This is not my... Week 11 07
23/03/07 - Little Big Voice
22/03/07 - Are you normal? No!
19/03/07 - I love the smell of my hands...
This Section; Background; The point
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Little Big Voice |
One of our favourite clothing companies we promote here in our directory - Howie's will be hosting their Little Big Voice lectures.
Four days packed full of workshops and guest speakers happening in the beautiful welsh countryside in late April. With the aim in there words “to change things, we need to learn some new skills. We need to learn how to use the media to give the small guy a big voice.”
Spaces are limited to a lucky forty they judge will benefit from it – and yours truly is one of them!
Wooohoooooooo - oh and did I mention we get to stay in tee pees!
So today I want to say thanks Howie's and kudos to you for helping to give the little guys a voice and putting a very real investment in helping our planet.
So help Howie's to help us all out, go forth and buy some of their awesome earth friendly clothing. I am currently rocking a pair of their jeans & oh my days are they not just the best pair I have ever had.
Have a great weekend gang and make some time for play!
Ollie :DX
22/03/07 - Are you normal? NO!
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Was the title of Susie's leaving card I gave her, rather apt I think. |
So the day has come (cue Eye of the Tiger playing in the background). Susie has done it, she flies off today to run the hardest foot race on earth, The Marathon des Sables.
(If you do not speak French this roughly translates to "Journey of certain death" or is it a "Fun day at the beach"? Damn I wish I had actually studied French.)
It's basically six Marathons back to back across a desert, carrying your equipment and living off pepperami sticks all while having your feet ripped to shreds and doing in temperatures topping the late forties! Yes I know you would actually have to be somewhat deranged to do this, but Susie we love you anyway and know you can do it you little freak!
Of course like any concerned friend and business partner my confidence was certainly buoyed as, at eleven o'clock last night, like a stressed Mum helping the slack child to finish a school project the night before its due, both Kim and I found ourselves somewhat concerned by Susie's rather last minute preparation.
"Hmm torch - will I need that Ols?"
"Susie you will be running in the dark in the sand dunes!"
"So that's a yes then?"
I was also pleased to see that her packing list was systematically scribbled on the back of an envelope (recycling..?) and that more emphasis was placed on finding tweezers to pluck those pesky leg hairs than on finding a signal mirror for if you run into problems.
Argh Suz you made us laugh!
Not too much though when helping you glue your velcro onto your shoes so your gators would stick I discovered some spilt superglue had permanently affixed my pants to my legs and my left hand to your shoe.
Hey looks like I will be coming with you after all!!!
We will all be thinking of you Susie and are oh so proud of you! All words of encouragement can be sent to her here.
http://web.mac.com/susiewheeldon/iWeb/Site/Marathon%20des%20Sables%202007.html
Anyway I must stop rambling. I - dear readers - shall be filling the soon to be sandy and blistered shoes of Susie for the next couple of weeks. So buckle up your seat belts, grab yourself a snack and please go to the toilet before we set off on our rollercoaster ride of "edutainment" education + entertainment (thanks KRS1!).
And now for something green.
I just found this site yesterday. Real estate agents that deal solely in Eco housing, brilliant!
Tell all your prospective home-buying friends!
http://www.greenmoves.com/search.php
Have a damn fine day whatever you do, but do one random nice thing today and be nice humans!
Ollie
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and blind panic... |
Tomorrow I get on a plane.
My first one in two years following a decision not to fly.
Unfortunately, before the decision, I signed up to a race in Morocco.
I checked out going by train and - through the fantastic Seat 61 site - found a brilliant route through Paris and Madrid.
But my paranoia eventually got the better of me. (If I missed a connection then I would miss the race, or get lost, or fall down an unexpected man hole etc)
So flying it will be.
Which leaves the contentious off-setting.
Currently the Environmental Audit Select Committee is checking out the carbon off-set market but until then I am will stick to Pure Trust since it was advised by my Carbon Action Reduction Group.
(Otherwise known as, 'people who know a lot more about carbon and off-setting than I do'.)
Anyhow - just wanted to assuage the guilt through confession in order to focus fully on panicking.
Now where did I put that passport....!
x
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It's brilliant...! |
Ahhh the Solio charger.
I have been coveting one for about a year now and finally I made the purchase.
What a fantastic bit of technology!
Basically it is a tiny solar charger which will run your phone, MP3 player etc and can store energy (much like a battery) so that you can transport it anywhere.
