Thursday 27 September 2007

Friday 28th September 2007 - The Price of Oil

The Price of Oil and Plastic Bags

On 19th March 2003 hostilities commenced as an absolute requirement for the spread of “democracy” to the Iranian people

1953 At six years of age I planted seeds in my very own “patch”. This was the nearest piece of land to the fence before “the field” fell into the river. The picture on the seed packet showed a cottage garden with tall pastel pink and blue flowers surrounded by tiny stars of riotous colour. All spring and summer I watched them grow. Alongside my patch grew beetroot, lettuce, spring onions, shallots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips and carrots, up to the edge of the sties where pigs grunted and slurped the mashed boiled peelings, from vegetables that we got to eat first.
August 2004. The Iraq war continues to be a drain on the American taxpayers’ pocket books. So far, the war has cost the United States 144.4 billion dollars.

1954 Harvest rolled over that year into the Indian Summer of September. We collected blackberries in tin buckets. The Victoria plums were laid amongst straw in hooped barrels, then the apples in September got the same treatment. Jars were scalded on the open fire in heavy copper bottomed saucepans then filled with whole fruit and seedless jams to stock up the shelves in the shed alongside redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries. Apples were collected in hessian sacks. When the pig was killed the sacks made aprons for the men to stop the blood spurting onto their clothes. Mushrooms were picked, huge brown domes that fairies and elves had spent all night pushing up. That is why we had to get up early to catch them before they disappeared back down. That harvest year was special, I handed mammy the biggest bouquet of flowers she had ever received, there were night scented stocks; asters, brighter colours than I had ever before encountered, and tumbling nasturtiums, the colour of the sunset.

A surge in car bombings, bomb explosions and shootings: Iraq ministries put the civilian death toll for May at 672, up from 364 in April.

1954-1955 It was Christmas, Michael had a sheriffs outfit; trousers with fringes and a gun in a holster slung low on his leg. The waistcoat sported a silver star. Mammy told us years later how she had finished the outfit at midnight on Christmas Eve and when she ironed it, with the heavy metal iron placed on the hob to heat, she had burned a hole right through it. Daddy found a piece of tin and quietly shaped it into a star with pliers, filing down the edges to made five hooks, one in each point of the star so mammy could sew it in to the waistcoat. They went to bed at dawn that Christmas day. Michael never minded the hole, no one else had a star like his. I had a doll called Bubbles, who took second place all her life to the box she arrived in on Christmas Day.

Explosives packed in vehicles tore through crowds gathered in Iraq's two most sacred Shiite cities Sunday, killing at least 64 people and wounding scores more.

1955 Winter brought darkness. Candles were costly, we were not allowed up until daylight. We would hear the stoking of the fire to get heat for a warm drink before Daddy walked the three miles to the pit, then snuggle back down under the rough woollen blankets separated from us by a warm flannelette sheet which stopped the itching. Next time we would open our eyes, invariably the light would peek in to greet us and we could get up to look at what Jack Frost had left on our window in the night. The winter was hard the day we tried to reach school up the steep slope out of our little hamlet. I looked over the edge of the bridge at the spectacular icicles reaching down into the frozen river and worried if the trout would survive. Come summer we would tickle their bellies, making them jump out onto the banks so we could smack their heads against a stone and proudly carry them home to eat. Hard packed ice made our journey impossible that day and as we climbed up, we slid back, making us tumble and laugh until we were escorted back home. No school that day which made it a milestone in my life. My first day off, ever, that was not a holiday. Mammy made us hot blackcurrants from the glass jars and custard out of the eggs I brought from the hen house. This treat was for her birthday and because we had got so cold. We laughed when daddy got home and huddled in front of the fire to warm his posterior, which he said was freezing from the long walk home. Summer would soon be here he said that day.

Because of the Iraqi war, the Madrid bombings of March 2004 took place, as did the London underground bombings of July 2005. In July and August 2005 a total of 6,599 Iraqis were killed.

1956 I was old enough to knead the dough. I helped to flatten it, pummel it and push it into the square metal tins which were shoved into the black iron oven at the side of the red glowing bars of the coal fire. When the loaves came out they were covered with a clean piece of cotton, this was one of my tasks, to hem squares of material. Hankies were my speciality, square ones were Daddy’s for best and the small three cornered ones, or thin strips, for Michael and myself.
‘Will the milk’ came each morning, invariably grinning. His red cheeks look like miniature mountains each side of a lake of white teeth. The long handled metal ladle would disappear down into the churn and bring you up the exact amount you had asked for, a pint, a half pint or a third of a pint. Your milk would be poured into the awaiting jug and the ladle swished in a bucket of creamy water and replaced back on its hook, next to the other sizes, ready for the next place on his rounds. He would then take the reins and guide Benjie around the sharp turning at the edge of the cottages. Rare occasions afforded us a ride on the milk cart and this became a highlight of the milk delivery. At the age of eight years a ride on the milk cart was the only transport I had experienced. I had my first motorised vehicle ride at the age of nine, when oil entered my life.
For their part, major multinational oil companies have made no secret of their desire to gain access to Iraq’s reserves. Shortly before the invasion Archie Dunham, chairman of US oil major ConocoPhillips, explained that “ We know where the best {Iraqi} reserves are {and} we covet the opportunity to get those some day” Shell has stated that it aims to “establish a material and enduring presence in the country.”
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Tuesday 25 September 2007

