I been away

And had a bad few weeks----
A surfeit of work in September and October- which delayed an overdue trip to the UK - where I experienced: connectivity problems (which deserves a whole blog) - too many time changes (at a time of year when it really counts)- 'homesickness' (after visiting friends in west Wales and seeing real darkness and wilderness for the first time in too many years) and guilt (my instincts tell me father is dying and I should be in London more - but how?).

Of course there were good bits in all of that. New books, music, ideas, contacts - seeing an autumn that showed the best colours I can remember(photos to follow) and seeing friends with whom I have a long history. (And went to one of the best firework displays I can remember seeing).

But when I came back two weeks ago I just hid under the duvet for two weeks. Went into my office when I had to - but otherwise blew out social engagements, skipped Dutch classes, drumming circle, Buddhist meetings and other non-essential obligations.

Today the sun came out and I went up to the garden and filled carrier bags with root vegetables (parsnips and celeriac) and leeks. There's something fresh and invigorating about the smell of freshly newly picked vegetables - that hopefully should refresh even the most jaded palette...

Mathew and Son

Out the door at seven am yesterday - riding the bus in the dark to the train station - everyone with button-downed coats and hats, huddled into themselves. Then when it does get 'light' around Utrecht it is still only a steel grey sky that leaks rain over the rooftops. Didn't get back home at 8.30 or so. So glad I don't have to do that commute every day (I have some friends / associates who do it four times a week) it wouldn't leave much time for anything else.

Still it was good day - informative presentations - a chance to meet old colleagues and new clients and to make new contacts. Equally to enjoy the splendour of the Peace Palace (link available in last blog). Two of our afternoon sessions were scheduled in magnificent rooms in the old building, lending an air of gravitas to the occasion.

Teaching an old dog new tricks

Time keeps going backwards- the past two weekends my clocks have gone back an hour each Saturday: the first because of the wholly unwelcome retreat from summer to standard time, the second because I traveled from the NL to the UK. As a result in the space of two weeks it now gets dark at 4.30 as opposed to 6.30. SAD? Me? Just a little.

Life has just got very hectic. On the business side, work is flying in to the extent where I am struggling to find the right people to sub contract it out to: to the extent where I am planning my work schedule until February. That’s fine - but it requires a new set of skills, of managing people and money – and I don’t always get it right. I am also learning how to manage (and get the most out of) spending half my time in the NL and half in London. The need to deal with my father’s affairs and having a major new contract with a London based NGO are leading me in this direction. Hell - I even have frequent flyer benefits now (which for a greenie is hard to deal with).

For a couple of weeks there was the prospect of a two-week mission to Africa: the idea was exciting but also created a lot of stress – organizing the jabs, the flights, the hotels- I felt more than ever like I needed to find myself a p/t PA. When the funding didn’t emerge there was a feeling of relief. between all this future and goal oriented stuff I am trying not to neglect my social and cultural life. I have squeezed in a few visits to museums (Rotterdam’s Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern), get to see a long term favourite band (Kangaroo Moon) doing a pub gig in Kingston, visit historic London pubs, eat in Chinatown, catch up with long time friends and make a new ones.

It’s all a bit fast and scary. So if I’m not writing about cultural events, or seeing rainbows and urban foxes, or the stupidity of the UK’s housing and banking structures, it’s because I am really busy learning new tricks and strengthening and building up my own life.

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Sometimes we go through life looking for something - and in our search other things that we weren't thinking about - but did want or need - materialise. An example: six years ago I was at a conference where I started talking to a woman - largely on the grounds that she was the most attractive, approachable and hippy type there (and I was looking for a lover at that time) we exchanged cards and e mails and her organisation is now one of my major and regular contractors.
These past few months and weeks that situation has repeated itself more than a few times- a visit to London to sort out some family business was pleasantly interrupted by an ex inquiring about my availability and interest for a supper date :-). This week an evening at sports club bought another potential new client and a visit to a therapist today bought news about a potentially very interesting future housing opportunity.
Next week there will be three days of overnight roadworks outside my house. Yesterday I got a random invitation to go and visit some friends on the other side of the NL. In short- we don't control this stuff.

