Wednesday 31 October 2007

the view I come home to every day


Day 31

Wednesday October 31st 2007 – Today is a cooking day. I have been on holidays but now back to brass tacks. The remains of the gammon were tempting so I foraged in the fridge and found a leek, some carrots and some fat for pastry. I ended up making a leek and ham pie, a quiche which will go in the freezer and two egg custard tarts. Oh and out of the little bit of pastry left a jam tart. The free range eggs make beautiful yellow quiches. The yolks stand up proud when you crack them showing they are fresh. The flatter the yolk, the older the egg was what I was taught. These are fresh. Today I had a little problem and made another discovery. Firstly the problem, for the first time on my project I had to empty the cleaner. What does one do with the contents of the cleaner without a bin. I took it all in my stride and sat down to contemplate. I do not have a bag in my cleaner which is a bonus now although a bag is paper and would have burned. But the mess I empty out of my cleaner is not pretty. I have a huge red wool rug that leaches hair like rain. How it is not yet bald I will never understand. Well I examined the contents in a cardboard box which is outside waiting for my next fire. They were not mineral, they were what I would call vegetable. Therefore they could go on the compost heap or I could burn them. Mainly fibres and little bits of dirt the compost heap will do fine. Now for my revelation. You remember the pop man who brought pop in glass bottles and took them back. Well he is still alive and doing very well. He is doing even better since I found out he still exists. Wait until my son and grandsons find out and wait until they see the bottles of pop. Not that they do not like my lemonade, but the bubbles, I failed to get bubbles in my lemonade so I can now legally buy pop and give back the packaging. I have ordered this pop man to come and see me next week. I just cannot wait, I was mad I had just missed him this week. I shall let you know of any other delights he may have tucked away on the pop van. Everyone I spoke to who has their pop from the pop man state they will never ever have plastic bottles of pop. What did they say, ‘ It just does not taste as good in plastic’. The list of available goods is growing weekly. I am thriving and my bin, empty as it has been since October 1st and today is October 31st.

Tuesday 30 October 2007

Sunrise in Tenby on 29th October 2007



where all my peelings go


Days 26, 27, 28 & 29

Holidays - I refuse to tell you what I ate - suffice it to say I returned with no plastic - but I had wooden pencil cases and pencils - wooden pencil sharpeners and lots of books, blank paper, jigsaw puizzles, tracing paper and trumpet books for my eldest grandson. Chocolate from the Caldey Island shop made by the monks and chunks of beautiful bees wax and honey soaps wrapped in paper. Oh I can spend ok without buying plastic. Enough about my holiday. I returned and the food was mmmmmmmmm.

Day 25

This afternoon I had to pick up my chicken from the butcher as I am off on holidays to Tenby in West Wales tomorrow. This week my chicken will be frozen. I also bought half a gammon as my son would be home tonight and he needed something easy to eat in case he stayed at home for the weekend. I find gammon ideal for keeping as it keeps for at least a week once cooked and covered in the fridge. I use it then to make chicken, ham and mushroom pie and chunks of it in an omelette and if needs be some can be frozen for reuse at a later date. Tonight is the chapel coffee evening and I will buy cakes there for sonny Jim to eat while I am away. I can take my container and buy welsh cakes and chocolate brownies and fill tins with them. This saves me now I know exactly where to source food to give myself more time for other things. I persuade myself I am not lazy and the money is for the chapel restoration, so I can and must buy. My grandsons love it when I have been to the chapel coffee evening and they look in the tins expectantly. Not this weekend though as I am on holidays. Hip Hip Hooray.

Thursday 25 October 2007

Day 24

Wednesday October 24th 2007. Today the lady who lives next door took out my empty bin. Why would anyone take out my empty bin? I am not asking her but I had to get it back in quickly before I was accused of using it. Before the waste disposal lorry comes tomorrow. She thought I had forgotten to put it out but did not think to look inside it. So is the curse of the bin. It would not occur to anyone that you just did not put out a bin. It is such a simple thing to do and yet when you tell people their mouths fall open literally and then the realisation that you must be utterly bonkers is on their faces one and all. Then a puzzled look appears and the eyebrows crinkle slightly. Sometime you then get a nervous laugh as though they are thinking of running but afraid to move in case they alarm me. I have to smile then and reach out to them to assure them I am pretty average, pretty normal, but do not put out a bin. Such is our indoctrination into supermarkets, packaging and waste that to think of not doing it is just anathema and a startling revelation to realise that it can actually be done. I know there are going to be times when I use a land fill site, such as when a piece of electrical equipment breaks down and has to be replaced. But this should not happen with the frequency that it does. We need good quality goods that will last and can be repaired. I looked at the newspaper yesterday and noticed how the Welsh Assembly Government is giving a couple of million pound prizes to foreign companies in a competition to come to Wales and set up. Imagine if that couple of million pounds was used to train a boot and shoe maker to make shoes that fitted welsh feet of all shapes and sizes at a fair price and people would come from all over to buy these shoes that last. I hate it, just when I have broken a pair of shoes in and they are the most comfortable shoes in my life they fall apart and I have to start all over again. The shoe maker could then employ staff and train apprentices and when the shoemaker went to buy himself a new suit he could find a tailor in his town who could do for the shoemakers body what he did for the tailors feet. The farmers in the fields around us would grow our crops and raise our meat and we would all thrive. Utopia people say. I answer them – Better than playing with Mickey Mouse money that has no substance. If I cannot see it then it does not exist is a good motto with money. Anyhow my bin is empty and I am loving this.

