More thought on bikes

On the train yesterday three young women were drinking raspberry bellinis. The fourth in the set of seats was hiding from them behind a copy of the Independent. This allowed me to see the front page. This morning I googled it. I was shocked, though not surprised, by the article, ‘Save our cyclists: Clamour for flood of avoidable road deaths to be stemmed’. I was horrified though not surprised by some of the comments. In the eyes of some Independent readers cyclists seem to be not only an inconvenience to drivers, but the undeserving recipients of too much money spent on protecting them and, obviously, all arrogant idiots who would only be improved by a head injury.

What is all this about? I would have thought that the advantage other drivers get from fewer people being in cars far outweighs the slight frustration of driving a little more carefully because slower and more vulnerable cyclists are sharing the road. I was given a lift from Hayes House to the railway station in Sheffield last week. Googlemaps suggests three different routes varying from 1.4 to 2.2 miles and estimating around 7 minutes for the journey. At something after five in the evening it took more than half an hour and I missed my train. As we inched forward at a couple of miles an hour a seemingly endless stream of cyclists passed us. I can imagine that is very irritating to the sorts of drivers who think Jeremy Clarkson is a god. It is not, however, the bikes that cause the delay but the other people thoughtless enough to want to drive their cars in rush hour too. Damn them, not the cyclists weaving their way through the almost stationary pollution producing obstacles. I mentioned this to my friend Julia when I eventually arrived at her house (by bus) and she recounted the story of a cyclist who she heard would have knocked a child down if not stopped by the quick thinking lorry driver who blasted his horn and frightened the child to a standstill. I am not contending that there are not idiots on bikes and that these idiots can’t do damage but every time prejudice against cyclists is mentioned everyone has a story confirming the prejudice.

Because I am sad I looked up the government statistics for road casualties for the UK in 2008 (the last year with full data). In that year there were a total of 230,905 reported casualties of all severities with 2538 people killed. People driving whilst over the legal limit of alcohol were involved in 13,020 casualties with 430 deaths. In the same year 115 pedal cyclists were killed and 2,450 were seriously injured.

When a cyclist is involved most reported accidents (93%) involve two vehicles, the bike and another compared to all reported accidents (59%), which presumably means that 41% of reported accidents involved a vehicle and a pedestrian. 95% of the casualties resulting from a pedal cyclist accident are pedal cyclists. 2% of pedal cyclist accidents involve a pedestrian and in 2008 this resulted in eight deaths and 143 serious injuries for the cyclist. The same set of accidents resulted in 1 pedestrian death and 54 serious injuries. This is very obviously one death and 54 serious injuries too many but in 2008 6,642 pedestrians died or were seriously injured in traffic accidents. How come the drivers who killed or seriously injured 99.2% of pedestrians are less vilified than the cyclists who kill or seriously injure 0.8%? Or the drink drivers who caused over 13,000 casualties, 430 deaths?

I know looking at numbers may be boring but it puts the whole thing into context. There are dangerous cyclists but they do not cause anything like the slaughter on the roads caused by people in powered vehicles. The danger of vilifying cyclists is that you tend to take less care over someone you perceive as worthless than those to whom you accord some measure of respect. I don’t have any problem with the idea of prosecuting cyclists who, because of dangerous riding, cause death or injury to others but I would like to see the safety of pedestrians and cyclists taken much more seriously.

Having recently taken to the road myself on a rather flash girly bike I am far more aware of the respect, or lack of it, accorded to cyclists than at any time since passing my cycling proficiency test almost forty years ago. Apparently research has shown that drivers are more courteous to women bikers than male cyclists. Crikey! Somewhere in the comments section in the Independent someone remarked that in Europe the person in the more powerful vehicle is automatically judged to be at fault. I quite like that. If you plough into someone more vulnerable, even someone who is not where you think they should be (the gutter is full of drains, potholes & broken glass), you are held responsible whether you are driving an HGV or a pedal cycle. If you are at fault you should be prosecuted. The other suggestion I liked was that before you are allowed to drive a powered vehicle you should be required to ride a bike in traffic. For professional drivers I think this should be something imposed annually. You want to drive for a living you have to spend a full day cycling through heavy traffic.

The taxi driver who pulled into the path of my brother-in-law recently as he cycled down a steep hill won’t be prosecuted because Robin didn’t die although, judging from the state of his helmet, he might easily have. Sentence the driver not just to a couple of days retraining but include a day on a bike.