This August I was at a Buddhist training weekend at Baarlo (yeah the photos are long overdue but I still haven't learnt how to upload them using bluetooth technology). I learnt something there - that I focus on the flowers and the fruits (you know -great lover, no debt, caring employers / contractors, blah blah). But when I focus on those things I miss the point about why I am alive. It's not so I can live a comfortable and easy life, with no problems. Because when the sun is shinng, there's money in the bank and a pretty woman in my bed it's all too easy to sit back and say life is good. But actually life is about planting seeds, about being a competent, confident and caring person who can make a difference in my community and in the world. It's not about how much money, pussy or kudos, I have- its about what I can give. Because that side of life is something that no-one can take away. My savings can dissapear into an Icelandic volcano - my lover can run off with Richard Gere - I can't control these things - so why spend time worrying about them?
In this sense it doesn't matter if you are a high flying banker or an impoverished Bangladeshi fisherwoman. The only thing of value we can do in the world is to give to it and make it a better place -not take from it. My father's hoarding habits have shown me how empty that path is -but that story is for another day.

Ghost town

Back to Wageningen - but it's not quite the town I am familiar with. The car parks and streets are empty and people in the shops are queueing up to serve you. My e-mail in-box is taking in about 60% less messages than usual. The Dutch holiday season has begun. Good time to book appointments with opticians and barbers. Not a good time to maintain social contacts - most of the social networks I belong to have closed down for two months.

Several of my acquaintances / friends (real time and virtual) are making rumbling noises about it being time for them to move on (leave the NL). I sympathise with their situation. Being single in a foreign culture is twice as hard work. Those I know with kids just put their noses to the grindstone and get on with it.

For my part I have spent half of the past two months in the "motherland". I fully expect that to be 25% of my time for the remainder of the year. Questions of holidays (I was looking at a trekking holiday in the Pyrenees or Croatia) are just not even on the agenda for reasons of time and money. I'm just trying to make the best of it.

Since I was away the Dutch government introduced the ban on smoking in bars and cafes. My local squat pub (which I haven't visited for about three months) has a notice posted on its window, regretting the fact that smoking tobacco is no longer permitted in their premises. They were hoping that as a private members club they might get away with it (you can still smoke pure grass there though). But the latest wave of health fascism (and this is not rhetorical - the German Nazi party were the first government to seek to ban smoking in public places) takes no prisoners. Why is it that our governments - who purport to believe in the market and freedom of choice - impose these things on their citizenry? I fully support the possibility of smoke free bars. I would just choose not to patronise them. In the UK the Wetherspoons chain went smoke free about three years ago - and found their custom down by 20%. In England everywhere you go now you see boarded-up pubs for sale. A combination of the locals not wanting to go any more, combined with their huge resale estate value.

This is nanny state writ large. And it doesn't work. Cocaine is illegal in the UK (and I think everywhere else in the EU). On my last visit to the UK I read that health and safety inspectors in Chelsea and Kensington - probably the UK's richest and most trend setting municipality - found traces of cocaine in the toilets of 98% of licenced premises that they surveyed. Prohibition doesn't work. I recognise that excessive cocaine, tobacco or marijuana use are not good things for society - or the individuals concerned. But how can governments control or cajole people, without infringing on their civil liberties or creating an underworld that feeds and grows prosperous on the very things the state is trying to control?

Answers on a postcard please

The milkmen of human kindness

Back in “my manor”. This time staying in a flat by the ‘rec where I used to play football when I was six or seven years old. So many memories in these streets – especially as much of the area seems to be a conservation zone and has changed very little in that time. Henry, the warden at these flats is from Belfast with a deep brogue and turns out to be one of the most helpful men I have come across. Within ten minutes of arriving he has set me up with everything needed to make tea (this is recognized as a fundamental Human Right in the UK - and appended to the British version of the UN Declaration of Human Rights), a fan (it’s the hottest day of the year – why do I keep travelling on record breaking heatwave days?) and offered me a towel, flannel, soap, shampoo. “’And will you have lunch with us tomorrow?”
Next morning I go downstairs out to the patio to have a smoke with my cup of tea. “Captain” Bob, one of the residents is having his breakfast there –a big bowl of muesli with fruit on top. He immediately offers to make me up a bowl and recommends that I take up the offer of a lunch. Other engagements prevent that. But I am struck by the kindness of ‘common people’. The people I meet living and working in this sheltered housing block are living close to the bottom of the economic ladder, at least by British standards. Living in one-room flats, with their own toilet and washing facilities. Other than that they have a shared kitchen, bathroom, lounge and laundry facilities. Pretty much student style – but they are mostly senior citizens. No luxury home to go to at the end of term. And, they are prepared to share the contents of their fridge or kitchen at the drop of a hat to a virtual stranger who just blew in from the street. I respect that. Enormously
Later that evening I get a spontaneous and informal counselling session from Henry who, it turns out, used to be a Jesuit priest and saw his mother through years of dementia. He lends me a book on Living with Alzheimer’s Disease even though he knows I am going to go and stay somewhere else and that he may never see me again. Sometime during our talk he talks about fear and the need to face it down because it is the fear that paralyses you, not what actually happens. He gives me some examples from his own life. And I see parallel examples in my own and how anytime we (I) find our(my)selves in unfamiliar territory (financial, emotional, health) that fear has the potential to paralyse us/me and make us/me act irrationally and not as we would want. The key is having faith - in ourselves (to be able to solve the problem) and in the universe (to support us). “”God bless ya son”. God bless you, Henry.

