Juggling family life with no car.....

It shouldn't be so hard and I suspect my difficulty is that I'm trying to lead a car led life without one. Today has been a particular case in point.....
1. Drop DS1 off at school and attend "Well Done" assembly.
2. Walk to the village to get 10.18 bus to get to play and stay with DS2 and meet friend for lunch.
3. Get bus back at 2.03, rush around house to get stuff together to go away tonight.
4. Pick up DS1 at 3.20 - rush to get to station for 4.04 train.
5. Three train trip to Hebden where hubby has been since last night for camping weekend.
6. Relax for the weekend.

I can't help but feel that one or more of the things in todays program should have been dropped. I'm exhausted and it's 2.30. Here's to an early night, going to bed with the stars ;-)

Food for free

We have been gradually filling up the freezer this autum with pounds and pounds of blackberries. The kids are loving foraging the country lanes and have come home every time with many more inside them than in the pot - blackberries are a great source of vit c, so I'm not at all bothered. We get some looks from my pristine next door neighbour whose kids are always immaculate when we turn up back home all covered in purple juice ;-)

Usually in the summer we manage to make some elderflower cordial, but we seem to have missed it this year. In the spring we use the new buds of nettles to make soup - fantastic with a couple of carrots and potatoes and a bit of stock and even better if you've managed to grab a handful of wild garlic too.

I'm hoping to learn enough about mushrooms to be safe picking them and on holiday this summer I fried up some seaweed which would have been delicious if I had worked out a way to get ALL the sand off - a bit gritty without the use of a power hose ;-)

What a great place to live......

As I'm writing this blog, I'm realising how lucky we are to live in this area. We live in West Yorkshire and our council, Kirklees, oversees some areas which have no eco initiatives at all and some (like our valley) which are full of people doing their best for the environment. Our kids school is currently working hard to put a proposal together for a Green Flag, we have the Green Valley Grocer's which I've mentioned before and the two villages of the valley are also part of the Transition Towns movement.

I'd love to be fully involved and at the moment I get to as many things as I can. It's just not practical though to take two under 5's to a community orchard clearance especially when we struggle enough to find the time to cultivate our allotment (more on that another time). The kids have just been asked to model at an ethical fashion show in November which will be great fun and I'm busy running up skirts for it from Uncle Malcolm's old trousers. We shall no doubt take the catwalk by storm ;-)

The balance between looking after the family and making a positive difference in the community is a tricky one and one which I'm not sure we're totally in equilibrium on yet.

40:40:20

Lyn Sloman points out in her book Car Sick that 40% of our car journey's could reasonably be replaced by a journey on public transport, 40% could be replaced if the public transport network were slightly modified and only 20% would be very difficult to replace.

With this in mind we are reducing our dependence on the car. We currently run only one car and this is used mostly for my husbands work. He currenlty works two jobs, one in the middle of the night on an industrial estate with absolutely no public transport options and the other in a village about 7 miles away which would take two trains or two buses to get to.... in neither case do the trains or buses connect up without more than half an hour of a wait, the 10 minute trip takes over an hour either way. Given that he is a nurse, the route is very hilly and there is no shower at work, cycling is not an option either.

We are very lucky to live almost on top of a train station, so we can do much of our travelling by train. In addition we are doing the following:

• Cycling, running pushing and chasing to school (I say chasing since my 2 yr old is doing the 1.5 mile round trip twice a day on a push along fire engine.... his knees are nearly scraping the ground, but boy can he speed along ;-)
  
• Doing as much of our grocery shoping as locally as we can. We have everything we need in the village so we have to weigh up cost against travel on this one.
  
• Minimising our leisure travel in the car.... we are always mindful of whether we need to do the trip and whether we could do it on public transport.
  
• Ordering some shopping to be delivered..... and looking for the items on line rather than getting brochures delivered.
  

How easy are we finding it? Well, the train is great - except when it's replaced by a bus which won't carry bikes. The bus is incredibly expensive - our trip into town on the train cost £1.80 return, on the bus it is £4.80!!! On long journeys, the family facilities are chronic - has anyone tried to change the nappy of a 2 yr old on a train.... not fun. I would also welcome the ability to book seats together even though I'm not paying for the kids, booster seats and straps on trains which could be used if needed would also be great. As per Lynn Sloman's book some journeys are just impractical on the current network.... on Monday I travelled to the other side of Leeds, it took me 1 hr to get there at 6pm and would have taken 2 hours at 9.30 to get back... I was willing to do it, but there was someone there in a car who offered me a welcome lift.... train stations are not great places to be hanging around in the dark.

In general though, there are few sacrifices and lots of benefits if you are travelling during standard hours; I'm sure the kids are happier on the train for a 4 hr trip rather than in the car for 6 for the same trip, when the kids are older I'll be able to read during the journey which they play or read comics or books, we are getting creative about our leisure time - next week hubby is going camping and we're getting the train after school on Friday to meet him etc.