And whilst I’m wishing for the impossible, I’d like cycle lanes to include double yellow lines and not fade away into hostile traffic.

Spring!

This morning I finally made it to the allotment to do something other than gaze happily and show it off to friends and family. I think I probably need a skip to dispose of all the assorted trash that has built up there. I wanted to trim the hedge back but there were areas where the footing definitely wasn't safe. I need to find out what is rotting below the undergrowth before venturing up to the hedge line. It took me 40 minutes to walk there but there are buses (81 and 88A) which I will catch from now on. I spent an hour and a half clipping and digging and have 7/8th cleared one tiny bed, as you can see. The bed was mainly supporting docks, dandelions, buttercups, wild strawberry and more couch grass than seems at all reasonable. I stopped at 7/8th cleared because I was concerned I wouldn't be able to walk home if I didn't.



In the areas further in there were a fair number of young stinging nettles. This is a good thing because it tells me the land is fertile. The buttercups indicate wet ground. The soil seems quite reasonable; a tendency to clay but not too heavy. There is also, to judge by the tubs strewn around, a slug problem, but that just seems to be the case anywhere is Sheffield.


Eventually, having spent some time on back-breaking work and coming to the end of my available time window (it was due to rain but, more importantly, I'd drunk enough tea to need to be looking for a loo), I spent a few minutes picking my first harvest. Early spring nettles, before they get all dry and stringy, make wonderful soup.

So here it is. Yummy nettle soup made with onions, garlic, leeks (from the garden), potatoes and a little bit of nutmeg. And a dollop of greek style yogurt. I suspect it'll be quite a while and a lot of hard work before I get anything else worth eating from the allotment.

What is 'Anyway'?

You may, or may not, recall that some time ago, inspired by Sharon Astyk’s Anyway challenge I had decided to tackle my own life. You may wonder if I’ve achieved anything. Hm. More on that later. Perhaps when I’ve achieved something.

But let’s take a step back. Let’s begin with 'The Theory of Anyway’. This is Pat Meadow’s theory, popularised by Sharon and it makes absolute sense to me. Many of the things I do cause my friends and colleagues to wonder. Why take public transport, for example, when I could get where I am going more easily (sometimes) by driving? My often-incoherent answer is made up of various points that come down to, ‘I think it’s the right thing to do.’ The component thoughts that lead to this conclusion for this particular choice are these.

If I need to travel I should pick the option that emits the lowest amount of carbon dioxide. Climate change is cumulative and my decision will not, on its own, make a noticeable difference but it contributes to the problem and it’s the right thing to do anyway.

Similarly for transport congestion. Going anywhere by road in Sheffield is unpleasant because of the huge numbers of, mostly singly occupied, cars on the road. The car advert where a couple of gorgeous young people speed thrillingly along empty roads through glorious countryside is a dream. The reality is lines of little boxes on wheels, some shaking with heavy bass, containing grumpy unhealthy people, inching forward enshrouded in a miasma of their own exhaust fumes. Again, this is cumulative. One car on the road could get anywhere in the city in minutes. When everyone tries to do it unpunctuality ensues. Getting out of that collective misery takes away only my small contribution to gridlock but it’s the right thing to do and I do it anyway.

Then there is effective use of resource. I am struck by this when I look at the clutter of close-parked cars occupying all conceivable curb-side positions, and some frankly inconceivable ones, around where I live. During the day the street doesn’t clear, although there are fewer cars. The value in terms of money, embodied energy and resource tied up in these machines is vast. I know. I sold my car to pay for a kitchen. It’s not just the capital cost either. It’s the ongoing cost of tax, fuel, insurance and maintenance. If we owned our means of transport collectively think of the money and space that could be freed up. The road I live on is a tetris of steel, plastic & glass; without cars it is spacious, quiet, safe – a place for kids to play and adults to sit around chatting. Once a year when we close it for the street party. I can’t do anything about my neighbours’ choices but I can choose not to own a car myself. It’s the right thing to do; I should do it anyway.

