parallel worlds

Since previewing a brilliant short film called Beyond the Tipping Point, which is to be shown and debated in Lewes this autumn, I’ve been pondering the issue of how people are coping with the now well-established information that our collective behaviour (in the West) is taking our stable climate to the brink, some say beyond the point of repair (well, for a few million years).

I’m bewildered that so few people are talking about it. You’d think there’d be a mass conversation going on right now, as there would if, say, a world nuclear war was about to break out. But it’s a bit of a conversation stopper, the scale of the problem overwhelming people, sending them into a place of denial or hopelessness, or hedonism. No wonder alcoholism and gaming addiction is on the rise. Then there’s the problem, my young friend Bethia told me, of ‘why should individuals change when society isn’t?’ An extra disincentive to make real personal change is the fear of being ridiculed for being green, extremist, abnormal, a fear of not fitting in, of not being liked by friends for taking an ethical stand, one that can be interpreted as mad or superior. I’ve been accused of that lately; it shouldn’t hurt but it does.

Yet I’m also meeting individuals who tell me –‘I’ve given up flying’, ‘I’m making my own clothes’, ‘I’ve installed a solar panel, ‘I’m loving local’. I’ve heard some voices accepting that it’s not BP who is responsible for the Louisiana disaster, it’s us, who buy BP oil and who invest in it. And, come to think of it, maybe it’s the wealthy citizens, living on 3-8 planets, as we do, who are partly responsible for the flooding in Pakistan. One can, as my friend Anuradha Vittachi writes, measure how many lives are affected by one’s choice to fly. I know this talk puts people off change, but how big does the crisis have to be for us to start to talk about it?

And there are some pretty creative community-wide moves afoot. Lewes District Council last week launched a town-wide car club. Using cars to reduce car use, an initial two cars in central Lewes are now available for the pubic to book and drive; they’re inviting membership now from the Commonwheels website. The Lewes Car Club is a venture being partnered by Transition Town Lewes, who wrote the feasibility study. TTL is also still going strong, with a new weekly market and a renewable power station in the pipeline, plus a website, promoting among other things, events every Wedneday at the beautiful Linklater Pavilion. TTL isn’t out to convert everyone to being green. Rather, I think, it’s being pretty successful in gradually co-creating a basic parallel public infrastructure that can be scaled up as and when.

pilgrim's progress

I walked to Forest Row last week, a walk of about 20 miles that I will remember for many years. It took three days, though some people can do the walk in one. My daughter Sophia and I set out at seven in the evening and reached the Anchor Inn in Barcombe at nine, just in time for a glass of wine and a quick meal and then a bed down in our warm sleeping bags and all-weather bivvy bags in an adjacent field, with the river at our heads. I was woken later by splashing in the river and hoped we wouldn't get trampled on by an otter or rat. Next morning we woke early and set off up the Ouse, swimming after breakfast in a gently sloping swimming hole surrounded by himalayan balsam and honeybees. A short while later we passed a woman who must have been about 80, lustily smashing rubble off bricks a a volunteer with the Sussex Ouse Restoration Trust, repairing the lock at Isfield. There we once 19 locks on the Ouse, which could, in their heyday 130 years ago, be navigated all the way to Haywards Heath. Their restoration, one by one, is a courageous act, and may prove to be important to life after cheap oil. After Isfield we headed off towards the pretty village of Fletching, where we had lunch and stocked up on provisions. That prompted a little nap in a field, then we got distracted by field mushrooms growing in fairy rings. We got lost later in the Sheffield Forest and arrived in Chelwood Gate at six, just as it started to rain. After supper of (field) mushroom risotto with friends we set up camp on the Ashhdown Forest, most of which is closely-grazed heathland. We spread our sleeping mats out and did some shooting-stargazing, on the night of the gorgeous Perseads. Because there was no moon, and little light pollution, the stars were like a blazing blanket above our heads. We camped in a little copse, sensing that wild camping on the Forest is frowned upon. I slept deeply, belly to belly on the soft, pine-scented soil. We slept late, and emerged to amble over to Gylls Lap on the other side of the Forest, meeting friends for a picnic before walking in to Forest Row. 

Apart from the joy of spending uninterrupted time with my daughter, what struck me was how gentle and - feminine - the experience was. Walking over the land, a slow exploration, is kind and non-violent, especially compared to the cars we encountered a couple of times. Walking through fields of corn and wheat, at the beginning, which gave way to sheep and cattle towards the Forest, you get to know the land's intimite details, to appreciate the roll and the plains, the brooks and the different trees. I was strangely moved by the experience. My body ached by the end of the walk, but I feel great now and I'm longing to walk again, further, longer, to be, as Satish Kumar recently said in his talk in Glynde, not a tourist on Earth but a pilgrim.

staycation

I started writing about staycations a week ago when faced with a fortnight with nothing much to do. Kids gone to festivals, and apart from one day's work, my diary was empty. So since we’re not going away this month, I decided to attempt a staycation. In my own home.