Genius.
I am off to the desert in a couple of days and so the conditions couldn't be more perfect for it.
No electricity.
Lots of sun.
Actually the perfect place for solar power in general. (Was investigating an article on that actually - might drag it out...)
Anyhow - even more excitingly. It is pink and was reduced in the Black's sale (possibly because it is pink...?)
It still cost £40 - or technically £39.99 - but they are normally £60. Not cheap, I admit, but hopefully the prices will start to come down on some of these things in the future.
Still dreaming of the solar briefcase that powers a lap top...
Anyhow - now I can take music with me, I best get along and sort out which tracks to take.
Very excited, yet somewhat bemused, to find 'The Littlest Hobo' in my collection yesterday... and intrigued to see what else is in there...! (Ha ha - went searching for the image and found the track in Spanish - how good is that!)
Have a good one.
Susie x
19/03/07 - "I love the smell of my hands."
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No - not the ramblings of a deranged maniac* but... |
something I have said many times over the past few days.
Followed by a 'hand sniffing' procedure which involves moving hand to nose and inhaling deeply before wafting it vigorously at the person to whom I am talking.
On reflection, this does make me look a little bit like I have been let out on day release but - they do smell lovely!
And it is all because I got some Ecover hand wash.
Always a fan of the Ecover washing up liquid I spotted the hand soap the other day so gave it a try.
It is so nice!
If you are having an 'oh my I have just run out of hand soap. What should I replace it with?'** crisis. Then give it a go.
Anyhow - hope you had fabulous weekends.
Ollie is back from his holiday and I am off in a couple of days so some of his ramblings later on this week.
Brilliant.
Susie x
*open to debate.
** some people might.
This section will be a daily, well - Monday to Friday daily, editorial. (Have to keep some time aside to keep up the ritual wine drinking / dancing as if being chased by bees.)
I promise to make it my mission to investigate something each day on exciting forays to find new stuff, fun stuff, ethical stuff and anything involving break dancing men with extremely toned physiques.
Let me know if you think of something I should go and visit or if you have any great ideas or information. (Any dodgy suggestions will be politely declined... or not so politely, depending entirely on what they are!)
For today, though, please just have a look below to find out how this whole thing came about. I hope that you are having a lovely morning.
See you tomorrow,
Susie x
Background to This is not my...
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What is this site all about?
Well, as all good ventures do, it started in the pub with the ominous words "I know, why don't we...?" |
What was different, though, was that it still seemed like a good plan in the morning (and somewhat less injurious than trying out extreme ironing, the other suggestion...)
Anyway - once again we had been supping beers and putting the world to rights when someone mentioned the unmentionable, despite our disaffection with the state of the world, none of us was actually doing anything positive to change it.
Whether this was complacency or apathy, who knows - but we were definitely leaving it to others to make decisions and take action for us on issues about which we felt strongly.
We live in a free society, but often things seem to happen as a fait accompli. The war in Iraq, ID cards, the fact that we will eventually succumb to watching some of Big Brother no matter how hard we try...
And we just go along with it. But that is ok, right? I mean, we aren't exactly encouraging the abuse of others - are we?
Ok - so maybe my new top might have been made under less-than-perfect conditions and I suppose that means I am supporting those conditions, but - I have to buy something to wear, so what other choice do I have?
And that was the problem. What - and where - are the choices?
So we decided to investigate. Surely in this free society we have other options; we just need to know how to find them.
So we went online. There are some great directories already for ethical and/or environmentally friendly products, but for us these didn't go far enough. We were on a bit of a roll and decided that these products deserved more active promotion.
We wanted to make as many people as possible aware of the practical things they can do to live life in a better way.
So on this site we will provide information about easy, positive and ethical consumer choices. These are choices that won’t necessarily cost you more, either.
In our directories you will find environmentally friendly and ethical companies and products across the following categories:
Clothes
Energy
Food and Drink
Health and Beauty
Home and Garden
Office
Recycling
Restaurants
You will also find plenty more to lure you back to the site on a regular basis. So come back to have a wee look.
Plus we will be working on video's, events and curious antics to keep important issues in the public eye – and provide us with much entertainment and amusement at the same time.
Give us a shout if you want to get involved!
Anyhow - take a look. Explore… investigate… probe away.
We hope you like it; we hope you use it.
