I woke to the smell of curry this morning, which is slightly odd on a Sunday morning these days (not at all so odd a few years ago) as Ady was cooking up one of the dishes ready to freeze for an Indian Extravaganza of cooking for next Saturday night when we have Mike and Rose over for a night of not swinging with Indian food.
Scarlett spent about 90 minutes in the bath playing, she experimented with some of her bath bombs and took about three cuddly toys in with her to keep her company and get thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed :). Davies, meanwhile was wanting to play Zoombinis. We got two of the three discs working but the third was being very tricky. I finally worked out it was because it was expecting the game to launch from the disc drive it had been installed from several years ago which is now defunct (the first laptop we had which was dropped and the d drive broken so it now operates with an external disc drive), so had to uninstall it and start again which got it working. Am always pleased when I not only manage to fix a problem but actually understand it too :).
Scarlett emerged, wrinkly, from her bath and sat and watched Davies. Between them I think they actually completed two of the whole games. Nice listening to them working together and really grasping some of the concepts. They don’t spent much time at all on pcs which I don’t think it a bad thing, particularly as they do spend a fair bit of time on DSs but it’s good to see them appreciating the resource and it’s possibilities.
We had lunch and Ady got the roast dinner on in a very low oven. I retrieved several eggs from the hen house, they are really getting into laying now and we’re getting a good 3 or more eggs most days, looking forward to that getting closer to 6 or even 8 a day in the height of the summer :). It is nice not to have to buy eggs again.
Towards the end of last year there was a movement in Worthing towards becomming a Transition Town. I looked into it a bit at the time and was impressed and thought I’d like to get involved but it came around the same time as my Lookering and the WPA course so I wasn’t in a position to take on anything else really. Caz and Bid reminded us about the movement last night and told us there was an event on today.
So we went along. It was called Food for the Future and included a film called A Farm for the Future which was excellent, all about the use of fossil fuels in farming and agriculture, alternative methods and permaculture, there was a group discussion afterwards along with refreshments, a graffiti wall to add your ideas and committments to change/ help and a seed swap where you could give in your own unwanted seeds and take away a packet in exchange. We got rid of all the flower seeds we seem to have collected and had no intention of sowing and got a great selection of vegetables and a few more interesting flowers that the kids want to try growing. The plan for next year is that people bring seeds they have harvested themselves to the seed swap as they will be super sustainable, locally grown and so therefore adapted for our area and beautifully complete the circle :).
The idea of the transition town for Worthing is to start making changes now to adapt for the inevitable changes we will face thanks to climate change and peak oil. Todays meeting was about how Worthing will feed itself when we can no longer rely on the unsustainable use of fossil fuel in farming and agriculture for powering farm machinery, adding fertilizer, insecticide and pesticide to the crops, processing and packaging and transporting the food to us. A really interesting example was a pre-packed sandwich from a garage or supermarket. The bread would have used fossil fuel at every stage of production from ploughing and sowing and harvesting the wheat, turning it into flour and then into bread, the ham from pigs fed on grains all requiring the same process, the token salad being flown or shipped from abroad, all transported to a factory to be assembled and then transported back out again to shops. Quite aside from the issue of the packaging of the sandwich it was as the reporter said ‘literally dripping in oil’.
The film covered different alternatives and ways of gardening and growing grops, tending land and preserving bio-diversity, different models of thinking and planning and permaculture. I have seen similar films and felt really bleak afterwards but this was a very empowering film that gave hope and made you feel you wanted to be part of the change and do something proactive. We spent some time chatting to people and coming up with ideas of changes we could make. Davies and Scarlett were particularly inspired by the idea of bartering, I pushed the idea of growing co-ops and sharing crops and gluts, Ady thought we should be finding out whether we can make more of our coastal location and beaches for food. We talked to a few people about Home Ed and it was all very promising and inspiring stuff :).
Caz had come along although she’d left Bid and the boys at home so we all piled round there for an hours playing and tea drinking. We carried on talking about bartering, communal growing and sharing crops, along with educational philosophies and the balance between ideological viewpoints and practicalities work out. All very interesting stuff :).
Back home again to turn the oven up and get dinner finished off, which we ate watching Countryfile. The kids did some drawing while their dinner went down – Davies drew some of the wild boars on Countryfile and Scarlett drew some Zoombinis.
Then we finished the last two chapters in the Creation stories and mourned having finished them, we’ve enjoyed them so much :).
Ady and I had baths and chats about plans and hopes for the future and watched Masterchef.
It’s been a good weekend :).