It's my birthday and I'll buy if I want to

So it's my flat mates birthday and I haven't bought her anything. I have decided not to buy anything in lent, so cannot go shopping. I did not buy anything before lent in readiness. To be honest my shopping was a bit random before lent. I went into Oxfam to buy a wardrobe, I saw one for £19.99 and then saw that for just another £6.01 I could buy a ....er..... sledge.

Which turned out to be rubbish for hanging clothes but quite good for chitting potatoes.

So I make her a card out of an old ladybird book with a funny caption.

Then I wrap up a book which I found being thrown out at work called 650 Favourite Recipes by the Womens Institue. My girlfriend is coming round for the evening before my flatmate's birthday so I declare this 'Kate's pre-birthday event'

We spend the evening reading out the recipes which seem to consist of long forgotten 1970's ingredients such as 'canned chopped pork'. We decide to have another evening where we make a whole meal from the book and the winner is the one who doesn't throw up.

We then watch a Sarah Millican DVD borrowed from a friend. We laugh a lot and Jo is glad she did not watch it with her children.

We then tell each other funny stories and all secretly decide we could be stand up comedians.

The Activity Vacuum

For the non religious amongst you this is now what Christians call lent. To the slightly religious it is the time between pancakes and chocolate eggs. To the gardeners it is the time between the Christmas baubles sales ending and the patio furniture coming out at homebase. For self-employed back specialists it is peak trading time as we throw off our winter lethargy and begin to tackle the outdoors.

Traditionally it is a time to hold back and take stock. Last year I didn't buy anything for 40 days and wrote about it in my blog. This year I have done the same but with an added extra. I won't take on any new projects.

So for the next three days I will be writing about what this experience has taught me.
The added extra of not taking on any new projects came about when my dad got ill and I thought it would make sense not to take anything on that I may have to later pull out of. My dad then rallied rather and began to feel better which left me with a kind of activity vacuum. One might think that an activity vacuum is a toy where you can pretend to hoover up. I first found this in my friends flat when I moved in and soon discovered a plastic sucker instead of a proper plug.

I digress. So this activity vacuum began to feel rather good and I found myself more relaxed and organized. So why not encompass it into lent?

This leaves me with a messy room and no shopping to do or projects to plan. Faced with my own chaos and nothing to distract me I begin to organize myself.

First socks. I go through my sock drawer and find 12 socks. All different. Where are the others? I don't remember picking out 12 unmatching socks and throwing them away so they must be in my room. I begin to tidy. 63 minutes later I have 14 matching and 10 unmatching socks.

I declare this a success. The tidying begins to feel good. I start to work on the rest of the room which is also a general storage area for the flat. I find 7 eco lightbulbs, a pair of unworn trousers that fit perfectly, a bra that belonged to a bigger friend that I have now grown into and a nokia phone. It starts to feel like shopping without paying and without being arrested. I decide to write my next blog about adding an extra word to the reduce, re-use, recyle, repair line - REDISCOVER!

Off the wagon

There is an expression about addiction that I always get the wrong way round. So I am either 'off the wagon' or 'on the wagon'. I don't know which one means you are doing the thing that you are trying to stop doing. But which ever one that is, then I am doing it. My addiction is to oil and all that that entails and I have been trying to give it up since I joined transition and gradually I have changed my life but it only takes a few things for me to be indulging again.

So for example I had gradually changed my life so that I was much less dependant on the car. I had done this by never agreeing to be involved in anything that meant I had to drive, so if someone invited me to join a book group in Wymondham then I would just say no.

I had started visiting my parents in Peterborough by train. This turned out to be cheaper than driving and much easier to knit on the journey.

I started to walk to work and sat smugly by as people ran round my office looking for the person who had blocked them in in the car park.

I moved to the city centre and started dating someone also in the city centre so that I was never more than walking distance from where I wanted to be.

I nearly, I repeat, nearly got rid of my car and then disaster struck....

