English forests…gone?

In the UK our political system is a farce. We currently have a government which no-one voted in, it is a coalition formed of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Now I voted for the Lib Dems as I believed in them and everything that they said at the General Election. If I had had  a Green candidate I probably would have voted for them, but we don’t so I didn’t.

I feel betrayed by the Lib Dems, since they have joined the Coalition tuition fees for University have gone up to £9000 per year, the Educational Maintenance Allowance has been scrapped (it supported children in low-income families continue in education to 19 years of age), and have made other awful cuts in the education sector. Even my library has had to make librarians redundant and reduce the opening hours. This is all just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, they want to sell off England’s forests. The following is from 38degrees.com.

The government is planning a massive sell off of our national forests. They could be auctioned and fenced off, run down, logged or turned into golf courses and holiday villages.

We can’t let that happen. We need to stop these plans. National treasures like the The Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest and The New Forest could be sold off. Once they are gone, they will be lost forever.

A huge petition will force the government to rethink its plans. Already 80,000 of us have signed the petition. Please sign the petition.

Other groups are beginning to sound the alarm too:

• “This sale is likely raise a tiny amount but could do immeasurable damage and cost the nation dearly” - The Woodland Trust
• “The future ownership and management of land that has high public value should be carefully considered. The proposed land sales are driven by the need to generate quick cash, but they must not be at the expense of protecting our natural capital, which is irreplaceable.” - RSPB
• ‘Given the benefits and Defra’s push to get people planting more trees, it seems strange the government has announced a sell-off of forest and woodland in England to help reduce the country’s budget deficit.’ - The Metro
• ‘In 1992 John Major’s Conservative government – also looking to save money in a recession – drew up plans to privatise the Forestry Commission’s giant estate. However it was later abandoned following a study by a group of senior civil servants, amid widespread public opposition.’ - The Daily Telegraph
• ‘Many of England’s best-loved forests and woodlands may be sold to large landowners, housing developers and international power companies in what could be the UK’s greatest change of land ownership since the second world war.’ - The Guardian
• The media has picked up on the story and is questioning the government’s plans:
• Environment Minister Caroline Spelman, who is the driving force behind the mass sell-off, has already been forced to respond to this barrage of criticism by environmental organisations, unions and wildlife groups. Her junior minister Jim Paice is the man who came up with the idea.

Please, please visit their site and sign the petition, post on your Facebook and anything else you can think of. I find this just crazy – there is no going back from this, once it is done it is done. Really does make a mockery of all of the ‘green’ promises we were made in the ‘Election’.

No poo – for a whole year!

No – I am not severely constipated, I am talking about shampoo!

My hair has always been my ‘thing’. People would often comment on the frequency of my hair changes – colour and style. I had short hair for a very long time and would style it in a variety of funky ways and it has been many, many colours including green, blue, purple and red. I really do dread to think how much I have spent on it over the years. It has always been a major way for me to express myself and today is no different.

I had  started to grow my hair, to save on the 6 weekly hair cut costs and to make it as long as possible for the wedding, when I thought about my red hair colour, which is my current colour of choice. I realised that of course that wasn’t even slightly green or in keeping with my trying to cut down on unnecessary man-made chemicals to use commercial dyes and so I swapped to dying it with henna. I use Lush’s Caca Rouge, so it is as red as I can get it. It take a long time – 5 hours in total and creates a severe amount of mess, I use a whole newspaper preventing the bathroom from also being dyed,  but it means I still feel like my hair is part of my personality without an environmental cost.

When I read this blog post entitled ‘no poo’ (tbh I thought she was talking about something else when I saw the title!) I thought – right. I can do that. Looking for the reference to that post has made me realise I have been no poo for a whole year! Amazing!!

What am I talking about? Well now I don’t use any shop bought shampoo or conditioner for my hair at all, just water, massage and a vinegar, redbush tea and rosemary essential oil mix for a rinse/conditioner. I also brush my hair for about 4 minutes in the morning and evening, massaging my scalp in the process. I only wash it once or twice a week now, as it doesn’t seem to need any more than that.

