Tales from the edge of town

The messiah returns

2011-12-29T15:21:00.000Z

The messiah has returned to Hartlepool United. Are you ready for this !!

long time again

2011-12-19T18:49:00.000Z

Long time since the last postt. Blame the dodgy back, wrists, neck, shoulders... lol.

Getting ready for christmas now on a budget. I say on a budget but that could be anything but on my budget it will be a small one. For instance we have £2.31 in the bank at the moment ! it's a good job I am a prepper and have food in the stock room / safe house.

Long time no post

2011-02-18T00:56:00.000Z

Just where does the time go?

I see today that it is over 4 months since I updated this site, goodness knows why because I've had plenty of time doing nothing as I've been in so much pain of late but then again smashed out of my head on prescribed medicastion does help with the missing time bit!

This environmental jolly is a good thing .....

2010-10-04T15:25:00.002+01:00

So 20,000 plus delegates, politicians, environmental activists and journalists et al all failed to get a binding agreement in Copenhagen in Dec 2009 so they are all trying again this year in Cancoon, Mexico with all the associated travel, disruption, policing, Co2 and other environmental pollutants just to have another stalemate at the end of it....

The best part is that they will be doing it all again in 12 months time in South Africa........

As I said this environmental jolly hollies are a nice little experience ...... if you can get on the band wagon [ run on bio diesel from a non rain forest deforestation country project of course] that is.....

Where does the time go??

2010-10-01T16:25:00.001+01:00

Whoa!! May the 12 was the last post, blimey where has the time gone. Probably cleaning the house and doing the washing up but then again it could easilly have been just watching the rabbits and chickens we now have.... Oh yes the livestock are multiplying !!

living a subsistance life.

2010-05-12T11:43:00.001+01:00

I watched a programme last week about a vicar who is living without money, initially for 3 months but it seems as if it is ongoing. I was incredibly impressed with this guy and the BBC for doing it mainly because it is following a religeous theme from 800 years ago and the bbc generally don't get into "controversial things" these days but also prove the idea is not new.

Last nights programme was where he tried to walk 240 miles from his home to an environmental guru in Devon. He had to resort to thumbing a lift and also had ot beg for food, which apparently is now illegal! He got there in time and i did wonder if it was by chance or good fortune but I am enjoying these programmes.

To quantify that a bit, I couldn't hope to live without money for one day or even one hour as we have a mortgage and we are only 60% self sufficient in veg.... and my wife would give me a kicking if I sugessted it, lol.
I must say my wife is going to be nominated as a saint when she dies ( hopefully not for a long time) because she is already saintly in her patience of me and the ideas I get up to but I feel another "experiment " coming on!!

Judgement day Part II

2010-05-12T11:37:00.000+01:00

So the election was run and the public decided they could not decide on who could run the country properly. Today we have the first day of the first coillition since the war years with the tories and lib dems in power.

I hope this works out well as I would prefer a more PR / talking to each other type of politics where slagging off each other, where "briefing against people" is a thing of the past. New labour was needed to get rid of the tories back in 1997 but then they desended into the dirty world of political backbiting for the next 13 years until now. I wonder how this will pan out over the next few weeks and months. Oh and I didn't manage to stay up all night on election night managing to stay awake until the late hour of 22.30 pm, lol.......

Judgement day

2010-05-06T13:39:00.000+01:00

So the election in the UK is here, now, today...... For the first time in eons if not ever the whole house is voting Librel Democrat. There is nothing surprising in the fact that we vote, I make sure we both go to the polling station and even if my wife votes different to me, spoils her ballot paper or votes for all of the candidates then we will have voted because I feel that it is our duty and not a right to vote because people died to give all of us the option of democracy. Of course many, many people have died in the wars to ensure our vote and democracy takes place on a daily occurance but don't forget that women died in the suffrajet movement to get women the vote.

Wether we feel that democracy is taking place is another thing. If you were a believer in the Iraq anti war movement when Tony Blair [allegedly] took our forces to war in support of oil and George bush then you probably think that democricy is not working but thinking of Iraq as an example they always had a 99.9% turnout for elections when Saddam Hussain was up for election....... oh, that's right he was the only candidate in the elections wasn't he....

I hope the election proves to be a turning point in the UK political system and we do get a situation where no one party "wins". The tories and labour parties call it a "hung" election where hanging is bad whilst the Libral Democrats call it a "ballanced election" but whatever it is called it will make politiciens sit up and think.... at least the optimist in me likes to think so, lol.

I know for one thing and that is I'll be sitting up all night to hear the results, soething I've never done before....... ever.

The planes are flying again..... so what?

2010-04-22T11:09:00.000+01:00

At last the world can once again breathe a sigh of relief because the aeroplanes are flying again and people can now get back to the good old UK ready to whinge and moan about having to stay in a foreign land a few extra days and whinge and moan they certainly will do! Most will get at least 4 weeks of drivel out of this episode.

It seems to be OK to go abroad for a week or 10 days, be louts on the beach and help destroy the locality of some distant shore then fly back home only to work your nuts off for another 52 weeks in order to do it again next year but come the time when people might be a bit inconvenienced then all hell has to be unleashed and it HAS to be someones fault in order to get full whingeabillity.

One report I saw was a woman sitting by the poolside in full sun saying it was hard to be stuck away from home, if she felt that way why did she contribute to the damaging ozone depletion by taking a cheap flight in the first place?

If people just take a few minutes out of their precious, hard working, stressful lives to think about the bigger picture of their very individual actions that contribute to global warming and the environmental destruction BEFORE they take the actions then there may well be less issues with "natural events" or "acts of god" [assuming that there is a god of course] and more money will be kept in the UK.

It may also be a good idea to think about why you need a foreign holiday for 2 weeks because if you need this holiday to relax and unwind from the pressures of daily life then surely the best action would be to reduce the pressures and stress of the daily "grind" rather than stick your head in the sand for 50 weeks a year.

it does the soul good to rant, lol......

The Election

2010-04-19T17:54:00.000+01:00

So we have an election looming in the good ol' UK and the main two parties are slagging each other off as per normal bear pit politics that we are all used to. Along the rails comes Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats with sound debate and arguments and wins the first TV debate hands down. Even 4 days later the oppinion polls are still showing a good response for NC.

I do hope that the LD's get a good showing at the polls in May even if it's just to give the others a good wake up call.

If anyone reading this can vote then you have until the end of Tuesday to get on the voting register..... especially if you want to vote LD, lol.

Fridgeless...... again

2010-04-13T20:35:00.000+01:00

I tried last year to do without a fridge deciding to make a pot in a pot cooler for the milk and butter etc. Primarily this was an eco thing and a desire to go back to the pantry system and daily shopping to get the freshest food and save money and CO2 by not consuming as much electricity. Although this worked I was having to shop daily and this was taking it's toll on my chronic back problems so this more or less died a death quite quick but about 5 weeks ago both the fridge and freezer blew up so we have now been fridgeless and freezerless for the last 5 weeks and with no money to replace them we have had to manage.....!!

These last 5 weeks have been darn hard for the above mentioned problems but we have had the car available to do shopping when my back has been far too bad to use the bus but this has an ipact on my personal CO2 production. On the matter of CO2 production we have saved over 119kg of CO2 from the electric used to power the FF. Some of this will have been used by the car and buses but I've not assertained how much yet.

I don't know how long this will continue but with no money available it may be a fair while, lol. which brings me to another point, Sell by dates. The government is going to do away with the sell by dates and the use by dates because 1000's of tonnes of food that is perfectly good to eat is thrown away because it is not used by these dates. Good for the reduction of waste food but this also means more profit for the supermarkets as they will be able to leave produce on the shelves longer and there will be less food marked down for quick sale wich will mean many people will have less to eat because they need to use the marked down products to eek out a food budget.

Why is it......

2010-03-31T16:03:00.000+01:00

...... a policy of the local (?) government to insist on putting your local election number on the counterfoil of the ballot papers before you vote ?
In Hartlepool when you give them your election register number they write this on the counterfoil " so that if there is any fraud they can check who voted" . What it actually means is that if you dare to vote for a minority party, say the BNP or UKIP for example then the likes of special Branch can keep an eye on you !!

Paranoid... you bet I am.

At cost energy

2010-02-25T22:03:00.000Z

Saw this piece about a new energy company on the Tonight programme today and thought I'd mention the link here.
Basically it is a millionaire who is setting up an energy supply company [ like BG, EDF, Eon etc] but he plans to charge the consumer the at cost price he pays, I.E. no profit for him.

It is planned for late autum 2010 but you can read all about it at http://www.atcostenergy.com

The less we pay for our energy the more we can spend on heating our homes........

Chilli heads

2010-02-13T22:03:00.002Z

I've been making chilli sauces for a while now but never really got the right one. Today I made one that is more or less there. I bit too much ginger but I can correct that in my next version. Ready for testing so if anyone out there is a chilli head and would like to sample a bit of my rather hot sauces then contact me but remember I need a disclaimer signing first.....

25th of February 2010
Number two version done today and boy does it blow your eyeballs out and then scorch your sockets.... loverly...........

13th of April 2010

Version three made today and I'm becoming a dab hand at this chilli sauce lark now, lol. 40 birds eye chillis, 5 narga moriche chillis and 2 tablespoons of narga moriche chilli paste (70% chillis). This one is really hot. I mean bloody hot, so hot my wife thought my head was going to burst as it was cherry red like a tomato!!
I'll have to re evaluate the idea of scorching my sockets as this one has done the job better.

Still it tasted nice....

Quilting

2010-02-05T14:21:00.000Z

I have always loved the feel of a good big quilt and the artistry involved. I've wanted to have a go for years now but thought it was too difficult. Well now i've had a go and I'm hooked or should that be wuillted,lol. It also came as a bit of a surprise when afriend said she was a quilter but she is far more accoumplished than I am and probably ever will be. Why not check out her site here perfect patchwork and have a look at all her glorious items.

google adsense

2010-02-05T14:15:00.002Z

Just a quick plea to ask if anyone reading this blog can click on some of the adverts that appear on this blog. I have an adsense account and all last year I earned £2.03 so i ain't retiring just yet but every little helps so they say.

Take care,

Alan

Happy new year and surviving the weather

2010-01-05T12:44:00.000Z

So tis the time of the year when we all, well many of us say Happy new year to each other. I hope you all have a really happy new year and that it continues through the whole year of 2010.

It's snowing really hard here today, like 2" this morning and the likes of which we haven't seen for many a year but then I can just about remember the last really bad winter we had in 1963. Admittedly it is only by photographs of me playing in the snow as a toddler but the family stories of having to dig the house out of snow drifts are still well remembered. Digging the house out was in fact a truth. The snow was so hard and fast in laying and drifting that it was up above the downstairs windows so when we opened the curtains we could not see anything as the light was blocked out by the snow. Aparently my brother was able to open the front door and had to shovel snow into the house just ot get started to dig his way upwards and outwards.

Probably a bit of a long story but it still does the rounds. It will pay dividends to take a bit of thought to your health and safety whilst we have these difficult weather conditions with us. I say difficult because we in general have not had to endure bad weather in theUK for many a years except for short 3 day jobbies.
Still, as many of us work many miles away from home and transport is a necessity whichever form you use it becomes relevant to tae a few minutes to think of your H&S. My website has some tips on it if oyu are stranded so click on the title of this post to be taken to the site.

I hope it is og some help.

The Pig of Happiness

2010-01-05T11:53:00.001Z

how low will you shop ?

2009-10-24T17:40:00.001+01:00

previously on this blog I've had occasional month long (or even longer like the car and plastic experiments.) trials to test me out so I thought that it's time for a new one forNovember.

I shop at Asda a lot and they have the whoopsie / yellow label reduced items that are due to come to their sell by date.

I am good at making up meals from nothing or various different things so i thought this challenge would be to cater for my wife, myself sand occasional uni visotor my son from what is available in the yellow label items.
Of course there are a lot of items available in the early moring around 9.30 in my local asda but the better deals are generally fewer in quantity but better in rpice, like 1p for 2 salmon fishcakes reduced from £3.00 or bread for 2p reduced from £1.80 but these are available after 2300 hrs.

I wonder how many times I'll be down at the shops at 11 pm or after but that is the test for this month of November, 2009.

One note of caution is that these yellow label deals will soon be coming to an end as the government, in their wisdon has decided to do away with the sell by/ best before/ use before date labels to encourage more food useage and less going to landfill. all well and good for the reduction of methane and CO2 etc but what about the thousands of people who, like me use these low price deals for basic living from day to day ?

November 14 update.

been doing this test but not religeously. Started off ok with a few buys in the last few days of october in order to have food on the table in november but I forgot to continue after about the 3rd of November and went shopping withoutr thinking so this is something that could easily be done ... if I remember that is....

T'computer and tings

2009-09-24T13:47:00.002+01:00

by you can't live with them and you can't live without them... wives I mean... sorry computers I mean... Ours decided to play silly blighters so I decided to show it the ultimate revenge and got it reformatted... well it's working better now...

Yeah the new website is up

2009-08-27T14:57:00.001+01:00

So the new bselfsufficient website is up and running. It is still the bare bones and needs editing all over the site but it's up and running as we speak.... well until I get my editing head round it, lol.

it can be found here.

The carbon footprint buster.... ok the cars knackered...

2009-07-29T19:22:00.011+01:00

Here's an experiment come experience starting Friday of last week which was the 24th of July 2009.