The politics of well-being

Economists are an easy subject of ridicule since they base what they claim to be an objective science on the dubious notion that greater wealth = greater happiness. (They use the term utility and assume an irrevocable link between the two). Because of the influence that this profession carries with policy makers this leads us towards a position in which the over riding social goal is to increase material wealth. For decades environmentalists have criticised this as destroying the panet on which we depend for our livelihoods. It continues to be so - but now the most visible manifestations of it have been out-sourced to factories in countries like China and palm oil and soya plantations in SE Asia and South America.
Yet in recent years awareness has grown that it is not just the environment that our high earning, high spending, acquistive lifestyles are destroying but our own sense of self worth and happiness.
In the 1990s the King of Bhutan turned down an loan offer from the World Bank to build a mega - paper mill to turn the contry's ample forest reserves into pulp. Famously he said that gross national happiness is more important than gross national product. Since that time more and more people have been exploring this idea. Oliver James' book Affluenza is a wonderful example. In one poigant part of it he talks about how the current UK government actually went so far as to set up a Happiness Working Group, and how their ideas got rubbished by the Treasury's economists.
Now it seems that the issue is back on the policy agenda agaian, with the appointment of a Happiness Tsar . It will be interesting to see how far this initiative and debate runs. I suspect that some of James Oliver's more radical prescriptions for affluenza might not make it onto the debate. He shows there is a clear relations between national happiness and income inequalities and also to the degree to which people watch TV and are subject to direct and sublimal advertising. He recommends limiting exposure to advertising and to American programmes that inculcate material lifetsyles and reducing inqualities in incomes. Wonder how far that will get with this or any other part of the political establishment? Of course there are many aspect to happiness that can be developed at the individual level and giving people these tools (or inoculants) whether as preventive or curative measures is a good start. For me it raises the old and seemingly unresolvable (in any intellectual sense at least) about whether one should seek to change the world or oneself.

De toekomst is oranje?

For those not familiar with Dutch the title translates as "the future is Orange?"

Last week a friend of mine asked what plans the Dutch have to protect themselves against climate change induced sea level rises. Given that a substantial proportion of the country lies below sea level this is a key question. Given that the NL is Europe's largest emitter of CO2 gases (read intensive pig and cow production) it is even more pertinent. The question was sparked by said friend having recently spent a week on a beach in the South of England which will - under a projection of a one metre sea level rise - either not exist any more or at least will be an island. Owners of properties here obviously have cause for concern.

So I went to visit flood.firetree.net which projects the impacts of sea level rises on the area in which you live (or vacation, or have another interest in). I took the lowest level sea rise (1m) and applied it to the Netherlands. Basically one third of the country will disappear. Zeeland and Flevoland (the polders so painstakingly created in the first half of the C20th) will almost completely disappear. Much of N & S Holland (containing the NL's three largest cities) will also be afloat. A large part of the northern Provinces of Friesland and Groningen will also be lost, as will the ports of Zeebruge and Calais and most of the northern Belgian coastline. Closer to home it will take a 7m rise (worst-case scenario?) for the ironically named local Zeezicht Eethuis to acquire a sea view.

