Shoe crisis

August 29, 2008 at 3:28 pm (Uncategorized)

My ancient pair of Berghaus Storm walking boots has finally fallen apart. I mean really fallen apart – stitching gone and sole hanging off.

That just leaves me with:

  • A pair of brown Doc Martins, which are falling apart only after about 3 years. The leather has stretched and they are now too wide and make my feet hurt.
  • A pair of Clarks work shoes that I have had forever. At least ten years. They are soooo comfortable, but sooo tatty
  • A pair of bike-oil soaked trainers.
  • Wellington slippers (like Welly boots but shorter) with a hole in the bottom where a nail went right through.
  • Wellington boots – essential for every country bumpkin.
  • Smart shoes, which are smart, but bloody uncomfortable.

Does a man needs more footwear than this? Of course not. I have all eventualities covered in that list. The trouble is that most are rapidly getting beyond repairable. I could go to work in wellies, but I think my feet would smell after a while. Ho hum. I better see what size 9 footwear is available second hand on ebay. Hmm, second hand shoes doesn’t sound right though, it has a slight ick factor. I should probably stop being such a sensitive plant and get back to work…

- Sean

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Fashion Landfill

August 24, 2008 at 6:38 pm (Buy Nothing New)
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The true weight of this addiction has only really been felt by an unfortunate few such as the Salvation Army which, with around 2,750 of the UK’s 9,000 charity clothing banks, has been faced with an ever growing mound of tat to flog to consumers indifferent to pre-worn unless it happens to be vintage. Value fashion retailers will debate forever as to how they can sell clothes so cheaply, usually citing economies of scale, but it has been clear to recyclers for some time that a fall in fibre quality and finishing is part of the equation. This makes the resale of last season’s paper thin, slightly shrunken sun dress a distinctly unappetising commercial proposition. Besides, there isn’t much incentive for consumers to buy worn when a new dress costs less than a lunchtime panini and coffee.

But when Defra, the department for the environment, began to analyse the impact of different materials in the nation’s landfills a couple of years ago, fast fashion’s get-out-of-jail-free card was unexpectedly revoked. The nation’s penchant for ‘McFashion’ – as one-night-only T-shirts and skinny jeans have been dubbed – was found to translate into more than three million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/24/ethicalfashion

Oh Dear…..

So the question is, what we do re: shopping when we finish the Not New Year. I am keen to continue to find what we need second hand. I also want to buy from genuinely ethically sources such as http://www.adili.com and other sources. I truly want to value what I buy and remove myself from the throw away culture of the high street.

- Tammy

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Babies, tut and time off

August 24, 2008 at 7:59 am (Buy Nothing New)
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One of the main aims of the Not New Year was seeing how it would be for a young mum. The obvious impact would be where to get baby tut, how much baby tut is really required, how much pressure would I be under to get said tut. This impact hasn’t been as bad as I thought, as the massive baby buying period of 0-6months is over. There are some things that are so undoubtedly cute that it makes me sad she cant have them, but its not too bad.

The unexpected impact has been that my ‘time off’ has been seriously impacted. Let me explain: Every Saturday, I got two or three hurried hours away from home. This gave me a break from baby and the four walls of our humble abode. So where would I go? I will let you guess – town. Yup, the old trap of shopping as leisure. Factor into the equation buying clothes/make-up/jewelry to boost the ego and a powerful combination arose. Hence the term Yummy Mummy. Yummy for the marketing people anyway….

So the result is that I haven’t had ‘time off’ in at least a month, if not more; until yesterday, when i went into town! I went to a different town to raid their second hand shops and have a coffee (a genuine pleasure, always).  I was delighted to find one shop had been refitted and had transformed from a below average shop to a magnificent second hand haven – Red Cross be very proud! Weirdly though, I just bought chocolate, thats it, hummmm.

