Closer to the birds

I was a “Young Ornithologist” as a boy. For those who don’t know what I am talking about, this was once the name of the club for young people in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Looking back, it probably sounded a bit geeky even then. It now calls itself the RSPB Wildlife Explorers.

I recall looking forward to the YOC magazine ‘Bird Life’ and I also referred to a Collins guide to birds in Britain which had colour photographs and seemed quite flash at the time. Back then, the pleasure was spotting and recognising different species of birds when on holiday or a day trip. I had a fondness for the yellowhammer because of its golden plumage and I could recognise its call (“a little bread and some cheese”) on the hills and moorland. I also loved seeing chaffinches because of their cheeky nature at picnic tables and brilliant red breast and cormorants because I associated them with the sea and admired their acumen in fishing. I also liked the lapwing with its distinctive crest that we would often see on cultivated land as we zipped by on the M1.

My grandmother loved to see the birds in her garden in Bilston, Midlands and kept various china birds on her mantelpiece including a kingfisher. She often expressed a wish to see a kingfisher for real and it was quite late in her life that she finally did. I still think of her when I am birdwatching. I think my school in Wakefield, West Yorkshire were pretty good with encouraging such interests and I remember with fondness trips to RSPB Fairburn Ings to see aquatic birds such as the gloriously punky Great Crested Grebe and to see the cute puffins at Bempton Cliffs on the east coast of Yorkshire.

From my teenage years onwards, I gradually lost interest and even though I retained a love of the outdoors and always hiked in open countryside, I stopped looking out for our feathered friends. This is probably where my outlook would have remained but for our move to South Wales six years ago.

I began to recognise the old pleasures of seeing cormorants diving from the cliffs on the Gower and oystercatchers feeding in the mudflaps of Swansea Bay. Seeing the mallards, swans, coots, moorhens on Brynmill Park lake took me back to a simpler time and the rarer visit of the little grebe brought renewed excitement.

I’ve become almost obsessed with what we can attract to our garden, somewhat encouraged by neighbours and my daughters’ presenting me with pictures that they have drawn of birds we have seen. I believe we have had 19 different species in the garden in our time here, but there are other birds in the area I haven’t seen in the garden yet and this keeps me motivated. We are thrilled to have regular visits from a family of four goldfinches who love the sunflower seeds that we put out and a solitary siskin who feeds upside down.

With more time on my hands at home as we have seen through lockdown, I’ve started to develop the garden to attract birds. Initially, this was about getting the right feeders, but then it became about developing a “hedge” so that the birds had somewhere to hide. The “hedge” is basically allowing the ivy on the fence to grow out of control and I’ve plonked some small evergreens in front of it.

The National Trust’s ‘No Mow May’ this year also brought much merriment as we built a “scaremow” in our garden to promote the ecological benefits of not mowing your garden. Watching people pass by and stare. Some screw up their faces in bewilderment. Some children pointing in delight. One fellow took a photograph with a zoom lens.

But its the behaviour of the birds that has been so fascinating. Watching them grow in confidence in our garden to the point of losing their shyness. Seeing a goldfinch hop across the grass and gulp down a sunflower. Watching a sparrow dance in circles in the air in pursuit of an insect. Dodging the starling poo as they try to ward us away from their nest in the roof. Catching a wren darting through the undergrowth. Recognising the efficiency of the pigeons, jackdaws and blackbirds in picking up droppings from the feeding stations: rather them than rats.

My latest discovery is an app called Birdnet that you can get on android phones. Simply record a bird singing nearby and send it to an electronic database and within ten seconds if the sound was clean enough, you’ll get an identification. In local woodland walks of late, I have been able to identify the calls of the chiffchaf, the blackcap and nuthatch. Recognising a bird’s call was always a gap in my knowledge but bit by bit I am getting better at knowing what’s around even if I can’t actually see it.

I feel closer to the birds in a new way. I can only see my interest deepening and maybe at last its time to go back to being an “ornithologist” and rejoin the RSPB.

Cutting out the plastic at home

The more that I think about what I might want to write, the more I feel like I am channelling my inner Dave Gorman. For those who are not familiar with his work, he’s a comedian who has made very entertaining TV shows from just pursuing some of his most whacky ideas. He dedicated a whole series to tracking down and travelling to meet people who shared the name ‘Dave Gorman’ and another to living his life exactly how his horoscope told him to and measuring the success of this through some kind of happiness index. Gorman’s ideas were the product of idle talk with a friend and he just took them to the nth degree and of course had a platform to do it.

My whacky idea was that I could start a mission to cut down on plastic. This being the product of a talk (I won’t say “idle”) with my wife. Then I thought I would share my findings in an informative if not necessarily entertaining way. Perhaps in my daftest moments, there was an imaginary film crew with me and the world was willing me on. But for the most part, I have just been trying to do better out of conscience. And then bit by bit, I have started to wonder am I taking this to the nth degree and would anyone be interested?