So I did a bit of searching around the web site of the Dutch Ministry of spatial planning and found the usual official-talk - with no commitment to actually spending any money on ensuring that 50% of the Dutch population will be safe from a fairly minimal increase in sea levels. I spoke to someone who lives below sea level. He said the government won't take any measures that involve additional expenditure - and I recalled listening to a recent BBC world service programme earlier this year that talked about how one of lowest municipalities in the NL (8m bsl) was planning to build an extra (if I remember rightly) 40,000 houses and several industrial parks.

So it makes me wonder why the NL, with its huge planning culture, high taxation rates and supposed role as global ambassador for sustainability is putting its head in the sand over these issues and how on earth countries like Bangladesh or the Maldives are expected to cope? Probably the Dutch can deal with a 1 m rise in sea levels. But if it is any more the question arises as to whether people want to live below several metre high concrete sea defenses.

In the meantime of course life goes on. The Dutch football team have seen off Europe's supposedly finest two teams - each by a margin of three goals. Now every supermarket is full of products trying to cash in on this success: having orange stickers on their products saying hup hup Holland. This sucks. These parasitical companies are trying to shift product, whether chicken drum sticks, popcorn or whatever on the basis of something that has nothing to do with them. The future's bright, the future's orange. We'll cash in on anything we can. If France and Italy stalemate each other on Tuesday night and Romania don't ship too many goals against the Orangemen then its goodbye (and good riddance) to the two highest ranked teams in Europe. But hey what the.....

I had what Dutch people call a gymnasium (grammer school) education. We learned the classics. It was obligatory (I preferred Ian Dury- he's probably on the curriculum of some progressive schools nowadays). One story that springs to mind is Nero playing his violin while Rome burned. Another Roman leader famously commently that the populace would be happy as long as they had bread and circuses. Plus ca change...Will the NL be EK champions in 2008? If they play as well as in the last two games then I hope so. I'll shout for you. But if your three biggest cities might be under water in 2028? Go figure your priorities!

On the buses

This is the longest time I have spent in Britain since I left these shores five and half years ago and I feel like a bit of a tourist "at home". Seeing how much some things have changed and how little others have. And of the things that seem to have changed wondering how much is down to the changes I have made myself in that time. People here seem more confident and open than I remember - but is that really them or me? There's a lot of Polish spoken on the streets and that is clearly independent of any changes I have made. And London's buses have got a whole lot better. They are frequent, clean, relatively graffiti free, have a simple and cheap fare and payment structure and many routes have real time information systems showing when the next bus is due. Also, some real thought seems to have gone into redesigning the routes so that instead of being like spokes of a wheel radiating from a central hub, there are also many radial services that link outlying suburbs. For example nearly all the suburbs around Kingston now have direct links to the hospital (1.5 km out of town) rather than requiring a trip into Kingston and then out on the bus that happens to pass the hospital. That requires real attention to user needs. When you cross the greater London border and try to use the buses there you can see the difference in quality and service. They cost twice as much, are infrequent and often don't turn up. My first day in London I was just outside the GLC boundary - I checked the bus times - one at 8.30, the next at 10.15 - (obviously meeting public demand for transport in the morning) and the 8.30 bus didn't show up until 9.20. What level of customer commitment does that show? What level of customer loyalty can they expect? No wonder the road was snarled up with single occupancy cars all the way into Kingston.

Much of the reason for the improvement in London's buses can be directly attributed to the commitment of Ken Livingstone. Londoners voted him out of office earlier this month-largely over allegations about cronyism, nepotism and corruption among the black community groups that were being financially supported by City Hall. Now London will be run by a Tory Mayor. Ironic in a sense since it was the Tories who abolished the GLC, claiming there was no need for a strategic city wide authority. British tribalism is hard to explain to foreigners. My Labour friends and acquaintances think Boris is going to destroy Ken's achievements in building a pluralistic and tolerant London with a much improved public transport system. I rather think he might he might have achieved a change in zeitgeist in London, rather like Thatcher did in Britain. A change that is so profound that Boris, like Blair will have no choice but to continue in the path of his predecessor. The colour of the party may have changed but I rather the main policies and discourses are set in stone 'till the next the crisis forces a fundamental rethink.

