All he could do was press on. He would get to the Nativity play. Perhaps someone he knew would spot him walking and offer him a lift. In an unusually gritty voice, he started to sing one of his favourite hymns as he trudged back up the hill.
"Who would true valour see
Let him come hither:
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather."
The mist was closing in now and it swirled around in the wind. Sometimes he could see a fair distance, before it rolled in towards him again.
Ahead of him, he heard a voice. He was certain that he heard a voice.
He stopped singing, but the voice of a young woman carried on.
"There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim."
Alan caught sight of her, now. His fellow chorister was wearing a red head scarf, a blue rain coat and gum boots and she was walking down the hill towards him. She waved to him, a joyful, friendly wave and turned abruptly into the hedge and disappeared from sight.
He could still hear her singing and he hurried up the hill, joining in.
"Who so beset him round
With dismal stories,"
Where was she? There was a small gap in the hedge and the singing came from the other side.
"Do but themselves confound:
His strength the more is."
Alan walked through the thick hedge and came out onto a wide expanse of grass leading into the mist from which he could still hear the singing, exultant and floating further away as the singer hurried on.
He raised his voice to carry with hers. He didn't care what he sounded like, he just wanted to join in.
"No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight."
The words of the hymn rose through the mist, bravely,
"But he will have the right
To be a pilgrim."
Alan knew where he was now. He was walking on Beatrice's Way, a raised swathe of land, which ran directly across the wasteland to the almshouses and the road in which St. Mary's Hall stood. It was an old green lane used by the drovers, but he was amazed that it was still clear.
The girl's voice, sweet and soft in the damp air led him forward in the right direction even when he couldn't see more than a few yards ahead.
He sang now, without fear and with a sense of inner peace that he hadn't known since Mary was alive.....
Later in the story,
Alan made contact with his friends and feverish activity went on for several days. Documents were found and copied, advice was taken, opinions sought until he knew the case was complete.
They decided to hold a public meeting in the church hall and invited their M.P., the developers, the council planning committee members and the general public.
On the night, Alan was surprised by how many people he knew had turned up. There were numbers of grandparents whose battles he had fought when they were young, with their children and even grandchildren. The local vet was there and a couple of architects he had approached, when he had needed to provide alternative schemes.
The history society was well represented and to everyone's surprise, the owner of two of the empty factories was there. The general public was considerable: people from throughout the town who had played in the wastelands as children, walkers' groups, the chairman of the allotment holders' association. Teachers, who used the wastelands for educating the children about the environment, people who went there from the town when they needed space to think, bird watchers, bat watchers, the list was impressive. The natural history society was there in force.
People were standing at the back of the hall, because there were no more seats left. Both sides spoke....
(copyright. J.R.Birch 2004)
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Where The Fox Goes.
This post is in addition to my usual ones. As well as Everyone Can be a herO, I have recently put onto PDF the first novel I ever wrote, updated and rephrased in places, but nevertheless, a book of the early nineties, which were surprisingly relevant to our current situation.
This was the time just before nearly everyone had a mobile 'phone and most people weren't conversant with computers, unless it was for work. It was also one of the last times I remember when kid had more freedom and used to play outside. It was another time of factory closures as trade was moved to places where they paid less and made more profit.
I first wrote it as a television series and sent an outline to Alan Yentob, in 2003. This series never happened (!) but it actually makes a better book anyway. We are flogging it for a pound a pdf on my website, www.insideoutsider.co.uk when I can get the Home Page on line.
A fox makes it's way through a town and the surrounding countryside, the path it takes leads it through the gardens,allotments and landscape of the families in the book. They have cut backs and job losses and the allotments and wastelands are under threat from a developer. This is a book in which Christians are not afraid to sing hymns as they walk down a country lane. These same paths were trodden by Christians in the times of the enclosures and it is their commitment to the people around both in the eighteen nineties and in the nineteen nineties which counts in the plot. It is a family book and it also contains the story of a lost cat, who, like the fox, touches on people's lives, arousing compassion and affecting their lives for the better.
