiment.

Mark Boyle was born in 1979 in Ireland and moved to Great Britain after getting a degree in Business. He set up his own business in Bristol. For six years Mark Boyle managed two organic food companies which made him a good profit.

However, in 2008, he decided to give up earning money. He vowed to live without cash, credit cards, or any other form of finance.

Mark Boyle began to realise that many of the world’s problems are just symptoms of a deeper problem. He thought that money gave people the illusion of independence.

Mark sold his house and started preparing himself for his new life. He posted an advert on a website asking for a tent, a caravan (a vehicle for living or travelling) or any other type of a house. Soon an old lady gave him a caravan for free. At least he then had a roof over his head!

After that, with his pockets empty, Mark was ready to go. He didn't even carry keys as he decided to trust the world a bit more and not lock his caravan. On November 28th (International Buy Nothing Day 2008), he became the Moneyless Man for one whole year.

Everything was different from then on. Mark lived in his caravan on an organic farm where he worked as a volunteer three days a week. In return he got a piece of land to live on and grow his own vegetables. His food was cooked on a stove, and he washed in a shower made from a plastic bag hanging from a tree, and warmed by the sun.

Even breakfast was different. With no morning coffee to brew, Mark had to find an alternative drink to start the day with. So he drank herbal teas, sometimes with some fresh lemon verbena that he could find near the caravan. "It's all very good for you: iron, calcium, anti-oxidants," Mark said.

Food was the first thing to consider. Mark discovered that there were four ways to find it: looking for wild food, growing his own food, bartering (exchanging his grown food for something else), and using loads of waste food from shops.

Public interest in his project was divided. While a huge number of people supported him, there was criticism of him, particularly on Internet forums.

"People are either very positive about what I'm doing or very negative; I think it's about 70 percent/30 percent. It's funny, if you don't have a massive plasma TV these days, people think you are an extremist," Mark said.

People tend to ask Mark what he learnt from a year of a moneyless life. "What have I learned? That friendship, not money, is real security," he answers.

Mark's remarkable journey is described in his new book "The Moneyless Man", which shows in a detailed way the challenges he faced on the road to his new world.

Big Ben

London has many landmarks, but none is more popular than the Elizabeth Tower which is located at one end of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. The famous tower is the third tallest clock tower in the world. It is probably the most well-known attraction in not only London, but Great Britain as well. But, what makes this tower so special?

The Elizabeth Tower is home to the largest four-faced chiming bell in the world. The official name of the bell is The Great Bell. However, its nickname Big Ben is more popular than the official name. Nobody knows exactly why the bell got such a nickname. There are two main versions. The first one is that the bell was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, the British engineer who managed the casting of the bell. His name was put on the bell itself. The second version suggests that the bell was named after Ben Caunt, a famous heavyweight boxing champion of that time.

Big Ben weighs 13.5 British tons, which is about the size of two large African Elephants. It is 2.2 meters high and has a diameter of 2.7 meters. Big Ben chimes every hour. The clock tower was completed in 1859 and Big Ben first chimed over London on July 11 that year.

There are also four nameless quarter bells inside the tower. They chime every fifteen minutes, playing the world famous Westminster chimes. They can be heard from a distance of as far as 12 kilometres!

Amazingly, the bells still chimed and the clock still showed the exact time after the Houses of Parliament were bombed during World War II. The building was completely destroyed, but the tower and the clock weren’t damaged.

The clock faces are 7 metres in diameter. The hour hand is 2.7 metres long, and the minute hand is 4.3 metres long. There is an inscription in Latin in gold letters along the bottom of each of the clock faces, ‘O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First’.

The clock’s time is kept accurate. There have been some incidents when the clock was inaccurate. In 1949, birds damaged the minute hand and made it slow down by 4.5 minutes.

Nowadays clockmakers climb the Elizabeth Tower 3 times a week to wind Big Ben's Сlock, whose timing can be affected by the weather, atmospheric pressure or simply by its age. Big Ben’s С lock is over 150 years old.

At the top of the Elizabeth Tower there is a lantern known as the Ayrton Light, which is lit whenever the House of Commons or the House of Lords is in session.

The Big Ben chimes to greet the New Year and it is a starting point for the New Year’s celebration of the entire country. The BBC also broadcasts the chiming of the bells on Remembrance Day to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month; the end of World War I.

There are 334 steps to the top of the clock tower. Unfortunately, it is not open to the public for viewing the city.

According to a survey done in 2008, Big Ben is the most popular tourist attraction in London.

Banksy

Where do you expect to see graffiti? Probably not in a museum. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, in the south-west of England, was the kind of place where you could see classical pictures and statues. However, in the summer of 2009 the exhibition ‘Banksy versus the Bristol Museum’ opened. The exhibition presented more than a hundred works by Banksy, one of the world’s most famous graffiti artists.

Banksy is a puzzle to all. He keeps his identity secret. He hardly ever gives interviews and likes to remain anonymous. Nobody knows much about his life or his background, but many people believe that his real name is either Robert Banks or Robin Banks and that he was born in England, somewhere near Bristol.

Banksy’s street art is always provocative. It's his way of communicating with society. His graffiti is characterised by bright and frequently shocking images, often combined with slogans. His work is often a personal protest against wars, social policy or people's behaviour. Although graffiti is not allowed in cities, Banksy's works have become immensely popular.

Banksy believes that art should not be used for advertising. He has refused four times to do adverts for Nike, a famous sportswear company.

A year after the Bristol exhibition, Banksy made a film called ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’. The film tells the story of a street artist. It got many positive reviews from the critics and from the general audience.

Another curious fact from Banksy's biography is that once he was named among the 100 most influential people in the world. He actually found himself in the company of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Lady Gaga. When he was asked to send a photo, Banksy sent a picture of himself with a paper bag (recyclable, naturally) over his head. His fans still don’t really know who he is.

Bristol isn’t the only place in Britain to welcome and accept graffiti. A park in Dundee, Scotland, has the longest legal graffiti wall (almost 110 metres long) in the UK. Anyone can paint on the wall any time they like. The idea of this graffiti wall project is to demonstrate the positive side of graffiti and to organise workshops and graffiti classes for local children.

Even the capital of the country could not stay free of street art. There's a special website dedicated to London's street art and artists. The site's team is a group of enthusiastic young people who are closely connected with the street art world. They try to record and register all the works and display them on their ‘Street Art London’ site. That is quite a job to do! The reason is that street art is very temporal and short-lived: graffiti is soon covered by another wall painting so they have to be quick to take a picture and post it on the website.

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