I’m fed-up with this blogsome blog, considering moving it or abandoning it again.  It’s all so very rigid, I wish I could import it to Blogger or something.

I heard on the news this morning that the government is considering encouraging us to become vegetarians for the sake of the planet.  According to some research by the University of Chicago recently discussed at EcoStreet, it’s more effective to give up eating meat, than to replace your gas-guzzler with a Toyota Prius.  This added to my recent personal misgivings about eating meat means that I’m going to be devising a plan to reduce meat consumption in our home.  I respect the right of choice for the rest of the members of the household, so it won’t be a case of no meat at all, but I will only be providing a meal including meat once a week.  There remains the issue of ensuring that everyone gets their vitamins etc.  But I’m sure we’ll muddle through.  Marmite contains B12 doesn’t it?

Friends of the Earth would like to hear from you.  They’ve recently launched a new online bookshop and would like feedback from the green community.

All you need to do is answer 10 short questions for your chance to win over £150 worth of environmental books.  Click here to complete the short survey.

Thanks to Anna at Friends of the Earth for the tip. 

It’s been a few weeks, but we’re back home after a trip to Cape Town for my sister’s wedding. It’s good to be back with Tango the cat and our little house, although it was very hard to leave family and one of the most beautiful cities in the world for the little bit of suburbia that we call home.

We offset the carbon emissions from our flights with Climate Sure, a very good idea I’m sure you’ll agree. Get a quote next time you need travel insurance, they’re very competitive and do good things with the money that you pay them.

Being back has me fired up with enthusiasm for getting organised at home, at the allotment and for the future.  Apart from business as usual, I am going to be taking a Full Permaculture Design Course in the near future on the path to a new career.  Sadly the course that I’d hoped to be doing is not running this year, so I’ll be hunting for another.  Keep you posted!

I bought my very first pair of 99% recycled shoes last week.  They are Worn Again trainers, made of prison blankets, ex-military parachutes, car seat scrap leather, ex-military long johns, ex-military towels and recycled rubber.  Very comfortable, for me and the environment.

All the best for the New Year to our friends and visitors.  2007 has promise written all over it.  We have a few green resolutions for New Year, namely finally fitting the Water Two valve and putting down the long awaited leaky-pipe irrigation hoses in our back garden, attached to our water butts.   We also have plans to further insulate our loft, up to 30cms.

But, on to more jovial matters, and our New Year’s Eve gathering.  We had such a terrific night.  Good friends, good food and lots of fun.

The children painted and played before dinner.

And for dinner we had bobotie, begrafnis-rys, roast butternut, green bean curry and chutney, followed by fruit salad.  Thanks to Neill for making the bobotie and to Lindy for the fruit salad.

So here’s to 2007, may it be a good one! 

There has been a certain amount of wrestling with my conscience during our days of freezing fog last week.  I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere and quietness that the fog brought, but at the same time felt sorry for the many people freezing cold while they waited for a flight from Heathrow.

This article in the Guardian struck a chord with me, relieved my guilt and put a smile on my face.

 Freezing fog: what’s not to like? I like to think I’m a caring kind of guy, even where arrogant sociopaths who pollute the skies are concerned, but - respect to all you air passengers huddled in your blankets out there - don’t you think this might be the planet trying to tell you something?

And if, like me, you’re lucky enough to be snug as a bug in a well-insulated home, doesn’t this have to be one of the best environmental stories of the year? Don’t you love Nature herself finally taking over, to ground the planes that helped make this the hottest year in history, forcing everyone on to trains and coaches instead? Sorry, but ever since this fog thing started, I haven’t been able to wipe the smile off my face.

Each morning, since the fog set in, Rowan and I have run into the garden to check out the sky, then sat down to calculate the torrents of CO2 that will not be released. Last night, with hundreds more planes grounded indefinitely, it seemed the right moment to crack open a bottle, and plan a party. Until then, with 2006 such a grim year for the climate, there was no way we could have justified even this minor environmental insult. Personally, just the extra lighting would have made me feel guilty.

But our party - assuming we used sustainable cutlery and took the bottles to recycling in the wheelbarrow - would be written off by just one of those thousands of passengers not taking a plane. If BA kept up the total ban on domestic flights we might even run to crackers.

Though, to be honest, when we switched on the news, I wondered if it was ethical to celebrate, while all those other people were stuck in tents, worried they’d never get home.

"They’ve brought it on themselves," Rowan pointed out, "I don’t feel sympathetic at all. Don’t these people read George Monbiot? I’d just like to know what’s going to happen to those blankets." And it’s true, isn’t it, if you want to celebrate the season of peace and goodwill by accelerating climate change, you’ve got to deserve everything the planet throws back at you? Unless, maybe, you’re a child under 10 - though Freya and Thor are younger than that, and they already do vomit faces when they see a plane go over. They didn’t even want us to have the party! It’s just a question of green parenting, starting early.

