Free-thinking author David doesn't want to sell his book (From Cotswold Journal)

Free-thinking author David doesn't want to sell his book

DAVID Leadbeater is an author with a difference - he doesn't want to sell his book.

Truly, David, who was born in Mickleton and still lives there, would rather give away his book, Over the Farmyard Gate, than have people buy it.

It's all part of the philosophical nature that set him off on the writing path in the first place and the resulting paperback of around 60 pages takes a futuristic look at the world and sets about proposing an alternative system.

"The present world order is bound to change," he said. "Money is on the way out, and we need to have something in place to pre-empt that and the disasters that would befall us.

"It looks at the philosophy of what I have called co-operatism and relates to a money-free world. I have looked at four institutions that affect our world - money, oil, politics and religion - and how I see a different way through it all. They seem to cause so much conflict in life.

"For example, money is so corruptible and there are so many problems related to it. It's restricting development and the better aspects of life. It's getting to a point with all the debt in the world - Third World Debt, global debt, national debt, personal debt - that I don't see how we can carry on indefinitely. There's going to be some kind of catastrophe."

Former farmer David started writing when a fall into poisonous sheep dip proved a life-changing experience. He left his farm, his marriage broke up, and he turned to the written word to keep his thoughts in focus.

But he didn't think of turning all his work into a book until recently.

He rented a holiday cottage in Weston-sub-Edge for a month and put all his previous notes in order. "I needed to get it all out of my system," he explained. "Once I got stuck in I just carried on. It's a stood-back kind of view of the world.

"Farming is in my blood. Like my father and my grandfather before me, I love walking up Dover's Hill and Meon Hill and looking over the Cotswolds, weighing up the world. That's why I called the book Over the Farmyard Gate. It's the farmer looking over his gate and watching the world go by and thinking about things."

David had the book printed by Vale Press of Willersey. He had 500 copies done, but while there is a £5 price tag, David would rather give copies away.

"If people want to pay something, I'd rather they gave the money to charity," he said. "I get more pleasure out of giving than selling. I haven't distributed them, although the Fair Shares shop in New Road, Moreton, has some copies."

Fair Shares is exactly the kind of organisation that David advocates in his brave new world. It deals in time credits instead of money, with people contributing their own skills and receiving others in return in a kind of time barter system.

He had hundreds of his poems put on disc through the system - which cost him eight hours in time credits.

Another aspect of the organisation that appeals very much to David is that everybody's time is worth the same, whether a secretary or a childminder, or a gardener or a plumber.

Gardening has always been a favourite pastime for David, who has started a co-operative system at Mickleton allotments where he helped with the regeneration of the facility.