The last two things are clear positives for me. One is exercise. For some years I used to drive to the gym, work out on the treadmills and steppers and bikes whilst watching MTV and then drive home again. ‘Like the doped white mice in the college lab.’ Being inherently lazy and having a certain amount of sense I have always struggled to exercise with the only aim being getting fit. My radical idea is to combine travel and exercise. Instead of walking to nowhere on an exercise machine I can walk outside, see the seasons change and arrive somewhere new, if only at work. Walking or cycling to my (fairly local) destination is the right thing to do for my health and wellbeing.

And finally, the time issue. I can get somewhere faster by driving, all being well and assuming no one has had an accident anywhere on my route. (I occasionally listen to Sally Traffic on a Friday afternoon just to remember how horrid driving can be.)

I’m not saying there are no delays on trains. Obviously not. But during the delays you can still get to the toilet, get a cup of tea, catch up with your mail etc. And if the delay is longer than an hour you can get a refund of the fare. But that is only one aspect of the time issue. In terms of actual time spent in travel, public transport requires more, but what you can do with that time, the quality of the travel time, is better on a train. You can read, write, work, knit, sleep, chat to your fellow travellers (or hide in the private aural world of your iPod), eat your lunch, drink a bottle of wine or just gaze out of the window. I am prepared to ‘spend’ a little extra time on public transport in order to enjoy the time I spend travelling. For me it is the right thing to do.

You can see that I am little short of perfect. Except last week Julia dropped me off at college and Doug gave me a lift home from Julia’s after a particularly fun evening at her house. This weekend I made Ian take me to a garden centre to buy two pots and two bags of ericaceous compost for planting blueberry bushes into. The first two trips were pure lazy indulgence, the last could not have been done without a car. What I am hoping to achieve is a minimisation of indulgence trips.

There are many other choices that I apply ‘Anyway’ to. Generally, like the issue of transport choices, they are built on a number of reasons. Why eat seasonally and locally? Why cook from scratch? Why eat at non-chain restaurants and cafes? Why make my own clothes? Why grow my own food? Why work for a small environmental consultancy? Why have a store of food in the house? Why be polite to people? Why try to form my own picture of what is true and important? Some of the reasons are based on a perception of environmental limits, on a sense of fairness, and some are just because I enjoy my choice but all come under the heading of ‘It’s the Right Thing To Do’, and that I should do it Anyway.

Budgeting blues

Balancing my budget is a major part of my Anyway Project, an attempt to live a more sustainable, more meaningful life. It’s certainly not the most exciting part of the project but it’s essential as an enabling requirement. Without finding a way to live on less money some of my other aspirations cannot be considered. Having a comfortable home and a productive garden both require some input of money but more importantly they require me to have more time. Until recently I have been very short of time; work absorbed an inordinately large amount of time and energy. Now, however, I have an extra day a week for doing non-work stuff.

When times were especially hard at work, eighteen months or so ago, I (and the rest of the staff) was paid as if I were working a four day week. It kept the company viable. Some time ago we finally made it back to full salary and I found that I had plenty of money left at the end of the month. I talked to my boss and we agreed that I could go back to being paid for four days and actually only work four days. What a fab idea! So that’s what I’m doing and I’m loving the extra day each week.

One of the things I’m using my extra time for is to travel up to Ian’s once a month. Travelling off peak means I can go by train for around a third of full price. Ian reckons a round trip to see me costs around £120 with recent petrol prices. At around £30 for me there and back by train it not only saves him a lot of money, it saves a substantial amount of carbon. The extra time also means I can see more of my sister, Sue, whose work pattern means she has some Fridays and Mondays free too. And I’ve got time to do housework, cook and garden. It’s all good!

The only slight problem is the budgeting. Over the last two months I’ve been pretty slack about keeping my spending under control. In January I spent 25% more than I had budgeted for. Oops! It’s not the end of the world though, I was paid at my full time rate at the end of December so there was some slack available. There won’t be next month.

The budgeting method I use is from Zen Habits. It’s terribly simple and based on my income.  I split my income up as follows; 60% for living expenses. This includes utilities, food, clothes, contributions to kids university expenses, insurance, charitable donations etc. As much as possible of this is paid out automatically on monthly standing orders or direct debits. When I first took my pay cut I went through all my direct payments. I took out about a third of my charitable donations, mostly those that had been ‘sold’ to me by charming people, and retained the most important ones. Practical Action and Womankind are among the charities I kept on. I got rid of my contact lenses, cut my insurance payments down, got a water meter slashing my water bills by two thirds and turned my thermostat even further down. I also started buying my bulk food from Lembas, saving a substantial amount of money on Waitrose prices.