Wednesday 24 October 2007

Day 23

My bin remains empty. I now after just a few weeks know that I could live like this indefinitely with very little effort. My children are now trained well and would not dare bring plastic bags into my house. A friend who smokes suddenly said to me after she had sat and drunk a couple of cups of coffee ‘ oh! what do I do with my cigarette butts’. She went on ‘ I will have to take them with me, give me a plastic bag’. I looked at her and we both burst out laughing, ‘I forgot she said, you do not have a plastic bag’. This turned into a dilemma. How does one dispose of cigarette butts without a bin. Well they were burned. I thought of my compost bin but did not want to pollute it so I burned them in my incinerator. There were only two of them but I felt guilty about doing it yet could not allow a friend leave my house with her cigarette butts in a paper bag J I have to perform this service to keep any friends.

For the last two days I have eaten the remains of my Sunday dinner. I make more than I need for this purpose. Six hours spent cooking on the weekend allows me the freedom at the beginning of the week to concentrate on other things in my life like writing, campaigning and socializing. I have frozen some custard I made on the weekend and half the apple crumble I made. These will come for next weekend now. The freezer allows us to have the best of both worlds as does the microwave. I use all mod cons. They are there I have no problem with them. My problem is with items we throw away daily and which create land-fill. Anyone want the number of my milkman I would be only too glad to give it out.

Day 22

October 22nd 2007 - Today I was on my way on the train to Cardiff again. I love the train. For me it is an ideal mode of transport. I admit I would be a threat on the road due to slow responses. I have thought well about trying my test again after failing dismally a few years ago but have erred on the side of caution. So I understand too well the downfalls of the public transport system we have. I have no problem with waiting for a bus and as long as I can get onto the train and the bus I will use them. The towns I have more of a problem with than the means to get there. Because of pedestrian precincts it is only the fit that are able to enjoy our towns now. In Neath for example we used to have bus stops just outside the back of the market. Now you have a five mile hike to get to the bus. Something has to change if we are to retain our towns as shopping areas. The journey to Cardiff was uneventful. I watch people getting on and off the train and wonder where they are going to. I wonder how much litter they put in their bin and I wonder how many of them are aware of the fact they do not have to create landfill. On the way home the train arrived punctually and my journey was effortless in a comfortable seat. I read too many papers on the train though and get incensed enough to start writing letters as soon as I get home. But it is a way of getting your voice heard. It is a way of implanting into peoples minds the seeds of wasteful packaging and plastic milk bottles against which I wage war.

Tuesday 23 October 2007

Day 21

Sunday rose with the lark, the sun shone and I was alive. My son was home for his Sunday dinner. He was snuggled in to his bed like an animal in a nest. He misses his bed I think more than his mam. Today was a round of cooking, fresh bread, the traditional cooked dinner with apple crumble to follow, fresh fruit salad and mams custard. Last night I cracked an egg for my supper knowing it was a double yolker. Two slices of toast and one egg, that cannot be bad. This is why I do not find fresh food shopping from local markets expensive. My own bread is far more filling. Every meal made from fresh ingredients keeps one satisfied for far longer. I do not know if you get guaranteed double yolkers from the supermarkets but I get them from ‘my’ market.

I spent approximately 6 hours today preparing vegetables and cooking but as I am alone from this evening what I have cooked will now see me through the first half of the week. Next weekend I am off to Tenby. Imagine three days of food cooked for me. I am definitely the most appreciative guest they will have. I guarantee also to not bring home one piece of plastic. I will have to look for something for the children which is not wrapped. There are two really interesting book-shops in Tenby. Our family loves books so another problem solved.

Sunday 21 October 2007

Day 20

Today we held a car boot sale to which one car turned up. That car was friends from Trebanos, Jan & Pat Frayne who like myself are pipeline campaigners. We have fought together for about eighteen months to get the safety of the huge LNG pipeline from Milford Haven to this village of Cilfrew out into the open. They are now good supportive friends and even though they were the only car in our car park
(the old pub car park in the village) we had a few visitors come from the village. We had a lift to bring the chapel long wooden tables and benches the couple of hundred yards down the road from the vestry and back again. Apart from that we carried from our homes all we needed. A few of us had made cakes, which were displayed on the chapel table covered in a white lace cloth on silver plates with doyleys. We had gateaux and cream and mugs of tea and coffee. So we sat there and had fun. In this village we are having fun again as we used to long ago, without using oil. The more events we can put on in the village the less carbon footprint we create and the more our community will thrive. The children love it. They help us carry chairs to the car park and they sit and listen to what we have to say. There is room there for them to kick their balls about and there are many people watching them. Children for far too long have been allowed to rule out of doors while the parents and grandparents sit and be entertained in doors. We now sit with them on occasions and see the far better side of our own children who await eagerly the next ‘event’. I feel it is up to us as the older generation to bring back our communities and not allow them to die and our children not know how to socialise and organise their own lives. This community living could be extended to our food also. We need local food, then we can have our own food events, our own fun, sustainable living with jobs and roles for everyone. It is not a dream, it is our children’s future.

Saturday 20 October 2007

Day 19

Friday 19th October 2007
Two days in town one after each other. But today the town smelled of smoke. Every shop was wrapped in smog as the icon of Neath, the Gwyn Hall which was nearing it’s first major refurbishment in it’s history was badly burned last night. The only saving grace was that no one was hurt or killed. The fire started at approximately 9 pm on Thursday night 18th October 2007. People cried as it burned and the sadness permeated Neath with the smell. The building was iconic and had held shows that almost every child growing up in this district must have visited at least once in their lives. I saw many shows there and I felt as sad as all the other faces I could see around me. The market was saved and I had to put up with the jokes from all angles through the gloom, such as, good job it was not the market, you would have been in trouble. They were right, the Market in Neath is about the only alternative place to shop. Without the market we would have nothing but supermarkets. I shuddered at the thought and then realised how lucky I really am. Lucky to still have this market as many towns might not have this facility. I spoke to a friend living in Minnesota in the United States who tells me that a butchers shop is something he has not seen since he left New York many years previously. Supermarket shopping is all they have now and when I tell him of the market in Neath he gets nostalgic and sad at a way of life lost to them in the United States. Fight to keep your market he tells me, for once it is gone you will be like us with no alternative and I hope against the odds that the façade of Neath Gwyn Hall can be saved for the town. We desperately need historical icons.

