This is not my... Week 12 07
29/03/07 - Drink and be merry!
28/03/07 - Seize the day!
27/03/07 - Waste not, want not
26/03/07 - Music my rock
This Section; Background; The point
29/03/07 - Drink and be merry!
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Drink and be Merry! |
Woohooo Thursday!
Wow isn’t this week going fast? NO??? Well let me distract you for a moment by me telling you about just how much I love wine, it’s right up there with pirate monkeys which I must confess is what I would love to really be.
But I digress I love wine so much that I thought I would dedicate today’s daily editorial to it and also because I wanted to use this fantastic picture of the baby Dionysus God of wine.
Boy he definitely lucked in when they decided who was going to be God of what.
“Ok Dionysus, lets see what we have got left here then. We still have God of war available…no not interested, OK how about God of the post laundry missing sock, no? No good either, arh how about this one God of Wine!? Oh we have a winner here. Yes I think you will be great at this one Dionysus your never far from a bottle and disturbingly always roaming the heavens naked, so shall it be."
I digress (again) so for as much as I love a good bottle of Dionysus’s nectar, selecting wine ethically can be a more painful experience than alarmingly discovering your underpants have turned carnivorous.
But fear not my feathered friends buying organic wine supports a sustainable farming system. As does buying some of the fledgling fairtrade wines from South Africa and Chile. Suppliers include Vintage Roots vintageroots.co.uk and Vinceremos vinceremos.co.uk.
Also, to keep those transport emissions down, support English wines visit englishwineweek.co.uk for a full list of vineyards.
In other news our little Susie, who is currently running the Marathon Des Sables, should by my calculations just finished the dreaded sand dune section of the course and has reached her rest day.
Now if I know anything about Susie, while all the other competitors are lying around on there cots and moaning about the heat, Susie will be up at the crack of dawn mulling over her latest scheme to save the planet.
Or equally as likely trying to chat up a hot young fellow runner while subtly breathing through her mouth and trying not to hold her nose (they don’t shower in six days urgh!).
Today they will get a chance to check there emails so send her some words of encouragement or tell her how wonderfully cold the weather has been here and remind her just how lucky she is to be having a relaxing beach holiday.
So hit the link and send her some heartfelt words and remind her just how nuts she is!
Post a message to her she is runner 802
Drink and be merry and have a fantastic day in paradise.
Ollie : )X
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Seize the day! |
Wohoo Wednesday! Or “hump day” as many of my co-workers like to refer to it.
I prefer Wohoo Wednesday personally but hey call it what you will.
Yes, I too am buoyed to know we are halfway through the working week, but at the same time we all seem so hell bent on blitzing through the week as fast a humanely possible. As it’s generally assumed we only get to properly live our lives at the weekends.
Personally I think this is a little sad.
In that it means for many of us we are only living at two sevenths of our “capacity for fun” or “CFF” as I have just made up now, in our lives.
I put down to people being unhappy in their current day jobs. Where as those in happy and satisfying jobs are living their lives seven days a week at a total of seven out of seven in their “CFF”.
If you are reading this now and none too happy about it, then I challenge you to change it. But where oh where wise Ollie should I even begin? I hear you (internally) screaming at your screen.
Well - how about enlisting the help of careershifters.org
This service looks at how we can get more control about doing what we really want to do, rather than what we think we should do. Something I think is pretty damn important.
So go out and seize the day but don’t forget to enjoy the ride along the way.
Ollie : )X
27/03/07 - Waste not, want not
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Waste not, want not |
I have spent my weekend racking my brains trying to think of something to talk to you about while Susie is away undertaking the unimaginable feat of running the Sahara.
The first and obvious theme is the difference of greenliness between Canada and the UK as I am currently writing to you in my freezing andminus below weather cold kitchen.
I am in the throes of a love hate relationship with my home and native land as I realize just how forward moving Britain is in comparison to other countries in terms of its fashion, food, culture, transport and life in general.
Green is the hot topic on everyone's lips and Britain features in North American news on a regular basis for new initiatives and policies that it is implementing.
I was out at a restaurant on Saturday night for my sister's birthday, and everyone had their mobile phone sitting out on the table, easily contactable should the need arise.
I looked around and some of the phones were clunky and practical. A couple were slick but for the most part they were there to serve a purpose. They were phones.
People here generally have 2-3 year contracts and if it is a new phone you are after, you are going to pay for it. In Britain I was on a plan that I got a new phone every year automatically at the end of my contract. I had some boxes arrive from the UK last week and out poured 5 phones, which I have acquired in the last six years.
Granted I am a pack rat, but I don’t want to get rid of them (maybe I can sell them one day?) and even if I did, I could not just throw it in the bin. It is ridiculous to throw a perfectly functioning phone away just because it is outdated by a year or two (and okay maybe sometimes 5).
Britain is at the forefront of trend setting but in the new green era is it really practical and necessary to be constantly updating your personal electrical devices?
Every hour 1,700 mobile phones are discarded in the UK. That is 40,800 a day and 148,920,000 a year. And that is just Britain.
Mobiles carry lead, mercury and numerous other cancer causing toxic chemicals that could be detrimental if they leak in the soil and ground water system of Britain.
At the end of last year EU legislation was set in place making phone manufactures more responsible for the disposal of their wares which is a good idea, but what about a vintage Nokia?
Is that a phone in Ollie's pocket...?
They may be big, they may be clunky, but they work, they function and there is absolutely no need to have a new one every year. They are built to last ten and so the test starts here.
In the meantime instead of leaving that recently upgraded phone in the cupboard, contact the people at envirofone. They will recycle your phone and pay you for the privilege! Damn - talk about a win, win situation.
Have a fantastic day!
Lara x
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Music my rock. |
Hey Funsters!
I hope you had a fantastic weekend I know I did! Just the perfect mix of seeing some live music compliments of Bedouin Sound clash from Canada, they simply rocked!
A lazy energy saving lie in, followed by some tasty organic eggs for breakfast. Then spent the afternoon working on my pitch for funding for our fantastic site to enable us to bring you more of all the amazing things we think might inspire and make you laugh. Keep your fingers crossed for me on Friday when I go in to pitch to the panel (of no doubt lovely panel of judges) from Unltd.
Unltd was set up to provide guidance, funding and support for community initiatives. So if you have been mulling around an idea that you think may just make this world a nicer place to live why not get in touch with them.
In other news our own, Susie started the first leg of Marathon de Sables yesterday and will be trekking out across the desert as you are reading this.
As you can imagine six marathons in succession it isn’t just a physical task of gargantuan proportions but most definitely a mental one. So take a minute from you busy day to send here a quick couple lines of love and encouragement. Just click the link and post a message to her she is runner 802.
Happy Monday all!!!
Ollie :)X
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.
