This is not my... Week 35 07
07/09/07 - Shameful
05/09/07 - Ode
04/09/07 - Just one more minute
03/09/07 - "A pessimist...
07/09/07 - Shameful
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Behaviour... |
Finally about recovered.
Went out on Wednesday for a quick beer and then (with the handy excuse of the tube strikes) got convinced to stay at my friends and in the pub for a bit longer... Messy.
Getting way too old.
As - in fact - noted on the evening in question.... when someone asked how long I had been married!
He was referring to my ex boyfriend at the time but that was not the distressing thing.
The distressing thing is that - where I once looked young and free - I now appear to look like a middle aged housewife.
Oh my.
Not happy.
Will thus be spending the weekend scouring the Health and Beauty section on here for environmentally friendly anti ageing cream!
Hope you have a good one.
Susie x
05/09/07 - Ode
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To the train... |
Oh trains, you are so shiny and quick
Very rarely do you spill your coffee when you are in one
Or get sick
And you can read the paper
Such early morning creativity...
Anyhow - putting that aside - been doing a spot of investigating into eco travel and came across this brilliant site: Eco Travelling.co.uk
Quite handy for a bit of information (and train love) if you fancy a look.
The news has also been reveling in the glory of the track with the new high speed Eurostar to Paris.
And - let us not forget the lowly commuter train. (No striking for those of us Londoners who potter to work on the over lands this week.)
Ah the train.
Sorry - needed to get that out of my system. Got to avoid standing on Doncaster station with clipboard and overcoat for just a bit longer...!
Susie x
04/09/07 - Just one more minute
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Ok - one more minute plus - erm - another minute... |
Couldn't get out of bed this morning.
(Most likely due to the perversity of my subconcious. It is - naturally - a rare morning on which I need to be up early.)
Anyhow - in a bit of a rush but thought I would quickly highlight Walk-it again.
It's been mentioned a couple of times but it really is an amazing site for routes around London and - with the three days of tube strikes - could be quite useful.
Right - best get up and at it.... just as soon as my alarm clock has been located and destroyed!
Have a lovely day.
Susie x
03/09/07 - "A pessimist...
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sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." |
Was given an amazing book yesterday, Global Warning - the last Chance for Change.
I have read a fair bit on the subject over the past few years but this book is great because it is easy to understand and... has lots of pictures! (Before further publicising my immaturity I should mention that they are both stunning and educational.)
Anyhow - in the early part in talks about how close we are to unstoppable climate change.
Which means that the figures are brought out.
I hate figures.
Apparently, we need to stay under 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. (I am assuming that this is 'parts per million of all of the other things that make up the atmosphere' but have yet to investigate because of the number thing...)
Regardless - the leading scientists across the globe have estimated that we will reach this level within 15 years and insist that we need to take drastic action.
Well - apart from Sir David King, our chief scientific advisor, who agrees with the facts but feels that politicians will never risk their careers in order to take such action.
"His solution was to go for adaptation, building sea walls, moving cities and changing food crops... He conceded, however, that the developing world would be hard hit by this approach and that some countries, particularly small island states like the Maldives, would disappear altogether."
How useless is that?!
Man alive - we have a whole 15 years. All we need to do is get together to stop wasting so much, invest in carbon sequestration and renewable technologies and add environmental costs to the pricing of goods in international markets.
Hmpf.
Such defeatism.
My grandmother would be appalled.
Bring back Churchill, I say:
"You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory — victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
Susie x
31/08/07 - Back to Black
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Back to black |
Who knew that websites themselves and not just their content could be environmentally friendly? Not me, until recently that is.
There has been a lot of hype on this side of the pond recently about Blackle (www.blackle.com), an Australian created search engine. It uses google for all it's answers - so what is the difference? It is all in the colour. Blakle is a black website with minimal colour, the principal being that the display of different colours on a webpage consume different amount of energy on computer monitors. According to the US Department of Energy a monitor displaying white uses 74 watts, while a monitor displaying black uses 59 watts.
So are you staring at your computer screen shrugging your shoulders, thinking to yourself, watts means about as much to me as flocci nauci nihilipilification? I was, so in laymans terms it basically translates that at today's statistics, based on the amount of people using Google, for an average amount of time, $75,000 worth of electricity would be saved every year if Google turned black.
It is too late in the evening to start doing the math, but if that is one website (albeit a big one) what could the likes of MSN, Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Wikipedia, BBC and Fox News (some of the worlds most popular websites) do?
Emergy-C has established a colour palate for energy efficient web colours.
Though if all this seems a little too black to you why not try greygle who aim to change the web one shade at a time and still save engergy!