My mum went into a home and my dad got really ill. Then my work got moved to 3 miles outside the city centre. I had to travel to Peterborough at a moments notice. When I walked around the office asking if anyone was driving into the city and could give me a lift I was looked at like I had asked for spare change for a cup of tea outside Macdonalds.

So I started driving around everywhere like an ex-vegetarian who has started eating meat and can't get enough of it!

Then my car broke and the garage asked me to pay £2000 to get it fixed and so I have parked it in my ex's driveway while I have a think. You could say that the car and me are officially 'on a break'.

So there you have it. My story of how you an end up off or on the wagon and then back on or off it in just a few months.

My name is Helenofnorwich and I haven't driven for 6 days and 3 hours...

You don't have to be mad to be a transitioner but it helps

This politically incorrect statement used to be around every office in the '90s in the form of 'You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps'. I was out with my mother shopping in Peterborough and was surprised at how friendly everyone was and how many people she knew. It then dawned on me that she didn't know any of them and this was an aspect of her dementia. I have since heard of other neurological conditions with a similar outcome. But why do you have to have some kind of brain impediment before you will smile and say hello to someone you do not know?

Living transitionally means you may behave in ways that look a little odd. You may ask to borrow something that is really cheap to buy such as a cake tin. If you are cycling places then you tend to arrive slightly sweaty and multi-layered. You might eat strange things in the lunch break such as last nights leftovers. The other day I walked round the office asking if anyone was driving to our headquarters and felt rather embarrassed as people looked me up and down in wonderment at my lack of transport. 'Is she too poor to have a car?' 'Perhaps she has something wrong with her and is not allowed to drive'. Our company has now joined liftshare which means you can log on and find someone else going on the same journey and cadge a lift. Its kind of like a computerized hitchhiking with the knowledge that the person works for the same people as you.

You may also look generally poor by not flying abroad on holiday or buying the latest flat screen TV. So as well as being odd you will be poor and odd thereby lowering your status further.

However you will be oblivious of all this because you will be having such a good time connecting with people you share lifts, food and cake tins with. Different things will be important to you, for example I nearly crashed my car the other day ( yes I still have one) because every year I decorate the pine tree on the puppet theatre roundabout with secondhand baubles. This year I drove past looking for a place to park when I saw that someone else had already done it! I threw my head back with laughter! I have created a TRADITION.

Oh and the photograph? I just googled 'baubles' to look for someone who looked stranger than me and it didn't take long.

being the 99% not the 99p

Last night I was at the launch of Rob Hopkins new book about transitioning. It was the most amazing transition evening since the unleashing 3 years ago. I left with renewed enthusiasm to go out and make changes. There were three rooms at the united reformed church in Norwich. In the main church hall there were speeches and a film shown made by Tom Harper. I did some stand up comedy about being a transitioner and then Rob talked about how things had changed since the unleashing and some of the initiatives that were going on around the country.

The lovely James Frost played a song he had written for the film which I was looking forward to hearing but then got sent off with a bucket to collect money from people who had come in late and missed the chance to donate. Afterwards there were stalls representing different projects going on in transition such as the Magdalen street celebration and farm share. There was a most amazing cabbage on display which looked like an imaginary cabbage in a dream you might have.

With regard to the Occupy Norwich picture that you see there was an agreement that here was a very visible revolution going on that people could get involved in. One that was saying that we can't can't carry on in the same way as we have already.

The main thing I learnt though is that when someones says in an email 'can anyone introduce a film and be a bit funny' then before you send one back saying 'pick me, pick me!' you might want to imagine yourself holding a piece of paper with jokes on in front of 250 people first.

something to do and someone to do it with

Many years ago I trained as an Occupational Therapist. It was the perfect job for me because I absolutely loved doing stuff. My childhood was filled with evening activities and as a result I had 'Grade 5 piano' and 'was a Queens Guide' on my CV.

