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It's been an amazing day, starting with a visit to the dentist for bite impressions so that the new denture I'm having made will be a perfect fit. I'd decided to go on into town to get just three things: first, the rest of my Christmas cards which I always get from the charity card shop they have in St. Thomas Church, opposite the University in the centre of town. Second, I wanted to look at placemats for my nice new dining table which Liz said she'll give me for Christmas, and finally I wanted to go over to The Sage, our superb concert hall on the south bank of the river, to get tickets for Murray Perihia who's coming in January. But it didn't quite work out like that!
I went to get the cards first: and whilst I was at it, I picked up some Fair Trade honey from the fair trade shop, also in the church. I do like to use fair trade products as much as I can, and the Sweet Justice honey is highly recommended, having a lovely subtle taste and going very well with my Sunday croissant. Then I walked up to the Eldon Square shopping centre, thinking I'd go to John Lewis' to get navy tights (so few people keep navy nowadays) and to use their quite posh loo. Now the ladies' loo is next to the toy department, and that brought to mind my lovely grandson Danny (isn't it a pity I can't put his photo on here, for 'child safety' reasons). I found a present for Danny (I read his blog, so he might read mind, so I won't say what I got!), but didn't look at their place mats as I'd done so previously and they hadn't inspired me. Instead I went into Fenwicks, found a lovely set with matching coasters, French bistro scene, and bought them while they were there rather than leaving Liz to get them. I'm pragmatic like that and so is she, she won't mind at all that I found and got them.
This was all getting quite heavy, so I thought I'd better get down to The Sage to get the tickets, and then take everything home. But as I arrived at the Monument, the nearest metro station (for as a paid-up Greenish Woman I'd naturally taken public transport and left Buttercup, my shiny yellow car, at home), I found that the Christmas Market was on! I love this market: there are both food stalls and gift stalls, it's the only place I know outside Australia where you can get kangaroo burgers (not to mention Ostrich burgers, Wild Boar burgers and a few other very odds and sods) and loads of other culinary offerings. I had a quick look, and decided that having lunch there whilst carrying heavy shopping wasn't on. So I took the Metro home, dumped the luggage and came more or less straight out again on the metro back to town.
Now as an over 60 I can do this with impunity: I have a Gold Card which costs all of £12 a year and gives me free Metro travel after 9.30 and any time at weekends. But if I didn't qualify for one, all these journeys would have added up, and a much cheaper and more convenient option would have been to take the car, put it in a car park and dump luggage in it as and when necessary. And were there two people without cards, the metro fares would have added up to around £20 (unless you'd known in advance you were going to go back and forth, in which case you'd have got a day ticket - but of course I hadn't planned it that way). So my Greenish poin is, why can't everyone have cheap, subsidised Metro fares to encourage them to leave the car at home? We know that measures to avoid climate change will cost money, but this would be relatively cheap and could cut down a lot of short journey emissions.
Sermon over! I had a delicious Maltese spicy beef wrap for my lunch, washed down with a traditional glass of Gluhwein (German mulled wine, gorgeous in the open air on a winter's day), followed by some mini Dutch pancakes with maple syrup. Then I went round the shops, buying some cheese, some olives, some stuffed pepper things which make a lovely starter, some Dolmades (always a favourite, I love Greek food and these are little parcels of rice wrapped in vine leaves) - not to mention some assorted marzipan and a copy of the Big Issue. I'm so grateful to have a lovely warm home that I feel for the homeless, and selling the Big Issue must be a thankless task.
So finally over to the Sage on the hybrid electric bus to get the tickets: back on the same bus, it having gone up to the Gateshead interchange and back whilst I was getting them, and another walk past market and shops en route to the Metro. At one of these (I won't say where as the recipient reads this blog) I bought what I hope will be a nice present for my niece Angie... oh, and dropped into Moben Sharps Dolphin who put in my beautiful bathroom two years ago to ask about new kitchens. Finally back home, where very soon I went for a nap.... and woke up at 6.15 p.m., disastrously late for eating and going to a meeting at 7! So I settled for the meeting, having a quick cuppa and a macaroon to keep me going. And the meeting? well, see the next post!
Those who know me know that I hate gardening! So it was perhaps a little surprising that I spent most of this morning in my tiny garden, which is at the front of the house, just one bed some 14 feet by about 8.
Part of the reason was that the autumn leaves had again piled up on my front path, and in particular had blocked the drainage channel. Now we've not had it nearly so bad over here as they have in Cumbria, but you never know, and a clear drainage path seemed like a good idea. The other thing bugging me was that there is a bush in the garden, goodness knows what it is but it has darkish green shiny leaves, rather like a laurel but much, much bigger than bay leaves: and it had grown seriously too big. My friend Sue, who knows about these things, recommended to me that I should prune it in the autumn: but October was a busy month and I'd not got round to it.
So today I fetched bin bags, gloves, kneeling mat (a couple of newspapers in a supermarket carrier bag!), saw and secateurs, and set to work. First I cleared up all the leaves I could, which was most off the path, though I've left, on the whole, the ones on the bed itself to turn themselves into leaf mould which will feed the soil.... won't it? I must say the path looked a lot better for it. Then I set to on the bush. First I went outside, and cut off everything that was overhanging the pavement: this entailed sawing off some quite big branches, which I dumped on the front path to be dealt with later. Then I went round on the garden side and snipped and sawed off a good bit more.
Finally, I spent at least an hour sitting on the little low wall between my house and next door, with a bag between my legs, cutting everything into six inch lengths that would go easily into the bag and not make holes in the plastic. By noon I had two and a half bin bags full of garden waste, and the place looked a lot tidier. Very satisfying!