Have a fantastic weekend everyone.
Lara x
30/08/07 - It's 2am
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And we've been stuck on the runway for three hours.
No I don't want a bloody scratch card...! |
Had tea with a my friend Blake yesterday.
He wasn't happy.
In fact, I would go so far as to say, outraged.
And - while I am generally a temperate soul - I was more than willing to join him in a vitriolic attack on...
RYANAIR
Dun nun nun nahhhhhhhh
Now - there are many environmental arguments to suggest that Ryanair is hardly a saintly organisation.
However, I shall focus instead on his musings concerning the correlation between happiness and budget air travel*:
"My theory is that even if the Ryanair start price is so low that after they have finished adding their, initially hidden, extras (tax,insurance, hold luggage, excess baggage, and now a potential 'check in fee') you end up with a cheap monetary price - any value is completely removed by the squalid conditions on the flight, the appalling bun fight that is the boarding queue and appalling people skills of the Ryanair staff.
The attitude is summed up best by their knee jerk reaction, when a plane is delayed, not to apologise for a break down in their service offering but rather to warn passengers that assaults against their staff will not be tolerated.
In short, the Ryanair experience comes with an emotional cost that far outweighs any potential financial gain that might be achieved by booking with them over their 'premium' competitors."
Now, he may be thinking of this in terms of alternative airlines, but I like to think of it in terms of alternative forms of travel altogether.
A lady at work just took her first long train journey. She returned from holiday delighted with the relaxation it engendered.
I have just come back from France where a car journey with friends was one of the funniest (and - um - creative?) experiences I've had in ages.
And - though I realise that covering long distances without flying can take a while - my friend Ed points out with his Slow Travel that the journey can be enjoyable in its own right.
So - if you too are fed up with tempestuous slumber and stale sandwiches - check out Seat 61 for a wealth of knowledge on international travel by boat and train.
Whichever way, hope you have a lovely (and stress free) day.
Susie x
*He promised a quote but provided quite the diatribe! Hoping it might be cathartic for him if I put it all in...
29/08/07 - No matter how hard you try
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Somepeople just can't be told... |
It's a tricky thing trying to be energy efficient.
There are all sorts of trials and tribulations. Shed loads of information and complicated lifestyle choices. And then - there are the people that stand in your way...
Ah yes.
Ironing.
For (entirely ethical reasons and absolutely nothing to do with laziness.... ahem) I rarely iron.
Actually - to be fair - I quite like ironing* (despite the scars on my tummy from the - I got bored so answered the phone whilst doing so - incident). But only when the items being ironed are technically already pretty flat and require no coordination (or in fact ironing in the first place).
But today I have to do a last minute presentation at work for which I need to look smart.
And - despite my best efforts to insist that a crumpled T-shirt would be the most environmentally friendly thing to wear - I have to drag the shirt out from the back of the wardrobe.
Hmpf.
Ah well - according to the Basingstoke County Council (that well known venerated source of environmental information).
"Not all clothes need ironing, but where possible do all of your ironing in one go."
Guess I had best get on with it then.
No one phone me in the next half an hour... only just healed from the last time!
Susie x
*And may take up the extreme form because of its fantastic stupidity factor!
28/08/07 - Bonjour monsieur
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Voulez vous visite le discoteque dans mon pantalons...? |
Ah yes - back from the continent well rested and totally bi-lingual... if you count bi-lingual to mean 'able to say suspicious - ungrammatical - sentences and write French bhangra rap about a monkey'.
(It was quite the journey for my mate's boyfriend who spent 10 hours in the car with us.)
Anyhow - France.
An amazing country.
We were up in the Alps, with stunning scenery and a way of life that gently reminds you there is far more than heading to the office each day.
I'm sure that there are parts of the country where it is all about TV's and lap tops and all that but with natures playground on your doorstep, huge communal meals and air so crisp you can eat it - they didn't really figure.
That aside, though, the most obvious environmentally friendly thing I noticed was the lack of shopping bags.
Not sure if it was just the supermarket we visited but it was a 'bring your own bag' affair and quite refreshing with it.
I know that a couple of bags here and there are just a drop in the ocean but - as far as energy efficiency goes - so is everything.
Reusablebags.com estimates that there have been roughly 328,000,000,000 used so far this year. Which is quite a big drop by anyone's calculations.
Anyhow - just a reminder that the little things can help. Especially if everyone does the little things!
Hope you had an amazing week and bank holiday.
Best get to work I guess. Might see if I can get everyone yodeling to recreate the alpine ambiance...
Susie 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.