So, 60% for living expenses, 10% for short term savings, 10% for long term savings, 10% towards a pension and 10% for fun stuff. That last means that I don’t have to feel guilt for going to the pictures, eating out or buying a couple of bottles of wine. The short-term savings are supposed to be used. They are the way of dealing with the large payments that are scattered through the year including Christmas, birthdays, household maintenance costs and large purchases. Currently I am taking out more from my short-term savings than I am putting in. This is, of course, unsustainable. It should come to an end when my short-term savings reserves are exhausted or, preferably, before.

My long-term savings and some of the 10% for pension goes into my ISA, which is paying a paltry amount of interest right now. I am not contributing to a regular pension at the moment and haven’t been since taking the initial pay cut. I’m not sure quite what to do about this. I suspect that by the time I am able to retire there won’t be a pension scheme paying out anything I could live on no matter how much I paid in now. This is something to think about. In the meantime the money is as safe in a building society as anywhere.

If this system is used in its simplest form my salary goes into my current account, all regular payments are made automatically, including those into savings accounts and I should withdraw my fun money and living expenses money, and keep them in separate envelopes. I should never use my debit card and I should stop spending when I get to the end of the cash. This is a very effective way to cut down on spending. Actually handing over notes and coins and seeing the dwindling amount keeps you focussed. I think that is what I will do next month, keeping a small amount in the bank to pay for train tickets and maybe one book a month from Amazon.

What I have done up to now is track what I have spent in a tiny multicoloured excel spreadsheet, a new one for each month. The most technical this gets is a little box that tells me what I have left which is fine as long as I look at that box before spending. Which, of course, I don’t usually. I did a quick breakdown on what I have spent my discretionary money (fun & non-automatic living expenses). I found it a really useful exercise. Remember that I overspent by 25% for January.  This is how the total spend broke down:

18% eating out fun

18% required travel

16% clothes (in the sales)

12% garden

11% food

9%  household (a new sheet, towels etc in the sales)

7% wood for my little stove

2% entertainment (tickets for Sally & me to see George Monbiot debate)

2% books

2% discretionary travel (buses in Sheffield where I could walk)

2% discretionary food (food I buy when travelling due to lack of organisation)

1% health (one prescription & hand cleaner for travel)

OK, January is when I do my bulk garden order and that could have come out of short-term savings but there’s already some wool (from the sales), train fares to get Sally to university interviews and Sally’s hotel at Eastercon (£216!!!) in there. And I spent lots more on clothes and household stuff because in the sales you can get twice as much for the same money. Also, the wood purchase, whilst not a one-off will not be a regular – the stove is very much a back-up and very occasional cosy evenings extravagance. Books are down to almost nothing due to joining the library.

What is quite interesting (to me) is that Eating Out Fun and Required Travel (train tickets) are by far the biggest portion of the money I spend. The other rather scary thing is that I pay somewhat less than half of the spend for Ian and my joint meals out. To some extent the eating out is because he and I have such different preferences. He’d rather eat meat and a salad and I’d rather eat vegetarian with a preference to starch. If necessary I’m sure we could come up with another way of dealing with this at home.

And that is the comforting conclusion I draw from this analysis. I could live comfortably on even less money if the need arose. It would require more thought and organisation but it would be quite possible. If the economy continues downward I could still work a four-day week and get paid for three, but only just. And below a certain level of income comfort just disappears.  

A transport of delight

I was talking about my preferred mode of travel during the lunch break of a course I was delivering last week. It's come up a number of times in recent months, maybe because of the inclement weather. I travel by public transport. 