Adding a random note to this post, I did have to endure WHSmith, as the Canterbury Post Office has closed down and moved into said stationers. The result is a hot, windowless, crowded space that is shockingly the main town branch. Mutter, mutter…. Anyway my actual point was WHSmiths. I found the entire store cluttered, overly bright, and essentially shouting at me – go here, buy this, sale, sale, sale, save …… How could anyone have a clear, focused mind there? But maybe that is the point, to have a clear mind would be to have an opinion, an inner direction that cannot be moulded by advertising and the store. To keep the consumer off balance is the whole idea. Oh Dear.

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Repairs

August 20, 2008 at 2:07 pm (Buy Nothing New)
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Chatting to a guy from the local recycling project, we talked about the Buy Nothing New year. He said that he thought we would do OK – ‘as long as nothing major breaks’ – and the jink was put in place……. the dishwasher decided that it would continue to work, but couldn’t be arsed to actually clean anything……

Given little Megan takes up most/all of my time, I have decreed that a dishwasher is a life saving gadget. So we needed very expensive, new, dishwasher spray arms …… wrapped in a lot of plastic ……… but at the end of the day £98 [how much?!] is better than a new dishwasher…

So one of the ‘rules’ that has developed on this ‘project’ is that we must get things repaired. But to repair ’stuff’ generally means something broke, and that something needs a new something to replace it – hence dishwasher arms. I also bought some canvas repair tape new: I needed to fix the tears in the canopy of our swing seat, before it degraded too far. On my list is also woodfiller for the office windows – I think half Kent’s insect population can now get in.

And for those of you curious as to the mobile phone key problem – buying an old mobile off ebay for parts was actually too expensive – I am just living with it, and figure that I still should be able to sell it later – probably for parts…..

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Freecycle

August 13, 2008 at 12:07 pm (Buy Nothing New)
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I am feeling all warm and glowy today due to the wonderful people who are freecyclers.

[for those not in the know: Freecyclers are local networks who give away stuff they no longer need to other Freecyclers who may want it; thus avoiding landfilling perfectly good stuff]

It all started with a lady over in Hamstreet giving away a fridge freezer, as it wasn’t going to fit in her new place. Now our fridge is interesting for two reasons:

1. Always has a good inch of ice cold water in the bottum

2. Anything towards the back of the fridge freezes – we have lost far too many vegetable this way.

Our freezer also had some interesting ‘quirks’. So….. I put in a request and got it! It is a fantastic thing and is covered in cow stickers to cover the dents, so it is truly unique!

This left us with a spare freezer. I put out a freecycle message in within less than 24 hours it was off to its new home with a family whose freezer had broken. Hurrah! Enthused by this success, I also added the old Sky Box and a table to the list. The Sky Box went very fast and the table may also go this weekend.

I have just answered a request for a birthing ball; as a lady in Sittingbourne needs one to try to get baby to turn (gulp! Rather her than me – turn baby, turn!). I am about to scurry into the attic to find it….

So this bizarre momentum has built up with receiving and giving at the moment, which is a genuinely nice feeling….

- Tammy

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more veg

August 5, 2008 at 10:07 pm (Garden Growing)

The veggie patch is starting to yield treasure. Runner beans, broad beans and kale went into tonight’s pot, and yesterday we had our first broccoli.  Very exciting. Unfortunately, the weeds are also doing well and I need to find to time to do some gardening.   When’s that going to happen!?!

- Sean

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15 milliseconds of fame

August 5, 2008 at 10:01 pm (Uncategorized)
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A Chatham bloke doing a much better job than me...until the power went and the two cycling hippies had to peddle faster.

A Chatham bloke doing a much better job than me...until the power went and the two cycling hippies had to peddle faster.

I wuz on the telly, I wuz.

On Sunday I took the train in fair Rochester town (yes it is a town, thanks to an admin error a couple of years back when it lost it’s city status) to take part in the Stop Kingsnorth Power Station rally to mark the beginning of the climate camp week.

Rochester high street swarmed with journalists, hard-nut cops with armoured video cameras recording everyone’s faces. I suppose I’m on file now. Some police database has my mug shot and a listing saying: “potential trouble maker, mostly harmless”. Come to think about it, I should put in a Freedom of Information request into them to see what they have got on me. It’ll probably be disappointingly little.

