I made about half the quantity of vegetable soup that I’d originally intended to.  At about 2.00pm  the sun shone briefly and persuaded some dog walkers at least that they ought to get out.  Our friend Alan and his son Ade were our first victims.  We told them they had to drink our soup and pose for a picture whether they liked it or not! 

After that we had a steady stream of people throughout the afternoon.  I was really pleased at how happy people (and they were a diverse bunch!) were to talk about climate change issues and many of the people we spoke to were already making their own efforts to lessen CO2 emissions.   I found it funny, but somewhat disheartening that some people are automatically suspicious if you offer them anything for free.   But even those who didn’t take soup or seem interested did at least take the literature from us. The old guy with the whippets didn’t say a single word and he seemed slightly lost.  But  he obediently, if silently, drank his soup and posed.  I hope he found his way home okay.

These guys turned up in their home-made canoes which we thought was definitely deserving of some off-road soup.  Better still they let the girls have a go, I think canoeing is going to be the next craze around here.

I was glad in the end we made the effort and hopefully we reached some people.  Children I think, remember doing things like this and it gives them a sense of agency in their world.  If they succumb to futile nihilism then surely there would be little hope for the future.  Oh yes, and we had some very nice soup for our tea!

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.

We spent last weekend sorting out the wood store.  Yes I know we should have spent all our spare moments over the Summer doing this, we are definitely ‘last-minuters.’  We wanted to sort out waste wood from the quality seasoned timber and get it chopped up for kindling or at least to a size that will fit in the burner.  This is the one drawback, we find, of an enclosed fire. 

Its always odd to look at this interesting assortment of past lives.  Some of it looks like it might still have one more life before being consigned to the burner.  I liked the look of these triangular pieces pictured below.  I think they were used as temporary chocks.  The Man from Salford tells me he’s already hacked up a few of these.  This is a shame, I could have used them to make a herb wheel planter.  We’re not going to chop up the last ones until we’re sure they can’t have another life.

Now that we’re going to be releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere we need to make the most of it. We’re going to be sharing the warmth and energy with passers-by through the medium of soup.  And the wood store seems like a good place to hang out our 350 International Day of Climate Action banner.   

350 stands for 350 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere.  According to the best research available yet, this is the absolute safe limit.  Currently CO2 is measuring 387ppm in the atmosphere.  People all over the world will be carrying out inventive and imaginative actions to highlight  and raise awareness of this in the run up to Copenhagen. 

This coming Saturday afternoon we are going to be ladling out Off-Road Soup (the title describes the location, not the ingredients which will be vegetables!) to unsuspecting passers-by.  It’s our way of spreading the warmth and the word.  I hope our soup may even lure some one to pose in front of our banner for a 350  Climate Action photo. 

If you’re unable to get involved but fancy a bit of keyboard activism you can click the button below and add your name to the I Am Ready pledge. 

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. 

‘Surely,’ we reasoned, ‘there should be healthy and fair trade beyond our hundred mile boundary?’  Here comes the compromise.  We decide we are each allowed three overseas  luxury items.   Why three?  Well if we write lots of extra stuff in now it means we have something to negotiate with at future summits and it will look like we’re making meaningful compromises without ever actually reaching the agreed target.

I added to my list teabags, basmati rice and, of course, lemons.  Goldilocks had a preposterously long list of things that she couldn’t possibly live without.  Historically, of course, she has not consumed as much as us.  She is still developing.  Who were we to say she shouldn’t eat all the junk that we happily consumed as children?  However we were pretty certain, that with the exception of tinned tuna, most of them consisted mainly of chocolate and sugar.  (It is possible that someone within a hundred miles of us grows sugar beet but I don’t know where it goes, I’ve only ever seen cane sugar on the shop shelves.)  So that was her three luxuries sorted.  

The Man from Salford having, thanks to Goldilocks, already ensured a supply of chocolate, needed only to add coffee and soy sauce to his list.  He looked smug whereas I could have still added loads of food products to my list.  My concern here was spices.  Get ready for a bit of carbon trading.  ‘I may produce many goodies containing spices,’ I reasoned, ‘but you are consuming the larger portion of those goodies.  I think I should be entitled to your third list item and I say it should be spices.’

It was a tense moment, maybe just to derail the whole process he might suddenly affect a fondness for caviar and declare that he couldn’t walk away from the table without it.  I would be without my spices (which I couldn’t walk away from the table without) and the whole deal would be off.  But The Man from Salford is a good man, he has his reputation to uphold (if not a Nobel prize) and in any case is extremely fond of curry.  The Hazlehurst protocol was ratified and the signatories slapped each other on the back and congratulated themselves on having reached an historic agreement.

If you would like our leaders to take Copenhagen seriously and come away with the best possible deal for all our futures why not visit one, or indeed all three, of the following;

You could sign the petition calling on Barack Obama and US representatives to take firm and positive action at  Blog Action Day.

You could sign a letter written to Gordon Brown at Oxfam’s Here and Now.

You can visit Greenpeace 12 Policies and write a letter to your MP asking them to make a commitment to the green agenda.  If your MP is anything like my MP you’ll get a letter back saying, ‘What a fantastic idea but what about lemons?’  Actually she said she was glad Greenpeace was taking this initiative but it wasn’t ’feasible’ and that her Government was fantastic.  

I am going to remove the pips from the two lemons that are sitting in my fruit bowl now and plant them as a symbolic reminder to myself on Blog Action Day to make sustainable food choices. Who knows, there is a chance I may get my 100 mile lemons. 

What about you? I’d love to hear what three luxuries you would choose! Any suggestions to help us meet our targets always welcome.

Writing this saves me editing today’s post right now and I can task avoid until next Thursday -Hooray for Blog Action Day!  Of course I’m inviting fellow bloggers to click the button and join me on Thursday 15th October.