Many years ago, when I was the environmental management representative for a company implementing ISO 14001 we had an environmental consultant visit us to do a legal compliance audit. I asked him for his car registration to let reception know because we always played car park Tetris - double parking was necessary. 'I came by train,' he said and I vividly remember thinking, how very odd! I am now doing that odd thing myself. I think it is a function of being aware of all the environmental issues. As a consultant I spend an appreciable amount of time keeping up with environmental news and researching environmental impacts. Transport is one of our big ones. Not only does it emit about a quarter of the UK's greenhouse gases, the congestion and pollution caused is choking our cities and making them unpleasant places to be. We cart around large quantities of steel, plastic, glass and polluting liquids to get us from one car park to another and during some parts of our commute we move so slowly and intermittently that we are almost parked then. On Tuesday morning I walked towards work in Sheffield. I stopped to chat briefly to an acquaintance at Hunter's Bar roundabout and was overtaken (very slowly) by a huge Co-op delivery lorry. After completing my conversation I headed up Brocco Bank. I'm not a power walker, in fact my preferred speed is the gentle stroll, but on reaching the top of the hill I had to hang around for a couple of minutes for the lorry to appear in my photo. It's not very effective to travel by powered transport in Sheffield at rush hour.

So, yes, but public transport. Isn't that a bit horrid? I haven't found it to be horrid at all. It's generally very relaxing as long as you reserve a seat when travelling on the more popular trains, and none of the buses I've caught have required me to stand. What it does mean, generally, is that I have to set off earlier and arrive home later than I would by car, although by no means always. The journeys usually take longer but that time can be used. I dislike driving to a venue to present training because it means I have to review the slides the day before rather than on the journey. Similarly, when I have performed an audit I will get most of the report written up on the train on the way home. The time is not wasted as it is when driving; listening to drivel on the radio. If I don't want to work I can read, knit, or just look out of the window. The train journey from Sheffield to Manchester through the Pennines is lovely in the summer and preferable to the impatient idiots overtaking on the Snake Pass at any time of year. The journey to Edinburgh or Glasgow along the East Coast line is also lovely with stunning views at Durham, Alnmouth and Berwick and along the coast up to Eyemouth. I love train travel everywhere but around London, where I tolerate it because the alternative is so much worse. I've had some fascinating conversations (except around London) and when I'm feeling anti-social I plug in my i-Pod.
In order to make sure I get a reserved seat I book my train travel on the internet. I use the East Coast website because it doesn't charge you for using a credit card or for picking the ticket up at the station. And because I'm used to it. Other train companies and the Trainline sell tickets for all journeys. I book as far in advance as I can and doing this means not only can I get a seat but if I can be sure of my travel times I can usually get cheap tickets. The Moneysaving Expert has useful tips on this here. I also keep a lookout for offers. East Coast sent me one around Christmas which had a single to anywhere on their network for £8. I promptly booked two weekends in Scotland. The travel for each weekend cost £16. You certainly couldn't drive for that.

Yes, but if you're not going to a city centre a train is no good you say. I must admit that the integrated transport system that the various governments have said we will have anytime now still doesn't seem to be in place but in the last four years there's only been a couple of places I haven't been able to get to by public transport, both in Yorkshire. Apparently it used to be possible to get to Heckmondwike but the service was discontinued. It's possible to get to the top of the M606 in Bradford but it takes hours. When I drove, though, it took going on for three hours. About the time it would have taken by train and bus. The M1/M62/M606 were pretending to be carparks on the day I went.

It is a good point though. I often need a connection from the station to my final destination. I use two methods here. One is the TrainTaxi website. This lists all the train stations in the UK and the local taxi companies serving that station. Obviously if you are arriving at a large(ish) station like Sheffield you can expect black cabs and the site notes this. For smaller stations it is prudent to call the day before. My only problem with taxis has been because I haven't kept an eye on the calendar and neglected to get in with an early booking on the two days of travel during Eid. Not a mistake I will make again! The wonderful A.B.Cars still got me from Garforth station to the Holiday Inn in time for my presentation and amazingly cheaply and then brought me back the purse I'd dropped in the cab. I never used to use taxis. I thought them an extravagance, but the cost of a taxi on top of the train fare has only once been comparable to the mileage and is often much less, and I pass these savings on to the client.

If money is tight, as it has been these last couple of years, you might still decide to avoid the cost of a taxi. I did this recently on a trip to Tanfield Lea in County Durham. I looked up its location on Googlemaps and realised it was about equidistant from Durham and Newcastle, around 14miles. That looked like an expensive couple of trips in a taxi so I looked on Transport Direct. It turned out that there was a bus that took me to within a couple of hundred yards of my destination and though it took 3/4 of an hour longer the entire journey was pleasant. Not so much going back. Someone threw themselves in front of the train just outside Sheffield. We were waiting an hour whilst the emergency services dealt with it and probably the train driver dealt with the emotional problems he/she must have felt. At least, though, we were warm, in a lighted carriage and could go to the loo. After quarter of an hour there was also complementary hot drinks and those going past Sheffield got sandwiches too. Very much more comfortable than the hours I've spent on various occasions sitting on motorways waiting for debris to be cleared.