At a recent interview I discovered that these things are no longer held in such high esteem, however they made me what I am today so I am glad I did them. As my life progressed I grew bored of achieving and entered a new more spiritual phase in my life where it was more important to do things with people.

The creation of the Magdalen Street Celebration has been a most amazing experience of working alongside wonderful people to create 'something for everyone'. What is great about working on a project is that it is free leisure time. If you go to the gym or join a class you are paying to sit (I think this maybe frowned upon in a gym but my experience is limited) in a room of people you may not interact with. Being part of a project you get to make jokes round a table, drink tea and leave with the feeling you are making the world a better place in some small way.

Everyone takes part according to what they can do. The lovely James knows about music and has organized some great bands for the day. Karen is super organized and has made a spread sheet of all the workshops and stalls and fitted them into the empty shops in Anglia Square. Stefi is mainly bossy so we just did what she told us to do but it meant that in a bunch of lefty liberals at least someone was in charge. Andy was behind the scenes creating amazing graphics to give the celebration its yellow-black-hand print theme. I attended meetings and made jokes mainly.

Oh, and applied for funding, invited the mayor and made 100 metres of bunting (with a lot of help).

The 2nd Magdalen Street Celebration is tomorrow, Saturday 1st October, 10am-4pm, all along Magdalen Street, Norwich, NR. Click here for map and details of activities, stalls and music. line-up

On being an eco-worrier

When I first got into the whole green thingy I imagined myself as protesting in trees and having a cool name like swampy. Obviously that has been taken but perhaps urban forager. However, being middle aged, middle class and generally living in fear of arrest I have only managed to be an eco-worrier.

This involves analyzing everything you do and weighing it up against cost to the planet, my health, my purse, my family and my spiritual self.

So for example, I am in my old watering hole from my youth. No longer packed with six formers but now frequented by families having a 'traditional home cooked pub lunch' printed on an impossibly large menu with a specials blackboard that is too far away for me to remember everything in one trip.

Mum has memory problems so while she and dad are still slowly reading out the starters I begin to peruse the mains and play the Green Game.

So first I think green. We have taken the car to the local pub (go back one square)

It is independent ( go forward 1 square)

Shall I have a cheese salad? This would be healthy and more environmentally friendly than meat. But what's the point of going out for a meal and having a salad?

The fish looks good. Healthy and tasty but its really expensive and dad will insist on paying and we are running out of fish in the sea.

I carry on down the menu to the 'beef and ale pie made locally with seasonal vegetables'. This looks good but still meat, mental note to come back to this.

Pasta bake. This would be veggie so more green but they are always a lottery are pasta bakes. Mum is still on the mains now but the waiter has been back twice already. I start to wonder if i shouldnt have something that mum could have if she doesnt like the curry she has chosen so we could then swap.

The waiter patiently returns, I panic and plump for the beef lasagne because I just really fancy it.( go back six spaces)

p.s in case you are thinking of going to the fox and hounds in Peterborough you will find that the picture of this girl on their website most misleading.

What if life in the future was all about doing less?!

The book I'm leaving on the bench is "How to be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson.

“How to be Idle” as a title doesn’t conjure up the idea of Transition, does it? But then again, this isn’t really a Transition book. It’s a more of a motivational book, part of the “Heart and Soul” side of Transition. That might sound a bit ironic too, one might think, until you read it. For me (and I should think for many others in this fast-paced modern world), the idea of doing less (especially less of the boring stuff) seems like a great solution! Life is far too hectic, and this attitude is only exaggerated by the perceived necessity to “buy more!”, “earn more!” and “do more!” that is promoted by mainstream media, the government and our employers.

This book is written as a series of essays, each one representing an hour of the day, and each with a different theme of something that you could be doing in that hour instead of hard work. Chapters include “4pm: Time for Tea”, “5pm: The Ramble”, “Midnight: The Moon and the Stars” and many more of life’s little pleasures that come from just taking time off.