Day 18

Today I was let loose in a sweet shop. Neath Market boasts a sweet stall, which is huge. Guess what, they still do paper sweet bags. The sweets are all in glass jars or boxes on the counter. I can just go around and around choosing sweets all day. There must be hundreds of varieties there. Every day now I find more cardboard wrapped items I can purchase so I am slowly but surely building up a dossier of environmentally friendly packaged foods and goods with the milk bottle standing tall and proud at the top. I love glass, I always have. It is clean, wash a milk bottle in fairy soap suds and hot water and see it sparkle. Plastic will never sparkle as glass does. Then there are the colours, the ruby colours of glass. The Romans brought in glass to this country and examples survive until today. Coloured glass over one and a half thousand years old. I know plastic will last in the land-fill longer. I wonder will anyone ever get excited about unearthing a plastic milk bottle. I think not. I found baking tins in Neath without plastic packaging and bought a new stainless steel frying pan with only a cardboard label hanging on the handle. No thank you I smile, no plastic bag as I pull a canvas bag out of my shoulder bag. I have a few more in there also for emergency purchases. I found organic muesli in the market with the porridge oats, cardboard wrapped and I looked in Boots to see what I could buy. Not a lot, but if I ever need a new nail-brush or loofah or natural sponge I am ok. No plastic on those. I remember when we used to get toothpaste in little tins. Well you cannot get them any more. I am afraid if you use toothpaste it is impossible to get it unless you use a plastic tube. So the sage leaves and salt will be my only tooth cleaning products. Oh I discovered in Boots natural bristle brushes, with plastic covers on. I could have bought a plastic brush though without plastic on. I shall have to weigh up my options and keep my hair short. All in all a good day scouting for supplies.

Wednesday 17 October 2007

Day 17

Wednesday 17th October 2007. Well Slimming World was a dawdle. I had to get in and out quickly due to my lift being in a hurry, so I did not have to stay and explain the no gain, no loss situation I found myself in. Perhaps the trifle balanced out the quiche. Next week I shall face the music. The market telephoned me today on my mobile while I was out in a meeting to ask did madam require a free range chicken this week. What service !! I commend the stall holders of Neath Market. No supermarket ever did that for me. I used to get mightily annoyed when I would go through a till at Tescos and the young person serving could have been taking money from an alien with a false hand as I would have been all the way through the checkout as she talked to her till mate next door, paid, exited the checkout and she would not have looked up once.

I hit crisis point today after my cheese and pickle sandwiches with fresh beetroot. I wanted a desert. If it had not been for Slimming World I would have made some pikelets quickly on the bakestone and covered them with blackberry coulis made quickly in the microwave. But there is next week and the self help group of which I would be the star if I did not try at least. I was pretty desperate but controlled. I took a large Hereford Crispin apple and cored it. I stuffed the centre with sultanas and put it in the microwave for 4 minutes. I then cracked 2 free range eggs which I separated and split a vanilla pod down the middle. I put a third of a pint of milk into my double saucepan and a dessertspoon of honey, dropped the vanilla pod halves in and warmed the milk gently. I whisked the eggs and added them to the hot milk and vanilla pods in the double saucepan. It took about 20 mins and then I removed the apple from the microwave, poured the custard with the little brown flecks in it like that upmarket vanilla ice cream and indulged myself. 2 hours later I am still full to the brim and smiling and warm like a cat who has had the cream. I have survived and on my cooker is a pot of vegetable stew with pot barley in which I can smell already. My bin is empty, I am full, my hair smells lovely with the Lush solid shampoo and I do not think I ever needed deodorant after all these years of using it. Oh well they say you are never too old to learn.

Sourcing is the key. I revel in the fact I can walk into a shop and go around the shelves searching for items I can buy instead of wandering aimlessly looking what would take my fancy. It is a whole new game and I am not adding anything to the mountain of waste which already
exists.

Tuesday 16 October 2007

Day 16

Tuesday looms wet and windy. The day for doing indoor things like cooking for the weekend. Tonight is Slimming World and the weigh in. I wonder if last weeks quiches will catch up on me this week. If they do then the trifle from last weekend should not show until next week. Where there is life there is hope. Yesterday there was a report saying the supermarkets need to get greener as they are not faring well in the grades set by some obscure body. I read every paper I can get my hands on while on the train so am clued up and pen happy by the following day. Yes the letter has gone to the Western Mail. Another report was about putting weighing scales in schools to weigh pupils and prevent obesity. What a load of codswallop. I was a large child and can remember well how embarrassed I would have been to be weighed and have the nod of disapproval from some well meaning interferer in my life. My mother could not afford to ply me with treats and I was one of four children. We had our own fowl and vegetables and pigs. What had made me bigger than the average brownie. The day I walked into brownies at 10 years of age. I had plucked up the courage to ask my mother to take me they looked at me, taller than average, a big girl and stated matter of factly, Oh! we do not have a uniform big enough in brownies she will have to wait to go to guides and then get fitted out. I never made girl guides. My career in the camp fire brigade finished that evening. I never went back and built my own fires with my brothers on the side of the river and went back to becoming head squaw. Something has happened to food to make all these people this size, something has happened to life styles to make all people what they now term ‘ obese’ a derogatory statement that in an instant segregates a huge portion of the population and sells slimming foods by the ton. Now we need face lifts, botox and infill by the time we are 30 and perfect teeth that cost ten thousand pounds a time. What next I ask myself, just where do we go from here ? All I ask for is fresh fruit and vegetables and local meat. Our children will grow strong then. Local bakers to bake bread without all the additives and food that mums cook and serve in that age old picture of health and contentment. Women today are denied that. They did not give it up, economic direction stole it from them. Can we ever get it back, perhaps we can try and rescue some of it. My bin is empty. When this rain stops I shall take a picture of it and my recycling bin and plastic bags. They are a thing of my past, what will be the future