The only advantage I see to driving to places for work is that you can take lots of stuff. Indeed, when I had a car I had to occasionally empty out the accumulated stuff and take it back into the office. The ecologists couldn't head off with their newt traps on public transport but with a laptop & a bag of paper I can and I feel that should, not just because of my environmental principles but because it makes my life better.

Finding a balance

Over a year ago now I took a two-week permaculture design course. It was fascinating, traumatising (who knew I had so many issues around the word ‘home’?) and, I thought at the time, life changing. And then I came home and fell immediately into default mode. Sigh…


I have a few issues with permaculture, and with Transition that grew out of it. It’s nothing to do with the ideas, which I think are useful and fundamentally sound. It is the monetising of it and the branding. Some of this may also be because I am not a belonger. In my life I have been involved in a lot of organisations, in some cases giving a lot of my time and energy to them, but I’ve never felt any real sense of belonging and the associated obligation that comes with belonging. The closest I come to it, outside of my family, is to fandom but, for me, fandom is Not a way of life. I regard it with wonder sometimes, amazed at the generosity of its component parts, the occasional infighting, the passion and the energy (in some cases) but perhaps because it feels like a huge extended family, I can take or leave the obligations. Recently I have thought that maybe I’ve wandered too far away from fandom because of the huge amount of time and energy work is consuming. Time to reconsider.


So, yes. Where was I? Changing my life. I have continued to do stuff but it’s not to a plan, to a design, and as a consequence, it tends to drift into triviality and pointlessness. Given that I spend most of my time in systems management I am a big fan of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle but, despite my best intentions, I’ve never even got to the ‘plan’ stage. I’m not even sure that I’m having much of a positive effect at all due to my lack of organisation (how can I save the world if I can’t define what that would mean (or find my keys))? I’ve got a list of objectives. I’ve had them for two years. I’ve made no progress.


So, with a small amount of enthusiasm, I am looking at being part of Sharon Astyk’s Whole Life Redesign Project! Sharon identified seven areas she aspired to change. There are clear matches with my long ignored objectives.


Sharon’s suggestion - Domestic Economy
‘This is the territory of home life. Here's where we start thinking about what we want our home life to actually be like. For me, the critical requirements are less cluttered, less disorganized, a home that functions better in relationship to what I actually do and intend to do at home. I'd like to set up the house in order to be able to bring people here for some of my teaching projects, and also to use some of the space for farm projects.’


My version of this was ‘Comfortable Home’. Well, if I’m going to be totally honest it was ‘Home for Gracious Living’ but anyone who has been to my mildly squalid terrace house in Sheffield will know that it is unlikely that I could actually aspire to gracious living there. I’m a lazy housekeeper and I’ve not got huge quantities of cash available to transform it. I could, however, work towards the less lofty objective of a comfortable home.
As Sharon notes, clutter and disorganization make for both a less comfortable and a less thrifty home. I occasionally buy things knowing that, somewhere in the house, there is a perfectly adequate resource of the type I’m looking for, I just can’t put my hand on it. I’ve been in my house since June 2007. I still haven’t unpacked my last boxes. Part of the problem is that I accumulated a lot of stuff in the large marital home. I’ve moved to a much more modest house but not divested myself of all the trash I’d accumulated.
I mentioned this to Claire Brialey some time ago and said I was going to get rid of some books. She looked at me aghast. Once started on that road where would one stop? The Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare? And yet I have many books that I will never read again and would not recommend to anyone else. Why keep them? Ah yes, but the last time I got rid of a dreadful book, The Tides of Lust by Samuel R Delany I found a couple of months later that I wanted to quote from it in order to demonstrate how awful it was – beautifully written but really rather nasty. Similarly, Vivia by Tanith Lee. Tides was replaced – a friend sent me a copy. Vivia never left. I think perhaps what I should do is get rid of the mediocre books and keep the well-written trash. And yet, and yet…
I am truly a packrat in the traditional fannish way but I could really do with simplifying. I’m thinking of starting to actually use the library again rather than keep so many books. It also helps keep books in libraries relevant.
I made a start last weekend when Ian was in Washington. I assembled some more bookcases and got most of my books finally out of boxes. Once they’re all out I’ll start winnowing. James Bacon and John Dowd have a fostering service set up to place unloved books. I may well make use of it. This is a very big project but one that I would like to start on.