Hey, I don’t even look like an eco-terrorist. I need better dreadlocks for that. And a didgeridoo. I had Ki with me, but it’s not the same as having one of those brown-green moth-eaten lurchers that seem to come free with battered old transit vans. Not that I’m resorting to petty stereotypes you understand.

It was a really well organised effort and the turnout was pretty good, and collected momentum as we marched over Rochester bridge and up through Strood and towards the camp at Kingsnorth. I didn’t go that far and ambled back with a couple of local Green Party activists who had been tasked to go and get some extra spuds.

There are a lot of very brave people out in that field this week. The police are playing silly buggers to see if they can provoke trouble.

What gets me about this whole debate is the government aren’t willing to spend big money on renewables because of the uncertainties and risks, and yet they believe that market forces will make companies like E.ON spend billions of pounds on Carbon Capture & Storage, which is unproven, untested and likely to be hugely expensive to build and maintain. They aren’t even willing to put legal clauses into E.ON’s permissions to make them use CCS even if it does become available.

No such thing as ‘clean coal’.

Anyway, I did get a very minor non-speaking part in Sunday’s Channel 4 news, you can see the report on their website (click on the picture below). Don’t blink, you’ll miss me. My speech seemed to go ok, though my message may not have been conventional CPRE….

No, I’m not the rambling bloke in the mac or the scary lady in yellow.

- Sean

blink and you'll miss me

blink and you'll miss me

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Reading

August 5, 2008 at 7:02 am (Uncategorized)
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I love reading books and watching programmes that give me a genuine new perspective on the world. One of the more interesting was C4’s “Can’t Read, Can’t Write”. Reading is so so important to me, and to see the impact of not reading was incredible.

What was also unexpected was one learner’s reaction to being able to read, which was the equivalent to a scene from “Minority Report” when Tom Cruise’s character is walking along the street being totally bombared by advertising.

Minority Report advertisements

Minority Report

Truth is, it appears to be the truth NOW, we just dont realise it:

“Normally you walk up the street, and what you see a stunning building, a gorgeous church. Now what I see is a bloody sign over there. There is a sign over there [pointing]. Now the words just jump out. Its horrible, I hate it. Shop signs everywhere, posters on shops. It takes away the serenity of coming out. It makes my heart race. Before any of this [learning to read], I just wanted to read books. What I didn’t consider was that by reading books everything else gets in. Everything is telling you to do something: go this way; walk that way; buy this. Now I feel a compulsion to read them: SpecSavers; Card Factory; Birthdays………. Not only have you given me reading, but you’ve given me the rest of the f****** world and I don’t particularly want it, thank you”.

Linda, “Can’t Read, Can’t Write”, C4.

- Tammy

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Not my Bag – Guardian Blog

August 4, 2008 at 7:34 pm (Uncategorized)
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For one month I am attempting to live my normal life with one main change – no new plastic. That means no bags, no packaging, no plastic to hang around in landfill. In this blog I’ll keep you updated to let you know how I’m getting on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/

But don’t forget to check out: http://plasticisrubbish.wordpress.com/ as this lovely lady clearly isn’t experimenting – she really is living it.

My thoughts – baby loves blueberries. Blueberries come in plastic tub – Doh!

- Tammy

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Tao Te Ching

August 4, 2008 at 12:34 pm (Buy Nothing New)
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To keep on filling

is not as good as stopping.

Overfilled, the cupped hands drip,

better to stop pouring.

~

Sharpen a blade too much,

and its edge will soon be lost.

Fill your house with jade and gold,

and it brings insecurity.

Puff yourself with honour and pride,

and no one can save you from a fall.

~

Retire when the work is done;

this is the way of heaven.

~

9th Verse Tao Te Ching

Oh the beautiful Tao Te Ching! This verse basically says that the pursuit of more status, more money, more power, more approval and more stuff is as foolish as honing a carved knife after it has reached its zenith of sharpness. To continue to get more stuff dulls the perfect blade.

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