Day 15

Monday and my week alone starts. I have decided to make inroads into the eats for the weekend early. I need to discipline myself to make through the week what I will need for the weekend. It is Monday and I am off to Cardiff to get my grandchildren from school. Meeting tonight and so good job I have another dinner put out for myself from yesterday. I am lost at my daughters house as she has a waste bin. I feel guilty and one week I know I am going to come home on the train with a bag of peelings for the compost. The only thing stopping me is in case the train crashes or I am rushed to hospital with a bag of peelings attached. They might think I am mad and rightly so. I ate my dinner at 10 pm and stayed up until 1 am to digest it. I slept like a log. But have I prepared anything ready for the weekend. Well not quite yet.

Monday 15 October 2007

Sunday - Day 14 - 2 weeks gone

When you have children it is your duty as parents to raise them as healthily as you can. You have to trust them to go out into the world then and fend for themselves. The start you give them is their knowing how to do that. My daughter struggles to juggle working and raising children. Like most young professional people she and her partner cannot afford to not work. She feeds the family well by visiting the butcher and the fish market, cooking dinners and the best food money can buy. In this situation the cost of this lies with my daughter, who is under terrific pressure to attempt to do the best for her children whilst helping keeping a roof over their heads and giving them a chance in life to be able to sustain themselves well. Women have been used since the last war to create a mass production line to build material wealth. Some of this wealth has come down to the man on the street in the form of cars, which are using up all the oil on the planet, fridges, phones, dishwashers, waste goods and plastic wrapping that clog our planet. All this is at the whim of the Bank of England who set the bank rate. We are at the mercy of the multi national corporations and financial institutions. Some people say to me it is too late to change it. When I think of our dependency for the basic staples of life on imports and see nothing but cattle and sheep around me, and no crops, it gives me the urge to do things such as no plastic and no supermarket shopping. I need to be active in talking to people and telling them that to secure their food supplies for themselves and their children has to be a priority, has to be THE priority above all others. I will never believe it is too late to change it. I can at least try. To feed a family well does not only entail the cooking of food along the lines of Delia Smith in the kitchen once a week. Nurturing a family is a full time job. There is the thought that must go into every days meals, there is the actively getting the ingredients on the list one mentally formulates in your brain or on a piece of paper for the next day and the day after that. There is the preparation time which can be horrendous when one does not have the time to do it in the daily routine. Then there is the serving of this food, the cleaning up after and the starting all over again. Food is not fast and never will be and the better the food the more time it can take. Time our young families do not have in this throw away society which has to stop.

Sunday 14 October 2007



James's Sunday dinner which he ate before returning to his student digs in Newport on Sunday 14th October 2007 All food sourced from the Market at Neath and he gave his mam a clap when he had finished.

Day 14

Saturday 13th October 2007 and day 13 not 14 - I know I have gone wrong but cannot put it right. So be it :)
I have to get up earlier on Saturday. Because I was in Cardiff yesterday I had prepared nothing for the onslaught. James came home last night and today my daughter Jane and my grandsons Keelan and Daniel arrive for the day. This happens each weekend for most of the year. I had to get to the market. Trying to balance hungry children and Slimming World is no joke. It was to be a beef-steak pie then it turned into a casserole, in other words a pie without the pastry. I headed for the market and missed the first bus. Oh well off for a political discussion with my friend Dilys and one hour late getting to Neath. Lovely coffee she makes me and I duly arrived at the market with greaseproof paper and a napkin to wrap my free range chicken in. Into my basket it popped together with my Tupperware container containing my beef pieces and three jars of local honey. Across to the vegetable stall and carrots, onions and tomatoes joined my meat and off home on the next bus.

I started cooking at noon and was still cooking and peeling vegetables at 3 pm. By then the casserole was in the oven, the strawberries had been cut up in the strawberry jelly and the blancmange was in the fridge. We ate at 3.30 pm and everyone was hungry and appreciative. The rest of the day was filled with cups of tea, free range boiled eggs and mam’s bread toasted with market butter at 7.30 pm for supper, kids pyjamas on and they are in the car by 8 pm for the drive back to Cardiff. Yes I have to get up earlier on the days my family arrive because it takes so long to prepare and cook enough food for us all. By the time the house is quiet again there is no prepared food left and tomorrow I must start again.

Day 13

Friday 12th Ocotber 2007
My mother imparted a lot of things to me before she died, one was how the wage my father brought home from the mine was divided up each week. We must have talked a lot come to think of it. She told me of the time when my father would bring home five pounds as his wage.
We lived in a rented cottage for which the rent was three shillings and sixpence. I remember the electric light being put in to our cottage. When that one bulb was switched on it must have been like our ancestors on March Hywel mountain seeing the harvest sun rise on Good Friday when they would climb the mountain in the dark to offer bread to the gods for a good harvest. As children we partook in that festival but altered it slightly to all the children of the village climbing the mountain on Good Friday to roll down our hot cross buns. Well the one electric light bulb and the iron that was plugged in only during daylight hours obviously as one could not iron in the dark, cost one shilling a week. When the electric man came my mother got a rebate on what she had used and so it became exciting to see the man empty the meter on the kitchen table and stack up the shillings dividing them into two piles, one for the electric company and one for us.
Apart from this rent and electric there were no more bills. We had no television, our water came from a spring and my father had a radio. I think there was a licence for that of a few shillings a year. So the total outgoings were in our household four shillings and sixpence leaving four pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence to be handled by the woman of the household. Think of the wage today that would need to be earned so that when all the bills were paid each month the woman of the household would be left with over 95% of the wage or salary.
Today I needed to go to Cardiff for an interview. I ate lunch in Harry Ramsdens in Cardiff Bay. The first time I have ever visited a Harry Ramsdens and something I will have to own up to at Slimming World on Tuesday night. Guess what, Harry Ramsden did not live up to my own meals of late which win by a mile. MY mother would have had a fit to know how much I paid for fish and chips.