Sharon’s suggestion - Household Economy
‘This is the territory of making ends meet and meeting financial goals. My goals here are to up the portion of our personal economy that comes from barter and personal exchanges, to drop our expenses by 20% and transfer the money to savings and to infrastructure like insulation that will cut expenses in the longer term. I want to have a plan for dealing with money and benefits cuts that we expect on Eric's end.’


Strangely I didn’t have anything like this in my objectives despite the fact that this is one of the areas I have been working on quite hard in the last couple of years. It makes sense to add it in and I’ve called it ‘Economic Viability’.
Attaining economic viability has been a long hard struggle. I took ten years out with my children and when I finally went back to work it was for the same salary I had started on as a graduate many years before. It took a lot of hard work, hard nosed pushing and a master’s degree to get me back into the salary level that I could survive as a single parent again. When David and I separated and I moved to Sheffield I was quite comfortably off as long as I cut out all the luxuries I’d used to enjoy. I cut. Things were fine.
Then the Crash and the struggle. In order to keep the company viable we all took a 20% pay cut. I cut out half of my charity donations, I stopped using contact lenses, I stopped impulse buying, I stopped buying lunches, and I started using Zen Budgeting. This turned out to work very well, to the extent that I found I could live quite comfortably within these limits. Given that I have enough money but hardly any time I have decided, now I’m back to full pay, to work a four-day week. Should everything go horribly wrong again I would be hard pushed to live on a 40% cut though. That’d mean getting rid of the TV, Demon, the rest of my charities etc. This is definitely an area that I need to monitor.
(I should also mention, in this section, that we benefit from the Ian subsidy – for which I am very grateful, and which means I drink much nicer wine more often than I would otherwise.)


Sharon’s suggestion - Resource Consumption
‘This is the territory of what we use. Our lives are enhanced when we use less, and so are the lives of others and our environment - it is as simple as that. We've seen some creep in our energy usage, and we need to get it back down. Right now our family of six is using less than 1/5 the US average (and most of those are based on household numbers with the average US household being 2.6), but I want to get back closer to 1/10th which, while not a fair share, is a lot closer. We need to get back in the habit of accurate bookkeeping on our energy usage as well.’


My version of this was called ‘Living Lightly’ and I’ve been very poor at achieving anything. Last year I started on the Riot for Austerity but didn’t get very far with it. I found trying to convert everything a pain and I never took the time to set up a proper spreadsheet. This year I joined Sheffield’s CRAG, the Carbon Action Rationing Group. I have found this simply fascinating. As my friends would attest, I keep my house on the chilly side, use public transport all the time (except when I go somewhere in Ian’s car) and don’t fly and yet my carbon production to date this year is 1293kg. The UK per capita average is 4500kg so you’d think I was doing quite well but this was set up by financial year and there has only been temperate months so far. Also it doesn’t include carbon impacts generated by my business travel. Admittedly my house is old and draughty but there must be lots of people out there who never have the heating on and go nowhere in order to generate an average of 4500kg. Another one to make more effort over. I’m replacing my old leaky front door and hope that will help. I’ve got plans to insulate the floor. We’ll see.


Sharon’s suggestion - Farm and Subsistence
‘This category may be more relevant to us than some people, but everyone does some subsistence work. For us, we want the farm to be the center of our lives, and to integrate ourselves more into the farm - that is, we want as much as possible my work and our lives and the farm to be one thing. For a long time we've used Eric's work to subsidize the farm, but now it needs to be self-supporting, and that's part of that equation, while we also expose what we're doing in low input agriculture to other people. We'd also like to up the degree to which our subsistence activities teach and help others. Most of all, I want to do a full evaluation of all our projects, both so that others can begin to understand them, and also to make sure that we are doing everything we do as well as possible.’


This doesn’t have a real equivalent for me. I have no farm and no real interest in having one. I could make this ‘Productive Garden’ and try to do a better job of dealing with the slugs. This has been my intention anyway, and may be a good use of my extra day a week.