We have been wanting to "lose" the car for a few years now, well I have but the wife, bless her (organic) cotton socks thinks too much about me and my bad back to let me get away with ditching it for good.
Anyway it's that time of year again when the car insurance is due and the renewal came through t'other day for £292. 70 pence which for a beast of a car I have, a 2.6 auto omega ( like a 150 mph [allegedly] sports saloon ) I was well chuffed but at the same time reading the "terms and conditions" which said the cost included a " policy issuing fee" of £25.00 OK so they print out the insurance certificate and all the bumf, parcel it up in a nice quality envelope and send it out by courier to my address at a time suitable to me.... fat chance, they bung it all in a PDF, attach it to an email and tell me to print it out so I've emailed them telling them I'm not renewing because of this.
So here I was doing a bit of shopping on Friday and the emissions light came on the dash and the engine sounded like a bag of hammers so I limped it home and put it in the garage because that sounds like the crank case sensor needs replacing which it did a few years ago and then it cost around £345.

Also the car also needs servicing at around £180 and like many others about these days we barely have 2 pennies to rub together so we decided to let the insurance go for now and lock the car away in the garage for a few months.

If you think about it here is a bit of work needed on the car, which is only 6 years old by the way and it is going to cost around £800 !!

The dog needs an operation on his back at about £300 and as we have no money now is the opportune moment to ditch the car hence the chance to experience life without a motor for as long as i can do it.

We are constantly bombarded by media, government, quango's, environmentalists etc about cutting our carbon footprint so this experiment will see what i can achieve much like the plastic reduction one in January.

Friday the 31st of July.

One week into the no car use and it's terrifyingly simple...... Painful, weary making and laboriously long times spent doing what i would class as nothing when I could be doing something else but we haven't used the car.

I have a bus pass and use that frequently and when the boss is with me we get a day pass for her which saves 20p over 2 journeys but obviously we would save more if we used it more during the day.
Shopping is a pain as it has had to be done daily because i made the mistake of "forgetting" I was going on the bus and got a lot of shopping. Thankfully a couple of people helped me put the shopping on the bus which the driver was cool about and I phoned my wife to meet me at the bus stop so she brought the bike trailer round and we got the shopping home OK. a salutary lesson learnt there... always remember what you are doing.

Like the reduced plastic shopping it takes time and effort not having a car. You have to wait for buses, sit with screaming kids, whinging old folk and then get jostled about in ques but all for the sake of the environment..... and saving money...

Still the week has gone OK, I have noticed I've taken more pain relief medication but then I've done more effort.

I think the bus is going to be a goer as they say and that got me thinking because we had planned a few days out seeing it is the summer holidays et al. The car forced the issue but there was me thinking we were stay at our own town again for holidays as we didn't have a car but then I got to thinking about making it a challenge to see if we could get a few days out, at low cost, as we have no money which, if I'm honest is the main reason we are not using the car.

I found out that if you plan ahead then the savings can be quite good. I used to go to Te*co's and saved the club card deals so these have to be used by the end of Aug 09. Hence we are going to apply for tickets to the york dungeons and one of those bus rides round york whilst also visiting the railway museum. Hopefully these clubcard vouchers will be accepted, I haven't looked at it yet but we hope to have a good day out in York for very little money by combining offers. I have a disabled train pass which saves a third off the fairs and a second adult can go at the same price so the ticket cost will be around £10 for both of us after discount, the free entries for clubcard vouchers will hopefully pan out and if so we have a get on and off bus ride to see different parts of york for nothing.

Apart from the train fare it looks like we will only need to pay for food but as the newest TV chef, Valentine Warner says " do a picnic in a Loaf.... An ingenious idea and one I plan to do.

4TH August

Got the disabled train pass today. It cost £18 but for two of us to go to Newcastle metro centre tomorrow and then york next week we will be saving £17.52... more or less paid for itself straight away. One other thing on the above post about getting the tour bus to save money, On the national rail site here you can get cheap bus passes for certain areas of the country if you buy one at the same time as the train ticket. Unlimited day ticket type pass and it was going to be £3 for the York one which is a lot cheaper than the tourist buses.

We went to visit the in laws yesterday and although they only live 4 miles away it took us two buses and 40 minutes at a cost of £6.80 return for one person. Having said that we got my wife a day pass for £2.90 so saving nearly £4. This is not quite half a gallon of petrol for my beast of a car so in monetary terms it was cheaper to do it by car until you add in the hidden costs of motoring like road tax, wear and tear, servicing etc.

It took 40 minutes and 2 buses each way but we were able to go into the shopping centre and have a cup of coffee and a few minutes to ourselves just reading a newspaper or looking in the library which I haven't been in for years... It was quite impressive also.

I think the buses are a goer...

One thing we didn't have to buy when shopping is garlic,lol. I lifted the last of the garlic yesterday and in all i have over 400 bulbs now and we have been eating home grown garlic for a couple of months now. When I say eating
I mean eating. There is nothing better than pureeing a couple of cloves of garlic and spreading it on a slice of home made brown bread with real butter.... heaven.

12th August

The dog had his op last week, £238 and is doing well, in fact he's not phased by any of it. As a result he had to go for a check up on Monday the 10th and as he's getting on a bit the two miles to the vets and back would have been too much for his hips. Without the car we decided to get the bus into town and walk home most of the way but he enjoyed the bus ride not one bit. He has the propensity to expect a fuss off everyone he sees so as you can gather a bus full of potential fusses and not one did he get... oh the simple life of a dog. Anyway, he had his check up and everything is OK with the stitches.

Oh it cost 20p for the dogs bus fare....

Like the plastic reduction trials at the beginning of the year on this blog being without a car takes it's toll and time becomes a premium.. better not tell tesco or they will package it and sell it as tesco finest... Time, the tesco finest type or this is no ordinary time, this is M&S Time.......

I don't think it is possible to do without supermarkets in a town if you don't have a car. It could be possible to do without them for the plastic reduction topic where you can spend a bit more time shopping at small shops but, from memory the effort I had to put in back in January couldn't be done without a car. I guess in a village setting with full amenities it would be possible but then they don't have buses to the town...

17th of August.

OK so we are about 3 weeks in to the no car experiment and it's as if we have never had a car..... Sad in a way as I've had a car every day since November the 18th 1978 when I past my driving test except for 2 weeks back in 1999 when we sold one car and the next one wasn't ready.

I reckon the time taken to change our lifestyle in a big way will be between 3-6 weeks. I found it easier with the no plastic after about 3 weeks I seem to remember and this week has been the tipping point for the car. I will need to drive again in October when I take my wife to the theatre to see the river dance thingy as that is in Sunderland and there are no buses or trains between our town and Sunderland after 10 pm, 9 pm for trains so I'll need to way up the idea of hiring a car, looking for a shared lift or getting a weeks insurance for my car for that day. The tickets were bought for my wife by our son for Christmas otherwise we would not have booked them if we were without a car. In future it will be a decision to make where we want to go somewhere and the first search will be the transport requirements. If they don't fit then it would be a case of not going.
Having said that we are Hartlepool United FC supporters and we have always chose to go to away matches in the car except the dodgy ones like Leeds United and Darlo if they ever get into our league again,lol. The main reason is because my wife says so and the reasons are like stopping for breaks when we want, shared driving, less time on the road etc but she came out with a comment the other day after the draw for the next round of the Carling Cup. We got Burnley at home but she said she would rather have an away match at the likes of Middlesborough or Newcastle. i retorted how would we get to those matches then ? to my astonishment here reply was ON THE BUS... with a sneer of sarcasm... The astonishment was due to the fact she was talking about the football supporters buses...

So the upshot is that my wife, faced with having no car and a love of football she is prepared to "slum it" with the rest of us to see her beloved team in action.... Yes.. goodbye Car...

21st August 2009

Nearing the end of the month without the car now and it is starting to take it's toll. I had to the doctors yesterday to have my bloods done. Our surgery has done a "well man clinic" for over 12 years now and all this is, is where you give or rather the vampires take an arm full of blood and send it off for the lab rats to play with then I, as a hypochondriac have to suffer for 10 days until the results come back to tell you that you are OK..

Well it was that time of year again last October and I sort of "forgot" about it until December when they kept telephoning me to book an appointment. All this is in the aid of preventative medicine as it picks up anything like rises in your sugar etc. Anyway, done that and everything was OK but since December I've lost 22 kilo in weight through consistent effort and good food intake, which for that read stop eating 6 fried egg sarnies at one sitting or a full box of jaffa cakes at one go or things like that. My favourite diet song has to be Peter Gabriel's " No self control", lol.
Soooo, for those still in English this is over 3 stone in 8 months so I'm well chuffed but now the doctors have decided that in the aid of "preventative treatments " they will test everyone between the ages of 40 and 64 to see what %age risk you are of coronary heart disease. Like I want to know if I'm 75% at risk of a heart attack ?? Some might but I'd worry so much that I'd get stressed out and have a heart attack...

So the vamps took the blood and now I have to wait until the 1st of September for the results...
Now what has this got to do with not having the car? A lot as I had to walk down to the surgery as the buses were not on at a good time for me. So I set off and it took me nearly an hour and a half to walk 3/4 of a mile, totally knackered with the back pain when I got there out of breath, blood pressure through the roof and nauseous with the pain and I'm on morphine tablets now so imagine the amount of pain I was in...

Still had the sense to get the bus back but even then I had to walk about 200m back home. Done absolutely nothing today except sleep, wake up take some more pain relief then sleep again.

I know I could have got a taxi from door to door but I didn't have the £5.40 that would cost so the loss of the car has been rough over the last two days but hey ho I'll be back to normal whinging and whining tomorrow...

25th of August

Recovering from the missive above, boy does it take it's toll ! Been rather subdued as I'm in a lot of pain and we need some shopping so even though I said I'd never do it I've decided to have a look at online food shopping so just looking for a free delivery coupon / code for Asda then I'll be sorted.

The %age risk of a heart attack turned out to be 10%, lol.

29th April 2010

The car was still out of commission until March 2010 when we finally saved the money up for the repairs to the car. It turned out to be the coil packs, the distributor caps, plug leads and spark plugs in old money but that cost the thick end of £380. We got to use the car between the 25th of March and the 9th of April when the test ran out. Got the car tested on the 25th of April and it needed an exhaust..... £500.76p so we have used the car for less than 2600 miles in the last full test year and it's cost us about £1600 !!

Without the car on a long term takes it's toll. There is no doubt what so ever in my mind that I need a car or a lot more money. On average wqe spent around £50 a month on transport such as taxi's and train but that would have been a lot more if I'd used a taxi every time I went out. Thankfully I have the spacka bus pass but whilst this is free, which is good you need to pick and choose the drivers and buses you use or the bouncing about shags up the back even more.

On the whole I think I will be selling the car as soon as possible because there will be another repair bill soon and thern the car will be off the road again until we save the money up.

like a bus...

2009-07-20T18:16:00.002+01:00

Just like a number 6 bus, never one when you need one then two come together.....

After the recent bad weather we have had I spent some of today looking over the veg patch mrs T has created and oh what a sorry sight. Garlic is well covered in rust now so that has been dug up and the onions have all but been blown out of the ground so many of them have had to be lifted. Mind you that was no effort really as they were blown out of the soil over the weekend. So I have over 200 garlic plants and about 70 red onions to sort out now...

On another board I frequent people will still believe the state will look after them.... fools.

It's all stemmed from the swine flu pandemic that we have here in the UK. I'm on the paranoid side full of conspiricy theories and doom and gloom and there are others who think that when everything hits the fan the NHS, fire, police etc will have a "moral and ethical duty" to go to work to ensure we all are kept safe.... hmmm...

All I can say is I have my food and water stockpiled to last about 4 weeks at the moment with more to come.....

where does time go?????

2009-07-18T13:09:00.002+01:00

Sorry for not updating this blog for the last 2 months... Just where does time go ?

Old age or a dodgy back certainly helps blur one day into the other but I am ashamed at not updating this as I seemed to start off so well,lol.

So over the last 2 months what has been happening in the chez teather household?
Well i was expecting the son home from uni for a freebie 6 months before going back to uni in september but along with 6 of his friends they have got another house to share so it now looks as if he has moved out completly... heaven...

Went to the download festival which for the oldies reading this it is the renamed monsters of rock at donnington. Hard going with the back but the facilities for the disabled provided by live nation were absolutly phernominal... really pleased. I doubt i'd go again for health, money, mobillity issues but if you have a son / daughter who wants ot go then you can let them go with a sense of security that they will be ok. Obviously I'll put a disclaimer here but for a festival it was really, really x3 well done.

Veg patch that mrs T built is holding up and producing masses of fruit and veg which we reckon has / will save us over £300 over the year so that has been a boom.

One downer is the dog, Tinks the red setter needs an operation to remove a small lump under his skin. £300 at least and then they asked if I wanted the vet to give him a saline drip to aid recovery, pain killers and things like that...! all of course had to be paid for on top of the £300 estimate but the really gauling thing that has me bitterly dissapointed with the vets is that we have to pay upfront then claim it back of the insurance company.

I've been a regular, faithful cutomer of this vets practise for over 40 years, YES 40 YEARS and they won't let me pay for the op a few weeks after it's done. We used to bread greyhounds so the vet was at our house so much he was a family friend. An average bill back then in the mid 80's was around £400 a month, every month but loyalty doesn't pay these days it seems.

So much so that we will be going to the PDSA and asking them to do the op and pay up front to them but hopefully as a charity they will be cheaper. I will be fund raising for them as well as a way of saying thanks..

Right off to watch the golf to see if Tom Watson can pull off another open win...

being prepared

2009-05-18T15:07:00.003+01:00

Hi folks,
I don't know where that last post came from, must of been when I was down but I'm up again now, lol.

The title of this missive is being prepared... what does that mean to you? I ask as we have just had a new boiler fitted and when the men came to fit it they found a gas leak on my hob AND oven so they cut them both off and condemed them. Therefore for 3 weeks we have only been able to cook in a microwave which for a cook like me is worse than being in hell for eternity.