So you might still be asking, “what has this got to do with Transition”? Well, for a bit of help answering that question, I’m going to refer to Tom Hodgkinson’s further work “How to be Free”, which although not on the bench because I gave it to someone at the Transition Conference, I heartily recommend (possibly more so than “How to be Idle”, in fact). “How to be Free” is a kind of manifesto for the Idler. Specifically, I suppose, for the author himself. In this book, each chapter represents an action that one might take (and the author has taken) on the road to freedom. And it is here that one can see the connection between an Idle life and a life beyond Transition.

Tom advocates “Cutting up the Credit Card”, “Growing Your Own” and, on a slightly less straight-forward tack, “Playing the Ukulele”. Altogether, the image he gets across is one of a great life – one of fewer working hours, more connection with our loved ones and with nature, more time to do what we want, rather than what our employer expects of us. What isn’t immediately obvious (he doesn’t really dwell on it in either of the books) is how sustainable this kind of lifestyle is too. Most of the pleasures he mentions come at little cost, to us financially, and to the environment, whilst boosting our well-being far more than buying the latest gadgetry ever could.

It may sound at first like this is an idealistic proposal for a world of no work and many pleasures that is obviously unrealistic, but he’s not really saying this at all. What he is saying, however, is that work should be done on our terms, at a time when we want to do it, life’s little pleasures should be enjoyed now, rather than continually postponed, and cooperation should stand taller than competition when it comes to trading and industry. To me, it sounds like one possible manifestation of a great life beyond Transition.

All images from http://idler.co.uk.

STOP PRESS: Having had a quick browse of the Idler website, this quote was prominent, and backs up my final paragraph - "Idleness does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class." Robert Louis Stevenson

Brilliant video!

all present and correct

It may seem like only the other day that we had the torture of valentines and that it was only recently Christmas and surely we don't have to buy anything until Easter but may I remind you it is mothers day on Sunday?

There is no getting round it really. You can say you are not religious or its just commerical or you dont have a mother (actually that last one would probably be ok) but they will EXPECT something. Apart from my mother who has severe memory loss. But then its her birthday as well and I actually WANT to give her something. Besides which she will go to church on the day and no doubt some cute kid with bunches will thrust a daffodil in her hand and give the game away.

So she is getting knitted gloves. Ok so I might have taken advantage of the fact that she isnt that sure of the seasons but she actually loves the scarf I made her at Christmas and wears it indoors and out.

In fact the not buying things has been going since the beginning of lent but I am not meant to tell anyone but I decided to not buy anything until Easter. This included my flat mates birthday so I had to do some quick thinking. She ended up with a cornishware teapot (that had belonged to me) a mini cardboard cut-out of herself with some paper clothes (you had to have been a girl in the 70's to know what I am talking about) and some homemade brownies.

The picture shows a hat I made as part of the norfolk beanie series. It has pictures of windturbines/windmills on it. Just a little tip if you are knitting a present for someones birthday. They are always on the same date each year and people get funny if you ask them to move it because say, and this happened to a friend of mine, you leave your knitting at a someones house and can't finish the project on time. You may, and again this is not me but a friend of mine, end up knitting in your bedroom in the dark at your parents house hoping to get the gloves finished by tomorrow.

In this image I have re-eacted the scenario of my friend. Anyway I have got to go I have to go do a thing now.

sex in the city

So I am living in a tower block.

Quite high up.

With a view of the Cathedral, some days.

Is it green though?

You can walk everywhere as you are so central. It is walking distance from the train station and the bus station. In fact it is walking distance from everywhere I want to go. You can stare out of the window at the cathedral. Or walk and see it.

There is an empty garage where people put stuff they dont want. I have so far claimed the following;

a chest of drawers

a broken umbrella

a bed (had to put that back as turned out to be a cot)

a brand new stapler

a kit to make a replica of your penis

If you are prepared to wait you could probably furnish a whole flat in this way. Previously there have been dining tables, sofas and gym equipment.