Down by the river, and into the river we dive

I got all my commitments put to bed today (to use a publishing term) . Two annual NGO reports - one mega PhD chapter and a proofread of half of a PhD where the tenses and use of 'the' and 'it' needed checking. 6pm I got on my bike and headed down to the river to have what felt like a symbolic swim - the first of the year. Immersed myself in the cold waters of the Rhine - and made a promise to myself to be back soon and not let myself be a slave to my business or my past.

Culture shock

The son of a friend of mine has recently switched from working for a British software development company to a Swedish one. He is still in a state of culture shock about his improved quality of life and being treated like a valued human being at work.

Which country are you?

At a recent meeting, Mike Gould, one of my editing colleagues (I should perhaps say competitors – but we work in quite different fields) gave SENSE members a talk about cultural fluency. He also introduced us to a web site where we could test how closely our personal values are aligned to those of the country in which we live.

The programme has four parameters – power distance (which measures the extent to which the least powerful accept the unequal distribution of power within society), individualism, masculinity and avoidance of uncertainty.

I found that Norway was the country where social values most closely match my own, followed by the Netherlands. The only noticeable difference was in Power Distance – where I have less acceptance of the unequal distribution of power than the average Dutch person (the country that came out top on this criteria was Denmark).

This of course left me wondering how much I have absorbed Dutch values – or how much they have always been there and drew me here in the first place. I quite clearly remember making career decisions that would help me spend a long time here in 1992 (although they were thwarted by a change of exchange programme). My fondness for all things North European was strengthened when I was spent a semester at the University of Copenhagen four years later (when the city was cultural capital of Europe no less).

But after five years of living here there are a few things that I miss. I was kind of hoping that the survey might suggest a country with wide open spaces, unspoilt nature, a little architectural dereliction here and there, a good climate and a food culture as my ideal match. Far from it – the top eight matches for me on the programme apart from here were the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. So perhaps I will have to go truly Dutch, work hard in a safe, well organised and (reasonably) socially equitable environment for 44 weeks a year and spend the rest of the time taking off for wide open and uncluttered spaces with a nice climate.

So which country would you fit best in? Is it the one you live in now?

Richness in diversity

It's common to grumble (though not necessarily on a blog) about one's work - too much, tight deadlines - or if you work for yourself - not enough coming in. I thought I would mark a change by saying how much I am enjoying my work at the moment. I have a number of projects on different subjects (economics, participatory development, natural history and tropical forest management) written with different styles (academic journals, annual reports, PhDs). When I have enough of one author or topic I can switch to another - (I have found out that my good attention span is about two and half hours after which it is more productive to go and do something else). My research interest in ecological farming taught me that one of its benefits is diversity - in maintaining environmental conditions, reducing vulnerability to pests, drought or to market price fluctuations. But diversity also has a social aspect. It is good for people to vary their routine, to be able to switch from pruning trees in the morning to weeding the maize in the afternoon. It keeps us interested in what we do - (as opposed to having to sow fifty hectares of cotton before the next new moon). My one gripe is that there are so many projects coming through my office at the moment that I have very little time for blue sky activities (in either sense of the term). So I have decided to set aside a week soon to do nothing else and will - appropriately enough - be going to the Festival of Diversity in Bonn, staged to coincide with the Convention of Biological Diversity and the Protocol on Biosafety - international meetings that will have a huge influence on the rights of farmers and governments of poor countries to manage their own biological resources. Let’s hope the arguments in favour of diversity prove stronger than those for uniformity.

Economic (f)utility

A story in today's Guardian (from an article originally published in Science) shows what many have known for a long time but have not found a scientific way to support: giving makes people happier. All the world's great religions know this (and teach it)- and many traditional societies / cultures do too. So how come our advanced societies and our political leaders let themselves be so (mis)led by economists who accept and even elevate to a fundamental assumption about human nature - that people are rationale creatures who selfishly seek to maximise their utility.

Giving need not be just be about money - but also time or "of ourselves". Doing so makes us more complete - makes us feel better about ourselves and our value to society.

A society that can't distinguish between wealth generation and value creation is not only in danger of destroying the physical resource base on which it depends (i.e planet Earth), but also the humanity of those within it. But how do we move from a political system which prioritises wealth generation, to one based on broader values without going back to the moral prescriptions imposed by the church or other institutions?

I read the news today oh boy

Today I heard on the BBC World Service that the Nepalese gverenment has added 18 public holidays to its already extensive list. What a wonderful idea! Maybe one of the warring democratic candidates could steal a march on their rival by proposing the same in the USA?