It took me a while to get to the stage, I am at now I started by using a bicarbonate of soda and water mix to wash my hair, but I phased this out over a few months. I didn’t go through a greasy stage at all, but it didn’t feel normal for a while. Occasionally I feed it some more by giving it a hot, rosemary infused olive oil treatment, or a mayonnaise treatment. I smear one or the other on for about half an hour and then wash it out. On these occasions I do have to use soap (my handmade stuff) to wash it out, otherwise it does look oily.

Now my hair is growing well, is healthy, bouncy and has got back its natural curls – I love it and its shiny redness! It also means I can skip a whole section of the supermarket and I save money not buying shampoo or conditioner.

Have you gone ‘no poo’? How did you find it?If not – think about giving it a try to let me know how you get on. I really love knowing my hair isn’t dependent on SLS and other toxics.

Admitting defeat

So, the time has finally come when I have to admit defeat on my allotment. It’s all rather sad.

Things got so hectic with my course that I couldn’t get down there for three weeks and the weeds are up past my waist. I put a pot of lavender down last time I was there and when I went back this morning I couldn’t find it – I kid you not. I struggled to get from one side to the other. This was the final straw which broke my back as I had been thinking about quitting the allotment for a couple of months. I have collected my tools, brought them home and I need to arrange how I will get the shed home and flat-packed down the side of our home shed.

Part of me is really sad about this, but part of me is much more pragmatic – everyone down on the allotment is either: retired, doesn’t work, only works part-time, or they have spent hundreds on their allotment. The person behind me has spent over £700 on their little patch, a sum which seems completely absurd to me. It requires an awful lot of time to look after an allotment, which I currently would prefer to spend on other aspects of my life. There was also a big mental block to going there – I would be GOING TO THE ALLOTMENT, which meant old jeans, three hours and a lot of aching afterwards. As a result I would only go there if I could spare three hours, rather than popping along for an hour, which I think is what is needed on a daily basis as a minimum, along with a good few hours each day at the weekend.

I also am rather sad that my somewhat idealistic aspect of the community spirit of an allotment didn’t arise. It was a new allotment, so things are being build from scratch, but I really wanted everyone to work together. I think it is far too large for that and possibly because everyone had their patch it didn’t work. I was so upset when I saw people start to fence their bit off – especially when they used the flourescent orange builders netting. It really divided the place up and made it all very individualistic. One day I will work on creating a community in the real world. This is not my first disappointment with community, I lived in one made up of 17 people in a rather strange, rambling abode above a leather shop at the top of Brick Lane in London. A topic for another post.

So, what I am doing with the tools and bits that lots of people gave me for my birthday last year? Well, I have gotten the gardening bug and so I am investing time and energy transforming our garden. When I first moved in with my OH just before I got the allotment I wasn’t comfortable doing things in his garden. Now I feel it is very much our garden and our home, so I am happy to start putting my stamp on the garden! His mum and dad put in some amazing raised beds with a lot of structured (I think the proper word is architectural) plants and so I am making flower beds around the side. I will also be doing a lot of pots as we have a large concreted over bit (nice). I have really got the gardening bug now, something which I must have inherited from my mum, and so I will be continuing to learn and grow. I will be focusing mainly on flowers and herb, especially those which can be used in herbalism.

As for food; I have signed up to Abel and Cole, who deliver local, fresh food to me once a week. This is good as it means I can pretty much avoid going to the supermarket and it will force us to eat better as the food is relatively pricey and I will feel even more guilty about throwing it  away.

The end of a rather small experience for me in allotmenteering, but it has definitely made me into a gardener. Are there any other allotmenteers out there? How do you cope with it?

Meadering, bimbling thoughts

Hello there.

I don’t actually have a topic for this post, I normally set out with a specific idea on which to post; even if it changes as I write – something which has happened several times now. I do have lots of things on my mind and so I am writing to see if anything worthwhile comes out. Apologies if it doesn’t!

First up – bimbling – it’s not a real word, yet one which I like and use quite a lot. Hopefully you understand what I mean my it. I normally use it in the context of bimbling along when walking somewhere – no pace, no strong sense of direction. My other half is away on business at the moment (which is happening quite a lot of late, he has lots of big projects on the go) which tends to result in my brain whirring away with no particular focus.