You cannot change the way the flats are heated. It is a communal boiler and the heating and hot water is set very high by someone in an office somewhere. Brian and John are two council workers who will gladly help you carry furniture or find your car keys (left in the toilets) in exchange for however much personal information they can get out of you in the time it takes to help you. There are communal washing lines which mainly get used by a man with lots of white vests and pants. I have become friends with some people on other floors and we exchange spare milk and eggs and gossip.

So there you have it. Not really living off the land. No picking herbs from your garden to make tea or spending the weekend making a rainwater collector. However I can get rid of my car and not buy any furniture ever again. Or penis replicators.

I drive therefore I am

A year ago I made a pledge at a mental health conference to give up my car. To be honest I didn't really know what I was saying as the previous session had involved me massaging a girls hand (apparently this is a relaxing activity) and I was rather flustered.

Anyway a year later and this seemingly easily forgettable idea written on flip chart paper and hopefully now fallen down the back of a filing cabinet has been remembered by quite a few people who seem to relish in saying 'still got the car then?' whenever they see me.

Well as it happens they can stop their mocking because I am selling it. I have had the roof fixed. That was quite cheap and I got to keep the biro that was blocking the tracking system. Its been serviced and is ready to sell. Now I just have to deal with the grief. I mean this was the business. A soft top sports car. My midlife crisis car. I always felt like I could pull in this car. Should I want to although I never did test it out. It was actually quite hard to get out of in an alluring way being so low and the heated seats made me think I had finally wet myself.

Although the main interest was from children so that was a non starter. One day I laid in bed and heard some school kids saying ' oh cool! wow look at that!' I knew they were talking about my car and I felt a rush of pride. Then I heard one of the girls knowledgeably inform the others 'an old lady drives that'.

Of course I will have to actually GET places without the car. But since I have been living in a tower block in the city ( see tomorrows blog) I have hardly used the car. I walk everywhere. I go by train to see my parents (if you book in advance its actually cheaper than the petrol alone). I use taxis if I am tired and my bike if I can remember where it is. I also turn things down that I know I cant get to.

So anyone wanna buy a car? only owned by an old lady who hardly used it.....

Christmas shopping part three - things you can make

I have decided to do a hamper for my parents when I go and see them. In it I will put some plum jam I bought at a fair, a Christmas cake I made (not the one in the picture, mine was more burnt looking well er actually burnt, but I am thinking icing), some Chocolate brownies (jamie olivers recipe is amazing) some fairtrade wine and some cheese (binham blue maybe).

With one of my friends I showed her a book of felted gifts from which she chose a small bag which I made by boiling down one of my mums cardigans (before you ask, yes she HAD thrown it out and no she wasnt wearing it)

Another friend I knitted a caftiere cosy which I tried out on his caftiere when he wasnt looking and then realized it was too small and had to knit some extensions. It looks cute in a look-my-coffee-pot-is-wearing-a-balaclava kind of way.

Of course you have to have started this process back in November when you would have been pouring alcohol into your cake every week, practising your brownies and stealing I mean repurposing your mums sweaters. So bookmark this page for next year and get to the shops there are only 168 hours of shopping left!
or go to this website...http://www.buynothingchristmas.org

“Global warming eh? Why’s it so cold then? Hur hur…”

It had to happen.  Sooner or later some bright spark was going to ask the question:

“If there’s so-called global warming, why is it so cold?”

I saw it on Facebook first, which is perhaps inevitable given there’s 500 million people there (apparently even Sarah Palin is on there), and the very next day, skidding my way into the Coop on Dereham Road, I saw it on the front page of the Daily Express: “Global Warming: If Only”.

The subtext is clear – if global warming doesn’t match my experience of an unusually chilly November in England, it must not exist.  Even worse, it must be some kind of pinko conspiracy, dreamed up to fleece hard-pressed middle-Englanders of their hard earned money; the “squeezed middle” the media is so fond of.

Frankly people should know better.  Climate is not the same as weather.