We have had to wait 3 weeks as we didn't have the money to buy a new cooker / hob until this weekend and it got me thinking as to what would happen if we were hit by this swine flue pandemic or in the winter when it returns. What would we do for food, water, electric light etc? I've got a website in progress that was going to be all about self suficiency but there will now be a section on being prepared for a major crisis.
Speaking of which, North Korea are playing silly buggers again. I reckon that kim jong ill is ready to check out of this world and like all dictatorships they want to leave a mark for history to condem them by hence the escalation in the tensions in the region. This brings me back to the point above. What would we do if the shit hits the fan in a big way?

I'm starting to prepare a contingency plan, stockpile food, medicines, water etc in case we need it. Some people will say this is being alarmist but even the British Government says we should all have 3 weeks worth of supplies in our home in case of emergency or a terrorist strike etc.

Take for instance if the part of the country you live in or indeed the whole country was subject to an EMP or electro magnetic pulse. This would knock out all electronic items including mobiles, landlines, tv's, cars, electric and gas power stations and water treatment plants.

So you are sat there with no water, lighting, heating or mobillity [cars]. You will not be able to get money out of cash machines or banks and food shops will not be able to open either as they are run on electric. What will you do? How will you survive? Will you be able to feed your family and yourself ?

If you stockpile food and water, enough for 3 weeks as a minimum then at least you can stay at home for a bit. Without being prepaired you will encounter serious difficulties. If the trouble goes on longer you will need to be able to defend your plot, i.e. house, garden, allotment etc from scavengers and hungry people.

If you have made preperation for events then you can at least be more comfortable and safer than many of your fellow neighbours.

Going back to the alarmist point. If I prepare and you don't and nothing happens then we are both ok. If I prepare and you don't and something major DOES happen then I'm ok and you will be dead.....

Life is tough

2009-04-27T17:09:00.004+01:00

Well they say it's only tough when it hurts... well it's tough now. Were is the world going? what are we all to do apart from curl up and die?

coming alone

2009-04-17T19:17:00.002+01:00

Been a while since the last update but been busy in my own way. The third deep bed is in now and ready to plant the carrots, parsnips etc and we got the main dumping area behind the garage cleared ready o plant the potatoes but as things have it and everything is a loabour these days the first plunge of the fork into the soil to turn it over before using the rotovator displayed matted roots from an ivy covered febnce to next doors house.

So plan 2, put the spud sets into half a bag of compost and leave them there ! it turns out that this is the best way tto grow potatoes especially if you want to show them, which we don't but still it gets them off the patio sill and into growth.

My son shoveled a big pile of gravel into bags for me today and it took him 20 minutes. If I had tried to do it I'd have taken at least 4 hours, 6 tea / rest breaks and many pain killers to boot... eeh the halcyon days of youth... bles you son for your help...

My wife.... the burgeoning greenie.....

2009-04-06T19:13:00.003+01:00

Been a couple of weeks since the last update / entry but been really busy in the garden. What with the "bad back" constantly troubling me these days it takes just so long to do anything and I mean little things like potting up plants.

I watch gardners world and the theme last year seemed as if it was Carol Klien telling everyone to divide and seperate garden plants. Well this year i've had my dear and long suffering wife dig up a big blousy american hosta who's leaves were at least 12" long by 8" wide and I spend a good few hours dividing them up with a hand chopping axe. I got 12 good pieces out of the one plant back in October 08 and at least 8 of them have started putting shoots out this week so I'm well chuffed.
Also at the weekend my wife got the spade out again and dug up a fern that had long gone past it's best by date and we divided that up into three pots so again I'm well chuffed with the ideas from Carol klien but more so from my wife who has no interest in gardening but who helps me in ways only she can and with enthusiasm as well. She even drives me to the Durham organic Gardening Association so I can get out a bit more. She knows how much I appreciate it as i often tell her that she is my life line to the world.

One other thing is she is becoming more green as each week goes by. By 2015 she will be planting seeds no doubt,lol.

It pays to whinge.... politley... part 3....

2009-03-26T16:00:00.002Z

Gawd will this whinge fest ever end ???

I'm on virgin media and they are starting to take the Preverbial one... Because the bank returned their [ virgin] direct debit unpaid even though there was enough money in the bank account virgin have now cancelled the DD [even before I had chance to] so on the new bill which arrived today they have charged me £10 for missing the DD payment, another £10 for a late payment fee and because they have cancelled the DD there is a new fee of £5 for a "manual payment handleing fee"

I called them and they wouldn't refund / cancel the charges and said as it was the banks fault I should go there which I will tomorrow but Virgin are taking the P now with their poor broadband service so it's time to change.

I wouldn't care but i'm a loyal customer who pays on time and who has an XL package so it's nearly £80 a month at present but I bet i get it reduced by a good bit after a few days of net research. I'll be getting the lowest price packages and then asking my wife to check the details, she's the brains, I'm the brawn,lol so then I willmaking a pot of tea, sitting on the floor and calling dear old virgin and "having a chat" about their costs and pricing structures. If they want market share then they will have to give me a better deal or i'm off.......

I'll update acordingly.

It pays to whinge.... politley... part 2

2009-03-24T20:21:00.002Z

Having been bolstered with the whinging below I decided to play the insurance game and got several quotes then went through greasy palms . co.uk

Speaking of Greasy palms, If you join GP using this link you too can save money off just about everything. Also if you use the link to join I get £7 but only after you have enjoyed £15 in commision and then you get to use your own link to make a few bob.

Anyway I done the quotes, then re done them using GP and then i phoned my normal broker who does my car insurance. My best quote through GP was with More than and it was £245 with a £40 cashback brining the total down to £205. My car broker quoted me £206 so I said Oh I can get £40 cashback off GP to which he replied, we can;t match that price but we can knock £20 off for you as you are a customer already.

£20 off was down to £186 and it was a better policy to boot. He never asked what the original price was before the cashback and i never told him.......

If you are looking for anything to buy on the web then I can heartily recomend GP on the premis that you may as well make some money out of the purchase.

also if buying online first look for cash codes for delivery charges and these get free delivery. There are loads floating around so you should never need to pay for delivery from any of the major shops ( even for food etc) if you use the computer properly.......

It pays to whinge.... politley.

2009-03-19T11:10:00.002Z

I run a car and have always been a main dealer customer for repairs and servicing etc. One reason is I can't do the jobs myself and secondly I want to use dealer parts and not some copy items.

Anyway the car went in for the M.O.T test yesterday and failed on the indicator stalk flashing the headlights occasionally so it needed a new indicator stalk fitting. Got the price of £84 fitted so I said yes.

An hour later I got the call to say the car was ready so I paid the bill and went home. Looking at the bill they charge £35 to fit the stalk now all it needed was to unscrew 2 screws in the cover / cowl round the searing wheel and unplug the stalk and plug in the new one re screwing the cowl back in place. No more than a 10 minute job even for a spacka like me.

I whinged at the service desk by phone and got the fitting charge reduced by £24.00 + vat. I'll have to go back to the garage to get the refund on my card but I need to go to a shop near there anyway.

Also I had a whinge at the Lloyds TSB yesterday about a charge for a "returned D/D" the thing was there was plenty of money in the account to cover the DD but they still returned it and were going to charge me £20 for their mistake....

It will be a cold day in hell when they get to do this to me I'll tell you so on the phone I went, 0870 number, 15 p a minute ...right, got to speak to a human and told then to ring me back. They did and then after about 40 minutes [ just imagine if I'd been paying the bill ] they agreed that it was "an unforeseen banking error on their part" I know it was, stop the charges... They did but they wouldn't refund a charge for a mistake I made but I bet i get it back before the months out or at least get it suspended until the court case about charges finishes.....

Hey up the lads are here to finish the deep beds for me... must dash...

Feed the hungry 2 on £75 for a month.

2009-03-19T11:04:00.004Z

As an update this will not happen this month,lol.

Towards the end of February I was gearing up for this challenge but then my back gave out again. Well I say again, it just got a lot worse than normal pain so being in agony and bearly being able to lift my arms let alone do anything else my loving wife went shopping for me but being spaced out on pain killers or as I refer to them pain relievers as they never totally kill the pain but being spaced out I never conveyed to my eife in legible tones anyway what i was planning. She "got a few bits to tied us over " and spent £90 quid !!!

I take full blame for this but i'll try the £75 challenge later in the year as April sees holidays and from May our son decends on us from Uni and he is like a plague of locusts all in one go....

... but we love him to bits.....

Feed the hungry 2 on £75 for a month.

2009-03-19T11:04:00.001Z

As an update I

Electric tarrifs

2009-02-26T15:26:00.004Z

As we all know it's often cheaper to switch suppliers now and then for our gas and electric.

I used to do this religeously every 4 months but have become a bit slack over the last year only changing twice but since Ebico put their prices up they are not the cheapest now and if you need to save money then it is necessary to look around and change as the needs arise.

I've said before I don't trust the comparison sites which stems from the time i was a door knocker salesman for British gas and Eon. I always look at the companies own website to find the details of the lowest tarrif and often you may find that the power companies offer a two rate tarrif which can be hard to work out for your home.

My tip is to always take daily meter readings and then you will know what you are using. It's no good blaming the power companies for taking to small a D/D when you are using the power.

A person on another computing board i visit wrote out this formular for me to work out the cost of two tarrif electric bills.

=IF(SUM(A2:L2)<901,SUM(A2:L2)*0.1826,(900*0.1826)+((SUM(A2:L2)-900)*0.0796))

It can be cut and pasted into the top line of an excell spreadsheet in column M2. The first row is labeled jan, feb, march, april etc, one month in each cell A1 through to L1.
In ROW " column A you write your monthly electric useage figures. For me it was 230kwh. so I'd put 230 in cell A2 240 in Cell B2 260 in cell C2 all the way along for each month.

In the formula above you will see the numbers 901 and 900. These represent the first tarrif. For many companies it is a higher price for the first 900 units of a year then cheaper for all the rest. British Gas has 500 units at a high price then the rest at a lower price. Some use 182 units which IS FOR A QUARTER so should be multilpied by 4 idf usig the above calc. If your power company uses a figure then this 901 / 900 will need to be altered to suit your tarrif. The last bit you need to alter is the 0.1826 and 0.0796 in the above formula. These figures represent the actual cost in pence of your tarrif. The 0.1826 is the higher tarrif ( for the first 900 / 728/ 500 units etc) and the 0.0796 is the lower figure for the remaining units you use in a year.

If any of you good followers have any problems then leave a comment or better still email me and I'll do a spreadsheet for you if you give me your company and figures etc.

I'll be experimenting with this formula over the next few weeks to see if it works for gas. It should as the gas is also in KWH but there needs to be a conversion process first to get it to KWH if you have an old meter like me,lol.

Feed the hungry 2 for a month on £75

2009-02-09T19:14:00.001Z

Well, my month of reducing plastic in the shopping went well in January and continues to this day but with the deppression, (sorry worldwide resecion that had nothing to do with Gordon brown,) we are now in I thought it might be worthwhile doing another month long experiment. For the month of March I will attempt to feed my wife and I plus the occasional visit from our son from uni on £75 in total.

I've done it before on £120 but it was a skimp to do it and that was before the resent price rises in food etc.

I'll be utilising a full stock cupboard of which i'll list the contents here when I decide what will be in it.

Will this depression be all bad

2009-02-04T14:22:00.008Z

I call this downturn a depression rather than a recession because I think the present incumbent at Number 10 doesn't want to own up to the truth. I'm not a political supporter of any of the parties believing that all of them will fill their own pockets then let the rest of us fight over what's left. Cynical yes, sad, even more so but who wants to be remembered as the prime minister who took us into a depression?

The current track is that "it's a worldwide recession that was started by the Americans so it had nowt to do with me guvnor... honest"

The sad part is that many people will suffer in this depression, mainly those who have lost their jobs and cannot keep up the repayments on the new beemer or jaguar, the credit card payments, the various loans and the purchases of T%&*0 Finest shopping basket.

But ask yourselves this question. Will it really be that bad ? I was one of the consumer is king brigade until my financial crisis in 2005 - 2008 when I eventually ended up escaping bankruptcy by the skin of my teeth but that focused my mind to ensure i never again had any credit cards, loans, debts i "might not" be able to repay etc.

I spent the first 3 months of 2005 in denial, then the next 3 months blaming everyone else then finally I owned up to it being my fault and my responsibility regardless of the fact banks and building societies kept offering me more money. Of course i took it and spent it but hell life's too short to worry isn't it? well isn't it ?

After a lot of Internet searching and reading, often in the early hours as I couldn't sleep with worry I eventually got to grips with the problems and started to sort them out. Only one of the 14 creditors ha ranged me but I got the better of them in the end and stuffed them well and truly which makes me smile even now.

I had to live on less than £75 a month on food for 3 of us... which we did, I had to be housebound as being disabled I couldn't afford petrol so couldn't use the car and it got so bad I resorted to scrounging the allotments for veg to make soup.

We cut back on everything, the creditors were king and got their money first before anything else bar the mortgage and council tax. I learnt to bounce Direct debits without incurring charges and running up debts on the electric and gas in order to buy food and stay warm as well.

We learnt to grow veg, make our own bread, butter, cheese, jams and pickles, sausages and burgers whilst also making do and mend with clothes and furniture etc. Many of the things we still have now would have been long gone had we had more credit cards or access to loans etc. We would sell anything we could but also demanding a fair price and thus not used eBay and the likes. We cancelled birthdays and Christmases, holidays and even chocolates from the corner shop.

We paid off a ver big debt in a little over 3 years through cutting back to the bare bones of an existence and making the best use of what we had. I say this as it has made me a much stronger person and also a stronger family. It's taught s to be a lot more cynical of society and government, to be helpful but not at our own expense and above all to be realistic and trade in cash. If we have the cash we can make a purchase.