Here are some of the things I did the first week. Stay in bed late. Have a long bath in the morning. Paint my toenails. Check out 20 books and dvds from the Library. Go back to bed in the middle of the day. Walk around town, slowly, looking in shops I don’t normally look in. Sit in a cafe, with the papers. Have a cranial treatment. Have lunch with a friend. Fall asleep on the sofa with a hot water bottle and a book, in the daytime. Spend a whole day on my allotment. Drop in on a friend. Cook a different recipe every day from Ottam Ollenghi’s brilliant vegetarian cookbook Plenty. Spend an afternoon sitting by my bees. Scrump plums from the Landport and make plum jam. 

Here are some of the things I didn’t do: turn off the phones. Turn off the computer. Stop doing the chores. Get sidetracked into a drama. So one week in and I'm not doing that well. Holiday is a state of mind, but a very difficult one to achieve.

And now I’ve had a holiday forced on me. Our router has gone bust; it’ll take ten days to get back online. And I’m setting off this afternoon on a walkabout, with my daughter Sophia. We’re taking sleeping bags, bivvy bags and a stash of food and water. We’re turning left out the door, left up the river towards the Ashdown Forest and, ultimately, Forest Row. We’ll sleep when tired and eat when hungry. I'm looking forward to it.

meadowsweet

I recently had an encounter with the plant meadowsweet.  I was on a course, camping, and my friend Anna Richardson suggested a tea of meadowsweet for the headache and aching joints Grace and I were experiencing, instead of the paracetamol we would normally have turned to. She handed me a sprig she’d picked earlier and we immersed it in boiling water. The taste and smell were amazing – a sense of hay and almond, a light dusty fragrance, full of sunshine. And that night, in the dark, my dreams and even my pee  smelled of meadowsweet. At the end of the course Grace and I made a pact to make our own herb teas this year rather than buying them.

Meadowsweet, with its frothy, creamy heads, is abundant in the ditches and meadow margins at the moment, and I went out to gather some on a hot afternoon this week on the back lanes. It’s drying on my kitchen table, now, filling the room with its presence. I rang my friend Haskel Adamson, the herbalist, for guidance about what to do next.

‘Now is a perfect time to be collecting herbs’, he said, ‘because the intense heat brings out the essential oils. I went on a walk last night,’ Haskel continued, ‘and I saw yarrow, agrimony, mugwort, St Johns Wort, self-heal and tansy, which all make good herb teas. And in the meadows I saw meadowsweet, vervain and walnut leaves.’

Plants from the garden include sage, lavender, thyme, and rosemary, which are good to dry now before the oils diminish in the winter time. It’s a perfect time to pick lemon balm, before it goes to flower, and it might then grow again before the winter. You can also pick and dry flowers for herb teas, such as marigold and borage.

To dry the herbs, says Haskel, either hang them up out of direct sunlight in a warm, airy place, such as your kitchen, or for smaller flowers, dry them on a rack or muslin in a similar condition then store in paper or fabric bags in a dark place for up to a year. It’s also a perfect time to make St Johns Wort Oil. Fill a jam jar with the flowers, cover with olive oil and leave in a sunny window for a month until the oil turns red. Remove the flowers and store in a dark place, using the oil for wound healing and aching muscles.

Of course, make sure you know what you are picking and don’t over-exploit them (the Wildlife and Countryside Act makes picking all wildflowers illegal). Pick only a small proportion of the plant, and check that there are plenty of other plants left.

For me, the experience of gathering and drinking herb tisanes involves a good deal of reverence and gratitude; isn’t it amazing how the plant nations all around us are there for our nourishment, healing and delight? Some might even say that we can learn directly from plants in much deeper ways. It seems to me that this re-connection with the plant world is pretty much essential for us to make the transition, to become healed and viable as a human race. Thank you, meadowsweet.  

Anna Richardson and Anne Lynn are running a plant journeying day on Saturday 31 July in a local woodland to learn how to deepen our relationships with plants 01273 858154

Haskel Adamson is available for herb consultation and remedies, and personal herb walks 07842192614. Picture from Wikimedia.

naked

As the summer reaches its peak, I’m immersing myself in nature whenever possible, and this year I’m particularly enjoying being naked wherever I can. There’s something about being bare that brings out the playful rebel in me. And I’m fascinated by what it brings up in all of us. When inviting my friends to the recent Pells Skinny Dip, the responses included What Fun! How Disgusting! How Embarrassing! and What’s the Point? To some extent, I agree with the latter perspective, the skinny dip being late in the day, most of us rather chilly and the setting rather un-natural. But I went there because I could.

My pleasure in nakedness has certainly increased with age. When I was younger there was always the real fear of being leered at by the male predator types. Now there is no chance of that, particularly since I now only have one breast, and that freedom from fear of being pounced on is liberating. When I had the operation last year I was grieving never being able to skinny dip again, but a friend pointed out that that was a ridiculous thought. Many women have lost a breast to cancer, and being relaxed about it would do us all a service. In some ways, being seen and accepted, scar and all, has been part of my healing journey and I wonder whether it’s not just being naked but being seen naked that is healing for others too.