I remember as kid being told that we were going to grow up and live in a leisure society with robots (domestic and industrial) doing all the work for us. Strange how this never happened. We now have more electric servants in our houses than ever before (houses more than twenty years old don't have enough sockets to cope with the overflow of electric appliances), yet somehow nearly everyone feels obliged to work harder than they ever did in the past. Workaholism is becoming a real disease. There were some figures pulished recently about how much unpaid overtime UK managers do every year. And I know from my own experience how much academics over work themselves. Isn't it strange how one of the poorest countries in the world can announce 18 additional public holidays? Can you imagine the horror from the Chamber of Commerce or Confederation of Industry if any government in an "advanced country suggested that? Go figure

Life in the fast lane

I grew up in a suburb of a suburb of London. Three miles away from the southern end of the tube system and three miles away from once was a free standing market town but which now (and then) was fast becoming agglomerated into the massive sprawl of the largest – and most expensive- city in Europe. One of my childhood neighbours, a Mr. Cunningham, wrought miracles with his garden, tuning the claggy Thames Valley clay into a fertile vegetable and flower garden- he probably dug for victory in the war – but that gave him knowledge for the rest of his life. Leaning over the garden fence – probably asking for a ball back that had crushed his prize chrysanthemums- I remember him telling me that he could remember when this area was all fields. I couldn’t believe him – these miles and miles of houses stretching beyond my imagination were once not there?? What would Mr. C., now long pushing up daisies, make of the New Malden that exists today? I find it bewildering on my occasional return visits. I’m sure that those a generation ahead (or behind?) of me find it triply so.

Let’s take an example. When I went to school there wasn’t a single coloured person in the whole school. Last time I was in town two thirds of the boys dressed in the distinctive Tiffin uniform were of Asian (or occasionally African/ Caribbean) origin. This is not just a question of demographics (Tiffin’s is a grammar school -the equivalent of a gymnasium) it’s more about aspirations. The new immigrant communities want their children to do well.

Another example: the small town where I grew up has been the focus of a wave of Korean immigration (for reasons I have yet to fathom). Something like one third of the shops in the high street are now Korean owned. Take out the couple of supermarkets and the pharmacists and the rest are evenly divided between estate or travel agents, banks, mobile phone outlets and charity shops (of varying degrees of quality). The one shop I value the most is the traditional hardware store where you can still buy glue, nails and adapters for every kind of connection imaginable (and that is run by a Kashmiri).

When I travel on public transport my ears are pricked to try to capture the cultural zeitgeist of what is happening in the hood. People tend to talk more on buses particularly the older folk who know each other as neighbours or maybe have some history. When I listen to them I sometimes hear what sounds like racism but is actually I think fear and resistance to change. They simply resent the fact that there are no fish and chip shops anymore –just curry and kebab houses and noodle bars. Technological change plays a role too in this process too - these older people are dealing with the internet, mobile telephony, digital broadcasting and the 24/7 culture that just didn’t exist twenty years ago. But basically I feel that the old people in London – or New York, Dublin or Paris don’t feel that they have a stake in their society anymore. The pace of change in most of the developed world’s mega cities is running too fast for the older inhabitants to keep pace with. Their discontent is not going to make the news like the youth of Brixton or the Bronx taking to the streets and burning cars- but it is a question that those who embrace these changes – either because of ideological commitments to free exchange or to multi-culturalism should give some thought to.

Reasons to be cheerful part 1

I am really pleased that I made a decision last year to take an office (although I sometimes fret about paying two rents). It is really good for me to be able to mentally and physically seperate work from home - to not work until I have got dressed and prepared for the day and to have a definitive point at which I stop work. It also means that i get to see people every day - even if in the most fleeting sense and helps banish that feeling of isolation that home workers can often expereince. And it also feels as if gives my business a certain legitimacy.
Since I moved flat my office is so close to where I live that it is now possible to go home for lunch, do a household chore or even have a siesta (or power nap as they are becoming known in today's achievement culture).
Financial security may still be some way away but my quality of life ranks quite high. And finally I have the satisfaction of knowing that my carbon budget must rank among the lowest of anybody in the working population. Need carbon credits? I'll sell you some of mine :-)