So to the initial question, will this depression be a bad thing? I think not for the simple answer that it will make a lot of people sit up and look at what they buy, what they do and the way they do these things in a similar way our financial troubles made us. It will be most uncomfortable but it will make a lot of people come to terms with their predicament and never again will they buy into the consumerism that this "world " economy relies on to make the rich richer and the less well off feel good by buying products they don't need or worse still want!

We are now on the way to self sufficiency. We still shop at food stores as we are still meat eaters and don't keep our own livestock... yet but we have reduced our reliance on the power companies, we store water and still grow and make food as above. We are happier and healthier now, less stressed but still wary of what government can and often will do that may not be good and we will take that as it comes.

In my opinion becoming more self sufficient is going to be the way forward out of this economic crisis and the way forward to help combat global warming, food and power shortages that will come in the future as sure as day follows night. So if self sufficiency in whatever guise that presents itself is the answer where do we start? Everyone could install, or have installed micro generation for electric and hot water, even harvest rainwater and grey water but at what cost? £100,000, £200,000 ??

What we need to do is start of in the garden.

Simple as it seems but to grow a bit of your own food is a step that puts you in control, gives you a bit of time to be "at one with nature" and help you relax and unwind after a hard day at the work place but also it saves you money and the planet food miles. Obviously is you have a couple of acres as a back garden you can do an awful lot of growing your own food but you don't need much space, anything from a plant pot on the windowsill to grow a few herbs up to a full farm. If you have a back yard you can grow food in pots, if you have a bit of soil you can grow quite a few food plants in as little as a square meter of space. The native Americans used to grow three crops together. They grew sweetcorn and as it grew they under planted this with beans and used the sweetcorn as a climbing frame. After the beans were away they planted squashes or today we could plant courgettes as well. This became ground cover and so reduced the time spent weeding the ground. This method of planting is very hungry on the soil and attention needs to be given to the amount of water needed and also replenishing the soil with fertilizers.

Water harvesting

Which then neatly comes onto two other aspects of providing your own. Water harvesting and fertilizers. Water harvesting need not be grand sunken chambers the size of houses which cost £1000's of pounds but a few water butts in the garden. Having water butts is one thing you can't do on the windowsill but an average house roof is about 60 sq m and an average rainfall is about 1 metre of water per year so you could in theory harvest 60 tonnes of water per year or 60,000 Lt's. This water can be used to water your veg and fruit and also wash your clothes... and no they don't turn out grey and also you can flush the toilets and wash the car with the rainwater. If you go further you can filter the rainwater with a simple box of sand and there are many designs out there for this. Many offer purity of water in the 90% to 99% free of bacteria and germs but for even more safety you can use a set up of ultra violet scrubbers and then you can use this water to drink and bath in but please do your own research for the exact specifications of these methods.

Fertilisers As the cropping above is fertiliser intensive then you can use chicken pellets if you are going to grow organic but why not keep a few chickens in a small space in the garden and keep the guano or chicken much for a couple of years to mature then use this as a fertiliser.

The ideas keep coming from one leading to another and over time you can get a great deal of satisfaction out of being a bit savvy on where your food comes from and don't forget this all started with an idea to grow some herbs in a plant pot on the kitchen windowsill and costs nowhere near 100s of 1000's of pounds.....

Of course if the government really had their heads screwed on (proper like) instead of throwing billions at the banks they should offer free interest loans for environmentally friendly micro generation projects such as solar PV, solar Thermal and water harvesting but what do they know.........

A month without plastic.... conclusion.

2009-02-02T20:27:00.003Z

February 2ND

The month of January has come to an end and as such the challenge of no plastic also ends.

It was quite clear from the first day of shopping that this would be a Plastic REDUCTION CHALLENGE because an enourmous amount of plastic is used in todays food industry.

All along this challenge i aimed to reduce, reuse THEN recycle but my first dissapointment was milk. We drink a lot of milk and as such I looked for a doorstep delivery but the this was a no no from the first phone call. The milk had to come from the next town at least 15 to 30 miles or so away as our local depot was no longer viable many years ago and closed down so there was an issue of food miles. Secondly the cost of milk in proper glass milk bottles was 62 pence per pint. I mean come on, no bloody wonder the poor milkman is no longer doing so many doorstep deliveries. In a previous post I said we drank 3 pints a day but on counting we actually drink on average 3.8 pints a day. If our son is home from uni that will go to 5. So an average of 4 pints a day is 28 pints a week or 10220 pints a year. For doorstep deliveries the cost would be £6336. For poly cartons from the shops it would be £3654 !! I know I wanted to reduce my purchase of plastic milk cartons but come on spending an extra £3000 to do it is madness.

Thus I aim to reuse as many of my poly milk cartons as I can. I've got a lot of sugesstion for this but some to help on the way are making butter in them, cutting up and using for plant labels, making funnels out of them, bird seed fillers etc, etc.

My second dissapointment was the use of plastic for my dogs minced steak. He has a dodgy stomach and so we need to be careful of the amount of fat in his food. We found minced steak in 500g bags for £1.98 then it went up to £2.00 a bag. This is less than 8% fat so to reduce my use of this plastic, A grade 6 I'd need to mince my own which would be no problem but I'd need to find a supply of meat for less than £4 a kilo.... If you know of anywhere that sells steak at less than £4 a kilo let me know please.

Other than that there were no major dissapointments and it doesn't take long to "train" butchers, grocers, fishmongers etc that you don't want plastic bags. I mean it took me a week to actually buck up the courage to ask my fishmonger but then it was cool for all the rest. Within the second week I'd trained them to expect me to hand them a box marked beef, fish or pork etc and often one lass on the butchers stall would actually ask for the box to tare it out on the scales so I didn't even have to have greaseproof paper which I thought was cool.

Over the 4 weeks I had a total of approximatly 823g of plastic that I couldn't find a re use for, mainly the dog food wrappers but also the odd plastic tray from bacon because we wanted a bacon sarnie when only the Asda type shops were open.

Which is another point. In days of yore we shopped on a daily basis if there was a non working(outside the house)housewife or weekly on a saturday if the women were working. How on earth did we manage with shops only opening until 5 pm or 10 pm if it was the local corner shop. I mean, you couldn't get a pound of bacon at 9 pm on most nights could you... And maybe this is a way forward in this depression we are in now. To plan a weeks meals and stick to it. Buy all the ingredients and no more then either prepare daily or weekly and freeze. Maybe this will help cut down on the waste thrown away each week and the amount that comes out of our purses and wallets each week.

One other point is that it takes more time, effort and money to shop locally as opposed to doing one big shop at the likes of ASDA. It takes planning and time management. These are skills of which I need to hone and hone a lot but I'll get there in the end al being well.
On the whole I'd implore everyone to try the reduction of plastic for a month experiment. It certainly changed my views and I am one who already does an enourmous amount of environmental friendly shopping anyway.

This reduce plastic ethos will be continued from now on and even stepped up to badgering local shops to stop supplying plastic bags for fruit and veg. After all paper bags have done us proud for many a year before plastic arrived.

Life goes on

2009-01-28T21:17:00.002Z

Sadly my neighbour of 17 years died on the 18th of January after a short illness. She was one of the most kind and gentle people you could ever hope to meet. She could see the good in everyone even those who couldn't see it in themselves. She made the most wicked potato and leek soup you could ever eat and her recipe, one of many has been passed onto me so each time I make P&L soup I will remember my neighbour.

Her lovely daughter scattered her ashes yesterday and just as she did there was a massive rainbow in the sky, no rain, no sun just an overcast sky with my neighbour smiling down.

But this gets me thinking about life and things. We are so wrapped up in material goods like posh cars, fine foods, expensive holidays, all probably paid for on the never never that one day, in fact now there will be a depression not a recession. My family and I will be ok as we have nowt of value, no posh cars, no rich foods and certainly no holidays. So for us life will go on as normal until we come to the end and become another rainbow in the sky. For many others angst and depression, loss of houses and lifestyles will cost the NHS a lot more than anything else.

Hopefully this blog, and my main site http://www.bselfsufficient.co.uk/(when it's sorted) will become a bigger source of info for others to get through the crisis that is upon us and also looms in the next decade with the loss of oil / fossil fuels etc.

A Month Without Plastic Week 4 / 5

2009-01-23T10:11:00.007Z

January 22ND

Very little to say now as I'm well into the plastic reduction mode I've come to the conclusion that it is not possible nor feesible to eradicate plastic totally so it's going to be as much as possible a gradual reduction with the eventual aim of zero plastic but that will mean drastic changes such as no milk.

We had the bin emptied on Wednesday as my neighbour put it out for me whilst I was out but it was only about 4" in the bottom. For what was in there you could have put it in a dog poop bag I guess let alone a plastic carrier, heaven forbid. I've even trained my local veg shop to continue to provide the paper bags but my real objective is to get him to remove the plastic bags on a roll he has. I will keep whinging until he does.

As I say nothing has happened to report to the world against plastic. I haven't bought anything in plastic except milk since the last posting and when I went to the butchers yesterday I had my plastic boxes in my bag and was being served by a new staff member who was going to put some chops into a plastic bag to the cry of "No he does't use plastic bags" from another staff member. This was before I had the time to get my pork box out of the bag... canvas bag that is.

January 26TH

Still not a lot to report except bought two bags of mince for the dog so that's another 40g of plastic to add to the bin as it's type 6 and our council don't recycle it at present.

I really must find some meat to mince up myself as we use one bag of mince a day for our dog so that works out at an amazing 7.3 kg of plastic each year. The trouble is that at one bag a day you don't realise the impact on the plan but the greater yearly picture is quite astounding.

January 28TH

Been on a big shop tonight for the next two weeks and spent £70 including £14 for minced meat for the dog. Sadly this was the only things in plastic but that's my target to focus on now and buy meat and mince it myself. I'll have to fine it at a cost of less than £4 a kilo to make a saving in cost. I say saving in cost over saving in plastic because I can't buy stuff that is more expensive just for the fact it's not in plastic. Sad as it seems but I don't have a choice.
Speaking of choice, Lush, the cosmetic body products shop uses only recycled paper in their bags and the last one I got at Christmas had 3 spaces on so that if you get three stamps on it for reusing it you get a free soap or something.... The previous carrier I had from them had the date of 2006 written inside by me so I reckon it must have been reused at least 12 to 15 times in the intervening years.... Sad i know but hey it keeps me out of mischief.

January 30TH

Seems sort of sad now as the sparkle has seemed to go out of this trial now as I regard it as "normal" to reduce the use of plastic. Stil no cheaper versions of milk bottles.

A Month Without Plastic Week 3.

2009-01-19T11:17:00.002Z

January 15th

Went to the butchers where I got the meet wrapped in greaseproof paper the other week and asked for some bacon. Real thick cut Ayrshire roll bacon fit for kings and the young woman went to put in a plastic bag after wrapping it in greaseproof paper. I said I didn't want the plastic bag so got a blank look and so I repeated myself, I don't want a plastic bag thankyou.... So she pulled a plastic carrier of the hook and put the greaseproofed wrapped bacon in it. Whilst waiting for my change i took the bacon out of the carrier bag and left it on the counter to the cry of Excuse me you have forgot your bacon.... no i haven't holding it aloft. Well the look of puzzlement on her face was a real picture. My son commented... "Dad you can't help it that she's thick" ... Got him trained already,lol.

The reason I went there for my bacon was because I went to Asda, Tesco and Morrisons to see if the bacon was available without plastic. These so called shops of convenience proudly exclaim that they have fully trained butchers in their shops but I wonder what these butchers do when all their work is out of sight of the public and all the meat is pre packed. Matbe they are the packers or maybe they are just a picture you see in the adverts...

Having said that it was "less convenient" to me to go to the butchers as it was a special journey today that I could have done without if I was looking at food miles....

Still here is half way through the month and it is becoming increasingly easier to shop without plastic, you just have to think about it and if need be spend a little more time thinking, planning and executing your plan. By doing so you are supporting local businesses, (maybe)getting a bit more exercise walking around more shops but above all you are being part of the community. I often feel that we are a nation selfish singles who get up, go out to the car, drive to work and then drive home on a night locking the door behind us until it is time to do it all again the next day. The problem for me with this is that you lose the conection with society and your neighbours. How many times have we read that a body was discovered in a house and it had been there x number of weeks and nobody knew of the death until the stench alerted them.

If we walked a bit more, took a few minutes extra to enable usa to talk to our neighbours or smile at a stranger you pass by or sit next to on the bus the world would be a better place. Maybe I'm being nostalgic for a bygone era, maybe it never existed but I know in my street people know who I am and that they can count on me to offer help if needed.

January 19TH

4 days since the last update but all is going to plan. I bought some bacon from Asda on Friday Saturday and it was packed in the usual plastic packaging. The sad part of this, and a salutory lesson was that it was about 10 pm that we went shopping so I couldn't go to the local butchers for the bacon. The sad part was that it reenforces the idea of these shops being "convenient" stores because for many reasons I couldn't get to the local butchers before it closed. I guess i could have waited until today, monday but we wanted a cheese and bacon toastie that night not waiting until mMonday morning for one. The local butcher lost business because of this and I gained a bit of plastic in the process. All in all my plastic so far this month is very much reduced and weighs around 230g if my maths is correct... yes i have weighed every bit of plastic on digital scales but the actual amount is far smaller in volume than previous months. A normal 2 weekly bin emptying cycle would see the wheelie bin stuffed full of all sorts but mainly plastic that couldn't be recycled.

By selective shopping and thinking about my shopping habits, by thinking of alternative uses if I have to buy plastics I've reduced this down to about 4 " in the bottom of the bin. We are approaching the empty week this wednesday so i'm well chuffed at that Because it means that the bin will not need to be emptied this fortnight. If this is a way forward then my bin will only need to be emptied, I guess about every 6 months but like everything it takes effort to continue this but certainly for a month this is the goal.

After the month I feel that I will be sufficiently "trained" in my habits to continue with the reduce not recycle pledge for plastics.