This was the time just before nearly everyone had a mobile 'phone and most people weren't conversant with computers, unless it was for work. It was also one of the last times I remember when kid had more freedom and used to play outside. It was another time of factory closures as trade was moved to places where they paid less and made more profit.
I first wrote it as a television series and sent an outline to Alan Yentob, in 2003. This series never happened (!) but it actually makes a better book anyway. We are flogging it for a pound a pdf on my website, www.insideoutsider.co.uk when I can get the Home Page on line.
A fox makes it's way through a town and the surrounding countryside, the path it takes leads it through the gardens,allotments and landscape of the families in the book. They have cut backs and job losses and the allotments and wastelands are under threat from a developer. This is a book in which Christians are not afraid to sing hymns as they walk down a country lane. These same paths were trodden by Christians in the times of the enclosures and it is their commitment to the people around both in the eighteen nineties and in the nineteen nineties which counts in the plot. It is a family book and it also contains the story of a lost cat, who, like the fox, touches on people's lives, arousing compassion and affecting their lives for the better.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Raising the temperature... Whose water is it anyway?
A week or so ago I reported the good news that all we have to do is to eat organic and bring back the world to an organic system of food growing, as well reforesting, to not only stop global warming but reverse it. This came in the form of an article and alert in organic byte #227 from the Organic Consumers Association via a tweet.
Never in the history of mankind , surely, has such an important piece of news been delivered in such a singular way!.... but there it is... you don't need to do anything more fancy than going back to growing food the way our great grandparents did, to save the world.
This cannot come soon enough. This week, I had a news update from The Ecologist, the ecological early warning e magazine, reporting on a paper by a Canadian researchers, headed by Daniel Boyce, a PhD student at Dalhousie University, published in Nature.
It appears that while the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil can seqester back all the CO2 we produce and more, given half a chance; the phytoplankton in the surface layers of the sea have not been doing so well.. In fact their numbers have been going down worldwide each year by 1% since 1950. The Northern hemisphere has lost 40%. This seems to be due to the temperature of the water going up.
The Phytoplankton produce half the world's oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to Boris Worm, another member of the team.
You can find mention of it on the internet.. CBS has a short report, for one, which is where these figures came from, and which the link is to, but there are others.
It raises the question, do the billions and billions of gallons of water, sucked in by the nuclear power plants every day around the world, which also suck in and kill billions of small marine animals, have a crucial role in this?
From some figures I obtained from Beyond Nuclear, by going to " Licensed to Kill" (or go to 'Animals' and choose it from the drop down menu, or key it in their search box), "Once Through" systems can raise the temperature of the water taken in by up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit when it is returned to the sea. These temperature changes and the huge volumes of water being returned to the surface layers of the seas makes me wonder if the very air we breath depends on their being closed down? It may depend on no new ones being even considered..
If these "once through" plants were all forced to close down until they had been retro fitted with cooling towers, it would reduce this problem..but before you think that's the answer, just look at the problems with cooling towers and tritium leaks and ask yourselves whether that is an especially good answer.
In this country, Sellafield can take 4 million gallons of water a day from Wastwater, a beauty spot in the Lake District, to keep the high level liquid wastes from boiling, that's a lot in a year, but unlike the nuclear power plants, you can't shut down the cooling to the tanks, because the radioactivity in them causes the liquids to get hotter and hotter, and the wastes have to be kept cool for years and years. Meanwhile, local people are complaining about a hosepipe ban!
There are alternatives and you are entitled to a secure future... all of you. But don't worry about global warming, you can still munch your way out of it. Will there be enough for everyone... well, if you read "Don't Panic, Go Organic", also in the OCA., of course there will.
Never in the history of mankind , surely, has such an important piece of news been delivered in such a singular way!.... but there it is... you don't need to do anything more fancy than going back to growing food the way our great grandparents did, to save the world.
This cannot come soon enough. This week, I had a news update from The Ecologist, the ecological early warning e magazine, reporting on a paper by a Canadian researchers, headed by Daniel Boyce, a PhD student at Dalhousie University, published in Nature.
