All washed up

Not meant to be a reference to how I’m feeling (although having just got all the kids off to school with my hubby away overnight in London, it’s not far from the truth!) but a hint as to today’s subject.
Which was prompted by my son finishing off his Art GCSE mock coursework on the dining […]

Chocolate makes the world go round

That’s the message of the T shirt I am wearing as I write. Produced by Divine, the fair trade chocolate company, on organic cotton, to remind us of how central chocolate has become to our lives. As if most of us need reminding.
It makes our world go round - combatting heart disease, lifting spirits, comforting […]

What to wear

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the people around him not to worry about their lives: what to eat, what to drink, what to wear. Two thousand years on and we are still more preoccupied about these things than anything else. What to wear. What not to wear. We are what we eat. […]

Food for Thought

Everyone is afraid of something, aren’t they? Well, for as long as I can remember, I have had a phobia of supermarket shopping. Some people love to shop around - fruit from Netto, cheese from LIDL, basics from Tescos, organic from Sainsburys, desserts from MandS…. the list is long and varied. That is completely beyond […]

Is Poverty History?

When I agreed to take on writing this journal, I was more concerned about finding something to say on environmental issues than anything else. And yet, this is my eighth entry and I have so far talked about very little else!
Nor has anybody else, have they? Climate change has become the new media band wagon. […]

The Electrisave revisited

I don’t know whether you saw Panorama last week but it caused great excitement in this house, I can tell you. There was eco-man, walking around his house, Electrisave in hand, working out how he could save a bit of electricity here and there. My man was almost beside himself! How to validate an object: […]

More rubbish!

You may wonder why I have not mentioned paper yet, the most obvious and possibly important kind of recycling. Precisely for that reason. I have so much to say, it’s needs a blank sheet of paper of its’ own!
So much unwanted paper enters our home everyday. Junkmail on the doormat, artistic masterpieces that get discarded […]

A load of rubbish

Partly as a result of the great quantity of stuff I talked about yesterday, we generate a great quantity of waste. We are in the privileged position of having TWO wheelie bins! A long story - large family; entitled to a larger bin; never been delivered; using two normal wheelie bins in the meantime; the […]

Making changes in a consumerist society

Stuff. Great quantities of stuff. Our house is full of it. Toys we don’t play with. Clothes we don’t wear. Books we don’t read. Gadgets we don’t use. Forgive my negativity: it’s Monday lunchtime and I’ve only just finished sorting through the debris of another chaotic weekend in our house.

It seems to me that consumerism […]

A minefield of conundrums

I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on something I said last time. Can’t get it out of my head. I said that my quality of life was in danger of being reduced by my husband’s feverish desire to save electricity. How selfish that may sound. Honest, but selfish.
But isn’t that part of the problem? […]