A month without plastic week 2.

2009-01-08T20:46:00.012Z

January 7TH.

Probably one of the better days without plastic although I did fall at the last hurdle and it was costly on my health. As I was saying in the last post about the miles traveled to do the shops I tried today to use the bus and walk. I know I shouldn't as I'm quite ill when it come to walking but if you don't keep going then you may as well give up on life. It won't be long before I'm in chair so I may as well try a bit harder now.

Anyway....

So I got the bus from around the corner of my house into town. Well that started off with a dodgy driver finding all of the pot holes in the road and bouncing me all over the place. Now I'm no light little bunny but I got well shaken and stirred. Anyway got off the bus in town and I had a plan as I knew I wouldn't last long. Went to the butchers stall in our market hall and looked at the display. On the counter was a pile of greaseproof paper but hung up were a range of plastic bags and carriers. I asked if I brought in some resealable containers would they put the meat in them as I was trying to reduce plastic use age.

The butcher said it would be OK but they wrap everything in greaseproof paper as a start. I ended up with a good conversation about the environment and butchering and ended up with just under 4 pounds of fillet steak which 3 of us enjoyed as a going back to uni evening meal for our son.

So here I am carrying this fillet steak in my hands as I forgot to take my bags again and then I saw some lovely brambly apples, well an apple pie for afters just screamed out at me so £2.00 worth of apples in a paper bag and I refused the offer of a carrier bag and said why. The shop assistant, a 16 / 17 yr old replied "whatever" and threw it in the bin........ The chavs will destroy the future...

So I'm on my way back through the shopping centre and I'm really flagging now and the car is a good 100 yard away. I take a rest on a metal seat just in time as my legs start to give way and it looked as if i was sitting down but really it was falling down on the bench. Sat there for 10 minutes or so but the problem was I had had no food, a #1 cardinal sin if you go shopping and secondly it was right near subway's. Oh man do their sarnies taste and smell nice. Still my willpower was nearly broken but not totally as i got a 6" sub for my son after the pain had eased off but my head wasn't in the right place and the lady put it in a bag and handed me it. It wasn't until I got home after flagging a taxi down that I realised that I had the plastic bag.

After a good rest and some seriously strong pain killers my wife drove us to asda and for the first time I used one of their wheelchairs to my sheer disgust and embarrassment. Got some more dog meat mince and so that's another 5 plastic bags for the weigh in. I hope to get a metal mincer this month so that i can mince my own meat for dog food and thus know the fat content but also cut out on 30 odd plastic bags each month in the future as he gets one bag of mince per day. There will be food miles for that as i need to go to smogville for it but it is also a sausage making shop so I will get a sausage making kit at the same time.

As far as I can see it is going to be virtually impossible for me to not use plastic but at the same time I have only put 45g of waste in the bin this year which started yesterday after the first bin emptying day of the year although the 45g of waste includes the plastic where as by now it would have generally been well full and even emptied once.

January 8th

Took our son back to his flat today so took the opportunity to go to the Grainger market in Newcastle. Great place to shop for cheap bargains but all of the highest quality. In the old part it is row upon row of butchers and veg stalls, delli's and other little shops vying for your attention and money. I first went ther about 37 years ago and still love the place. I haven't been to Leeds in a long time to shop, only to see the scum leeds united take on my team but there used to be an indoor market there where you could buy like a whole pig or half a pig and have it jointed for you but it's been best part of 30 years since I was there... thankfully.

Bought a load of fresh fruit and veg [from Grainger market]and annoyed the line of customers as I had 4 large canvas bags full of F&F and took over 10 minutes to make the purchase. Poor son had to carry them all as well... all say awwww ! One woman was constantly tutting away and talking to the next customer about me taking time so to my sons dismay I made some really sarcastic remarks and she stopped whinging.

Went to the butchers and bought over the path from the veg stall and got some ox liver for liver and onions but sadly this had to be in a plastic bag as I didn't have any boxes with me. I love cooking and have done so for over 30 years now but didn't know until today that you cook ox liver in a slow cooker mode and lambs liver is fried. Liver came out lovely and tender after 4 hours slow cooking.

The secret to doing this plastic reduction thingy is to beome a boy scout and "BE PREPARED",lol. For me that means making a list, a route plan of shops, carrying cash and having the boxes and bags together.... Oh and the biggest thing... remembering to take it all out with me.

January 12TH

4 days since the last update so sorry for that. Been suffering from the dodgy back again which in a way is quite helpful for the reduction in plastic terms because I couldn't leave the house ,lol. Thankfully we had the basics in the cupboards so we didn't starve... we will never starve ! Before the back got a total grip on me I did manage to get to Smoggsville to buy a sausage making kit and a mincer.

I dropped so many hints before christmas it was unreal but did it turn up from Santa... no it didn't so I got one myself. It was expensive in that the mincer was a solid stainless steel one and a good size for £65 + vat and then the kit was £24.00 and a joint of pork shoulder and belly pork was a further £24.00 so the initial outlay was quite large but we got over 10 pounds of sausages made and have eaten about half of them. my neighbour, Bob is a self confessed sausage lover so he got some, wrapped in good old greasproof paper so he will report back soon. For me, my biggest critic is my wife. I don't mean critic in a bad way but she is honest in her advice so I take her council often and she loved them so I reckon we did ok.

Because the back kicked off I haven't been able to get out since Friday so the only plastic used was a 2 x 4 pint milk bottles. I managed to look in the wheely bin today and it's virtually empty with a couple of plastic / cellophane type bags from a pack of chilli's and some chicken. Also a tray that had chicken on. On the other hand there is about 9 plastic milk bottles in the recycling box but the rumour is that this credit crunch crisis has seen the bottom fall out of the recycling market so a lot of recycled gear is being dumped in land fill by local councils...

If this rumour is true then it is well worth doing the reduction in use first before the recycling bit.

Having said that I got a childrens wind turbine kit in the sales after christmas and used a plastic pop bottle to mount this on. Basically it's a Key Stage 2 kit where you make a turbine and as the wind turns the blades the small LED lights up. The reason I got one is that I'm a practical person rather than a reader and delegator so I needed to see in action the principles before having a go at a larger one to add into the grid. Anyway I stuck it out in the garden and was told the wind wouldn't be strong enough.... well last night we had 3 jumbo jets trying to land in our garden thinking this led was a runway light it was so bright.

I reckon we get enough wind so i'm looking for a non plastic set up of a wind turbine now....

January 13TH

Went shopping today but only to Asda. Remembered to take the shopping bags and my newest home made one, that's two now and it looks so much better than the first. Also recycled some brown paper bags from the local greengrocer to use in Asda and got funny comments from the checkout lass because she had to look in the bag to see what the produce was.... Don't worry a caustic reply is always on hand to put the infidels down,lol.

I was going to do chops and veg last night but changed it to ssausages and veg because the chops were in a plastic tray and clingfilm wilst the sausages were fresh home made pork and leek. I did buy some mince for my lovely Red Setter so that was two plastic bags but these will be reused to pick up his waste when out walking and 2 x 4 pint cartons of milk. I am finding myself becoming a bit of a zealot on this subject at the moment or really sad because there was an advert on the tv last night during big brother for a big store. Can't remember which one so I won't name any but it was advertising all the fresh produce and everything except the carrots were in plastic bags.... I'll be watching again as I feel a letter coming on....

January 14TH

I asked for some ideas for reusing the 4 pint cartons on another site I go on and so far there are about 20 ingenious sugestions. I'll copy them here over the weekend. Thank you my fellow ishers.
Got all the food for today so don't need to go out, thankfully as it's bitter cold and freezing ice up here.

A month without plastic.

2008-12-31T14:55:00.017Z

This has come about from a web link I saw where a BBC reporter tried to go a month without plastic last August. She was relatively successful as she reduced her plastic purchase by 80% but for someone like me, and indeed many other green / greener people this will be harder as I already have a limited use of plastic however starting 1st of January 2009 I'll give this a whirl.

The BBC reporter stopped using plastic bags for her fruit and veg, I did this 15 years ago,lol. She went to local butchers and deli's etc, I've been doing this for ages. She used terry nappies and some Eco friendly nappies, At 19 my son is well out of nappies now so this will not apply. I make my own shopping bags so no carriers needed, I use paper bags to pick up the dog waste of my gorgeous red setter so no( even biodegradable)plastic bags there. I'll have to find a way of buying cheese without plastic and I'll need to get the yogurt maker out again. I bought a lot of cheese from a farmers market before Christmas and it looked as if it was in waxed paper but on close inspection it is lined with a thin poly sheet...Hmmmm.

I got some free yeast from Asda yesterday so that will last a few weeks but I may have to take a small container with me mid month for some more.

One thing I will have to reluctantly buy during this months trial will be milk in plastic bottles as we don't have a delivery service in my area.

I'll try to update this every couple of days so why not check back to this blog to see how I get on and even leave a comment.

P.S. If you click on the title of this post it will take you to the BBC site for the original story.

January 1st, 2009;

Went ok as we haven't been out today but I did have nightmares about buying milk in plastic bottles last night,lol.
Still Andy at self sufficientish gave me a website called find your milkman. I thought that we didn't have a local milkman anymore but it seems we do so I'll be calling them tomorrow, Friday to check prices etc. It's ok being green but if the prices are prohibitive then I'll find an alternative use for the 4 pint plastic bottles.

January 2nd, 2009.

Still no joy on finding out a price for the milk delivered in plastic fee bottles. I expect it to be around 50p per pint which would make it expensive for me.
I went into town today and had a look at some indipendant butchers and all had plastic sheeting and carrier bags for produce. I was going to ask about supplying my own containers bit decided not to as they were quite busy. I needed something for tea so I ended up at Asda, my usual haunt for good food at cheaper prices although they were quite quick to up prices last year as and when they felt like it. I guess I shouldn't grumble but little things like 2 pence on a pack of 500g mince might only be 2 pence but when you buy 1 a day for feeding the dog it works out at £7.30 a year or nearly 4 bags of mince. Cooked ham went up by £1 per 400g and corned beef went up from £2.98 for 3 tins to over £5.00. Again processed food which in a healthy diet should be cut out but isn't always...

Anyway, back to the shoping. I ended up buying 4 chicken portions and these were on a plastic type tray, recycle symbol 5 in a triangle and a packet of chillie's. Now I came across the chillies first and put them back as they were in plastic and i knew that the local greengrocer had chillies loose so I got the chicken and then went to the grocer........ He was closed. Back to Asda and after buying the chicken I decided to get the chillies so the upshot was wasted petrol and plastic wrapping.

So a month without any new plastic lasted 1 day in truth but I'll change the goalposts and say a month reducing plastic.....

January 3rd, 2009.
Yesterday I was speaking of moving the goalposts in my quest to be plastic free for amonth and today Hartlepool United turned over premiership team Stoke in the FA Cup 3rd round. Bring on Liverpool away from home for a nice pay day for the club.

January 5th.

Yesterday the 4th Went by without any hitch so that's ok. Today however is another matter. Went food shopping as normal for tea, I try to buy local and daily or for every two days so all the produce is used up. This way if I have anything left I know before I go out what I need for the tea ( evening meal) or if it's leftovers.

I was planning the route to take to go to the local small indi shops and thinking of how much time this would take got me thinknig.... I know really dangerous but I did it none the less. I Went to the bank to get some cash as this is then all I have to spend and thus can't get tempted. Got back to the veg shop and bought the veg and a 25 kg sack of spuds mainly because they were in a paper sack and hence no plastic bags but they will get used up no problem. Then it was over town to a fishmongers to get some scampi and then into Asda to buy some mince for my lovely red setter and a tin of mushy peas... well you can't have scampi without mushy peas can you? While I was in the fishmongers I bucked up the courage to ask if I took a plastic box in would they fill it with the fish rather than use plastic bags etc... No problem they said so that was cool. If any of you are in Harltepool go to kings wet fish shop in Thornton Street... really magical fishy place or should that be plaice?

This took me about 75 minutes and 8 miles of petrol in a car that is currently doing 15 miles to the gallon around town but I avoided plastic bags. On the other hand I could have driven 3/4 of a mile to Asda and bought it all in one go and in about 30 minutes but the fish and potatoes and maybe some of the veg would have been in the plastic bags. Then there are the food miles that we are all being bashed around the head with and in my case it doesn't have to be food miles by air for peas from tanzania etc but the 8 miles I did in the gas guzzler car yesterday. Because it's a v6 it pumps out 268g of CO2 per km driven. 8 miles is roughly 12.832 Km so on my little soujourn to the shop yesterday I pumped out 3.438976 kg of CO2........BUT I SAVED SOME PLASTIC BAGS..
I guess there has to be a compromise somewhere but it seems the deeper you go into the actual mechanics of saving the planet that these compromises depend on your particular interests such as zero waste to landfill or no burning fossil fuels for heating or renewable energy. The one thing that is very obvious to me as I go on this month is that you can't save the planet without it costing you money on a personal level.

Also whilst in Asda I forgot to get the dogs mince so I had to go back in the evening to get that so not really that sucessfull of a day.

January 6th.

As an update to the price of the milk I was writing about on the 1st of January I finally got a response today. Apparently we do have a milkman who serves my area... he comes from the Middlesborough depot which is about 15 miles away at the closest and they do have doorstep deliveries in 1 pint glass bottles.......AT 62 PENCE A PINT I mean come on, I know saving the planet costs money but my house go through around 3 pints of milk a day so that's 21 pints a week and it currently costs me £1.53 for 4 pints in plastic bottles. for the same 4 pints delivered in glass bottles it would cost me £2.48 or comparisons for a week being £8.03 for asda in plastic or £13.02 a week in glass.....

Ok then 101 uses for a plastic 4 pint milk bottle... start your answers here.....

Why do we bother?

