Enniskillen (United Kingdom) (AFP)
A crank radio, some color photos and a pile of contemporary books - these are the only clues Margaret Gallagher has in the modern world.
At age 77, the retiree spent her life in a 200-year-old thatched cottage in Northern Ireland, with no running water, electricity or indoor toilets. An offbeat way of life that defies modernity but fits with the current ecological climate.
"I have never known anything, only what I live in the moment, what you have never had can not miss you," she told AFP showing her stone house white.
"All I need is to be healthy to live my life in this idyllic house," she says.
- "Happy" -
Margaret Gallagher and her immediate family have lived in this humble building since her grandfather bought it, coated with cow manure and pig blood, to cousins who had emigrated to the United States in 1887.
Nestled in the countryside of Fermanagh County (west), the 13-meter-by-7 house is made up of three rooms: a kitchen lined with two Spartan rooms.
Whether it rains or the sun shines, the cottage is heated by an open fire whose fire is fed by peat bricks. It emanates a particular blue smoke, evacuated by a chimney.
When she was younger, the retiree managed the small family farm while caring for seventeen years of her bedridden father, before working locally to develop employment and heritage.
She is woken every morning at 05:00 by a wren who, perched on the window sill, waits to be fed. "Fortunately, I do not sleep well anyway," she jokes.
She then starts her day: draw water from a nearby well, collect wood and peat to feed the fire, and cook three meals a day.
"It's my destiny, I'm happy," she says after a morning spent baking a cake over the fire.
- "Not for real" -
Ironically, with her archaic way of life, Margaret Gallagher is at the forefront of the changes demanded by some of those who denounce the environmental and psychological impact of modern lifestyles.
With the exception of her radio, only a newspaper from time to time and a basic mobile phone - which she charges into her car "to call a priest or a doctor" - connect her to the outside world, making a representative despite it of this movement.
Concerns about the environment, but also rising housing prices, are driving a new generation to seek alternative lifestyles with a lower carbon footprint.
But Margaret Gallagher is skeptical. "It's just a trend, they like what's fashionable, it's new and brilliant, and in a year or two it's going to be something else, it's not for real."
And she does not regret her decision to live an existence that still forces her to do difficult tasks in the twilight of her life. "I have loved every minute of my life so far," she says.
© 2019 AFP