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 Hello, sorry for not posting – seemed to have got lost somewhere in between my birthday and the snow appearing – occasionally in a slightly alcoholic haze! Happy New Year anyway and I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. In an inspired bit of junk swapping The Man from Salford managed to get me a manger for Christmas. How seasonal was that? Of course I don’t have any live stock to feed and I’ll almost certainly get the sack if I try to stick any babies in it, but it is just perfect for soaking my willow in without worrying about it getting washed away down the canal or warped in the butts. Another great freebie for Christmas was a large family sized canoe, somebody’s storage problem has become our entertainment – slight hitch though – it’s completely useless to us until the canal unfreezes!
Slightly more seriously than that our water supply has been constantly freezing up – making the job of getting on with everyday living slightly harder and slower. Sorting out our water supply has been on our to do list for some time now but this has really brought the issue sharply into focus. I’ll get posting on that sometime in the coming year we’ve got lots of exciting ideas and options on the table.
The most disappointing thing over the holiday period was the outcome at Copenhagen. I don’t think my expectations were unrealistic but nevertheless I can’t help feeling let down. The window of opportunity for acting against climate change is narrowing. We’ll be keeping up our personal efforts here to minimize our impact, but I’m also thinking we need to do more in terms of activism this year. That will be one family resolution, my personal resolution is not to buy any new clothes at all this year. (Unless our house is burnt down in which case I will buy new undies!)
Hope you like the picture of the hogweed, the freezing temperatures may be a pain but is sure does look beautiful around here right now.
 I’ve been trying ever so hard to be conscientious about buying (or more accurately not buying) clothes. This also means I’ve been thinking about what to do with clothes once they are no longer serviceable as such. Goldilocks generally manages to out grow clothes before they wear out too badly and so can be passed on to her younger cousins and friends. I tend to wear things to the point of falling apart and then they become part of my cleaning arsenal. I don’t darn, patch or stitch things back together though and I think perhaps I should. Continue reading A Patchwork Planet and Stitching Together the Fabric of Time
 We had our first proper frost this weekend. I like frost. According to allotment lore it will make my parsnips really sweet and tasty. Actually I dug one up about two weeks ago because I couldn’t wait any longer for the frost. I was dying to find out what was underneath the soil and leafy top growth. Unsurprisingly, what was underneath was a parsnip. I served it up for lunch that day. The Man from Salford, who is quite partial to roasted parsnips, complained that there wasn’t much. I explained that I was just digging one up to see what it was like. ‘It’s like a parsnip,’ he helpfully told me.
The cold weather always turns our attention to our less than efficient and somewhat crude plumbing and heating. We would like to have a water heating solar panel (we would like to have PV panels too) but we are not allowed. We live in a listed building on a conservation site and even something as inoffensive as a slimline panel on the roof is a no-no apparently. I’m all for preserving our heritage but I would like it to be presupposed by a need to preserve the planet first. I think a planet would make heritage sites so much more accessible. If only there was some way we could bypass all the red tape at the local planning department. Perhaps we could put in for a nuclear reactor?
The Gates of Hell are About to Open:
(Mind the gap) is a fabulous book by John Connelly. We are reading it together aloud as part of our ongoing efforts to find cheap and low-impact family entertainment. It is cheap, it is definitely harmless and generally more funny than it is frightening. And it is hugely entertaining. Connelly’s hell is populated by weak, flawed and vulnerable demons. Their desires and actions are governed, in turn, by avarice and a need to be loved. They fear their superiors and loathe their inferiors, and some of them are a little power crazy. Not a whole lot different from us then? Oh, for something simple, pure and uncomplicated – like a parsnip.
Last week I bought myself some leather driving gloves. I didn’t buy them, as I’m sure you will have already worked out, because I intend to take up recreational motoring. I wanted to have another go at willow weaving but without getting crop after crop, day after day, of very itchy weals. (See Woeful Willow Tale.) Normal gardening gloves don’t really allow for the fine motor movements necessary to weave, thin plastic gloves would probably rip straight away and so the leather driving gloves.
I’m glad to report this time I had no allergic reaction to the willow. I wonder if the allergic reaction last time was actually caused by the willow at all. You have to soak willow for at least five days before trying to weave with it. I toyed with the idea of securing bundles in the canal, but was a little wary of losing them so I stuffed bundles into the water butts instead.
The project I set myself was to make a serviceable cloche over which I could drape horticultural fleece for growing lettuces as early as possible next year. We’re still a long way off getting a greenhouse, so lots of improvising is going to be called for. My efforts were pretty wonky and still big on the rustic charm! But at least now I’ve got round the allergy thing I can practice and only get better at it.