2008-12-28T20:33:00.003Z

Why do we bother to be "green " or "Self sufficient" ? I was watching the recent panorama programme about open cast coal mining and the idea that the government has welched on their original plans to deny open cast pits planning permission. Also they have gone from a stance of no nuclear power to selling the nuke plants to a foreign country in order to build more nuke plants. Coming from hartlepool we have a vested interest in this debate as we have a nuke plant which is the sister plant of heysham and torness nuke plants.

Why do we bother trying to do our bit to reduce, reuse, recycle when we have a government who goes back on thier principles because the industries can lobby louder than the rest of us?

I continue because it's a way of life now for me and one I'm enjoying. I make no grand claims of saving the world now as I only scratch the surface of the green movement now by growing my own fruit and, reduce my reliance on the "big 6" power companies, and look at alternative uses for everything I own ready for when it's "regular"life runs out.

Why do you continue to do the good thing and be greener etc?

Well that's Christmas over with.....

2008-12-21T18:53:00.002Z

Well that's Christmas over with.....

Well the preparation is over with more or less. For the first time I'm all prepped for Christmas. I don't know what it is but it's certainly a change from about 10 years ago. then I would refuse to do anything until Christmas eve. Buying presents, writing cards, buying food and drink etc all was to be done on Christmas eve. It wasn't that I hated Christmas, far from it I LOVED IT ! I loved the fight in the shops, the arguing, fighting over the last bottle of perfume for the wife, the last power ranger toy for the bairn, the last bag of spuds for the dinner... I loved it... or was it the stress of all the fighting, the arguing and then the sheer satisfaction that I got the last of whatever it was I wanted over the other poor soul that was after the same present? Looking back it was probably the latter I loved and not Christmas per say.

Now I'm a more cultured person, a more relaxed person and a happier one if I must admit to it. Still this year I'm well prepared although still got a couple of things to make and if my wife is reading this then all will be revealed on Christmas Day, ha ha, ha. ( I've banned her from certain parts of the house where I have bits stashed.)

Recipies

2008-12-15T15:22:00.003Z

To become more self sufficient and as a way of providing for my family I need to be able to cook, clean and turn my hand to most things in order to cut down on the cost of employing someone to do the tasks for me. sometimes the tasks are too difficult or dangerous for me but one thing I can do well is cook. Here are a few of my recipies that I use and also links to other sites that have good advice and recipies on.
These recipies are offered here only as a guideline. You should make sure for your self that all necessary food hygiene practises are followed, you are not allergic to any of the ingredients or practices and you make yourself happy to follow these guidlines.
Basically this disclaimer means if you get the squits don't blame me.....

This page will be constantly updated as my blog progresses.

Bread.
the recipe is as follows,

1.5kg of strong white flour
1oz of fresh yeast
450ml of tepid water at around 100 deg f
2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar.
2 vit C tablets in the water

Method
Put the vit c tablets and yeast in the water and leave to ferment / bubble
Put the dry ingredients in the bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour in the water mixture and mix it all together.
Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 - 15 minutes. Leave covered until it doubles in size. Knock it back or knead it again for another 5 minutes then put in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in fridge for up to 24 hours.

Take out and let it return to room temperature for about 2 hours, less if put in an airing cupboard etc.

Knock back again when at room temp and cut into either buns or into pieces that weigh around 800g. Put into tins and cover with a tea towel to rise. When risen bake in a hot oven about gas mark 7 ( 6 for fan assisted) for 35 - 40 minutes. Should sound hollow when knocked on bottom of bread.

What goes around comes around......

2008-12-15T15:02:00.002Z

"The country faces grave economic difficulties and the likelihood of severe shortages. Unemployment, soaring food prices, chemically adulterated foods and the increasing dehumanisation of our society have all contributed to a growing awareness of the need to be more self reliant; to grow more of our own food and to make fewer demands on a state which can no longer cope with the needs of it's citizens......."

Seed companies have seen a 40% rise in vegetable seed sales in the last 2 years and a decrease in flower seeds.

Some Allotment sites have waiting lists up to 20 years long.

People don't trust government to keep them safe and healthy now.

which ever way you look at it people are starting to become scared of the future. I thought I was a bit weird when I decided on the road to be more self sufficient year on year but the more i read, the more I look on the net, the more I think about self sufficiency it makes realise that I'm not weird, I'm not on my own and I do have skills that can be of use in the 21st century. Skills that can't write computer codes or skills that can't make money on the stock market but skills that will enable my family and me eat, drink and be warm in a sheltered place. I'm scared of the future but hopefully I will be able to help others make the change if they want.

As for the opening statement which is so apt for today's society were actually written in 1975 as an editorial in the new magazine called practical self sufficiency later to be known as country small holding.

I was only 14 back in 1975 and although we lived in a poor household we were happy. We had patched up clothes and hand me downs although my mam never went as far as making me wear my sisters dresses but, if classed today, we were in a low socio economic bracket but we had food on the plate each night and fire in the hearth and we were happy.

Today, we are better off as food is plentifull and power is readily available for us although we have had hard times in the last 2 years and costs seem to go up all the time.

With the government spending all this money on Iraq and Afghanistan, the banks and city bail outs I can see it going back to the same way we were in the 70's only this time people will not be happy and unrest is possible.

You might discount these as ramblings of a madman but mark my words, mark my words.

food 2

2008-12-14T00:26:00.002Z

I made some bread again yesterday. not everyday as the body won't take it now and i don't get the hang of the bread maker. I've tried shed loads of recipes, different combinations of putting in the constituents such as salt first then yeast, salt then sugar then yeast etc but all to no avail. Sure it's edible but it's not like "what your mother used to make" etc.

Anyway i experimented with adding vitamin C to the mix and it seemed to work really well, so well I've got orders from my wife to make some more tomorrow. The only vitamin C I could find was in some Halliborange tablets in Asda so I used them. The colouring is from beetroot so although it looks a bit purple when you use them it doesn't turn the bread purple, thankfully.

The texture was soft and springy with no holes in it. The crust was dark brown as i left it in a bit too long without turning it around in the oven, so much for a fan assisted oven that evens out the temperature..... It had risen very well and really tasted nice, I mean REALLY NICE... in fact it was better than my mother made,lol.

One other thing I done was after the first rising i knocked it back and then put it in a greased bowl covered with cling film ans left it in the fridge for 24 hours before knocking it back a second time then putting it in the tins for a final rising.

The reason for the fridge was simply that i was too knackered to carry on so rather than waste the dough I reckoned it would be OK in the fridge although I did think the yeast might be killed off with the temperature and thus we might have sour dough bread.... whatever that is.

I've since seen that it can improve the bread by leaving it in the fridge overnight or for 24 hours so I got away with that one. In another article I've read it tells you to bake your bread on a "stone" even in a conventional oven so this must be something like the old stone ovens the older artisan bakers used to use prior to modern set ups.

Still the recipe is as follows,

1.5kg of strong white flour
1oz of fresh yeast
450ml of tepid water at around 100 deg f
2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar.
2 vit C tablets in the water

Method
Put the vit c tablets and yeast in the water and leave to ferment / bubble
Put the dry ingredients in the bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour in the water mixture and mix it all together.
Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 - 15 minutes. Leave covered until it doubles in size. Knock it back or knead it again for another 5 minutes then put in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in fridge for up to 24 hours.

Take out and let it return to room temperature for about 2 hours, less if put in an airing cupboard etc.

Knock back again when at room temp and cut into either buns or into pieces that weigh around 800g. Put into tins and cover with a tea towel to rise. When risen bake in a hot oven about gas mark 7 ( 6 for fan assisted) for 35 - 40 minutes. Should sound hollow when knocked on bottom of bread.

This is how I make bread and only offered here as a guideline. You should make sure for your self that all necessary food hygiene practises are followed. Basically this disclaimer means if you get the squits don't blame me.....

Ev... it just might work..

2008-12-14T00:15:00.002Z

I've been put in touch with a website of a company that make all sorts of low tourque DC motors etc for all sorts of applications from transport to industry and everything in between. They also do converters, regulators and battery packs etc so if one company can sort all that out as a matched kit then Im well happy....

I bought a copy of Mother Earth News today. A homesteading / self sufficiency type magazine from the USA and i was also bowled over by that. With the world having to suffer the last 8 years of George W I seemed to get conditioned into thinknig that all Americans were gas guzzling drivers living in concrete appartments not talking to neighbours etc but this magazine shows that there is life expectancy after George W......

EV ........ That's an electric vehicle to you and me....

2008-12-10T19:22:00.002Z

I get myself into all sorts of trouble by thinking, at least that's what my wife will say,lol !!!

I was in the car, a gas guzzling 14 mpg round town Omega 2.6 v6 monster the other day sat at a traffic lights / roadworks que and the petrol computer was ticking down rather fast and I got thinking.... what will we do without petrol?
I know I'm become more green and in a sustainable way rather than my last attempt years ago but I've always had petrol engined cars. I don't think I've owned any really economical petrol engines in my whole life. i once had a mini that was balanced, lightened and blueprinted and would do 7 miles to the gallon when the carb, a Reece Fische was set to economy but boy would it go. Talk about shit off a shovel this little monster was ( allegedly) the fastest car in Hartlepool and could easily destroy a 5.3 ltr mustang.... allegedly.

I've had a Capri with a modded engine, a triumph that ran on methanol and petrol but would need the valves replaced every 2000 miles, a Cortina with a 356CI Chevy engine in it so you can see I've never really given much of a thought to fuel economy but as I approach 50 and become more intuitive to my surroundings I realise that if we are to keep using petrol then we will be paying a lot of money for it. To that end I've decided not to restore my 1968 mkii jaguar so if anyone wants it i only want £600 for it and it's all stripped down ready for a bit of welding. give me an email if you are interested.

I don't go out of town much and if i do there is buses to do that. Also if I follow pools away there will always be a seat on a coach or a space in the back of a van for that so I'm sat in this Que thinking why am I driving a 14mpg car, all be it a nice, comfortable, fast, spacious car with full leather, air con, electric package... ( petrol head mode ) when I can get to build a fast economical EV that will get me round town, do the shopping, take the dog to the beach and also be a poser in a different type of car.

Anyway when the jag goes I will have an empty garage so i am going to build an EV starting next year. If anyone reading this has an Ev or any interesting web pages on Ev's then can you let me into the secret please by emailing me.

I don't know how much it will cost, what components are used or anything but I do know the panels will be fibreglass and painted in cherry red metal flake. I might also pay homage to slipknot and Metallica in the painting but there again blue and white has always been a popular set of colours... would you believe it, Hartlepool United FC play in blue and white.....

....... 2B cont.........

food

2008-12-09T20:49:00.002Z

Ok so it was cold on sunday..... Just right to get out in the garden and pull the last of the cauliflowers. These were really only baby cauli's and were about 2" across but were very sweet. I also got to pull up the leaves and soas not to waste anything where possible I cut the stalks out and shredded the green leaves of the cauli plants and blanched a couple of caulinders full. I froze these in freezer bags and in total got about 2 pounds of greens before the pain in my back and arms got to be to unbearable. The remaining leaves and stalks went next door to my neighbour for his rabbits to eat. The leaves I had blanched are now ready to add body to stocks and soups, also as the cabbage type element in bubble and squeek and indeed as greens for the dinner plate.

The upshot of this is that the ground is now clear and ready for my wife ot make some deep beds this weekend as i really need to get my garlic and shallots into the ground. I know they should be planted on the shortest day ( 21st of December) and lifted on the longest day of June 21st but if i can get them in next week then all the better.

I'm off next week also to get my chickens for the christmas shenanigans. I buy Cob ross chickens reared by a bloke called David Knipe who farms in the lythe valley in cumbria. Oh man if you love chicken then find out which farmers market he is attending and go see the chicken man !!

What is "being Green" or "Environmentally friendly".

2008-12-05T23:00:00.003Z

This missive has been prompted by other postings I've seen on forums I'm in so it's not a new idea but one that has got me thinking again.

So what is being green really about? Is it something that you have to do or is it a lifestyle thing? How hard is it and can you opt out for a bit?

For me being green is hard, damn hard. I was a tee total, celibate, vegetarian Buddhist greenie back in the early 90's and a very committed some say militant one at that which was extremely hard work and after 9 years everything fell apart, mentally and physically and my wife got a husband back all be it a car owning beer drinking swearing couldn't give a toss type of person.

Since then I've got a lot more mellow in my old age and in the last 3 years I've became a born again greenie but this time I'm not chaining myself to railway lines to stop nuclear waste moving for re processing etc.

However being a greenie has it's drawbacks. I mean it's hard work trying to get through to a 16 year old shop assistant that you don't want a plastic bag for the carrots and another for the apples, courgettes, bananas etc. It's also hard when you are buying a cucumber and get thrown out of the shop for removing the plastic coating and giving it to the shop manager to dispose of.

Why don't shops provide paper bags for the fresh produce? They do it for mushrooms so why not everything? Carrier bags, why do they have to be strong plastic? A bag for life can be made from cloth just as easy as plastic... I've made several bags from old pillar cases and duvet covers. One which my wife snaffled away was made out of a pair of jeans.....

Why do local councils insist on you putting out all the recyclable items in separate boxes and bags then the collectors proceed to put them all in one side of the bin waggon.

In years gone buy you shopped local and didn't need to recycle because everything was fresh. you bought things you needed from separate shops. you bought cloth from a haberdashery, paper, cellotape etc from a stationers, fish from a fishmongers, meat from a butchers who had probably slaughtered the beast in the back of the shop so you knew it was fresh.... not now, convenience is the game and Te£$o is the name. Mind you it's not the total fault of these big companies because i fear we have become more lazy in the last 20 years or so. A lot will say it's because women have to go out to work to help pay the mortgage..... why do you have to own a house? why can there not be much more social housing?