It appears that while the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil can seqester back all the CO2 we produce and more, given half a chance; the phytoplankton in the surface layers of the sea have not been doing so well.. In fact their numbers have been going down worldwide each year by 1% since 1950. The Northern hemisphere has lost 40%. This seems to be due to the temperature of the water going up.
The Phytoplankton produce half the world's oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to Boris Worm, another member of the team.
You can find mention of it on the internet.. CBS has a short report, for one, which is where these figures came from, and which the link is to, but there are others.
It raises the question, do the billions and billions of gallons of water, sucked in by the nuclear power plants every day around the world, which also suck in and kill billions of small marine animals, have a crucial role in this?
From some figures I obtained from Beyond Nuclear, by going to " Licensed to Kill" (or go to 'Animals' and choose it from the drop down menu, or key it in their search box), "Once Through" systems can raise the temperature of the water taken in by up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit when it is returned to the sea. These temperature changes and the huge volumes of water being returned to the surface layers of the seas makes me wonder if the very air we breath depends on their being closed down? It may depend on no new ones being even considered..
If these "once through" plants were all forced to close down until they had been retro fitted with cooling towers, it would reduce this problem..but before you think that's the answer, just look at the problems with cooling towers and tritium leaks and ask yourselves whether that is an especially good answer.
In this country, Sellafield can take 4 million gallons of water a day from Wastwater, a beauty spot in the Lake District, to keep the high level liquid wastes from boiling, that's a lot in a year, but unlike the nuclear power plants, you can't shut down the cooling to the tanks, because the radioactivity in them causes the liquids to get hotter and hotter, and the wastes have to be kept cool for years and years. Meanwhile, local people are complaining about a hosepipe ban!
There are alternatives and you are entitled to a secure future... all of you. But don't worry about global warming, you can still munch your way out of it. Will there be enough for everyone... well, if you read "Don't Panic, Go Organic", also in the OCA., of course there will.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
The End of Oil
A lot of speculation is happening about how and when. Personally, I very much hope that Renewables will cut in before it gets too bad. Anyone who thinks that mining Uranium and the whole process of building, running, cooling, protecting and decomissioning nuclear power plants, let alone trying to deal with the waste, has less carbon footprint than all the other forms of energy, will do well to look at the recent figures..The further you go into the future, the move damage you are doing to people, the environment , and the higher the carbon footprint becomes.
The end of oil, as we have known it, is coming. There are a a lot of lovely transition people out there, planning a better future and I was amazed at just how many groups there are in the U.K.
One person who lives sustainably as well as writing about it, and not just from the countryside homesteader point of view, is Micheal Smith (Veshengro) of The Green (Living) Review.
He has recently written a short book, called The End of Oil. It is one man's view of the future and a genuine, not overly theoretical, summary of some of the ways to live in this new society. It is honest, forthright and original and comes with years of experience of dealing with things as they are, rather than as consumersville would have us live.
I have benefited from Michael's genuine warmth for anyone writing whose work he thinks is of value and have read his attacks on greenwash. I read his blog regularly because it has its own voice, I learn from it and I am never bored by it. I love passages in his book which come with the sense of humour I now expect from him,.viz : the American approach to writing upside down in space and the Russian one. The former was thousands of dollars of research into a pen which would do this...which to be fair, they achieved... and the Russians? Used a pencil.
In his advertisement for the book, there is a whole chapter for you to read, to find out more. The End Of Oil by Michael Smith ( Veshengro)
The end of oil, as we have known it, is coming. There are a a lot of lovely transition people out there, planning a better future and I was amazed at just how many groups there are in the U.K.
One person who lives sustainably as well as writing about it, and not just from the countryside homesteader point of view, is Micheal Smith (Veshengro) of The Green (Living) Review.
He has recently written a short book, called The End of Oil. It is one man's view of the future and a genuine, not overly theoretical, summary of some of the ways to live in this new society. It is honest, forthright and original and comes with years of experience of dealing with things as they are, rather than as consumersville would have us live.