Like many people in recent years, I previously thought that I was doing my bit by separating the plastic from other rubbish. And then I realised that the production of plastic is another way that the fossil fuel industries are exploiting the earth and that we simply cannot recycle all of it, with much of it ending up in the oceans. Here in Swansea and throughout Wales for that matter, plastic free shops are really taking off. Some of them are community enterprises and some of them family businesses, but whatever their ownership they are enjoying a great deal of support and appreciation.

My family and I are trying to maintain this way of shopping but it isn’t easy along side everything else we have on.

Household items: Washing up liquid, laundry liquid and shower gels are filled up by dispensers in our old bottles at the plastic free shops. Deodorants are mostly bought with a cardboard packaging: manufacturers like Ben & Anna (popular in our local plastic free shops), ku.tis (made in Wales) and ‘we love the planet’ (sometimes stocked by Holland & Barrrett). This mostly means finding time around the kids Saturday morning activities to find time for this extra shop.

Meat: Chicken is mostly bought from the market because the supermarkets always seem to have them in plastic trays. We’ve started to make meatballs using sausages and beef mince from the market to avoid the dreaded plastic trays: great for involving the children, if not a little messy and difficult to judge how much to make.

Milk: we get milk in glass bottles delivered by Totally Welsh to our doorstep three times a week. This is easy to set up and to make alterations through an app.

Spices: again we can top up from dispensers with local suppliers.

Houmous: we’re going to have a go at making our own. Just bought in the tahini.

Vegetables: we now receive one bag of seasonable vegetables each week from the Cae Tan community agricultural project on the Gower which sees us right for potatoes, carrots, onions, brassicas and root vegetables most weeks.

Fruit: we’ve had to abandon Aldi and the better prices because everything is sold in plastic casing and defect to Tesco where we can buy unpackaged fruit, occasionally topping up with visits to the market.

One of the key tools in our fight against plastic is our Carrinet produced ‘veggio’ bags which are robust, drawstringed and washable and perfect for gathering fruit and veg.

But here’s the thing, there’s just so much stuff that I don’t know how to get that’s not packaged in plastic. And yet, just by asking the question, I find there are answers out there although they are compromising precious time further.

Yoghurt: According to an article by Clare Whitehead on environmental living website Naturaler you can get yoghurt in jars online through companies such as Abel & Cole, tucked away at Tesco, go to local farm shops or make it yourself. I’ll be opting for a local farm shop if I can find one that does it.

Berries: An internet search with the terms ‘berries plastic free UK’ contains suggestions of buying berries frozen, dried or unhelpfully, artificial (made of plastic). I think we’ll go for dried.

Cooked meats: As my daughters enjoy these so much in their sandwiches, we’re always buying plastic packets. Isn’t it a bit excessive to have your ham and salami personally sliced at the deli counter?

I’m pretty certain that all this effort is not or will not save us any money and certainly not any time. And this is where I start to wonder whether I am taking things to the nth degree. What part could I play in influencing the supermarkets to move away from plastics and make things easier for myself?

When it comes to campaigns, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has already been there with #OurPlasticFeedback: an investigation, campaign encouraging activism and television programme on the BBC. I’ll try to keep in touch with that. But more realistically, what if I was to focus on one thing like supermarkets offering deodorant with cardboard casing? Because that’s one thing I have noticed that supermarkets and high street chemists don’t offer that choice and its actually quite depressing to see isles of so much plastic with no evidence that the corporations are shifting away from plastic.

So I have decided to target some supermarkets and chemists with letters to see if I can get explanations and some movement on deodorant with cardboard casing and maybe in a future post, account for how far I got.

That’s my nth degree, for now. If that makes me like Dave Gorman, I’m happy.

My first blog

Why am I blogging publicly rather than keeping a journal?

I believe that environmental activism has to start at home. I am not criticising protesters because I consider myself one of them and I fully believe that Government and Corporations have a massive part to play. Neither do I believe that I can live up to a ‘holier than thou’ eco living (I’d very quickly fall short). But my family and are trying to make changes in the way we live and much thought goes in to those.

The more energy that I put in to making these changes, the more time I have found myself talking with friends, family and colleagues and then over time I have made a subtle shift to wanting to influence others. What I have to share is not the slightest bit technical. Where I am using environmental technologies for example, I don’t understand how they work (embarrassingly so). However, my family and I are consciously adapting our lifestyle and this means changing weekly routines, thinking about how to make them productive, changing shopping habits and forming new relationships with suppliers and tradespeople to name but a few “psychological angles” to this.

I have consciously decided not to check out whether what I have to write is niche or whether I have a unique angle just yet because I don’t want that to impact on what I have to write. Writing has been quite a big part of my life until recent years and I freely admit a desire for people to read my work. That said, blogging is new to me and like many technologies that have been around a while, I’ve been through a quietly sceptical phase whilst admiring the work of friends and colleagues who have something original and insightful to say through this medium. I am not really sure at the time of writing whether I just want my friends to read this or whether I want a wider audience. Time will tell.

What topics do I think I’ll write about?