 Continue reading Willow Weaving 2
I thought our Off-Road Soup event for www.350.org day of international action was going to be a complete disaster. Last Saturday the sky turned black and was full of rain all morning. Not a single person passed by our house. On the grounds that I didn’t have a plan B however, I set Goldilocks and her pal to work painting a banner anyway. Here is little Loopy-Lou drawing butterflies onto it. They thought butterflies were an important part of where we live. It would certainly be a less bright place without them.
Continue reading Off-Road Soup Day
Willow, being a dog of regal character, has two residences – a Summer one and a Winter one. Although she follows me pretty much everywhere, she is banned from the bedrooms and has to make her own sleeping arrangements. Last week she moved from her Summer residence at the bottom of the stairs to her Winter residence on the landing. Just as you might watch for swallows in Spring, we find observing Willow is a pretty good indicator of what’s going on season wise.
We’ve been feeling the cold too. The sofas downstairs are piled with rugs, skins and blankets so that we can put off lighting the log burner for as long as possible. But even snuggled under two blankets (and I do wear many warm layers) I’ve still felt cold. We decided it was time to start lighting the burner again. Once lit, it will probably remain so until some distant point in the Spring. A point where we realise that we’ve somehow spent most of the evening outdoors and it’s probably easier just to go to bed than mend a fire. We will also probably trip up over Willow on our way and realise she has returned to the official Summer residence. Continue reading The Dog Barometer, Getting Warmer and 350
 For my Blog Action Day post on Climate Change I’d like to share with you a family discussion we had recently. You may find it eerily familiar !
The Man from Salford started it. I was quite surprised. It is not like him to instigate environmental initiatives, especially if they might affect the contents of his stomach. What he proposed was that we should, as a family, start a 100 mile diet. In other words, we should only eat foods that have been produced within a hundred mile radius of our home. (If I was of a cynical nature I might suspect he had already done a mental checklist on this that reads: beer, beef, cheese! )
The first thing I said was, ‘What a fantastic idea.’ So, we’ve established a sound principle. The second thing I said was, ‘What about lemons?’ Get ready, here come the get out clauses! Between the three of us we could think of several more food items we couldn’t imagine doing without. And so the preliminary negotiations started. Welcome to the Hazlehurst Summit. Continue reading What about lemons and other excuses?
I’d almost come to the end of writing today’s post. Just a bit of editing needed – Granny Goo says I always write sentences that are too long and complex – FULL STOP Granny Goo! Anyway I don’t like editing much so I went for a trip around the blogosphere, always good for a little task avoidance. Whilst out I found this; Continue reading Blog Action Day
I’ve written posts on the subject of clothes before. Without looking I can pretty much guarantee I’ve written something like, ‘I don’t give much thought to clothes’ or ‘clothes don’t occupy a great deal of my time or thinking.’ Nevertheless I am not walking around naked. (Believe me that would not make the world a better place!) I have, regarding clothes, at some point or other made some kind of consumer decision probably based upon price, practicality, aesthetics and sense of self. I suspect not all of them have been good decisions or indeed green decisions.
I’ve been thinking about clothes rather more than usual in the past couple of weeks. First of all a couple of weeks ago I listened to Mark Boyle discussing his Freeconomy on the radio. His is a site well worth visiting, but it does make me feel like I’m really not trying hard enough! I’m quoting from memory so this won’t be accurate, but it is the gist not the details that are important – he suggested something like if absolutely no more clothes were produced in or imported into this country we’ve still probably got enough kit knocking around to be recycled and redistributed for the next twenty years. In short we just don’t need more stuff. Continue reading Swap Shop
My work with small people means that I am required to keep my Paediatric First Aid Certificate bang up to date and have a well stocked First Aid Kit at all times. I believe that children should be outdoors as much as possible and that they should be encouraged to take real risks in real environments. Nevertheless, I have never had to administer anything more taxing in the way of First Aid other than kissing better the odd grazed knee. The only time I’ve ever really used the contents of my First Aid kit for medical purposes is to bandage up wounds and torn paw pads on the dog. This wouldn’t seem wasteful if it wasn’t for the fact that First Aid kits go off, or rather they expire. After three years the sterility of dressings can no longer be guaranteed.
I can’t help feeling that Florence Nightingale would have been only too happy to have my out-of-date dressings. Even in this day and age I think that in the event of an emergency they would be better than nothing. Sterile or not, they would still be cleaner than any other fabric I might find lying around to press into use. Sadly it is not cost effective to replace individual items in a kit, so every so often I find myself having to buy entirely new kit. This means finding a sensible use for the old kit. So, what to do? Continue reading Recycling Your First Aid Kit
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