I remeber living in a street house and everyone knew everyone else and looked after each other. Now you get up go out of the house into the car go to work come home in the car and go in the house probably without speaking to anyone on the way to or from work......

Is it green for a rich person to pay a lot of money "to be green" or is being green more ethical if done on a shoestring? For instance if a rich person pays say £40,000 for an electric car is that being green er than a person who has not got much money and has to use the bus? both could be classed as being green but which one is greener?

I feel being green is a lifestyle change just the same way as it is going from full fat milk to skimmed milk or 3 sugars to none. One of the greatest jolts to the system I have had recently was to actually look in my wheelie bin and see what was there. I lost a bearing and I knew it was in the bin via the hoover so i emptied the bin out in the back yard. Thankfully there was no dog waste or food waste but masses and masses of plastic wrappers from various bits we had bought. Just out of curiosity I weighed all the plastic and it came to 2.95 kg..... 6and a half pounds of plastic that our council don't take for recycling because " they would have to send it to Cheshire" 3kg a fortnight ( don't get me on about 2 weekly collections" 72kg a year from one house on average.... 39,000 houses in my town.......

2B cont,.,

the wonders of the internet

2008-12-04T00:09:00.002Z

How the world has changed since I were a lad.........

This Internet thingy isn't half good you know....... apart from all this blogging malarky you can buy all sorts of things on t'intenet.....

I've waited a long time to see knickelback and each time they have been over here I've been unable to see them, mainly due to money and the fact that the didn't venture up to the darkest north east like. Anyway, now just found out that they will be at Newcastle in May 09 so the Internet has enabled me to buy 3 tickets for this great band. Also on the use of the Internet, another band appearing in Newcastle this weekend is Black stone cherry.... I think there is some clips on the video bar of BSC so why not hover he mouse over one of the pictures and click when you see BSC appear.... and rock the time away.

winter has arrived.... again

2008-12-02T12:26:00.006Z

By goodness it was cold last night. We took the dog round the block about 7 pm and it was icy cold, cutting wind that must have taken the wind chill down a few pegs that's for sure. Safely back at home we kept warm all night but when we woke this morning there was a deep layer of snow on the floor. I say deep, it was all of 2 inches but in these climatic changing times that was deep compared with the last 15 years or so.

I took my wife to work today in the car, i know a softy at heart but that's me... anyway trying to get the car off the drive and up the bank was a trifle difficult as it normally is in bad weather and driving in the snow made me think of the future and how my disability would be affected in bad weather.
Still it got me thinking... as I do and as I'm well on the way to a wheelchair now and I'm one of these cantankerous types who if told to do something chooses to do something different. Like for instance i was "advised" to start looking at using one of these granny scooters to get round town on. I mean, A granny scooter.... I'd much rather have a quad bike to tear up the shopping centre in rather than a GS....

So having a bit of time to day dream I got to thinking about building one of these disability scooters only doing one that could be environmentally friendly and give me some fun racing cars. So I set about looking at getting a cheap granny scooter and replacing the motor etc with a golf buggy motor as these can't half shift and if they can take on the hills and ditches of a golf course then they could take on the potholes in my town. I'd also be able to get into the shopping centres / malls and have some wheelie good fun there.

Anyway, plans went into dreams and eventually over the days to come whilst looking on the net for golf buggy motors I came across this site www.neurotikart.com Whoa what fun.....

All I need now is to sort out some solar panels and I'm good to go..... a 60 mph ecological granny scooter........

cutting down on electric.

2008-12-01T09:51:00.008Z

I've been asked how i have reduced my amount of electric I use so here are a few of the things I have done. Some worked some didn't but here goes. I don't want to teach granny to suck eggs so if you are doing these things please bear with me.

Firstly learn how much electric you use and how much this is costing you.

I do this by taking daily meter readings of the gas and electric.I call this my "power diary" I can then tell how much I've used in the previous 24 hours. I tend to do this as I get up so it's now a matter of routine where I get up, get washed, go down stairs read meters do breakfast and bait for the wife and then start the daily chores.... I'm a house husband see.
It's a good idea to do a "power diary" and you can go further by doing an hourly power diary. it gets on your partners nerves but after a few days they "understand".
In a power diary I wrote my daily meter readings and in the hourly version I would write the meter readings immediately before i say... put the oven on then when I switched it off I would take another reading and work out how many units per hour of use the oven was costing. I would then do my cooking in batch form and freeze a lot of it for the following week thus using the full oven. After use I'd then open the oven door so the heat would "escape" into the house and not out into the vents to outside.

Once you know these figures you can go about reducing them. I started off in June with around 24 kwh per day and got that down to 18 then even further to now in November I was using an average of 8.56 kwh per day. The first half of the month the average was actually 7.6 but then we had the workmen in with their power tools so it's gone up a bit by the end of the month.
Once you know the units you are using you can check each individual appliance with
the aid of one of these meters that you can either plug into the socket and then the appliance into the meter or a second type clips onto you main in feed cable and that tells you what you are using. The idea is then to go around your house and switch everything off. Then switch one item on and take a reading, switch it off and do the next item etc.

I found this tedious and it lasted about 5 minutes and 3 appliances before it went out of the window and being of an age when I was able to Learn maths at school I was able to calculate the average use over 24 hours. Say a 100w incandescent bulb could get 10 hours for 1 kw or unit of electricity. So to run this bulb for 10 hours would cost me 11 pence inc vat. However if I used a 20w energy saving bulb i could run that one for 50 hours for 11 pence. It then became a game to see how much I could alter and by using an 11w low energy bulb I could get nearly 91 hours for my 11 pence.

Some things can't be switched off or altered such as the house alarm and other security features. However those 500w security lights can now use low energy bulbs of 24 w. We went away for a few days so I switched everything off that could be switched off and the background useage for the likes of the fridge, freezer, house alarm and satellite / cable box was about 4.7 units a day. Late on in the year we went away again for a couple of days so I switched off the fridge and freezer and the background electric was 1.2 units a day so the fridge and freezer used about 3.5 units a day which is quite a lot apparently. They are over 10 years old and are under counter jobbies so this will account for some extra use. Having researched this I am told that under counter is the worst place as there is little or no circulation so heat builds up and this causes the cooler to work extra. I plan to take the fridge and freezer out of the work benches an stack them on top of each other to see if this makes a difference. If not the next step would be to look for an A rated or A+ rated FF.

I switch off all the lights as much as i can, i use candle light in the bath. My explanation to the wife is it's relaxing but really it is saving electric, lol. I don't automatically put the telly on, i switch the clocks off on ovens and microwaves. it's been reported recently that we use more energy having the clock display on a microwave that we do cooking the food. It's not hard to flick a switch to put the microwave on like any other electrical appliance. I've learnt that the fan in this computer is rated at 333watts so I can have this on for 3 hours for one unit of elecy or I can use my laptop for 8 hours for the same unit.

We used to use the hoover to clean crumbs up in the kitchen now we use a soft bristle brush and a dust pan. Actually it was a better idea but it also saves electric.
Because I'm on ebico as my power supplier and i pay 11.31 pence per unit for electric inc vat my cost of electric for October was £27.32 and November £29.11 corresponding gas was £44.49 and £64.67.

I pay £50 each month for each supply so now I know that in the last 2 months I've used £111 on gas and £57 on electric so I'm going to phone the power company up and reduce my electric DD thus keeping money in my account rather than give them interest.Edit note:: This I've done today, 02.12.08 and reduced my electric to £30.00 and increased my gas to £60.00.

Gas is much the same as the electric. I went about checking the units it used to run a full bath of hot water and worked out a costing from that. It was something like £2.20 and i have a hot bath every night. I changed my habits from running a full hot bath and then waiting an hour and a half for it to cool down ( playing on the computer really) to running a 1/4 bath with hot water, putting in cold water and getting in straight away. alternatively get in whilst the bath is running and it saves more hot water. I've actually got the cost of a bath down to 51 pence now so I can have a hot bath 7 nights a week for the cost of 2 previously.

A lot of people will say it's being a miser or they couldn't be bothered but when I say my power bill is going to be around £1020 this year down from over £1700 last year they look shocked and ask how it is possible..... so I tell them.

Publish Post

..... It also reduces your carbon footprint if that is important to you.......

making sense of things

2008-11-25T23:37:00.009Z

I got to thinking today whilst the decorators were in and I had nothing to do and i was thinking what pure, total self sufficiency would be like. Indeed what is self sufficiency ? I want to be self sufficient and this came about because of the power companies taking up for a ride and the government not having the balls to do anything about it. In France EDF is the major supplier of power. It is 51% government owned. The French government will not allow competition in the utility sector and EDF are only allowed to increase prices by the rate of inflation so I'm led to believe.

In Britain, EDF is a major player in the power game and can raise prices by what they want. Are we in Britain subsidising the French power system ??

Anyway, what is self sufficiency?

To me it would be total Independence from everything and everybody. You would be self sufficient in power, food production, transport and housing. This is not every one's idea of SS but for now lets expand on these ideas.
1, Total Independence of the power companies.

To achieve this you would certainly need to be all electric as you cannot produce your own gas. (we will come to wood soon) Well you can but that's just because you ate too many beans and you cannot use methane very well. So to live a 21st century lifestyle with computers, Ipods, TV's et al you will need to have a hefty bank of solar Photovoltaic cells on the roof. The average household uses 4800 kwh of electric per year. I think the average falling on the Uk is 900kwh per year per 1KW panel. Therefore to get 4800 kwhrs out of your system means you will need to install panels to the value of 5.5kws. This would cost in the region of £12000 to £15000 so you would need a lot of roof space also as a basic 130w panel is about 1.2m x 2m so to get 5.5 kw you will need around 43 panels.... quite a roof space indeed and it would need to be facing south.

2, Food production.

Like many people, I like to grow some veg in the back garden but could I become self sufficient from the main shops like T****'s and Asda ? I certainly couldn't keep any animals in the back garden so I would need to become a veggie again ( I was veggie for 9 years until fish and chips summoned me in Whitby one day......

So if I were to become a veggie again what could I grow to keep me healthy all year round. I've done some research and I'd need a garden at least 40 ft long by 80 ft wide and the research offers a proviso that the land would need to be "worked hard" to produce enough to keep a couple and 2 small children.

We have nearly as much garden, ours is 45 x 60 but there are trees, a pond,flower bed and dog running area to think about and we don't have any children at home... well one darling son comes home from Uni every now and then when he has no food but plenty of washing, lol. So, I would be down to 4 deep beds of 6m by 1.2m ( see post below where my wife is going to make these).
So if I had enough land I could be self sufficient in food providing I was veggie and didn't drink milk or eat cheese.... life would cease to exist without cheese.... but then eggs would be a problem so I'd have to keep chickens which, if you read all the magazines is a wonderful thing but cleaning chicken crap out on a morning in December is still cleaning crap out and when they get diseases etc, which even with the best husbandry I suspect they will still get red mite and worms etc they will cost money to cure in either self medication or vets bills. If you buy good stock chickens you are looking at £15 each so for 10 birds you are looking at an outlay of £150 without a house for them, food and other bits needed. I worked it out in the summer and I would need to spend in the region of £800 to set up a 10 bird egg line but then asked how much organic free range eggs cost and to get my initial outlay back I'd need to keep the chickens laying eggs every day of the year for nearly 2 years. In reality the timescale is probably more like 4 years so that's out of the question. As for working the land hard. .. Oh I forgot, I'm quite disabled so working the land hard is out of the question.......

Water

We all need water to survive, no doubt about that but to be totally SS you need your own well or spring water source. I was reading the latest edition of Home Farmer and this excellent magazine has a feature on water supply which was quite revealing. We, or at least I do take water for granted. I turn the tap on and it's there. That's not to say I'm not frugal with it and I have even trained my wife to switch off the tap when brushing her teeth and only taking a 4 minute shower. Although we are not on a water meter yet I'm confident that I could at least save a bit of money if I were to go metered. I'm saving water at the moment and have over 2000 ltr of it ready to fill my garden pond up when I get to clean it out later this month. I was going to sink a large tank into the ground to collect the rainwater properly and then use this for washing the clothes and toilet flushing but money isn't there yet for this project and whilst our mains supply is still quite cheap it makes no sense to swap.

Self Sufficiency is a great idea and one we could all aspire to but one that only a very few could ultimately achieve.

....... to be continued

renovations

2008-11-24T21:49:00.003Z

For a while now we have needed to have our house renovated. It's served us well over the last 17 years but now it needs updating and revitalising.
So because we want to reduce our dependency on the major power companies we have lagged the floor and outside stair wall as in the blog ...insulation below.

The update of this is that the plasterer has now been and gone, the walls have dried out and the decorator is coming on Thursday followed by the carpet fitter on Friday. Already we have seen a reduction in the amount of gas used and the house is far too hot for my liking at the moment as we have had a new radiator put into the hall. It's a smaller one than the one we have replaced but the output is massively improved so the heat out put is heating all of the hall and stairs.
The rest of the rads have been bled and as I say the house is too hot for me but my wife is what is known locally as a cold arse, lol.

The end of the month is coming soon so I will be able to update my blog on the amount of fuel used and I am hoping that it will be substantially reduced although I must take into account the fact that there have been workmen in and lights, drills and all manner of other tools have been used, many of them using electric.

Once this is done my wife is going to make some deep beds for the garden. She doesn't actually know this yet but when the scaffold boards arrive and I show her how to hold a hammer and nails or even screws and a screwdriver for the posh version she will soon get the hang of it. After that she will also learn how to plant broad beans and garlic........lol.

Scared

2008-11-24T20:35:00.005Z

A few years ago I was walking home from town when two drugged up scroats thought they were more entitled to own my I -pod than I was. The major word here being "thought". I had saved up for a long time to get the money for that I- pod and I was buggered if I was going to give it up to these two who would swap it for a £10 wrap.
Anyway the upshot was that they were both put in hospital and 3 years on one is still on crutches which brings me to the point of this blog message.... I'm being followed.......Yeah !!!!