I got the job which I mentioned before – so I am now a teacher in a secondary school – teaching 11-16 year olds English Literature and Language. I am very pleased to have got this job and I am really excited about starting. My first day is the 21 June – just after I complete my University course. Once that is finished I will be qualified to teach in further education and sixth form colleges: so, not in a school. As such there will be more training to do. At this stage I am not entirely sure what what this will be as I will already have a teaching qualification; its all very complicated and confusing. However I am not worried about it – just excited. I am a very good student and I love studying, so I will just do what I need to do and the school is really supportive, which is excellent.

Last weekend I went on a basic herbalism course at the fantastic Assington Mill. There are so many courses I want to do there and having been there I want to do even more of them now! Anne the owner is incredibly friendly and helpful and with her partner cooks the most amazing lunches. I was taught by Jude and Vanessa from Of People and Plants who were very kind and knowledgeable people. I have been interested in herbalism for a really long time, for example when I was Uni over ten years ago I made lots of herbal teas, but always from bought herbs.  Although I make my lotions and potions now I have never been confident enough to start picking my own herbs.

This course has really boosted my confidence and I have already been down to my allotment and picked a load of plants which were weeds before and I now see as medicine. I now have two oils being created and a spring tincture. I am hoping they will be running another course soon this was spring focused and I really would like one for each season to help me identify the plants who are ripe for harvesting. There really is something about doing things in person with a real teacher, as opposed to a book, which has given me great confidence to get out and start practising.

A few of you said you were interested in some of my recipes I mentioned in my last post. I am going to start off nice and simple with creations you can probably make from your kitchen cupboards, or after a quick trip to the chemist and I will get going on those shortly.

Hmmm, this is getting rather long now and so I will call a halt to my written bimbling. Hopefully there will soon be a post with more focus and something concrete to communicate.

Lotions and potions

I am back to work/studying tomorrow and although I love doing what I do I have a case of the back to work blues! I really enjoy my time off. Oh well!

I am sure this is not helped by the fact I have an interview on Tuesday, for a school (up to the age of 16), which is interesting as I haven’t trained to be a school teacher and I will have to do further training if I get it, which was so not in the plan for things at the moment. But then, what is?

Anyway, onto what I wanted to say: I went on an amazing course on Saturday, which I would love to share with you, but before I do I want to talk to you about one of the things which gives me a great deal of pleasure in my life and links with the course.

Creating my own beauty products!

I love the task of making them, as well as using them. It makes me feel properly witchy – hubbling and bubbing away over my stove top. I put on my favourite Pagan music and get brewing.

I make pretty much all of my beauty products now and they make wonderful presents for other people.

Candle, soap and bath melts make a great present. I already had the cellophane - I will not be buying anymore once it runs out

I make:

• Body lotion
• Cleanser
• Toner
• Face moisturiser
• Face exfoliator
• Body exfoliator
• Soap
• Shampoo
• Conditioner
• Bath melts
• Toothpaste (well, this is very much a work in progress to be honest!)

As well as making them I love using them. It gives me a small frisson of pleasure each time I reach for a product I have made. I have made with love, care and attention, teaching myself a valuable skill, cutting down on packaging, beauty miles (ok, I made that up – but you know what I mean) and from a socialist-feminism point of view, sticking it to the mega-beauty patriarchal, capitalist companies and all that they represent. (oh yeah!)

Would you be interested in some of my recipes and how I make them? No promises, what so ever about timescales!

Va Jay Jay

A post, actually written today – hurrah!

On my way home from uni yesterday I saw a poster which said Va Jay Jay in nice swirly writing. Which made me take a second look. All that was on the rest of the poster was a web address. Do you know what that web address was?

www.LoveYourVagina.com

Oh. My. God. The Word VAGINA in broad daylight. On the tube. Amazing. So I scribbled down the url to look it up when I got home.

I’ve just remembered to do so.

It’s a pretty site, says ‘ladygarden’ when you first get to it, which I didn’t like. But anyway. I clicked through and do you know what it was advertising?

The Mooncup!!!

OK, it’s probably a bit strange to smile and grin and say “hooray” when I saw it (I actually did you know – honest!).

But do you know what? It’s great that they have got the budget to start advertising and hopefully reach a wider audience. So – hooray for the Mooncup and its rather wonderful adverts and website.

I don’t think I need to explain to you why it’s so great – do I? Do you want as post as to why this is an amazing thing?