Day 12

I sat today and wondered where it all started. It was the bank. Before the bank our money was our own. Working people now all have bank accounts and so all their finances are hidden away in the vaults of someone else. Let us look after your money we were persuaded. Then when the milkman came for his money we had none to give him so the milk became integrated into the plastic shop which really did not cost us as much did it? Well the milk was cheaper and nothing wrong with plastic bottles is there? Cold callers are now regarded a nuisance.As a child in this village a man called ‘Id the Oil’ used to visit us once a week. He brought paraffin for the lamps and his little lorry was full of pinafores hanging in their dozen and pegs and bowls and galvanised buckets and wooden mop handles and cotton mop heads. This must have been the start of oil in our lives. Before ‘Id the Oil’ it was candles and coal. But then the banks took our money and now we use only plastic. The callers became an imposition, the computer now sells us everything without us having to go out of the door so our shops will all become like the new Amazon warehouse in Jersey Marine. Where the Tower Hotel once bragged ball courts and pavilions and walks onto the beach across what is now the main road into Swansea we have a massive faceless warehouse which is the future unless we start getting out there and finding out what is left to salvage of an interactive life. Today was spent in reflection. The food was all prepared yesterday. This is getting easy but the weekend is on the way.

Thursday 11 October 2007


Neath Guardian - Launch of my project - October 11th 2007

A DULAIS Valley housewife is hoping to convert more people to the “buy local” cause, by living on nothing but locally-sourced food for 12 weeks.
Linda Ware, of Main Road, Cilfrew, started her campaign on October 1, and plans to live for three months without entering a supermarket or using a plastic bag.
Aa well as boosting the trade of local traders, Linda’s campaign is part of a bid to reduce the “air miles” of food and reduce her own carbon footprint in the process.
“I’m using only local shops,” she said.
“The local shop in Cilfrew has got a lot of things in for me, and other local shops can get me anything I want.
“I’m going to be doing 90 per cent of my shopping in the market.”
She has made arrangements to buy all her staple foods – milk, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, fruit, vegetables, meat and herbs – from local sellers and plans to compost all her food waste.
She said anything with plastic packaging is a definite “no-no” – any paper packaging will be burnt in her incinerator.
She will have to do without anything that cannot be sourced locally, or that cannot be bought in environmentally-friendly packaging.
For example, she has been unable to source cream in a glass container – so will be forsaking it for the next 12 weeks.
And criticism of the project has even come from her own son.
Ms Ware said: “My son has just left for university – thankfully, he states – and so I am able to do this.
“He said his mother can do this mad thing without him.
“But he does support it, because he likes his good food.”
And there are other downsides to the project.
“Because I’m going without certain foods, I find I’m craving,” she said.
Ms Ware said she has had so much support for her project that she is now investigating the possibility of running a farmers market in Cilfrew.
“The interest has been fantastic,” she said.
“We’re going to try and hold the market in the old vestry.
“We just need to find out from the council if we can use the building to sell fruit and veg.”
You can follow Linda’s efforts in her weekly Guardian, or online at auntieplastic.blogspot.com


Day 11

The creative instinct comes with peace for me, comes with sitting in silence and letting my mind roam free. I had a chance today. I am full of all the things I want to do, quilts for my grandsons for Xmas, with appliquéd images that swim around in my head waiting to get created. I went through the full spectrum of things I must get started while I sat and peeled huge pears, while I added sugar to the hot stewed apples, while I sat and ate some more of that chicken with little chillis from the market and some more small onions and fresh tomatoes. I have to admit now that I made a bad mistake in my regime. I killed the yeast and my first batch of bread today did not rise. Unleavened it would have been called. There I was with this big lump of dough and no bin. I could not put it in the compost as it would have gone mouldy, I could not bury it as something would have dug it up. Then my daughter came to the rescue. I bet the birds do not worry if the bread has risen mam she said laughing. I spread the heavy dough out into a meat tray and cooked it. The smell permeated the whole house as though it was leavened. When I tipped it out of the tray onto the cooling rack it was like a rock. I thought of the flying birds and I groaned. I could not feed it to them and watch them crash to earth as they attempted to fly. So here is my confession. No I did not do anything bad. I went to the canal and broke it up and threw it into the water where it softened and the swans could not get enough of it. Fait accompli. It was not wasted and my bin is still empty. I will never kill any more yeast. So another day over and this is the life for me. Never again will I hear the thud of the flip top bin in my home. There is life without it, I can vouch for it.

Day 10

Ten days gone, I have 84 days in total to do, this leaves me 74 days to go to December 23rd 2007 when my experiment will end. But will it end? I can reveal to you now that having a bin was nothing but habit. I have not produced one single bit of waste so have nothing to give the recycling man and nothing to put into my waste disposal bin. I just cannot understand why it is so easy. It is now after a couple of weeks no problem whatsoever not to have a bin. I just think that if everyone did this then all those men who recycle and get rid of our waste could be digging up the mountains of Wales to grow our own food instead of importing it. What a thought. I could sit and watch them all day and wait for the carrots to grow. I know you are all dying to know. Is that free range chicken cooked? Well I can confirm that it is well and truly cooked and half eaten. I cannot find words to describe my stuffing, sublime, heavenly. Just think of the adjective and that is it, good all the way through. Whole little onions, my own bread crumbs, fresh sage and rosemary from the garden, rock salt and a big dollop of pure market butter. If I was not so full after the fresh fruit salad and raspberry coulis I would go get some more. Ah life! and not a plastic bag in sight.

