With Drive Opportunity is a tragic-comedy or maybe a comic-tragedy, based around hitching and environmental protest. It draws on my own experiences of non-violent direct action. Whilst entertaining and humorous, it pulls no punches
A naive country kid, Jason hitches lifts with strangers who open his eyes to different ideas and philosophies. He gets rides from hippies and heroin addicts, from arms dealers and rich businessmen, from old ladies who turn out to be antifascists from the 1930s, from people who are excited about the prospects life presents and people who’ve been worn down and just want a quiet uneventful existence. He sees the injustices of the world and the futility of trying to address them by conventional methods. He becomes an angry young man and tries to create something positive from his anger. The book tackles big issues and difficult subjects, but it does so with a smile on its face and a piss-taking attitude.
The book is a journey into protest told as a series of lifts. It’s based around Jason’s recollection of the lifts that changed his life so profoundly that he ended up sitting in a cell counting the bricks and listening to the screws jangling their keys as they walked up and down the landing. Each lift he recalls leads him further on the path to his prison cell.
With Drive Opportunity was launched at the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair on 1st November 2025.
About the author
I live in an off-grid house in the woods in Devon with my partner. With Drive Opportunity is about Jason’s journey through life, so I thought I’d say a bit about my own journey through life.
My early childhood was spent on an organic smallholding and I spent a lot of my time wandering around the countryside avoiding adults wherever possible. When I went to school, my teachers were ill-equipped to deal with me, my, still now undiagnosed ADHD and my attitude towards authority. At primary school, my headmaster recommended moving me to a school for the “educationally subnormal”. At secondary school my headmaster told me that I would either end up in grammar school or borstal, Eventually, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, labelled with “behavioural issues” and sent to a boarding school for “maladjusted” kids.
As a teenager in the eighties and a young adult in the nineties, I lived in squats, in a van and in a bus amongst other places. I hitched around Europe, jumped on diggers and had far too many interactions with the police on protests and while hitching.
I’ve done care work, warehouse work, farm work, shop work and office work as well as the work I now do in the woods. I’ve had the pleasure of working in a co-op and I value non-hierarchical structures.
My partner and I moved into the woods in 2009 and set up our little woodland enterprise known as Bulworthy Project. We lived in a caravan for five years whilst we worked as charcoal makers, got planning permission and built a house. It’s been a lot of hard work, but you can get more done when you’re not carrying the weight of a boss and a landlord. We’ve had the privilege of preserving and enhancing habitats on other people’s land since 2008 and love to see the results of our small but positive impact. Our work now is mainly surveying and managing woodlands. In our spare time, we manage Devon Culm, which is a grassroots environmental charity. We’re also co-founders of Rackenford Community Benefit Society, which has been set up to buy our village pub for the community.
I believe it’s feasible for society to evolve to a point where people are respectful to each other’s physical and emotional needs and play a productive role within that society without the need for reward to inspire them or sanction to restrain them. I want to live in that world
With Drive Opportunity is published by Scorpius Books. I chose Scorpius Books as a publisher because they are an independent publisher and print dyslexic-friendly books. They believe in making literature accessible to all.
With Drive Opportunity is available as a paperback at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham and they have an online ordering service. They’re a really cool independent bookshop. Click here to order.
The paperback edition is also available at Bookshop.org. They are an online book outlet, who support independent bookshops. It’s also available through Waterstones and the other well known book outlets (including the evil one that dominates the market). I’d encourage people to use bookshop.org or independent bookshops for all their book purchases if possible.
The dyslexia friendly version should be available, but they don’t seem to be in stock yet. I am trying to resolve this, but haven’t managed yet. It can be pre-ordered from Waterstones
Click here to pre-order it
The ebook is available from Hive Books and is also available on all the major platforms (including the evil book platform).
Click here to buy it
For readers outside the UK, the ebook is available on various platforms.
Contact
Please use this form or email pete@withdriveopportunity.uk if you’d like to contact me for any reason.