I have benefited from Michael's genuine warmth for anyone writing whose work he thinks is of value and have read his attacks on greenwash. I read his blog regularly because it has its own voice, I learn from it and I am never bored by it. I love passages in his book which come with the sense of humour I now expect from him,.viz : the American approach to writing upside down in space and the Russian one. The former was thousands of dollars of research into a pen which would do this...which to be fair, they achieved... and the Russians? Used a pencil.
In his advertisement for the book, there is a whole chapter for you to read, to find out more. The End Of Oil by Michael Smith ( Veshengro)
Saturday, 3 July 2010
This one, you can eat your way out of!
Does any of you ever have a sneaky suspicion that the scientists may be missing something when it comes to global warming? We know that it's real and we know that it's happening and apparently it didn't happen before man stood up, but doesn't it ever occur to you that there must have been a lot of dust and ash and stuff being shoved into the earth's atmosphere in its turbulent history, so have they really got it right?
Well yes and no! The answer is so stunningly obvious that I don't know why we didn't all get it straight away.
It took The Organic Consumer to produce the answer to it all in one of their "organic bytes" on Twitter. Funny isn't it, how one of the most important pieces of information this century comes as a tweet. http://bit.ly/cAp1JV on June 3rd 2010. " Go organic change the world, not the climate". If you don't like using links, just search with organic bytes 227 and the page will come up on the Organic Consumers' Association website. The two extracts below are from the first two articles, which I really recommend.
Change the World Go Organic
"If you do just one thing to change the world, go organic"
"going organic is the single most critical (and most DOABLE) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. Every acre of of ground that's farmed organically has the potential to pull thousands of pounds of warming greenhouse gases out of the air."...
"Organic living can stop the climate crisis. When you combine the impact of protecting the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil (which absorb and neutralize carbon) and eliminating all the toxic chemicals (and their packaging and the energy spent producing them), the carbon problem in our atmosphere is practically solved. We will still need more renewable energy, but restoring the earth's ability to sequester carbon is a good place to start. And you'll do it while eating."
- Maria Rochdale, Organic Manefesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World and Keep us Safe.
Alert of the Week: Demand Organic in Climate Change Bill
"A shift to local and organic food and crop production would eliminate most fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, including deadly methane and nitrous oxide emissions, while saving the world's forests and turning our farm and ranch lands back into carbon sinks or storage areas, instead of emitters. Transitioning just the world's 3.5 billion acres of cropland to organic would sequester 40% annual emissions! Transitioning all range and pasture lands as well, along with global reforestation, would enable us to remove enough excess greenhouse gases to reverse global warming and stabilize the climate."
If we just went back to growing food the way our great grandparents did, we wouldn't have a problem any more. ...and, it tastes a whole lot better.
Well yes and no! The answer is so stunningly obvious that I don't know why we didn't all get it straight away.
It took The Organic Consumer to produce the answer to it all in one of their "organic bytes" on Twitter. Funny isn't it, how one of the most important pieces of information this century comes as a tweet. http://bit.ly/cAp1JV on June 3rd 2010. " Go organic change the world, not the climate". If you don't like using links, just search with organic bytes 227 and the page will come up on the Organic Consumers' Association website. The two extracts below are from the first two articles, which I really recommend.
Change the World Go Organic
"If you do just one thing to change the world, go organic"
"going organic is the single most critical (and most DOABLE) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. Every acre of of ground that's farmed organically has the potential to pull thousands of pounds of warming greenhouse gases out of the air."...
"Organic living can stop the climate crisis. When you combine the impact of protecting the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil (which absorb and neutralize carbon) and eliminating all the toxic chemicals (and their packaging and the energy spent producing them), the carbon problem in our atmosphere is practically solved. We will still need more renewable energy, but restoring the earth's ability to sequester carbon is a good place to start. And you'll do it while eating."
- Maria Rochdale, Organic Manefesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World and Keep us Safe.