Sharon’s suggestion - Family and Community
‘This is a big one for us - the reason we considered moving earlier this year was the desire for a closer knit community - we had that but have seen some changes over the years. But the reality is that we've been allowing those changes to frustrate us, but haven't necessarily worked as hard as we could to compensate. So our goal is to spend more time working on our community building, and bringing our far-flung communities and our local ones into a state of connection. It is sometimes hard to be so far from our family, from close friends, but if we can build better on what's near us, we can reach out through a chain of links, rather than across a wide distance.’


This is a worry for me and I had it down, rather ridiculously, as ‘Maintaining Joyful Relationships’. I’m rubbish at this. Over the years I have lost contact with many lovely friends because I don’t find time to keep in touch. The exception to this is Sally, who I live with, my lovely colleagues at work and Ian. Luckily I have some great friends who I can pick up with easily. Again, I’m hoping that my extra day will give me some time to catch up with friends.
On the same subject, many of the important people in my life refuse to live next door to me or even in the same town. I am very disappointed in them! Jack is in Oxford, my family is in Leeds and Ian is in Motherwell, at least a four-hour train journey away. I worry about how the slow erosion of wealth and energy I expect will impact on these long distance relationships. I have no answer to this predicament but think that this is also an objective that I should concentrate on.


Sharon’s suggestion - Outside Work
‘If my children were hungry, I would and could do any work necessary - there is no doubt about that. But while my family lives on comparatively little money (we qualify for food stamps in our state, although we don't use them), we also have enjoyed the fact that we have the luxury of choosing our work. In many ways, we've had an enormous luxury - my writing and teaching and farming didn't have to pay much, because Eric was subsidizing them. Now my work may have to support us, but I still want, to the extent that's possible, to make what I do the right thing to do. I am enormously fortunate, in that I can earn money doing what I care about, and that I have had the luxury of giving things - my writing, my farm products, etc... away for free. Indeed, often the return of giving things away has been greater than those I use for money - but I don't live entirely outside the cash economy, unfortunately. So I need to balance my work - find the ways to make some money doing what I care about, while reducing expenses, so that I have the luxury of keeping giving things away.’


This one I called ‘Meaningful Work’. I’m very happy that I have work that is environmentally based and makes something of a difference. I say ‘something’ because I am working with the business community and some things are not up for discussion. I spend a lot of time talking about sustainability but what the government and business mean by sustainability is predicated on an economics based on growth, a concept that is not in any way consistent with sustainability. Still, it’s more meaningful than stacking supermarket shelves and better paid. My objective is, I suppose, to support businesses in moving towards sustainability, even if it is a watered down version.


Sharon’s suggestion - Time and Happiness


‘In the end, these balance sheets have to be even for me to begin to go forward. The good thing about this is that I know how easy it is to even up this part of the equation. My husband and children and the farm and gardens, friends and family give me a deep, inner core of happiness. Whether we stay or go, whatever changes we make, whatever we do without or give up, if I have some simple things - a little dirt (and I don't have to own it) and the loves of my lives in place, I am not afraid of the future, and I am happy. The thing that buys me the most happiness is time - but it doesn't have to be free time. Indeed, the thing that gives me the most comfort in the world is knowing that Eric and I can spend an entire day working in arm's reach of one another, with the boys helping and playing around our work, and know that at the end of the day, all of us, exhausted, will have found the time well spent. Finding time and finding happiness, are not, for us, a matter of more vacation time or things we want to try - they are simply the by products of trying to bring the pieces of our lives together.’


This is a part of what I have included under ‘Healthy Lifestyle’. I find getting a balance in time use very difficult. I’m not a fast worker and I have a personal requirement to produce work that satisfies my own standards, especially when I am training. It’s self-defense really. I don’t want to be embarrassed by not doing a good job. The problem is that this eats into my own time. That and the fact that wherever possible I travel by public transport for work. It gives me more productive time (I can work rather than just drive) but it takes longer and extends my working day. I’m tired all the time. My feet hurt, I’m overweight, I’m unfit and I haven’t the time to do anything more than try to catch up on my sleep and cook proper meals from scratch. Even that I’m not doing very well. Julia Daly has cooked a couple of splendid meals for us recently, the leftovers from which have been the basis of our meals for the rest of the week.


So, a whole host of things to think about, objectives in place and targets to set. I’ll let you know how it goes.