I’m finding my favourite place to be naked is in deep nature, especially, this summer, in rivers. I’ve swum in the chocolate brown waters of the River Dart, under the cool, mossy oaks. I’ve dived into the muddy waters of the Ouse at the turning of the tide. And last week I swam at dawn every day in a Gloucestershire river that meandered through fields and woods. Feeling the smooth flow of cool water, standing in the hot sunshine with a gentle breeze, lying in the soft grass, unclothed, is, to me, a hugely sensory experience, one that’s available to anyone of any age or body shape. Being naked in wild places can be deeply empowering: at times I start to vibrate as I feel the earth’s energy flowing through me. At the same time, it can remind me of my vulnerability, as though, as we strip off clothes we strip off the layers of pretense and protection with which we clad ourselves in the ‘civilised’ world.

My friend Philip Carr-Gomm, a Lewes resident, writes about all this in his lovely, illustrated, new book A Brief History of Nakedness,
‘Awareness of ourselves as embodied creatures lies at the heart of our sense of self, which explains why so much money and effort is spent on trying to change and cover our bodies, since the way we perceive them and our appearance radically affects our experience of ourselves and of the world.’

the money loop

This year’s Transition Conference in Newton Abbott revealed a new level of maturity in the movement, with hundreds of communities all over England – and the world – creating positive projects and bringing a low-carbon culture into being. Apart from several workshops with great relevance to Lewes – Energy Descent Action Planning and Working with Local Councils, one talk left me and most of those that attended reeling.

Michelle Foss, a Canadian financial commentator who writes as Stoneleigh on The Automatic Earth, spoke with great authority and in technical detail about a systemic financial crisis that would be upon us within two years, probably starting this year. The rapidly decreasing energy return on energy input of fossil fuels and a collapse of access to cheap unregulated finance will mean that we can no longer leverage the derivatives creating artificial wealth in the last few decades and we’ll experience a return back to the real economy, which is very much smaller.

We’ll be experiencing the world’s worst financial depression, she says, on the back of the world's biggest financial bubble, with house prices falling 90% and cash more or less drying up. Her key advice was to get out of all debt and get into transition. See here for Shaun Chamberlain’s great commentary. And there's a recording of her talk here at Indymedia. In the aftermath there was much discussion, which was summed up beautifully by Peter Lipman, chair of the Transition Network.

During the conversations someone talked me through a thought experiment: think of the times when you’ve been most happy, fulfilled in your life. What was happening then? Now think of the times when you’ve been most stressed, most shut down. What was happening then? Good, healthy experiences are usually not to do with money; they’re about being bonded, with each other, with nature.

here comes the sun

I'm jumping for joy because we’ll soon be installing solar photovoltaic panels on our roof on St Johns Terrace. Last night’s planning committee gave us permission, going against the conservation officer’s (lengthy) recommendation for refusal, as well as opposition by Friends of Lewes and the new Conservation Area Advisory Group. (Though with loads of support from residents and Transition friends).

It’s a coup for several reasons. The chair of the committee, who is very supportive of renewables, agreed that the council’s interpretation of the Article 4 Direction (which places extra conservation measures on Lewes) should be reassessed. It’s a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money and residents’ time for householders in central Lewes to require planning permission, where in all but four towns in England, solar panels are permitted anywhere except on listed buildings.

Second, our roof is central and visible, and will, I hope, inspire others. Ovesco, by the way, Lewes’s non-profit energy company, is investigating low-cost loans for people who can’t raise the cash. £11,000 in our case, from a job that practically did Dirk in when he spent three months solid earlier this year playing for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Third, these panels will enable us to generate half our current electricity needs, probably more if we made a bit more effort – and all once the children leave home. All our electricity will be free when the sun shines, and when we’re not using it, it will be used by one of our neighbours.

The new Feed In Tariffs make solar pv affordable, with a payback of 12 years in our case, through an income (£900pa) that is guaranteed for 25 years. So once we’ve paid off the system, the payments will continue, much like a pension.

There’s quite a ‘phew’ element to all this for me, as it’s the latest in a long list of resilience measures our household has been putting in place over the last couple of years. Peak Oil, which three years ago, when we started Transition Town Lewes, seemed like a distant mirage, is getting more and more real, with even Paxo leading a 15 minute discussion on it as Newsnight’s main story last night. Peak Oil means that easy oil has run out, and the fuel we have become so addicted to is becoming more expensive, more damaging to nature through extraction and CO2 emissions, and more unethical, in some cases, deeply, disgustingly so. Personal and community resilience is a sane response to this: growing food, working locally, building community, enjoying consuming less, and – finally – generating our own power from the sun. It’s a powerful feeling!