Run for the hills: Scaffy van

Monday, 1 March 2010

Scaffy van

No bin men today. Regular readers will immediately surmise that we have snow, and they'd be right. But really not much snow at all so I reckon the scaffy van men are on a bit of a skive. In between the snow there's been some glorious sunshine, so all in all quite a nice day really.

I made Boston

Baked Beans at the weekend and discovered that our black treacle was out of date, and as the tin firmly asserts that it must be binned on expiry I thought I'd better use up the rest of it - almost a full tin. Mmmmm I wonder.

[pause while you guess what I used it for]

Pilsner. I've brushed down the brewing kit and I've now got 23 litres of pilsner on the go - using up the remains of the black treacle for the wort. This feels slightly sacrilegious and I'm not at all sure what the dark tones of molasses will do for the beer - but I think it's guaranteed to be 'interesting'.

Tomorrow I have to drive to Inverness for a course - so I'm mildly worried about the prospect of snow in land with the heavy frost forecast for tonight.

Ach - it'll be fine.

1 comment:

townmouse said...: Our bin men made it through the snow. We're obviously made of sterner stuff, down here in the subtropical south west...; 2 March 2010 at 16:15

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Where I"m coming from - !CAUTION! a bit of a polemic

Firstly, there is nothing more important than me and my family. The most precious thing I can give them (including me) is time. In my job, with all it's pressures, I singularly failed to do this. So we run for the hills and try to redress the balance.

Secondly, climate change is happening. It's a cataclysm, the scope of which is beyond our comprehension. This is why we are doing so little to stop it - we just cant imagine the scale of the upheavals to come, and we can't imagine how we, as individuals, can stop it.

Everything is stacked against effective action. Our economy is driven by consumerism and it is consumerism that is driving climate change. Our political leaders are paralysed - to curb consumerism would cripple the economic engine. We increasingly define ourselves by our economic position and the things we buy. We are what we buy. What politician dare restrict our ability to buy, our ability to define ourselves? It would attack our very self and would be political suicide.

And anyway, the real power lies with money - and the people with money want us to consume and they spend millions every second of the day persuading us to consume more. What hope do we have against such power? And everything we buy pumps a little more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Thirdly, I am no saint. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to change my life for the benefit of myself, and, I hope, the planet. Ultimately my reasons for doing this are selfish, and although I'll do what I can to keep my carbon footprint low, I'll make many choices that are not so good for the planet. Like anyone, I can only voluntarily make changes to my life at the speed I can. I don't intend to beat myself up over this - I do intend to change faster than most.

Fourthly, there is hope. Our lust to consume is a very recent phenomena. Not so long ago we principally defined ourselves by our relationships with friends and family and place and we defined ourselves by our usefulness to society. I believe that climate change will force us out of consumerism, and in its place we will find those core values, and rediscover a sense of wellbeing that is so missing from our current fractured existence.

There are lots of examples where this is starting to happen. The transition town movement is one - people getting together and learning to appreciate the things and people around them. I played a small part in helping Sustaining Dunbar get off the ground. (http://edubuzz.org/blogs/sustainingdunbar/about-us) What I found there were people striving to build a positive and resilient future and there are transition towns popping up all over the place - a really positive movement. (find out more about transition towns)

Fifthly, At the end of the day it's all bollocks. So let's all go off and have some fun - it's the most important thing we can do - but let's just try to do it without killing the planet in the process.

Things I"m going to miss

Run for the hills

Monday, 1 March 2010

Scaffy van

1 comment:

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