I went to the doctors last week (no, that’s not the start of a joke) and as I was talking about my periods I told him I used a Mooncup. He said “really- the idea made me feel a bit funny when I heard about it”. To which I resolutely replied to him “it is marvellous and how on earth can you be squeamish; you are a doctor, sort it out”. Honestly – I did! He laughed and agreed with me.

So, a tube advert which makes me happy – rather a contrast to this one!

Priesthood

Another one of my half term musings…

Following on from my last post I  think what I am looking for is to be a Priest. As a Pagan it is not that easy – there is no central body to employ me. As Pagans we have no churches, mosques, temples or synagogues. There is no central community to serve either (with the possible exception of Glastonbury).

In addition I would see preaching as a very small part of my role – my beliefs are so intrinsic to my life that it permeates everything that I do. It isn’t a separate part of my life, so that when I go with my Grove to celebrate I don’t put on my ‘Sunday best’.

I would want to be out in my community, talking and teaching – life skills, literacy, ICT skills and basic maths, living in a greener way and crafty skills. Working in the environment to make it more enjoyable for all, including wildlife. Along with counseling, listening and at times just providing a cup of tea and a helping hand to those in need.

Of course, providing handfasting rites working with the dying, burials and naming ceremonies would be part of all of this, but to me being a Priest is so much more than that.

Being Pagan and spiritual by my actions, rather than just words. And the reason that I say ‘spiritual’? I am coming to realise through the blogs I read that many of us on this green path are here because of our religion. Our beliefs give us eyes to see the beauty in the world and we want to protect that, as well as to try to solve the injustices. I am beginning to focus on the similarities between our religions rather than the differences and it is an awakening I am pleased to come to.

The one area I would struggle with as a Priest would be the aspect most people think of in relation to a Priest, preaching. For so long now my Paganism has been a very internal, private thing. I find it very hard to articulate my beliefs; rather strange as I am normally quite verbose!

So, this maybe one way to create the one great big work/life amazing amorphous mass I mentioned in my last post, unfortunately I just can’t see how I can make it happen at this point in time. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

Story of stuff

OK, so I finally watched this, only a month after I said I would Like I said, I am on half term!

One word summary? Amazing.

Don’t know what I am talking about? Click here for The Story of Stuff

I have written this post straight away after watching it, before I click around on the site, which I am sure is going to be wonderful too. So, a more cohesive response… It is beautifully produced and very informative as well. I highly recommend you watch it yourself. BTW – all facts and figures here are relating to the USA.

There were many points which  stood out for me. The first was the concept of “externalised costs” – we are not paying for the cost of making something to the company, the actual costs are put elsewhere – into child workers, toxic chemicals, low paid employees etc etc. Someone else pays for our products – normally someone a lot worse off than we are.

I also liked her “golden arrow of consumption”. The idea that high levels of spending was created by government and is now protected by government and corporations. Oh, and while we are talking about corporations; they are now bigger than the government. Scary.

Overall, our perceived societal value is based on how much we consume and a lot of effort is focused on making us consume. 1% of everything consumed is still in use 6 months later. How very sad and telling is that?

This whole problem has been created by the US government after WWII when an economist, Henry Bloom(?) said:

Our enormously productive economy…demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consuption…we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate

Wow. After this planned obsolesce was built into products and ever since national happiness has plummeted. Our spiritual satisfaction? What a sad statement of fact. When I saw that quote I immediately thought of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  I learned about this while I was studying marketing and now have been taught it again as part of my teacher training. The above quote elevates shopping into satisfying our basic needs and upwards, almost to self-actualisation status.

The film also explains how we are manipulated into continuing this through the work-watch-buy cycle. My answer to this one? Avoid the main stream media as much as possible! I think this element is one of the many things that my readers do, we all have reduced our consumption – although my personal hero on this one is Eileen of Consumption Rebellion – she is hard-core, but with such joy and vitality!

My final thought on this, before I go back to the site and start clicking through on all of the links, is that I am pretty much preaching to the choir here. I am fairly sure that everyone who reads this blog is already living a greenish life and is taking steps to make it more so. The people who comment are those who already are following this path – please let me know if you are just starting out, or even don’t live a green-ish life.

