The Stupidity of Recycling (by sarah)

I have decided that recycling is bad - yes you heared me bad!

Its so waistefull it really is - lets see we have put resourcess and money and power into making a container say a glass jar - it gets used once and then mashed into little pieces - using more energy and resources, melted - more energy and moulded back into - oh a glass jar - what a pointless effort.

Glass is autoclavable you can steam/boil sterolize it, it can be made squeeky clean - so surely it should be highly reusable? Well milkmen have been doing this for a long time now with no ill affects. When I was in Kenya you where charged for the glass bottle your coke-a-cola etc... was bought in and got refunded that money on its safe return to a shop - any shop. People here have said they remember being paid for empties - it would make so much sense really it would.

Re-use instead of recycle!

This is why I loath anything but broken glass having to go to the bottle bank but there is only so much jam and wine one bod can make! Still I suppose more will be used when we have bees 🙂

If anyone knows of somewhere that does reuse this sort of stuff could they let me know?

Ok so recycling isnt bad - it is in fact good but it would be even better if it was only used on things that are no longer usable in this reincarnation - no I know the economical costs are probably the driving factor here but surely that cant keep up? Is it really easier and cheaper to melt everything down than to steralise it and reuse - I know they'd be different sizes and the such like so there would be some sorting - but for home jam making and preserves that would be fine (as just one idea of the top of my head) - I see the shops selling empty jars and bottles for this - and I bet they are 'new' jars as well - its so wasteful - so ludicrus (sorry spelling out of the window today).

On the plus side - the Green shop we go to allows you to bring your own containers for refilling 🙂 does anyone know if the body shop still does this? I heared that they stopped when they were sold.

I wonder how many bars, resturants and clubs recycle? You'd have thought that they would considering the amount of bottles and cans they get through but I know that all the ones I've asked have said no!

Ok so I've been ranting about re-using stuff - here is how I practice some of what I preach : 1) I make jams, chutneys, pickels and (hopefully if it works first batch on my own) wine which uses quiet alot of my jars and things - I also tend to try and make my own suaces reducing the number of jars I have in the first place but that isnt practicle for everyone (most people).

2) I keep the punettes fruit comes in from the supeermarket and then when out costing the hedgrows etc... use them for that or when we go to pick your own.

3) I use the fabric softner bottles to keep the worm juice in (hoping that we will shortly be migrating this sort of thing over to eco stuff).

4) Refill herb jars rather than just buying new herb jars.

5)Use old Milo tins for storing my tea bags and old baby milk tins for other kitchen sundries/seeds/lego/beads the list is endless.

6) Ice cream tubs and calwslar containers I use as tupper ware and freeze suops and the such like in.

7) Yogurt pots make great little plant pots my nan did this for most of her life - though as I now make most of our yogurt we dont have many of these.

8) Use reusable bags for sopping - this is great at the moment cos we get club card points and stuff too and the councel here gave us some free coconut husk bags as well 🙂

9) I used terry nappies until Jean was 8 months when her size and wrigglyness made them inpracticle - however in despair at our over spilling bins every monday I have found a lady who tracks down baby stuff for you and she has specially ordered some reusable nappies that work like the desposables - ie velcro! Me and Al are quiet excited about these as we have been looking for them since before JEan was born and this lady said she was suprised that non of the mother cares in the area or any of the other big chains round here sold them - this unfortunatly means they are a bit pricey but if they last to be used four times each they will have paid for them selves!

I know that not everyone can do alot of this stuff for practical reasons ie time but the councils could be making more of an effort with the recycling - what seems to be happening at the moment is that there is a lot of apparent recycling without alot of thought behind it but thats just my opinion - here is pretty good aand getting better but still alot of room for improovement like the stupidness over plastics - they say only plastic bottles with no reguards to the plastic types so lots of things that are recyclable get ignore 🙁 and therefore thrown away (we have unfortunatly already recieved a letter from the recycling people due to confussion on our part on how it worked here which is completely different from Essex - these letters would probably scare little old ladies away from recycling all together 🙁 )

Baby photos (by alaric)

From an old family photo album, some pictures of me as a newborn have appeared, on a visit to The Mill:

They're dated April 1979, so would be less than a month after my April birth.

Who'd have thought, then, that one day I'd be bringing up my own baby in this place? 🙂

Bound feet and high heels (by sarah)

Today I went to a museum and read about the old Chinese custom of binding womens feet, the foot was curved in so that the weight ended up being taken on the heel and big tow when the woman walked or scuttled - now it occured to me that this must have been similar to high heels in wweight distrabution. Mainly this was done to the feet for fashion and cos it was seen as highly erotic - same as high heels - I wonder why? Why is something that is detramental to movement so erotic and sort after? Saying that what has happened to the world whilst I've been bizzy creating and looking after Jean? Everyone is so dressed up! And what is it with the hideous pointy toed shoes - witchy toes - lalalala - witchy toes tralalalala. And if they arent wearing that then they all look like they are from the 50's, 60's or 80's or that they are a cross between minni mouse and supermans girly (I cant spell her name ok).

Ok so now I have slated of a huge chunck of the population should I start on the wellies? Hmmm...

I'm not saying these cloths are bad (appart from pointy toed shoes especially if they have kitten heels) but why so dressed up all the time? Where are all the students in just jeans and T-shirts? They seemed to be absent 😕 Gosh things have really changed and I was only out of it for 2 yrs!

Bobble Goes Backwards! (by sarah)

Yesturday we took Jean to a friends house - which happened to have lovely polished wooden floors and lots of rugs. Jean was placed on the floor to crawl as she had become too wriggly. She was fine on the rugs but went slippy slidding on the floor, this was so funny to watch, she started to sort of crawl on the spot, then slump - her hands getting traction her knees not! Then to all our delight she worked out that she could go backwards to where she wanted by sort of pushing with her hands and 'swimming' with her legs - it really looked like she was doing some sort of froggy swim! 🙂

I think her geologic tendencies are currently winning as she used this new mobility method to get to the mineral collections - certain geologists will be pleased to hear that so far her favourite has been a large siderite nodule!

Photos from the Party and Christening (by alaric)

There's been rather a lot, so here are some of my favourites from the ones I've seen:

And here are some links to online photo sets various people have put up:

My cousin's photos Charlee's photos on flickr