Auntie Plastic starts fighting back

On October 1st 2007 ( which is next Monday) I a mere welsh housewife, amongst other things, intends to live for 3 months ( 12 weeks to be precise) without entering a supermarket and without putting out a rubbish bin or any recycling. My carbon footprint will be minimal. How can you do this people cry. I can and I will. I have sourced my food. My son just left for University ( thankfully he states) and so I am able to do this.

The reason I want to do this is to show that the supermarkets are actually responsible for land fill. When strawberry growers state they have lost part of the strawberry harvest through floods and the consumer in the UK now demands strawberries every week of the year I take umbrage. I DO NOT demand or expect strawberries every week of the year. The supermarket tries to sell me them every week of the year though.

How does the common man/woman get blamed for the huge amount of waste put into land fill and recycling ?

I will show hopefully that if the supermarket had not arrived neither would the land fill and recycling be the huge bind it is today. The powers that be want us to pay for getting rid of packaging we have not asked for. It has been foisted on us and now we have to pay. Town centres have been pedestrianised, which means that if you buy in the local markets you have to carry the food miles to get to the bus or your car. In town parking is expensive so we are forced into supermarket car parks and hence into supermarkets to demand strawberries every week of the year. Our Town Councils should be providing in town parking to give local shops the same chances as the supermarkets. The monopoly of the supermarkets is destroying our way of life and we are being forced through their doors. My choice is being taken away. I want the choice of which door to walk in not a tardis that once I enter their doors and they close them behind me I leave penniless and they are happy. Our towns die and we have no choice other than to enter the supermarkets. I do not want this to happen. I want to see the towns flourish and be what they always were, trading centres, centres of excellence, social meeting places.

From October 1st 2007 ( next Monday ) I shall cook all my own food from staples i.e. flour, fat, sugar, eggs, fruit, vegetables, meat and herbs, This means I shall compost all my waste fruit and vegetable peelings and my egg shells and tea. Everything else comes in paper which I can burn in my little incinerator. I have milk from the milkman who duly comes to collect the glass bottles. I cannot have cream for the four months unless someone can find me cream in a glass container. I have failed to find it. I will not have washing up liquid or conditioner, or come to think of it deodorant. I have lived without these as a child so It is not as scarey for me as it would be for some. I have sourced Fairy Soap - good old Fairy which still comes in cardboard boxes with no plastic wrapping. The Lush shop will give me solid shampoo and conditioner, wrapped in paper. I shall use fairy soap for all cleaning, together with fresh lemon juice. I shall NOT smell. I shall bake all my own bread and make my own pasta. Jamie Oliver I am going to do what you are trying to get all mothers to do and do my own washing up :)

It is impossible for young mothers to look after their children, go to work and cook properly. I have made all my own food from scratch once before but then I did not wage war on plastic and land fill at the same time. I found I was spending up to 40 hours a week cooking and preparing food for 2 people. A full time job.

I hope you will follow my progress. I am apprehensive and I have one carrier bag left in this house which I will allow myself for anything I cannot dispose of naturally. If this one carrier bag is too full at the end of the 12 weeks I will have failed. If it is not I will have survived and won. I must make lemonade and ginger beer. The one carrier bag belongs to Slimming World whose class I go to on a Tuesday night. Not for me going into Tescos to get low calorie quorn sausages though, I have to get the meat from my butcher in Neath market in my own containers, and make my own sausages. Will I lose weight, Slimming World will tell you after the 12 weeks.

NO plastic will enter this door for 12 whole weeks and no waste disposal bin will be put out for collection. NO recycling bags will be put out. I will stay clean. I will survive. I will not waste as the supermarkets do every night huge bins of food being destroyed when people go hungry. Every thing I eat will be carried from my local town Neath and from the market. That last bastion of what we once new when we lived without oil. As a child here I would watch the farmers walk their cows and sheep to the local slaughterhouse, they would put potatoes and swedes on the kitchen doorstep for favours received at harvest time collecting in the hay when every man was needed. Our pigs and chickens were well looked after and tasted superb. We killed our own meat. No one would do it for us. Our market town thrived.

Follow my progress as I survive for 12 weeks, as I hope I thrive for 12 weeks. as I gain a carbon footprint that should be the aim of people throughout Wales and beyond. We cannot afford to waste, yet the supermarkets do. I am not a part of it. I am Auntie Plastic.
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