How do we reach those who are not? I don’t want to be a green bore… I try to set an example in my life and of course I realise that I am a long, long way from perfect, but how can we engage those who just don’t realise there is an alternative and what about those that just don’t care?

Green, feminism and class

This is something which has been running through my mind for quite a while now. I worry a lot about how quite often being green is being portrayed as something which is the responsibility of women. We are the ones who should be staying home, baking, making our own washing powders, washing nappies etc.

It is something I especially struggle with as an ardent feminist, high powered career women who has left that, in the process of changing career and is returning to being the hippy she was when she was younger. And now I enjoy baking and making things by knitting and sewing, amongst other techniques. If we do have children then I would really want to stay at home and not put them into a nursery (especially as they are really, really expensive here and as a teacher it wouldn’t be financially worth my time). I would want to use re-usable nappies and cook their food from scratch, as well as everything else which goes along with these choices.

I worry about how this is betraying my feminist roots. I know my partner would take a very active role in the childcare, but at the end of the day he would be working full time, leaving the house at 7.30am and getting home at 8pm. So, the vast majority of it would be down to me. And by taking the green option it requires additional time.

The other issue which worries me is that we would have this option as we are middle class. What would happen if he wasn’t earning as much? How would we be able to live the ethical, green life to the same extent which we do and I plan to do if we have children?

This issue was covered in today’s BBC Woman’s Hour. A debate between Julie Bindel and the Green party’s Natalie Bennett discuss these issues.Its the first item, just a couple of minutes into it. I hope those outside the UK can access it. (Oh, and the concept of having a ‘Woman’s Hour’? Don’t get me started!)

For me, feminism is about choice for women, we should be able to make our own choices about our lives. The inherently patriarchal society which we live in takes a lot of these choices away from us and often we don’t even know it.  I can chose to change career, live relativley greenly (trying to improve every day) and I chose to make my own things as much as possible. Sometimes as political act in itself and sometimes to save costs and minimise my impact on the earth. But by dint of being middle class (ie – well educated, access to the internet etc) and supported by my partner ( in so many ways) I am able to have these choices.

What do you think?

No Impact Man

Seasons greetings and all that. It’s not a big deal for me and I tend not to celebrate it, so no big thoughts on the New Year from me!

I followed the No Impact Man blog for a while, before I decided I needed to cut down on my  internet time. So when the book came out I got on the waiting list at my library for it.

I read it twice in quick succession and really enjoyed it. I don’t want to give a review of it, as there are professional critics out there, but I want to talk about how it made me think.

There are a lot of facts in this book many of which are quite horrifying. But I found it all made me feel guilty and I should be focused on how I can improve my life.

One of his main points is how much easier it is living in the city to be green. I can relate to that – when I lived in London I could easily get everywhere I wanted to go, I didn’t have a car, it was easier to live in a greener way. In fact for just under a year I lived in a community, with the aim of living lighter on the earth.

Here in the suburbs it is more difficult to be as green, but I think I am using that as an excuse. By moving in with my partner I have had to change many things (he was 36 when I moved in, me 29 and we were both set in our ways somewhat!), but I think I have changed many of my eco ways for the worse, watching TV,  particularly eating take ways much more frequently and using my car to get around when I could get my act together and cycle. Part of the problem is I can’t get access to the bike as my back gate has swollen shut. Excuse alert!

I am already doing a lot of the basic green stuff, making my own beauty products, not getting plastic bottles and bags etc, growing my own veg, making a lot of my own food, but I think I am just doing the easy stuff and I can push myself more.

But one things that I found most thought-provoking was his mention of the Story of Stuff. Now, I have seen this linked to on many of the blogs I read and yet I have continued to ignore it. Why is that? Am I afraid of what I might see? Or is it a touch of arrogance on my part? If that is that case why haven’t I watched it, just to prove myself right?

So, I commit to watching this and posting my thoughts on it within the next 2 weeks.

Lastly, something I found very interesting is he came to the conclusion that we should be focusing on what we gain by being green – mainly communities and better relationships with people around us – saying (paraphrase)

We need to draw lines around people, not between them

That is something I like! For me this is what the blogging community is, what the D2E forum does, and I think this is the fundamental key for getting ourselves out of the environmental mess we are in.