Even though our party came instantly offset, several million times over, I reassured the kids, and that’s not including the blankets, I still wanted to subject the arrangements to a rigorous environmental audit. No way did we want to ruin Christmas with an environmental guilt trip. So Rowan contacted the Greenpeace helpline, to make sure we weren’t, even unwittingly, risking any infractions of their Christmas Code.

"They say we can’t have party poppers, disposable cups, ready-cooked mini-sausages or anything methode champenoise," she reported (as if). "But beeswax candles are ethical, so is home-made organic food, proper champagne and having the hall lights on, so long as we turn the heating off and end by midnight."

But I knew all that already.

‘What about the snacks?", I said. "Is it okay to buy blinis shrink-wrapped?" Greenpeace’s answer could not be clearer: don’t go there, unless you can identify the source. So my friends, here’s my last tip of 2006, brought to you in rhyme, so you can’t forget: home-made canapes this year, will keep your consciences clear. Merry Christmas!

by Will Duguid

We took delivery of a large, 330 litre compost bin today.  It’s to be "installed" beside a smaller cousin in the back garden to cope with our ever multiplying (it seems) green waste.  We are now a two compost-bin family (and that’s not counting the other two at the allotment).  Yee-haa!

I’ve just sent an email asking my MP to sign Early Day Motion 396 to show his support for local decision making on the subject of GM crops, safeguards to prevent contamination of organic (and other) crops, and to make sure that biotech companies are made liable for damage they cause.  If you are concerned about GM in the UK, Friends of the Earth are conducting a campaign encouraging us all to "Say NO to GM contamination".  They make it easy to contact your MP and even give you a template letter to personalise and make your own.  Come on guys, let’s stop them before it’s too late!

As wild fish stocks wane and over-fishing becomes a real concern it seems ridiculous to be trying to increase the amount of fish in our diet, but that is what I’m trying to do.  Call it instinct, call it desperation, call it anything you like really.  The fact is that I "feel" that we don’t eat enough fish, and because we have cut meat out of our diet so much in the past few years, that we need an alternative, healthy source of protein in our diet.  I’m also trying to shift the last few stubborn kilograms of baby-weight from my body now that my "baby" is well over two years old.  Sigh!

I’ve been taking stock of the supermarket fish counters in our area over the past few weeks.  I don’t even bother going into Morrisons anymore because they have no sustainably caught fish.  Sainsbury’s offer some MSC certified Pacific caught cod and Alaskan wild salmon, as well as line-caught yellow-fin tuna, and  it seems that Waitrose fish is all considered to come from well-managed waters or fish farms. 

Hmmm!  We could really do with a local fishmonger.  I haven’t been able to find one in the two years that we’ve been here.There is an article in The Ecologist about traditional fishmongers that is worth a read, and now I must take my leave and scour the net for a fishmonger within a reasonable distance of our little green house.  Toodle-loo!

I am one of five women featured in the Allaboutyou.com article entitled: How green is your lifestyle?  I’m honoured to have been included along with the likes of Penney Poyzer of "No Waste Like Home" fame.

I’ve recently got involved in supplying the "green links" content to our village community website.  I’ve only made a start and will be adding to the links as time goes by.  Here is the Knaphill Village Green Links page.

We will be taking part in International Walk to School Month, and it will be a good habit to get into again, because it’s something that I let slip every so often.  Any excuse really, rain, tiredness, haven’t had a shower yet!  So more about that next week!

But while I’m on the subject of school, I found two great websites last night: Clean Slate sell organic and fairtrade school uniform, and Uniform2 is a free, online exchange where you can buy and sell used school uniform, books, sports equipment and musical instruments.

I sent an email to Ayrton’s school’s headteacher about Clean Slate and look forward to finding out what he thinks.

Since my post last month about my battle to find an effective natural deodorant, I’ve struck gold!   The Bicarbonate of Soda (or sodium bicarbonate) option has been by far the best odour controller that I’ve come across.  Instead of mixing it in a paste with lemon (this sounded just a bit sticky to me, and so I’m yet to try it out), I have been dusting some bicarb onto my armpits with an old blusher brush (throwback from the 80s).  The results are amazing, it’s very effective.  You can get bigger, cheaper containers of sodium bicarbonate from a pharmacy than you get at supermarkets.

We were given a second-hand  playframe by a friend who no longer needed it.  It’s just Piper’s size and she is enjoying it immensely.  Once we’ve finished with it it will be passed on again to another little person, these things last for a lot longer than our little ones need them for and there must be hundreds of thousands of them out there.  It’s a wonder that new ones ever even need to be bought.