The Mud Life 4×4 Magazine Issue 47 April 2023

After reading a few posts on Facebook the other day I found myself quite angry. It’s not often I feel this way as I’m generally too laid back to give a crap about things, but then I started analyse my feelings a bit deeper. Don’t forget, my other job in life is that of a therapist, so it’s a bit of a habit.

The Mud Life 4×4 Magazine Issue 47 April 2023

Turner’s Torque

Rant Alert!

After reading a few posts on Facebook the other day I found myself quite angry. It’s not often I feel this way as I’m generally too laid back to give a crap about things, but then I started analyse my feelings a bit deeper. Don’t forget, my other job in life is that of a therapist, so it’s a bit of a habit.

The triggers in question were a photo on a certain 4×4 and green laning Facebook page of a 4×4 bogged in a field, and quite clearly off-piste. Then a video of a trail rider riding up a stream, then a steep waterfall just off a green lane, again off-piste.

I see the same images quite frequently on my local newspaper’s Facebook page when kids, adolescents and grown-ass men tear up fields, footpaths, cricket and football pitches on their quads and dirt bikes.
Under the images sits the same old questions –

• Why do they do it?
• Don’t they realise they spoiling it for the rest of us?

And the simple answers are, they do it because it’s fun, and yes, they do realise that they’re spoiling it for the rest of us!

More importantly, they simply don’t care, and when all the lanes are closed to those of us who obey the rules, guess who will still be ‘tearing up’ the countryside, whilst living life to the full and laughing at us?
It’s like builders and handymen who dump their rubbish on a side street or down a green lane – they don’t care! People who drop litter, cigarette butts and don’t pick up their dog crap – they don’t care either!

Every now and again I think about the Law of Lebowski – how if you stop caring about certain things in life, you will be happier.

What are rules for anyway? To control us?
Well, yes, and obviously to help to obtain a safe and fair society, but when you disregard certain rules that you deem unreasonable and simply in place to ‘control’ us, what happens then? Yes, we break the law, but it would appear we also live life more freely.

Want to go fishing without a permit?
Why not.

Want to go wild camping in the UK?
Go for it.

Canoeing along a canal or cycling on its embankment without a permit?
Oh, you little devil!

What I’ve gleaned from reading the aforementioned posts is that the guilty parties don’t care who reads their responses, because there are no repercussions. They simply laugh at us as we’re getting more and more annoyed by their antics.

Think about it, it can be argued that they’re living life to the full, and having much more fun than we are. They’ll go home, have their tea, watch TV with their family and go to work, and the following weekend f**k it all up again whilst having an absolute ball.

Are they happier than us?
Probably.

I’m obviously not suggesting we all go out and break the law, that would be daft and irresponsible, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to think like they do.

Did it make me happy?

Erm… I feel my blood pressure rising, so I’m going to leave it here, and hopefully I’ll be in a more good humoured disposition next month.

Damian, Editor-in-Chief

The Mud Life is all about 4x4s, and enjoying the great British outdoors.

Damian and Karen Lee Turner (A.K.A. The Muddy Madam)

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