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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
 The moles have been laughing at The Man from Salford. They kick dirt at his solar powered buzzy thing. He is not amused. Mowing this little bit of grass outside the front of our house is his only contribution to gardening. It’s not even our grass, he is guerrilla mowing. I’m not overly keen on lawns. Lawn maintenance is energy intensive and in many cases, although not here, requires a lot of watering. Lawns are the kings of monoculture. But mostly I’m just not keen on them because it seems like an awful lot of effort for a lot of dull plant.
The Man from Salford forgot all about the mole outrage when a passer-by, who introduced himself as Trevor Firkin, told us that his grandad once lived in our house. The Firkins had it much tougher than us, that’s for sure. They made their living plying coal up and down the canal on narrow boats, despite this I’d be inclined to guess their carbon footprints were pretty dainty. Smaller at least than the yetty sized print we’ll be leaving behind. Continue reading Bits and Bobs and Bulbs
Just a quick one. This weekend is national moth night. Well actually it’s two nights, the 18th and 19th September. This means you have even less excuse for not getting out at least once with your torch at dusk and looking for moths. It can get a bit depressing typing out the same repetitive sentence, but yes their numbers are declining. We are talking about a decline of 50% over the last 50 years. Taking part in these surveys and providing data (even if like me you think you are a bit useless at identification) really is useful. To find out more visit National Moth Night. Apparently they are giving out prizes, you have up until 1st December 2009 to submit your findings. That should give me plenty of time to work out exactly whatever it is I manage to watch on the night. I’m already feeling competitive! Here is a moth, I have no idea what it is but it was rather partial to our catmint.
(And the Chilli Children Trust and some Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness)
 If you’ve read this blog from the beginning you’ll know that I have a somewhat strained relationship with the brambles in the garden. It will come as no surprise to you that I’ve been plotting their sticky end all along. Originally it was going to be in the form of jam, but I ended up doing something slightly different. And for that reason this post is as much about linking to another site as it is to do with Autumn berries.
I collected about 6kilos of the free goodies and made about two and half litres of blackberry sauce (or coulis if you’re feeling posh.) This meant that a hundred people could have a spoonful of the sticky stuff on their ice cream on Saturday night. (I also made coleslaw for a hundred people but that is another story!) So what could possibly induce me to do battle with thorns, nettles and wasps to collect this many blackberries? Continue reading A Sticky End
Social historians are fond of telling people that one of the most profound effects of industrialisation upon daily life was the separation of work from home, and the separation of work from leisure. Not that all this happened overnight or even decades. Large scale manufacture was taking place in homes long before what we would recognise as factories were built. It wasn’t until the 1850s that the balance tipped from a largely rural population to an urban one. But at some point during the late Victorian era the notion of ‘recreation’ became central to the contemporary psyche. Recreation was all about self-improvement and literally recreating yourself. This lead to the explosion of public libraries and municipal parks. By the end of the century the novel idea of ‘going-on a holiday’ in order to recreate oneself had been born.
Many of us now would like to return to some pre-industrial idyll where home, work and leisure seamlessly run together - the good life. Preferably we would like to do this with central heating and without the inconvenience of poverty, hunger and disease. While we put our rose tinted spectacles back in their cases we should at least observe the general rule of thumb that the closer you can manage to keep all things to home the lower your carbon footprint is likely to be. Holidaying at home is the new black (or something like that!) Continue reading What I did on my holidays!
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