Luckily the fabulous Marcus Brigstocke came to my rescue with a rant on that very subject, courtesy of BBC Radio 4 Friday Night Comedy “The Now Show”.  I fell about laughing.  So, if you happen to hear someone make a banal comment to you linking the early snow to global warming and you feel your blood boiling, Marcus will provide you with all the answers and rebuttals you need!  (You’ll have to be quick and listen to it before the weekend though.)

Laughter is a form of resistance and a form of resilience.
Listen to this and the laughter will sustain you through these literal and metaphorical dark days, I promise!

Pic from www.bbc.co.uk (Marcus Brigstocke in the middle with the offending piece from the Daily Express)

Re-purposing

“I’ve repurposed my summer trousers,” I declared to Eloise in Sustainable Bungay’s Sunday sewing class in the library.
“You’ve what?” she chuckled.

“Yes, it’s a new term I’ve come up with – repurposing*. I’m using an old pair of summer trousers for pyjama bottoms, and they’re great. Not much to do with sewing, but you know, all part of the reuse, repair, recycle thing.”

I can count so many positive changes in my own life since I joined Transition over two and half years ago. The huge social benefits which come from getting involved in common projects with other people preparing for an energy-leaner future. Learning new skills and sharpening up old ones. On an inner level, constantly working my way beyond ‘little me’ to defeat the isolating individualism that’s so strong in our culture, and which seems such a treacherous path to continue on. And just being more relaxed and able to speak with so many more people, in transition or no.

Some of this has come about by a sort of ‘inner repurposing’. During the 80s and 90s I had some (okay, a lot of) new-agey ideas about, well, a New Age. I was into Limitless (personal) Growth and Abundance. I read all the books and did the affirmations. I made a living telling people they could be into limitless personal growth too. I did not think in social terms then or of economics, or see that this 'spiritual' growth (which often came down to 'I want the perfect job, car, house, income, relationship') was predicated on the earth's very limited fossil fuel resources. I just wanted to get what I wanted. I wasn’t religious but I had my own spiritual ideas and I was most liberal about sharing them with others. If they didn’t understand them, well that was their problem. I had my purpose and I was in touch with it!

The first awakening I had that this wasn’t quite right occurred in Venezuela in a hotel courtyard full of flowers in 1996. I was 34. From the reception I heard a booming male European voice fervently declare that we all Create our Own Reality, a New Time is Coming, there is No Separation, We Are All One. On the way to my room I passed the man, who was about my age. I don’t remember the person who was with him. Whoever it was wasn’t getting a word in edgeways.

I didn’t immediately see the correlation between myself and this man. I just felt immensely irritated by him. It took a while to dawn on me. I had not yet realised how the talk of 'no separation' could feel so separating.

There's a discussion going on in the Transition Network at the moment. Michael Brownlee of Transition US believes the 'Sacred' should be at the core of the Transition movement, rather than community. It is well worth reading both his post and Rob Hopkins' response and the ensuing comments.

I once met a man who'd built a healing centre in Arizona with his own hands. It was an amazing place of wooden huts and geodesic domes and always full of visitors. He'd lived on site a long time. I asked him how he responded when people began to talk about their personal spiritual and healing experiences.
"Please don't," he said.

So what has this got to do with the small example of my trousers-cum-pyjama-bottoms?

Well, a few years ago I wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of repurposing - myself or my nightwear. A few years before that I would have actively rejected the idea. Trousers in bed? Darling, I was creating my own reality and I had my silk pyjamas sent to me by a friend in Hong Kong. And I'm not joking.

REPURPOSING n. The changing of the purpose of a thing from its original intended use to another, hence REPURPOSE vb. To give something a different purpose instead of or in addition to its original.

*I've just checked this term and discovered it has in fact been in use for some time, so I can't claim I invented it. However I wrote the above definition yesterday before I found this out.

Pic: Repurposed trousers-cum-pyjama-bottoms with blue woollen scarf repurposed as hot water bottle cover

Its Halloween, my car has broken down in the woods

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and while waiting for help I have time to ponder some major issues.........