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Day 9

Tuesday 9th October 2007. Today I had to be away from home all day also. I had to attend a meeting that took me a couple of hours to get there and a couple of hours to get back. I had to eat out again and so my regime was non existent. I was embroiled in political discussions for the day and my free range chicken still sits on the shelf of the fridge. My bin is still empty and the date on the chicken says 11th October. Tomorrow I refuse to go anywhere. I will cook and eat my chicken with the butter and herb stuffing oozing out of it. My home does not smell the same when I have been out all day. It is bereft as I am bereft because outside life has interloped into my regime, into my home, today I am not allowed to be just a woman, today I must be something else, so I shall. Tomorrow I shall revert to being a housewife. My bread bin is stocked, I have fruit and vegetables. Thank goodness for the fridge. Without it my food would have rotted. Another reason that before refrigeration and the motorcar and oil women were needed at home to feed the family. No shopping for the weeks food then. It would have been rotten. I smelled my chicken. It is fine. Tomorrow beckons now today is on the wane.

Day 8

This day is a blur. Today I had to go to Cardiff to look after my two grandsons when they came home from school. Today I did not think about my food regime until I started to cook in my daughter’s house in Dinas Powys. I decided to make a chocolate cake for the boys for after their tea. I had to put things in the bin and after only one solid week and a bit of practice of not putting anything in a bin I found myself baulking at the thought of dropping stuff into one. I do not have a bin I said to myself and here I am putting rubbish in someone else’s. The alternative was take all the peelings home for my compost and all the flour and sugar bags to burn. Impossible I would have had to use a plastic bag. I carried apples from Herefordshire all the way to their house and strawberries too. They preferred the chocolate cake. I came home late and weary and my fridge still has my organic chicken. Too late to cook it now.

Monday 8 October 2007

Day 7

The last day of my first week. Only seven days and already my life is turning upside down. I cannot understand why I have ever in my life put unnecessary chemicals into the drains, there is absolutely no need as far as I can see now. Washing powder I am using as it comes in a cardboard box, which I can dispose of and I do not own a scrubbing board even though I know what one is. The Fairy soap has become my saviour and should supplies ever run out Holland & Barrett do a bar of pure olive soap in a cardboard box for 79 pence. No perfume just good old soap.

I went today to Brecon and Hereford with good friends. Just over the border from Wales to flat farm land with huge farm shops and pick your own. I wanted to cry out, why here, what is wrong with my semi rural home-town that we have no fields full of cabbages, potatoes and swedes surrounding us any more. We can grow apples I wanted to say, why don’t we. Four hundred years ago there were in excess of a hundred varieties of apples growing wild in Glamorgan, I know. I have the names of them all in Welsh and English. There were also over twenty varieties of plums that a travelling man logged on his travels through Glamorgan. I watched the trailers full of dirty potatoes trundling along the roads and picked crispins, russets and bramleys to my hearts content. Local walnuts were dropped into my bag along with a net of four monstrous local organic beetroot for a pound. The farm shop boasted the best of every product, cheese, free range chickens, beautiful cured hams, jams of every description and empty glass jars of all shapes and sizes for you to fill with your own produce. I bought the Brecon & Radnor Express and read about the Hay Fire Festival, I read about Talgarth a little town in Brecon and how they have a regeneration society which is already, after just one year, making remarkable progress. get people back into our centres for local produce, we need to have fire festivals too. We need to have parking so people can get to the shops and the buses back so people can hop on the bus outside the market not walk half a mile carrying their bags to a bus station that reeks of the old cattle market stalls where they herded the livestock. Why did they build the bus station back to front. One can reach the top of Queen Street with heavy bags and see ones bus in the docking station. By the time you wait for two sets of traffic lights and force your way through the queues of people trying to get on their buses your bus has invariably gone. Planning !!!! Anyhow action speaks louder than words. I am purely selfish in my desire to see Neath regenerated. I cannot walk five miles to pick up my little bit of shopping. I need to retain my independence. I refuse to give a supermarket whose profits go to obscure places my money. I want to give my little bit of money to the person who will plough their profits back into the town and give me a smile and appreciate my custom and I want people to see the benefits of keeping our local areas alive. In a time of crisis it is these people who will help one another not the supermarkets, who when there is no money to be made will ditch areas without a thought. We need self sufficiency with food. For that we must all push, Wales can do it. We appear to be top of the pile for food innovation and up and coming restaurants according to statistics out this week. Well let’s grow our own food and complete the picture.

Sunday 7 October 2007

Day 6

I changed today from being a hunter to a cook. My son had returned from university starving and my daughter was on her way with two hungry grandchildren and none of them were on the Slimming World regime. I lay in bed thinking about getting up and having my organic porridge and then what. It came to me in a flash, they needed filling, I needed something substantial, I had to bake. I put on my pinafore from the drawer where all my tea towels lurked with the multi use cotton squares I use for getting fat off food, for putting over jugs in the fridge, for mopping up spills and for anything else other people use kitchen roll for. I have always done this, far cheaper and easier. The two pints of full cream milk had arrived at 4.30 am that morning, I heard the clank of the milk bottles. Bacon, free range eggs from the market, lovely Snowdonia cheese and some onions and I was away. The pastry was made and the quiches were in the oven. I sat and juiced lemons by hand until my arm ached, made a simple syrup with sugar and hot water into which I put the strained juice. then into my big jug, filled it up with cold water and put into the fridge to settle. Then the victoria sponge with fresh market butter and more eggs. It turned out perfectly. I had taken yeast out of the freezer last night and so started to prove some dough. Then the salad and it was four hours later and I had finished. Another four hours later I was back where I had been at eight o clock that morning. By eight pm I was cooking roast potatoes and lamb for the hungry James who thought he would like some yorkshire pudding and gravy if it was not too much trouble. I spent approximately five hours preparing food and cooking it today and at least another hour washing up but the Fairy soap did not fail me and everything in the kitchen, by the time I fell into bed at 11 pm smelled lovely and sparkled. I remembered the day before when I had toured two shops and found only four items I could purchase minus plastic but did not panic, I fell to sleep tired but with my hunger totally satisfied and smiling; for tomorrow, Sunday, I was out foraging somewhere special where I had not been before.