Alert of the Week: Demand Organic in Climate Change Bill
"A shift to local and organic food and crop production would eliminate most fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, including deadly methane and nitrous oxide emissions, while saving the world's forests and turning our farm and ranch lands back into carbon sinks or storage areas, instead of emitters. Transitioning just the world's 3.5 billion acres of cropland to organic would sequester 40% annual emissions! Transitioning all range and pasture lands as well, along with global reforestation, would enable us to remove enough excess greenhouse gases to reverse global warming and stabilize the climate."
If we just went back to growing food the way our great grandparents did, we wouldn't have a problem any more. ...and, it tastes a whole lot better.
Peak oil and transition....It's not so bad!
About Peak Oil....It wasn't so bad ...Kirk and Maria discussed this early on in the book...
Just for the record, I wrote to the effect that the oil had nearly run out some time before the nuclear accident. It was so expensive that most people couldn't afford it. Local communities started up again, traffic accidents went down, the air was cleaner...The only problem was nuclear fuel... as Maria says wistfully, "without that we'd have had a good future."
The nuclear accident happened afterwards. It did not take out the old fashioned cars, but leave the computers and televisions working. No, the petrol driven cars had already stopped working. The computers, as is mentioned in the book, were solar powered, and the television service was limited. The fact that I already have a marvelously sun powered website, genuinely powered by Californian sun, and very cheaply to boot, makes me think that it is just possible that this might still be happening in the future. Furthermore, as I read that certain computer giants were already looking at Scottish wind and wave power for energy to power the internet, maybe the internet would be functioning.
Also, if you were a government in a post nuclear country, where an accident had taken out some of the counties, but not all of them, and the prevailing wind at the time meant that there was still a population which was not yet drastically affected, although everyone knew the cancers would come, and come sooner rather than later, which which was one reason why no one talked about it...... Maybe you would think that the internet was a good way of communicating with people.
I didn't explain about the cancers, or the risks of their children having mutations in the story, but the way the reality hits Maria, just when life is full of promise, was more than enough. I have blogged about the resulting problems as a guest author on another website.
The teenagers in this story want to have fun, they like being with their friends and life is for living.
Anyway, it's your future, it can be great, so be positive, take a look at the next post because life CAN be brilliant. Absolutely, utterly, amazingly, brilliant.
Just for the record, I wrote to the effect that the oil had nearly run out some time before the nuclear accident. It was so expensive that most people couldn't afford it. Local communities started up again, traffic accidents went down, the air was cleaner...The only problem was nuclear fuel... as Maria says wistfully, "without that we'd have had a good future."
The nuclear accident happened afterwards. It did not take out the old fashioned cars, but leave the computers and televisions working. No, the petrol driven cars had already stopped working. The computers, as is mentioned in the book, were solar powered, and the television service was limited. The fact that I already have a marvelously sun powered website, genuinely powered by Californian sun, and very cheaply to boot, makes me think that it is just possible that this might still be happening in the future. Furthermore, as I read that certain computer giants were already looking at Scottish wind and wave power for energy to power the internet, maybe the internet would be functioning.
Also, if you were a government in a post nuclear country, where an accident had taken out some of the counties, but not all of them, and the prevailing wind at the time meant that there was still a population which was not yet drastically affected, although everyone knew the cancers would come, and come sooner rather than later, which which was one reason why no one talked about it...... Maybe you would think that the internet was a good way of communicating with people.
I didn't explain about the cancers, or the risks of their children having mutations in the story, but the way the reality hits Maria, just when life is full of promise, was more than enough. I have blogged about the resulting problems as a guest author on another website.
The teenagers in this story want to have fun, they like being with their friends and life is for living.
Anyway, it's your future, it can be great, so be positive, take a look at the next post because life CAN be brilliant. Absolutely, utterly, amazingly, brilliant.
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
An Ebook you don't need a reader for.
If you haven't already been to our website, the e book is emailed to you as a pdf and it doesn't need a reader, just download it. How much does it cost? £2.00 and if you give us the email addresses of a friend when you order, we'll send them a pdf free. Go to www.insideoutsider.co.uk ...to order. And yes, we'd love some feedback from you.
Did anyone else see the Homer Simpson tweet about the oil spill and nuclear waste... Very astute and it had been re-tweeted masses of times when I caught up with it.
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