So now: do I try to find someone with a brown wheelie bin in which I might be able to put my waste, or do I just put it in the ordinary bin? I don't really want it to go to landfill when it could be either burned or (preferably) properly composted. But I have neither the knowledge, skill or equipment to do anything with it myself, so I'll be dependent on others if I'm to dispose of it in a green manner. Any suggestions?
The big project at the moment is planning a visit to the Antipodes, next February to April. It started with a long held desire to go to the opera in Sydney: I've always loved opera and I've long admired that unique building. I couldn't, however, go all that way whilst my elderly parents were still alive and might need me at short notice. Now they have died, both at well over 90, I can go for a decent length of time without worry.
And then it came to me that I might travel amongst Australian Quakers. I'd been reading a book by a well known Australian Friend, Janie O'Shea, and it described the tradition of 'intervisitation'. I consulted with others, and concluded this was something that it was right for me to do. So the plan is to start in Adelaide, and thence to Geelong, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Newcastle (I couldn't go to Australia without seeing their Newcastle, could I!) and Brisbane. After that, back to Sydney and meet up with my sister, and then over to New Zealand for a three week holiday tour, coming back to Sydney for a night before going to Uluru (the Aborigine sacred site, aka Ayers Rock) and then finally to Perth whence I return home.
So I've just booked all the travel: this means flying some 25,000 miles in all. And I keep thinking that this is hardly greenish! But some of my greenest friends have been to Australia and/or New Zealand, without a qualm, so I do feel it's kind of 'my turn'. I've not done a long haul flight since Vancouver two years ago, and before that since being sent to do a job in Singapore in 1998. So I'm not really a world traveller, and there will be those who've done more air miles going to places in Europe, North Africa or the Middle East than I have to date. Still, Australia and NZ, and back, is a lot of miles.
Buying carbon offsetting is one way to restore a bit of self respect. I've been told this isn't always effective, but I do believe it's better than nothing, and it's one thing I like about EasyJet: they have buying UN approved carbon offsetting built into their ticket-buying website. But I do respect those who just won't fly any more, even if I'm not yet ready to join them, just as I'm not ready to give up meat and still less dairy produce. Someone has already asked me if I'm going by ship: but the cost of this is prohibitive, it's even more than a first class airfare.
So I end up feeling that I will do what I can: but reducing my carbon footprint by 10% in 2010 won't be possible, unless I can count the carbon offestting in too. But then, think how much less will be that footprint in 2011! I'll be Greenish Woman of the Year, I should think!
Today being remembrance day, I've been acutely aware of how the parents of all those young men killed in Afghanistan must feel. As a Quaker pacifist, I don't think that war is ever the answer: but when confronted with men like the Taliban (and I mean men - can there be any women who truly believe they should be treated as the Taliban treat them?) I find this view seriously challenged. It's a dilemma: should we allow evil to flourish in order to maintain a principle, or should we consider every situation on its merits, and recognise that in practice we really can have a choice between two evils and end up with the lesser.
I've been reading, or rather dippping into, a fascinating book called 'The Pig that Wants to be Eaten' after the creature imagined by the late Douglas Adams in 'The Restaurant at the end of the Universe'. The book is a series of moral dilemmas, posed and then discussed, with a conclusion in each case. Several are relevant to Afghanistan. But I can see both sides of the argument: to have left the Taliban, with their American arms supplied in order to get the Russians out (ask an Afghan which was the better regime!) and let them create a school of terrorism on Al-Quaida principles, or to invade and try to restructure the country as a 'western' democracy because 'we think it's better for them', and how patronising is that!
What I've been told of the Taliban (which I have to recognise is necessarily one sided) makes them seem to be the most oppressive regime on earth, worse even than Hitler's Germany or Attaturk's Turkey (the first nation to commit modern genocide). I find it hard to understand how human beings can treat their fellow humans like that, and to pretend that this is in the name of religion - a religion whose very name means 'peace' - makes it even worse. It's a form of collective mysogeny and sadism combined. So what does a peaceful person do when confronted by this?
My one comfort is remembering the Soviet story. In 1985, I took part on one of the most memorable experiences of my life, singing in the Royal Festival Hall on Easter Monday. What we sang was a specially written cantata telling the story of the women of Greenham Common and their fight against the deadly cruise missiles, which had they ever been used would have slaughtered countless Russian women and children. The Greenham women felt part of a sisterhood of all the women of the world, and that the men-tality that produced the missiles was entirely wrong. Little did we think, as we told their tale that day, that within five years the Cold War would be over, the missiles gone and the Berlin Wall taken down, and that a little time later the base at Greenham would be demolished and the land returned to the people as a common once again. And all this without a shot being fired, a soldier being killed. But then, the Soviets were not driven by a supposed religion ('real' Muslims tell me the Taliban take on Islam is nothing to do with that religion but is a cultural distortion of the true faith): they were driven by an ideology and it just became clear that it didn't altogether work. Even the more fundamentalist-communist Chinese have realised that capitalist practices bring more wealth, which is how they have become a much richer industrialised nation in the last 20 years (though there is still immense poverty). I have a lot of sympathy for the Chinese government because the scale of what they have to do is so vast that the problems are pretty intractable, and I do believe that they will gradually drop the oppressive side of their system, stop shooting so many people, and even possibly free Tibet. We won't need to invade them.
But meanwhile British troops are in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, and British hearts will continue to break as the death toll goes on, and on, and on. I wouldn't live in Wooton Basset for the world: I'd find the pain too much. I have cried over the coffins and mentally stood with the parents and wives of the dead, and agonised over what can be done: but I can't find any answers. Was it Wilfred Owen who said 'All a poet can do today is warn'?