Friday 5 October 2007

Day 5

This is a life changing experience. I am becoming a hunter. Each meal eaten sends a signal to my brain that tells me I will need to eat again today. No more resting on my laurels, opening the door of the fridge and reaching in for a free low fat yoghurt I do not have to own up to in Slimming World class. I prepare for the next meal in my head as I eat the last one. I am on the alert. I know how the caveman felt when he managed to outrun a wild boar after weeks of picking bones off birds. I am the hunter with my meat on the spit, drinking in the smells of my dinner, my stomach rumbling. I want to tell myself not to be obsessed with food but I have to be, for if I am really hungry and I have not prepared a meal then I am in trouble. One must constantly check the cupboards in case one cannot go out hunting for a few days to make sure supplies are in. I am travelling with the waggon trains. I am the new explorer, I am constantly on the alert with my primary instinct for survival uppermost in my life. Food the staple of all life. On a lighter note, I got my chicken breasts from the market. Then my son came home and wanted mams curry so I still have not attained my stuffed chicken whose smell will stay firmly lodged in my brain until I eat it eventually. Peeling tomatoes will become an art I am sure of it but the honey, the fresh lemon juice and the fresh tomatoes made a lovely curry and my son still loves me even though he tells me he might not stay for the whole weekend as they are not as mad as me in Newport and he gets plastic bottles of pop there.

Thursday 4 October 2007

Day 4

Today I learned a lesson in the art of shopping. I need bags with zips on top. I visited my local butcher. I could smell my chicken in the oven cooking as I neared his stall. No we do not sell whole free-range chickens only if ordered he informed me. Well I stated, I would like to order one please. He had to phone a man about a chicken. I could have one next Thursday from West Wales. Ok I said I will have one every Thursday but what do I do for the next week. The smell of that stuffing receded from the memory from whence it had escaped and I looked at the chicken breasts IN PLASTIC. Have you any chicken breasts without plastic I asked in vain. If that had been me I would have been getting the scissors out pronto. No he said as that memory slipped even further into the recesses of my chicken hungry stomach. Do they come in in the plastic I asked, I do not give in easy. Oh no, he said, we do that. Could you not do it to a few please I asked. They come in this afternoon he said, in a big box sealed and with nitrous oxide inside to keep them fresh. Ok I cried, never mind the nitrous oxide. I am making a statement not starving myself to death I will be back tomorrow morning with my container. I floundered then. I passed on to the delicatessen stall and bought 3 slices of turkey breast. They did not taste like the turkey breast of a turkey when I cook it but I was not starving after I had eaten it with a huge salad made from my fresh lettuce and tomatoes from the vegetable stall opposite and the new potatoes were lovely. I bought beetroot and huge mushrooms, spring onions, marrow and tiny carrots, swede and cauliflower from the Gower. My apples this week are cox’s pippins and the jaffas are huge, the satsumas juicy and the bananas the best around. Four plums again for a treat and four steps to the fish stall. Fish I cried elated after the chicken disappointment, I can have fish wrapped in paper. Haddock please that big bit there and no plastic bag. No plastic bag he repeated. No plastic bag I said. He put the haddock on a piece of paper and wrapped it perfectly, then in another piece then another piece and then he looked straight into my eyes as I shook my head and uttered again, no, no plastic bag. I put the fish into my container that should have held the chicken, it was a not quite the same but was lovely and fresh. The container joined the fruit in my brown leather bag which holds loads and fitted on my shoulder. I got it comfortable and bent down to retrieve my two bulging canvas bags of fruit and vegetables. As I lifted up so the lemons and tangerines and plums spilled out of my bag on my shoulder onto the flagstones. Hence bags with zips have to be a priority. I wanted to look as though this was normal as I chased my treasure between people’s legs and the man on the fish stall shook his head muttering, no plastic bag. I escaped grabbed a paper bag stuffed with liquorice from Holland & Barrett and I was on my way to the bus. My journeys today were the first journeys out of my village since I started my experiment on October 1st. I travelled to a funeral in a car with 3 other people this morning and back to Neath the same way. I caught the bus back to the village. Today I ate the turkey, tomorrow I will remove the haddock from the paper and feast like a queen again.

Wednesday 3 October 2007

Day 3

This morning I cleaned my teeth with fresh sage leaves. I need to dry some sage later which I will bake and crush with salt crystals, making it into a powder which I can then store in a glass pot to clean my teeth when the fresh sage finishes. My tongue tingles and my teeth feel shiny and clean. My whole mouth feels cleaner than it does with toothpaste. I was talking to my daughter this morning on the phone trying to explain the difference in my life today to what it was like last week. I am enjoying the preparation of my food and the eating of it far more. I am enjoying the peace of my son not being here and I am returning to that time before television and constant noise. I have not watched television for many years, preferring to do other things. Now the peace I have is poignant and productive. My daughter said ‘but on Sunday when I cook dinner it is hard work’. I thought and answered. Traditionally during the industrial revolution a Sunday was the day for chapel and church here and those who were not religious would have spent the day in preparing food and eating it and nothing else. The religious people of this valley would do all that on a Saturday and then only eat the cold food on Sunday so they could spend their day back and fro to the various chapel or church services. Today with the car and Sunday shopping and football games and everything else one is drawn to on a Sunday this quiet time has been lost. This one day a week where people stop and reflect is no more. The preparation and eating of good food has to be fitted in with the television in the background and the sound of computer games and electronic toys. Before the television and radio that day would have been filled with only the music or noise that people made. This is why choirs sprung up. People make more music when it is quiet in their lives. We are being bombarded today with sound.