Its not easy being Green

Today's story in the Guardian about recycling in Flanders reminded me how much I have come to take recycling for granted since I have moved to the Netherlands. In Britain I was considered a bit of a freak for recycling as much as I could. Here it is normal. Bottle and clothes banks, paper collections and separate bins for compostables can be found in every neighbourhood and the vast majority of the population are conscientious about using them.
One of the less pleasant aspects of doing this is having to clean out one's compost bucket on a regular basis. It is not a job to do an empty stomach! I recently thought I had found a way out of this task when I discovered biodegradable bin liners. However experience over past weeks has made me doubt whether they are 'fit for purpose'. The last two times I have gone to empty my little compost bin I have found that the bags had already started biodegrading and when I go to pull them out they leave the same stinking sticky mess in the bottom of the bin as before. But at least they don't spontaneously decompose when being carried down the hall. So now I am wondering whether is some a 'light green' alternative - bags that do not decompose until at least a week after their contact with liquid / sunlight or whatever is the vector for early decomposition. Any recomndations ?

On writing- A scene from Family Matters

I read a lot of books about India. The country seems to produce so many stunningly good novelists (and has also inspired many non Indian writers too). The latest to come to my attention (via our newly formed ex-pat editors book club) is Rohinton Mistry, whose 2002 Booker-shortlisted novel “Family matters” kept me distracted for much of last week. It’s a long novel, set in the Jain community of modern day Bombay and offers insights into both. To directly quote a Van Morrison interview I listened to this week it is “like all art, about redemption through suffering.”

I was particularly drawn by one of the side avenues of the book: a character who only makes a few cameo appearances and is almost a literary device rather than an character who develops throughout the novel. Vilas runs a bookshop next to the shop managed by the main hero. As well as running a bookshop he also works a scribe, writing and reading letters for the illiterate migrants to Bombay who do the most menial jobs. He does this as a hobby and a way of finding fulfilment. He enjoys being able to put people in touch with each other, sees it as his mission in his life and sees his clients and their distant relatives as an extended family. Through this character/device Mistry is able to provide a link between rural and urban India and make keen and key observations about rural urban relations and the joys and barbarity of rural Indian life. Through this Mistry also brings home what a wonderful thing it is be able to be able to read (the power of education is a sub theme throughout the book).

Vilas starts writing letters when a cleaner he has hired comments that he is surrounded by books all day, smells them and even dreams about them but cannot read a word. Vilas asks if he would like to learn to read and he replies that he would just like Vilas to write a letter to his family. Here’s the scene (pp.138-9).

After the shop had closed the two sat on the steps and Vilas prepared to scribble a quick paragraph. Between the salutation “My dear Pitaji and Mataaji” and the leave taking “Your obedient son” he filled five pages.

Three weeks later came a reply, the first letter Suresh had ever received. He held his breath, watching as his benefactor took a sandalwood letter opener from the counter display and slit the envelope.

“Only one page” observed Suresh sadly.

“Don’t be disappointed” said Vilas. “A letter is like perfume. You don’t need apply a whole bottle. Just one dab will fill your senses Words are the same - a few are sufficient”.

Suresh was sceptical as Vilas began to read the scrawl of the village scribe. There were invocations for success and good wishes for health and prosperity. But the rest was devoted to conveying the family’s happiness at listening to Suresh’s letter. Such a beautiful letter they said, it is like being with you in the city, sharing your life, taking the train to your bookshop, watching you work. And we hear your voice in every line, so wonderful is the effect of words.

Suresh was glowing pride as the letter ended. “One page only” said Vilas. And see how much pleasure it has given you?”

The power of words, expressing the power of words.

News from Home

Press Release from The Joseph Rowntree Trust

New poverty and wealth maps of Britain reveal inequality to be at 40-year high
A new way of comparing poverty and wealth trends across Britain shows inequality has reached levels not seen for over 40 years. This is according to research released today (17 July) by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. A second report, published simultaneously, has found that the public believes the gap between rich and poor people is too large.

Researchers working on the first report found that households in already-wealthy areas have tended to become disproportionately wealthier and that many rich people live in areas segregated from the rest of society. At the same time, more households have become poor over the last 15 years, but fewer are very poor.

And this after ten years of a Labour Government and an unprecedented period of sustained (but obviously not sustainable) economic growth. This reminds me to be grateful that I live in a country with some social democratic values