Not in a bad way of course but on this blog.

Hi Rick and Pat and thank you for following me. Rick and Pat are living the good life in Portugal and long may they continue. I'll delve into your welcoming site more over the weeks and hopefully pick up some pointers as to how to have a great blog like yours.

I'm new to this blogging lark so I don't know what will be of interest to you but I will enjoy being followed this time I'm sure, lol.

Insulation

2008-11-14T22:18:00.004Z

It's been 13 days since I last blogged...... if that's the correct word nut I've been busy and ill at the same time.

As I said in the last post I was getting the inside of the outer walls lagged with 2" of insulation and then plaster boarded over. This would then be skimmed by a pro plasterer. As it happens the bloke I had organised to do the work decided not to turn up and repeated phone calls fell on deaf ears or rather a voicemail..... bloody mobiles.... you can't have a decent whinge these days, humph.

So I decided to do it myself..... can't be that hard, it's only a bit of wood and insulation..... 3 hours and my spaka back got the better of me along with my shoulders, neck, and legs giving up the ghost I decided it was time to call it off as a bad idea. I got another bloke in and the pro plasterer is coming on Monday.

So it's taken 13 days of rest and massive amounts of pain killers to repair the damage of 3 hours work.... Mind you it has given me time to think about things whilst I was in agony as I'm a great believer in occupying he mind as if you don't it will occupy itself and not always for the better.

So in my thinking I got to the point of catching up on the daily meter readings. Whilst i was out of it in bed my wife took it upon herself to read the meters for me, good lass so we have got it down to an average of 1.8 units of gas per day and an average of 6 KWh for the leccy so the cost so far for November is around £9 for leccy and£12 for gas and we are nearly at the half way stage of the month. I know the weather has been a bit warmer for this last week but maybe the insulation is doing it's job in a big way. If I can get away with around £30 for gas and £20 for electric for the month of November I'll be well chuffed as I was paying £157 a month at the dearest time last year with Eon.

So to recap, I'm feeling a bit more normal, well as normal as one can when doped up on all sorts of pain killers, or rather pain modifiers as the tablets never actually "kill" the pain off but just dulls it a bit. My staircase is lagged and ready to be plastered by Nick the Plasterer.... who is a thoroughly good bloke and a demon plasterer to boot. Then it's off to take the wife to look for a arpet in time for chrimbo and that's another year more or less done for.....

The cold snap snapped......

2008-11-01T13:18:00.004Z

Well the last few days of October certainly let us know that winter was just around the corner. It were bloody freezing in our house!! As in my last post I said we were away for 3 days so being on a bent to reduce our dependency on the large immoral power companies I switched of as much as I could including the heating.

Our average heating for a day was around 2 therms so a saving of around 6 therms was achieved but by the house was cold when we came back. i mean not only cold enough to chill the bones but the fabric of the building, the walls and floors were cold to touch. It just goes to show how much heat is sucked out of the buildings by the walls.

The upshot of it all was we had to leave the gas heating on for a lot longer than normal to reheat the house and in the end used 6.2 therms of gas but suffered for the day until it warmed up..... which brings me to another point. We are getting the walls and floors insulated on the inside as it is a cold house so hopefully by next winter we will see a significant reduction in our energy useage and be as warm if not warmer than now.

Our actual gas useage for the whole of October was 51.2 therms of gas which when converted into kwh it works out at 1642.33 kwh and we pay 2.86p per kwh so that equates to £46.97. We also used 350 kwh of electric. The electric I am particularly well chuffed at as we used to use 18kwh per DAY in June which would have increased to around 24 units in October so to reduce this overall down to an average of 11.29 a day pleases me a lot. As we are on Ebico, a charity power company www.ebico.co.uk we only pay 11.41p per kwh so our electric for October came out as £39.94 inc vat.

Burglars

2008-10-31T21:48:00.003Z

We went away for a few days over to Cumbria so we could have some R&R and also take in the HUFC match against Carlisle ( 1-0 to pools) but whilst there we got a phone call from a neighbour telling us that our house alarm had gone off. We came home a day early only to find that the scroats had tried to jemmy out the patio window but the security devices had held well. The galling part was that my neighbour telephoned the police and they refused to attend the alarm and asked her to check to see if anything was wrong. Like asking a middle aged woman to confront a ( probably drugged up ) burglar on her own. Cleveland police are the shits........ The green edge on this episode is that the burglar left a good quality garden fork as he legged it, obviously from a previous burglary but hell, I can use a good garden fork especially if I confront a burglar.....

We went by car to the lakes as we had a dog and two suitcases but it got me thinking that back in the 60's we also had a dog and cases when we went on holiday but we didn't have a car. The journey would take about 6 hours to get to the lakes by train but we managed it. Now I wonder how long it would take and if we could be bothered as the car is the easier option.

I want to get rid of the car but my wife points out the need for a car as I'm well disabled. Now if only I can find a solar powered granny scooter and a train time table........hmmmmm.....

What's in your bins?

2008-10-22T13:02:00.003+01:00

As the title says, What's in your bins? Have you looked lately or don't you care ? Nothing wrong with just dumping stuff in the bins including the recycling bins but as this blog has a bit of a green eco bent then I feel that we all have a duty of care to look in our bins and see what we can avoid putting in there in the future.

Take for instance an Innocent plastic bottle full of lovely cool mineral water.

When you have downed the mineral water and (hopefully) put the bottle in the recycling bin then is that it for you or do you wonder where that plastic bottle goes and what happens to it ? I did so I phoned a few council departments and the general consensus is that it is shipped off to china or India s we don't have the facilities to recycle plastic that much in Britain. Apparently the bottle is sent half way round the world in bulk containers on ships and then chipped up or pelleted and then sent back to us in this form to be reused in making more bottles etc.

Now if you didn't buy that bottle in the first place you wouldn't need to be part of the pollution caused by this shipping pollution would you? You would be able to say that you are treading lighter on the fragile earth and if you think of it it's only one bottle but if you buy one a day it's 18.25 tonnes of plastic a year......

Also when you are shopping why do we need to put fruit and veg in plastic bags? We pick the produce from the shelves, we put them in bags and then put the bags in the trolley. When we get to the checkout we put the bags on the conveyor belt. Is it so hard not to use the bag in the first place? Try it next time and see if you REALLY do need the plastic bag.

Again this sort of packaging makes up about 60% of our household rubbish that goes to landfill according to Friends of the Earth.

The come back kids

2008-10-22T12:04:00.006+01:00

Last night we went to watch Hartlepool United at home playing Huddersfield Town. Now we, as in all the family are home and away supporters dedicated to the cause and if you cut us we bleed blue and white. However this causes conflict with my trials at being more eco friendly because if we do every away match this season we will drive the equivillent in miles of half way around the world in a gas guzzler of a car. To that end we have decided to only do a handful of important games or niggle matches when we can get a "good atmosphere " going.

The trouble is that this season we are known as the come back kids because we always have to fight to get a point or 3. Last night was again no exception. The defence were crap and let in a goal. We came back with a goal of our own. Sure enough we let in another goal from a set piece free kick. Again we equalised....2-2. True to form right on the stroke of half time we let in a third goal... Rather dubious as it came from a dodgy offside decision and then their keeper took the freekick from the other side of the pitch no less !! this led to the goal so 2-3 at half time.

Still we Hartlepool supporters know better and that there is still 45 minutes in the second half. True to form we put 3 more goals past Huddersfield Town in the second half to end the game 5-3 to Pools. My trouble is that we let in so many goals. Including last night we have scored 59 goals at home but also conceeded 54.... Still we can't complain...... 3 points is still 3 points..

The penny drops........

2008-10-19T17:59:00.009+01:00

Had nowt to do today, well that's not strictly true as there is always too much that needs to be done in this world but we decided that we would go out for the day. No place in particular so we ended up at a garden centre and a couple of electrical shops. The garden centre was a typical crass affair but I couldn't resist getting some raspberry canes, a red goosgog bush and a thorn less blackberry bush. Two cups of tea later the wife came back from the "Christmas department" which was set up in August by the way, and off we toddled to the electrical shops.

We need a new fridge and freezer purely on environmental and money saving grounds. The separate under the counter ones we have at present still do their job but hey are costly to run compared with the modern A++ versions.
Having worked out the running cost of the ones we have which is around 4 units of electric a day and the new one would be less than 1 unit a day we would save around 33 p a day in running costs.
Now 33 pence a day doesn't sound much and you are probably thinking that I'm a skinflint but over a year it is over £120 in savings. Granted the cost of the one we looked at was the thick end of £400 but just on the savings alone the new Fridge Freezer would have paid back it's cost in 3years and 4 months. Also being disabled the pain involved in getting stuff out of the fridge and freezer at the moment would be negligible. As well as this the current ones we have are over 10 years old for the new one we would then be quids in.

Also in the next shop along in the shopping parade we saw some new televisions. Flat screen, digital do dahs all this and that free cable or satellite boxes and home cinema systems etc. I, of course wanted the biggest TV on display, a whopping 60" jobby at nearly £2000 ( but you did get a free home cinema sound system and it played DJ Tiesto concerts in hi def...... but my wife dragged me away and as we were walking along the line of TVs she said....." but how much energy do they use?"

It wasn't until we were driving home that I realised what she said.... " but how much energy do they use?"For over a year now I've been battling with her to win over her mind and soul with constant talk about energy saving light bulbs, wood burning stoves, solar thermal heating and Photovoltaic panels not to mention how much electric and gas we have used on a daily basis, (I take daily meter readings) how much petrol costs in terms of CO2, Getting her to switch lights off, standby buttons are also banned and cooking is always "eeked out" a bit further such as putting a 1/4 can of water into the pan of soup, adding vegetables and lentils to mince to make it go further and of course reduce, reuse, recycle. Most of it I thought had landed on deaf ears and all to no avail but to my shock and horror she comes out with a blinder of a question " but how much energy do the TV's use?" Amanda, I love you !!

All my work is done....... Now where is that wood burning stove catalogue I need to show her.......

It's spittin......

2008-10-18T13:21:00.003+01:00

It's spittin marjory... get the kids in.........

Got up early today, well 10 oclock which is early for me on a Saturday ready to dig over some of the garden with a rotorvator. Well actually I was going to make cups of tea and bacon sarnies and a friend was going to do the rotorvating, ripping up a good 2/3rd of the lawn to make a veg patch 8m long by 5m wide but it started to rain........ started with a little spitting rain then a bit more and eventually it is a torrential downpour and the wetherman said it would be fine today with heavy rain tomorrow, Sunday. The lawn is laughing at us now but come the next fine day that coincides with my mates day off and the lawn is a gonna.......

Change

2008-10-17T22:26:00.003+01:00

Leading on from my welcome post........

Do we need to change? If so what do we need to change and why? I feel that we need to change the way we think and the way we behave to one another and the planet as a whole. We need to change the government as they seem to have lost the plot totally.

It's not just the money crisis or the meltdown of the stock market, the collapse of the banking infrastructure or the lack of services and higher taxes we pay but the insidious hidden things like massive legislation introduced by this government.
I've been driving for nearly 30 years and not put a foot wrong. In the last 3 months I have had 2 parking fines ( £60 each £30 if settled fast) and an £80 fine ( £40 is settled fast) by the dvla for not renewing my SORN on a car I'm rebuilding.

The parking fines were dished out when I was in Edinburgh and had broken down and I was waiting for a tow truck when the parking attendant slapped the fine on the car. The second was in my home town because I was 11 mm over a white line. Both appealed, the white line was rescinded.

The dvla one just had to be paid but in the past a notice used to be sent out much the same as the renewal papers for the tax disc. Not now, bang goes £40 quid. These type of stealth payments are making a lot of difference, I mean £40 is a fortnights food shopping for my wife and I.

Change to the way we treat the planet is also well over due. I remember in 1992 ( I think) Greenpeace said we had 8 years to change our thinking on global warming or it would be too late to reverse the changes.

Governments including ours looked the other way and ignored the likes of Greenpeace and now look at the trouble we are in and the dire predictions we are all facing in the future.

Maybe the global recession will be a good thing. Maybe it will bring us to our knees and then the ones who can grow their own food, feed their own animals and ride a bike will be one step ahead of the herd who will be running for the cliff top without the ability to turn right or left before the precipice looms.

Welcome

2008-10-17T22:16:00.001+01:00

Welcome to my blog.

Years ago, in the late 80's to be precise I was studying to be a professional photographer and the first digital photograph came on the scene. The one that I saw was a collage of a soldier outside a castle with a deep blue cloudy sky. All three shots, the soldier, the castle and the sky had been taken with a digital camera and merged by computer to make one.

There was uproar in photography circles and I devoutly stood up and proclaimed that I would NEVER EVER buy a digital camera and I would stay faithful to the medium of Black and white prints on expensive papers with many hours in the darkroom....... I bought a digital Camera all be it in 2003.

I also couldn't see the point of all this blogging palarkey! I mean who wants to read what jumped up self important little people want to say??

I've now got a blog so I guess I' m a blogger.... Ho hum......

I guess the reason for this retrospective is that times change and as we evolve in our day to day lives we see the benefits, the negativity's, the uses and the pitfalls of the fast evolving world we live in and maybe we want to try and change this ( for better or worse) or we want to make our mark in the world without designing a nuclear bomb or creating genocide or even "being a celebrity"

For me this blog will be of a green bent as I fear for my son and any children he may have in the future as we rape, pillage and destroy this world we live in. Time has come to change the way we live, the way we think, the way we behave and above all the way we link into the world of our fellow man.

I hope you enjoy reading my missives and find something of use in them. I can't guarantee I won't ramble on and on, be obnoxious, politically INcorrect or any other of a thousand traits I seem to have but I'll try to be good..... honest.