Tomorrow I go to a funeral and then to the market. I need a chicken. I will try to get a free range chicken and my mouth is watering already at the thought. Food is paramount in my life for this week. The change even though slight for me is a huge change. I am not panicking yet but I have nearly been there. Bare cupboards, no tins to fall back on, no plastic packets to dish up in minutes. Next week perhaps I will start on crafts I have been wanting to get on with for years. Who knows, but first tomorrow that chicken and no Sean Rutherford,if you are by any chance reading this, I have not yet put a big fat VEGAN at the end of this blog. Not yet J

Tuesday 2 October 2007

Day 2

Day 2

I am a self satisfied woman. I just ate a cheese sandwich, cheese and butter from the market, my own bread and my own piccalilli. I just got back from Slimming World and I lost half a pound, better luck next week. The cheese sandwich will have worn off by then. I have so enjoyed my food. At the moment everything is under control as no son, daughter or grandkids until next weekend. Friday will be cooking day or Saturday as I have 2 meetings on Friday. Every morsel I put in my mouth tastes wonderful and the house smells fine. I scrubbed the bathroom today with Fairy soap. I washed the net with Fairy soap and I am getting to think that there are more memories wrapped up in smell than anything else. I remember the smell of Fairy soap from my childhood. Into my mind came the smell of carbolic soap as though it was in my hands. The smell of fresh scrubbed flag stones and the smell of the wet scrubbing brush. I have enough food to keep me going for a week and will visit the market on Thursday for supplies. Life seems more tranquil when one has to prepare for eating. One has the preparation time to think, the mundane rhythmic tasks allowing the mind to roam free. I think about my meals way before I eat as I have to plan ahead. No good going into the fridge or cupboard when starving, there is nothing there to grab and ram immediately into ones mouth. Every morsel takes preparation time and thinking time. Then every bite is heaven on earth. I will sleep tonight with the smell of Fairy soap wafting in my mind. I wonder will I dream?

Day 1 update

Update at 1.45 pm day 1

My potatoes are boiling behind me, bubbling gently and rhythmically while I sit at the kitchen table peeling fruit. Worcester apples from the market, red and green skins, still with the stalks they were attached to the tree with, some have a little leaf attached, if only I could draw and paint, sigh. I push my nails under the skin of the oranges from half way across the world, the zest hitting my senses and bringing back memories of kitchen cupboards on Saturday night after shopping. Melon, yellow and rounded like a huge egg. I remember the first time I ever tasted melon. My brother made me a necklace from the dried seeds. It was magical, he gave the necklace to me , he was a boy, but his pride in that necklace nor mine in his skill ever diminished. All it took were the seeds from that first melon, a piece of cotton and a needle. I look at the skin of the melon and wonder if it will dry out for pot pourri. I will need to get my book on microwave drying out and see what I can dry out for my own use and for Xmas presents in my hampers. The orange skin and lemon skin, so fresh it hurts to discard even for my thriving compost. The seeds of the melon cannot be wasted. I see them decorating boxes for children with a little glue over the top to stick them on and make them shiny. They can make melon flowers on box tops. They will be dried. To have the peace to write this and the time to reflect is precious. It makes the creative urge strong, I want to sew, I want to make things, I want to teach others this joy I feel from just being able to sit and hear those potatoes boil and smell the fruit that will grace my palette later on today. Now the potatoes are ready and I will eat.

Monday 1 October 2007

Day 1 - October 1st 2007

Good morning world. For a long time I have struggled with the fact that we are told by the powers that supposedly know, energy is running out, yet we are encouraged to use more of it. Being a logical creature ( i.e. woman) I fail to understand why people are urged to come on line when North Sea gas is all but run out. I fail to see why we as a nation have to transport a liquid gas half way around the world to this little island when as a child I knew a life without gas. I knew a life without oil also, being the ancient age I am. I have no problem with new technology, as one can see with my use of a computer, the bus is my saviour and the car has been a boon to my tired knees on many an occasion. However I have a major problem with the waste of food, clothing, toys, furniture etc. of the throw away society created and ultimately the energy wasted.

Small shops in my local town of Neath in the Borough of Neath Port Talbot, South West Wales are struggling. In fact they are disappearing at an alarming rate. This week the independent book shop that has been for quite a few years outside the railway station in Neath closed. The market which has a charter going back eight hundred years is no longer thriving. The quality goods which were once on sale in my local town can no longer be found, although many cheap foreign imports which I do not want can be sourced there. If the people are no longer in the towns, the traders will not survive, which means we are totally dependent on the supermarkets. Small independent shops do not waste as do the supermarkets. Huge bins of waste food being destroyed from every supermarket daily. The small shopkeeper would eat or use what his customers did not buy. I want my market and my town to survive. If energy is running out and global warming is being exacerbated by the use of fossil fuels it is madness to use energy to provide food and goods we waste. I hope to show in the next three months that it is possible to not be instrumental in the heinous waste supermarket culture generates.

So I set out on my journey, from today nothing will be disposed of from this household. I am alone all week and on weekends my son will return from University to fill up his internal tank on mums cooking. My daughter and two grandsons will spend a day with me each weekend. I shall provide all they eat without the supermarkets and without disposing of any waste. Everything I purchase will be monitored by a friend. The number of hours I spend daily on obtaining, preparing and cooking will be shown here in my daily diary. I look forward to the next three months and I look forward to perhaps being able to show how the possibility to live differently whilst moving forward is there for us all.

We do not need new forms of energy, we do not need more land fill sites, we need quality back in our towns and a sensitive use of the energy we have.