I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas...

It's been a good day. I've done the traditional turkey, not being ready to be vegetarian, but with loads of vegetables: and one of my guests brought a bottle of Champagne with her, which was great. It's been the sort of Christmas I enjoy, relaxed and doing little other than cook the lunch (which I really enjoy doing).

We've used a good bit of energy, of course: I've had the heating on nearly all day, which I don't usually do even in the present cold snap. I find the house is well enough insulated that if I warm it up in the morning, it's warm enough until dusk when the outside temperature does start dropping fast and I begin to feel distinctly chilly. The neighbours on one side have been away, which doesn't help: when both neighbours are home I benefit from having little or no heat loss through the long party walls. The house was built before the days of cavity walls os I can't have cavity wall insulation: but the roof is well insulated and everywhere is double glazed.

I'm convinced that reduction in energy use has to be a major part of becoming a greener nation, a greener world. Less energy use means we won't need to decide what sort of power stations to build: the answer could be 'none', or relatively few.

Could I have been greener? Well, frankly, after finishing off the champagne, I couldn't really say. So I'll just wish all my readers a very Happy Christmas.

Green and white

No, I've not become a Celtic fan: it’s been snowing! There’s been a fair covering, lying on the roads, though as my street is a major bus route it never stays too long. But my lovely little Buttercup is sitting firmly in the carport – well, car space, as there’s no roof at present – and if I need to go anywhere I’m using public transport.

And that’s a Greenish reflection: that the way to avoid driving in the snow is to go, as far as possible, on the bus. Yes, it’s slower and involves standing waiting in the cold: but it’s safer as well as less polluting. I went to Sainsbury’s today, waiting all of two minutes for the bus there and having to run for the one home! Mind you, I’m well aware how very fortunate I am to live where I have a bus to Sainsbury’s in one direction and Morrison’s in the other.

Meanwhile, news is coming in from Copenhagen, and it’s not good. I’m not at all convinced that it’s going to end in anything but failure, even if they do agree to some sort of statement. What is undoubtedly needed is measures that will hurt everyone to an extent, and the rich and powerful to a bigger extent, and nobody seems willing to agree to such measures. We do indeed seem to be in the Age of Stupid. What price the Green party getting a massive increase in their vote? It would be good to have some Green MPs, and if Gordon & Co. let us down seriously, it could happen.

A thought: should I have Christmas lights on, to give a bit of festive cheer, most of the time? I put them on at dusk, and turn them off when I go to bed at around midnight, and they are low power LED lights, but it’s still electricity, more than the TV takes on standby and I get told off if I leave that on. But I like my lights, I like to see them as I walk home down the street, making the place look a bit less gloomy than the wintry weather.

The house is getting full of food. I keep seeing these scrummy looking things, like a Stollen slice and some mini rum truffles, and three jars of fruit in something alcoholic (cherries in Kirsch, peaches in brandy, pears in..er.. red wine?, cos they were three for two), and I can’t resist them. So we move towards the usual situation on Christmas eve, when the house is full of food and there’s nothing to eat! There will be, though: not sure what I have down for next Thursday but I’m sure it’s something tasty. Could well be fish of some sort, as I won’t be having fish on the Friday – oh, yes I will, smoked salmon and cucumber on thin wholemeal bread and butter, for tea, along with leftovers, a bit of salad maybe, some humous perhaps…. Not to mention the Christmas cake which I’ve not iced yet. Might do that this evening. I have to make a trifle tomorrow for the Bring and Share lunch at Meeting, but I’ve all the ingredients for that. Really I should fast all day on Monday, in preparation, but I don’t suppose I will.

And meanwhile, they played the wonderful Harold Darke setting of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ on Classic FM just after I got into bed last night. And snow was indeed falling, snow on snow: and it was a magical moment. May all our Christmases be green and white!

One of those days

For most people, 'one of those days' means one where everything goes wrong. But no, for me today was quite the opposite: it was a day when every moment seemed precious, when I was so moved to joy that I started singing, and when at the end of the day I took a major step to fulfilling a lifetime's ambition.

I awoke, after a not totally restful night, to a glorious morning: sunshine, blue sky, little wind. Definitely a day for Belinda (those who are new to this should know that Belinda is my trusty bicycle and means of keeping slightly fitter than a couch potato!) So after a healthy breakfast (cereal and scrambled egg) I grabbed the shopping list... and then had a thought. Almost ready for posting was a parcel for my grandson (Dan, if you're reading this, then the cat is well and truly out of the bag!) So I addressed it, found the parcel tape and taped it up more securely than the mere sellotape it had had before, and put it in a bag for attaching to Belinda's carrier.

Off I set, with the morning sun at my back. I have a standard route for exercise combined with shopping: about the first mile is on road, then I get onto a bridleway which goes up quite a hill, steep indeed at the end, and then a bit more on road before more bridleways which decant me just up from Morrison's. I was delighted to get up the steepest bit still riding: sometimes I have to get off and walk, but today - admittedly in the lowest gear going - I kept riding. The short stretch of road to the next bridleway has a lovely view out towards the coast - you can just about see the North Sea at one point - and from the vantage point of a quite high saddle you can see even more! I felt at peace, and very content, as I turned off the road: I was keeping fit, doing a useful task - indeed two, posting the present and shopping - and the sun shone so I was riding 'in the light', a good Quaker term! I began to sing 'Oh what a beautiful morning' as I rode along, being only slightly embarrassed when I realised that a couple of dog walkers had been in earshot.