1.
Would it have been better to travel on the train? On the train at least I wouldn’t be left in the dark to be ravaged by the undead but on the upside I can take more luggage in the car. On the train I can write my blog as I am doing right now. I can also feel the warm glow which comes from being green even if it is forced on me by the garage not having my wheel in stock.

2.
Shall I try having no car for a while or even a car share? A friend has suggested it and I don’t use one most days. I have been walking and cycling everywhere just lately and getting quite fit. Also its so much easier to park when you haven’t got a car.

3.
What did they do before oil when faced with waiting? You probably wouldn’t send a messenger with a note to say ‘bit L8, CU when I get there’. How would you pass the time when you have no entertainment? Have we forgotten how to just sit and do nothing? There is a great saying that the Quakers have adopted ‘don’t just do something, sit there’. An event is coming up called just this day which is about spending some time on 24th November just doing nothing.

4.
Is it a good idea to meditate while parked on the side of the road? There is not much else to do when you are waiting and I know for a fact that Zombies can’t open car doors. So I decide that, yes, it can be done although the time passes more slowly.

Of course the moral to this tale is, um , dont start a blog without knowing how you are going write the last paragraph.


ps yes that is how I look, luckily I had just been to the hairdressers before my car broke down

confessions of a transitioner or how to lose friends and alienate people

When i was at Sunday school they taught you that when you point the finger there are always three pointing back at yourself. I had forgotten this recently until a Shaman reminded me by something he said.
The other day I bumped into a facebook friend and her son who was holding a toy bear. Without thinking I looked at the label and she immediately began apologizing for buying stuff from Ikea. This filled me with shame to think that I had made someone I hardly knew feel guilty about buying a toy for their child. So this blog is about saying sorry for that and to all the people that I have made feel bad when in fact the whole point of transition is to face challenges with a positive outlook and a 'can do' attitude.
I would also like to confess that every year I buy about a thousand pounds worth of electronic equipment, yesterday I ate an Angus burger at Burger King , I have just driven hundreds of miles in a four by four and I ran over a squirrel.
But of course this doesnt make very good blog reading but perhaps an occasional confession would make us realize that transitioning is exactly that. We live in a world that demands we get everywhere fast and look a certain way and fit in with society and with fellow transitioners. I personally prefer to strike a happy medium so that everyday people find me rather odd and transioners look down on me for my takeaway food indulgences.
I will leave you with the image of a cow floating away over a field with her fellow cows shouting up ' its ok to fart, don't worry about the methane!'
kind regards
Helenofnorwich
ps it wasnt true about the squirrel

Ebay Snowflake jumper - £15
gloves knitted by mother - free
souvenir hat from Russia - free
clothes swapping Caterpillar Boots - free
snowball - models own

Saving the planet and looking geeky - priceless

How many times can you recycle an hpde bottle top?

I thought you might like this story about milk bottle tops. As you may know you can recycle plastic for cash. And if you are doing it for charity it is amazing how enthusiastic everybody is. One woman made her son drink only skimmed milk because she thought that only green lids were being collected. I heard that rethink was collecting them for a local school so as the rethink drop-in lies within my imaginary village ( more of that tomorrow) I decided to get all the church people and people from where i work to collect them. Someone ( lets call him Brian) was bringing me loads to my work and I soon had whole bagfuls which I then took to the drop-in. After a few months I was at the drop-in with a bag of milk bottle tops when one of the staff said ' Oh lovely, Brian will be pleased, he takes them up to a lady on St Stephens road'. This lady was, of course, me and I since found out that this was not true but for a moment I wondered how many times we had circled them round!
I have, by the way, stopped collecting them for now but if anyone is taking a journey down to Portsmouth and fancies delivering some bin liners full of tops then contact me.

and lo! a star appeared on the roundabout by the puppet theatre....
as it is coming to epiphany I thought you might like to see a photo of this star made from foil takeaway containers on the inner ring road....