Why buy water in a plastic bottle?

.... when

• 40% of bottled water is just tap water in disguise
  
• A plastic bottle takes an average of 1000 years to degrade
  
• transporting bottles of it around the country is estimated to create more than 33,000 tons of C02 emissions - equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 6,000 homes, or driving your car round the world about two and half thousand times.
  

We have recently bought each of us a metal water bottle and won't be buying any more plastic bottles of water. The tap water in the UK is amongst the cleanest in the world, so it makes sense to save the money and fill from the tap.

Urg... found the camera

Now I have to dress up as supermum as I promised in the first blog..... crikes. I'm thinking black tights, wellies, red pants (over the tights of course), not sure on the top, but definitely washing up gloves on hands ;-) F

What a beautiful day hey hey

WOW it was glorious here. Perhaps we are finally getting a summer.

At the weekend I went out and bought a bike seat for my hefty two year old. I was dubious as to whether I'd be able to balance once I'd hoisted him onto it but all went well. We took the train a stop down the line, fed the ducks, perused the charity shop (got a nifty pair of dungarees for lo for 80p and a matchbox digger for 10p which he was delighted with) and meanered back along the canal tow path. I was hoping to pick some blackberries but the best ones were by the road or next to the canal and with a two year old in tow..... Anyhow we got back to our village and stopped in at the Green Valley Grocers to get our fantastic value organic veg bag and then on to the ice cream parlour to reward ourselves for our cycling efforts. Fabulous.

Cut emissions by 10% in 2010

I've just signed up to the 10:10 campaign - some of you will already know this 'cos I've sent emails to 10 friends to get them involved too. The aim of the campaign is to get individuals and businesses to cut emissions by 10% in 2010. I reckon this can probably be achieved simply by us becoming mindful of our consumption. I have thought about how we can measure our emissions and come to the conclusion that it's much easier to measure consumption. To this end, we're going to get an electricity monitor (our library service is lending them out and apparently you can buy them for a tenner) and I'm going to take milage readings on the car at the beginning of each month. Obviously I can also look at our electricity bills to compare month on month how we are doing. Some of our changes will be very difficult to monitor however..... how much change to our emissions does it make to replace one meat meal with a veggie one for example? If anyone has any stats on this I'd be interested to see them. Happy emissions cutting y'all.


Here is a link to the Guardian article about the campaign launch. There are some very cynical comments at the bottom of the article.... I think these people might be what is called deniers/nimby-ers. ;-)

What's a day in the scheme of saving the planet?

I'm not your hardened, dreadlocked demonstrator by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I've only ever joined a demonstration once before. The Wave - come together to stop climate chaos , feels pretty important to me though and I fully intend to be there.

Here's the rub..... when it comes to the family, our weekends are pretty important, especially since our older little chap has just started school. Furthermore, persuading hubby that a demonstration is important enough for him to be in charge of childcare for the whole day ain't an easy task.

That said, this time, one day of the weekend feels like a very worthwhile sacrifice to make in order to be counted amoung the millions who will no doubt join the march. Coaches are being organised from most towns and as many people as possible need to be there to put their weight behind decent committments being made in Copenhagen. (I'm using "decent" here in the broadest sense of the word.... decent, as in substantial, but also decent as in moral, so that we in the west can hold our heads high and say we are not standing by while the poor suffer at the hands of our misuse and overuse of the worlds resources).

I sincerly hope that as many people as possible will find that there are no excuses for attending and will join us all in London or Glasgow on the 5th December 2009.

School Runs

Our oldest little chap started shool on Thursday..... what a day, wind blowing the driving rain horozontally across our path. Nonetheless, we opted to walk and arrived with all of us looking like drowned rats. We live in a large village and it has been disappointing to see just how many cars turn up to drop off/pick up kids from school. There seems to be no walking train and yet at least 6 mums doing the round trip twice a day from our part of the village alone. I know that many of these mums have smaller children too and maybe this is why walking trains won't work, but I can't believe it's not possible to get it working. Anyone out there got experience of walking trains?

What's it all about?

This blog is the result of lots of conversations I've had with friends about how key parents are to saving the planet. We have the greatest vested interest in securing a wonderful future for ourselves, the planet and our children. I'll be posting regularly about my efforts to change how we live and I hope others will contribute their inspiring ideas too. Looking forward to hearing from everyone else out there who cares for our future.

Incidentally, I don't consider myself to be any more of supermum than all the other supermums out there, I just wanted an excuse to dress up with pants over my tights and take a silly photo.... but we can't find the camera at the moment..... be very afraid...... ridiculous photo coming soon ;-)