Arriving at the shopping centre, I locked up the bike and took the parcel to the post office: over £5 postage! But my grandson is worth it and I've no other way of getting it to him this side of May: I just hope he likes it. (He's very computer literate and has his own blog, so I'm not going to say what was in the parcel as he could well read this!!) Then to the shop, to get milk and a few other things I needed: and then back home, a slightly long way round to avoid riding behind a lorry with the most dreadful exhaust emissions possible. It was smoky enough riding away from it!

After my usual light lunch (soup and garlic bread and a yoghurt) I went back to the kitchen and began work on the next task: making the Christmas cake. I love doing this sort of thing: it was great to find all the ingredients, prepare the tin, make the mix and set it to bake. Then I went to have a nap.

Just as I was ready to get up, a friend rang me and suggested meeting for lunch tomorrow: so I have that pleasant event in prospect. I went and took the cake out of the oven, stuck in a skewer to check it was cooked (it was) and left it to cool in the tin as the recipe says. Then, finally, I went for my 'morning' bath, a relaxing soak in sensuous aromatherapy bubbles. I got out just in time to get dressed and catch the Metro into town, to meet my friend Julia for a meal prior to yet another visit to our wonderful concert hall, The Sage Gateshead. A pleasant, if over-generous, pasta al forno and a bus ride which should have been about ten minutes but took 25 due to a silly, round the houses route and heavy Christmas traffic, and we were there. The concert was a Classic FM one, in every sense: Elgar, Vaughan William's exquisite 'The lark ascending' played as well as I've ever heard it by Bradley Creswick (who should be hetter known than he is), and then after the interval a vivacious performance of the Mozart Clarinet concerto, making this 'old chestnut' sound like a new and fresh piece. The concert ended with the emotive 'Variations on a theme of Thomas Tallis', a piece I've loved since I was a teenager and once wanted to use as the background for an anti-war film shot entirely in cemeteries.

So all in all a good day: and the icing on the cake was yet to come. I thought I'd do a preliminary sketch for a new blog: I'm going on a long trip to Australia and New Zealand next year, and I want to blog every day so friends back home can see what I'm doing. So to start it off I thought I'd write a bit of background as to why I was going, starting with a wish to go to the opera in Sydney. I wanted to mention the designer of the Opera House and couldn't remember his name, so I looked it up... and the site had an inviting link to 'buy tickets'. So after finishing the draft (far too long) of the blog entry, I went to see if booking had opened for March, and it had (unlike last time I went, a month ago). So I registered, looked up what was available (horribly expensive, one of the two seats I bought was over £100), threw caution to the winds and booked for my two favourite operas which happen to be the ones they're doing on the two dates I can go! One is La Traviata and the other is Tosca: and I have the seats booked and paid for, to collect on arrival. My lifetime ambition is one step closer! What a way to end a really good day.

The Road to Copenhagen

I said I'd say a bit about the meeting. It's now a week plus later, and to be honest I don't remember all that much, except that there was in the end a good debate about coal fired power stations. One man, an experienced engineer, pointed out that if you replace an old coal fired power station running at 35% efficiency by a modern one, even without carbon capture, running at 46% efficiency then by building 'new coal' you're actually reducing CO2 emissions. This didn't go down too well with the green brigade, but to me the only answer is to ask how you can be sure it's a replacement and not an addition. That would be my worry.

I'm beginning to realise that a majority of people in the developed world are going to have to make major changes in their lifestyle if we are going to succeed in keeping global warming to a level where it won't be a total disaster. Those who suggest it's not man made miss the point, here: it's not in doubt that man contributes to greenhouse gases, and if that's the case than we can lower the rate of warming by contributing substantially less. (Actually, the world's major science academies all agree that the phenomenon is human caused: one researcher tried to find what the balance was between scientific papers in refereeed journals which supported the idea that global warming is man made and those that opposed that idea. She found the ratio was 100% in favour: no papers at all in her substantial sample suggested that this is a natural phenomenon. It's only irresponsible journalists like Melanie Phillips, on Question Time recently, who suggest differently: Melanie had the gall to say that the ice caps aren't melting and polar bears are thriving. She's clearly on a different planet: the evidence is overwhelming.

So what sort of changes will we all have to make? One suggestion is we should go vegan, because of the amount of methane produced by livestock. But I do wonder about this one... what about the methane produced by all those bean-eating vegans! I want to look for some proper research on this one, and haven't got round to that yet. And I don't believe we've evolved to be vegans. If the problem, then, is too many cows, surely the answer is eat less meat rather than no meat, and eat meat other than beef which is apparently the chief offender. Having just eaten a delicious piece of Farmers Market local leg of lamb, I'm not feeling in the least guilty. Maybe more insulation (but how many emissions were produced in making it?) and more public transport (but I've done only about 1500 miles in six months in the car, hardly heavy motoring!) are part of the answer. But then..... you'll have seen I'm resisting not having my milk and cheese. Others will similarly resist not having their 4x4 or their long haul flight holidays..... and there are no easy answers.

I'm not optimistic about Copenhagen. There will be millions of words, but will it save even as much in the way of emissions as was created by having the conference in the first place? Somehow I can't feel sure even of that. But watch this space: you never know.