I think it will vary from “copious notes” on adapting to eco living, perhaps more philosophical and cultural considerations, discussing my experience of domestic environmental technologies and perhaps reflecting upon and promoting work that I did earlier in my career around the green economy. As I write, I think I have an article on the ‘Nissan Leaf’ in me but I am also thinking about ‘virtue signalling’ and whether this has value in influencing others on environmental matters. This could be eclectic. An old friend of mine once encouraged me not to worry too much about what I have to say. “You bring your material. I’ll bring mine. Its all fine.” There’s bound to be sentiment too.

Who would I love to connect with via my blog?

Friends, family and colleagues. Perhaps it will expand beyond that in time.

If I blog successfully throughout the next year, what would I hope to have accomplished?

I would like to reconnect with people I haven’t spent much time with in recent years. I would like to share ideas and receive them.

Rhubarb Rhubarb

Photo by Kulbir on Pexels.com

Boris Johnson has always been a man for colourful language. It’s usually a sneary put down of people he doesn’t like or doesn’t respect. His targets and misfires have been numerous and I won’t dignify his coded slurs with further mention here.

Today though as his premiership crumbles, Johnson has widely been quoted on 27th January 2022 as having dismissed concern regarding his personal intervention in the humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan as “rhubarb”. The Eton man long credited with the common touch, I wonder whether his social class leads to him reaching for that word and how conscious he is of its historical, social and political context. Would it be helpful to him if people look below the surface of the showman’s choice of words?

In Britain, describing something as rhubarb is a derogatory way of saying something is “blah blah” or “mumbo jumbo”. In the theatrical tradition, background noise is created by extras repeating the word ‘rhubarb’. It was “chosen as a word for producing indistinct background noise because it contains no very sharp or recognizable phonemes” (Wiktionary). Should a man in such trouble use “rhubarb” to suggest his attitude to the people concerned? Historically, it hasn’t worked out well.

In Leeds born Tony Harrison’s poem, The Rhubarbarians he writes about the agents of the establishment shouting down representatives of the working class with insults concerning their production of rhubarb in West Yorkshire. The establishment’s actions were in complete ignorance of rhubarb as food consumed in upper class circles, being reared in horse dung and pulled from the ground by ordinary people. According to the Yorkshire Society, special trains colloquially known as the “Rhubarb Express” were once commissioned to transport rhubarb to the Old Covent Garden Market in London.

“Watch me on the rostrum wave my arms –

mi little stick of Leeds grown tusky draws

galas of rhubarb from the Met-set palms.”

Tony Harrison: Rhubarbarians, Part 2

This lack of respect for a symbol of working class life is in contrast to the pride that local people felt and still feel for their rhubarb industry. Leeds is at the top of a triangle of cities alongside Wakefield and Bradford where rhubarb is traditionally grown. A local industry that dominates production across the UK since the 19th century and for which ordinary people feel some ownership. Families like my own would rent a strip in a field in the mid 20th century to grow rhubarb for themselves. The first rhubarb of the year is harvested by candlelight in “forcing” sheds on farm land across the triangle. And in recent years, a rebirth of rhubarb tourism has brought about a festival, a pub named “The Rhubarb Triangle” and not so long ago, you could buy a three course meal in Wakefield town hall, each course featuring rhubarb. Would a man serious about continuing to disrupt the red wall, speak in such a derogatory fashion of one of its best products?

This is not to mention the after Sunday Dinner favourite, the great rhubarb crumble served with custard. A personal favourite. Rhubarb is naturally a sharp tasting plant, benefiting from sweeteners. Yet, in wartime, rhubarb lost favour because of the disruption to the sugar trade.

In my research, I have found interestingly that rhubarb plays a part in a modern “culture war” exploited by Russian state media output in the west. An article in RT (formerly known as Russia Today) describes outrage at “woke” protests at the colonial legacy of Myatt’s Fields Park, named after a 19th century rhubarb producer who is said to have traded in slave produced sugar. We know where Boris stands on culture wars and it rarely plays well.

Reaching back in to history, the earliest recorded use of rhubarb is 2700BC as a drug treating gut, lung and liver problems (yorkshirerhubarb.co.uk). In 1657, it was so highly regarded as a drug, that it fetched three times the price of opium. During the second world war, the government controlled the price of rhubarb, holding it to one shilling per pound so that ordinary families could afford it. In modern times, Yorkshire forced rhubarb has won praise from celebrity chefs including Nigella Lawson and an outdoor variety is actually known as “champagne rhubarb”.

Rhubarb it seems is not so shabby, Mr Johnson.

Getting round on the leccy

Photo by Mike on Pexels.com

So here I am in Swansea services on the M4. I’m here after the school run, having the second coffee of the day and charging my Nissan Leaf. I’ve been doing this around once a fortnight on average since the turn of the year. I’ll get around 100 miles for about £8 on the battery and it will take about 45 minutes. Next week, same time or slightly later I’ll go to Tesco to do the weekly shop and again depending on whether I also have a late breakfast there, I’ll put 30 to 60 miles on the battery for free. Perhaps before a big trip we’ll impose on a relative who has a driveway and charge overnight to get to the full “range” of the battery (around 156 miles). So far, this is keeping us going.

Why I am doing this? A little while ago, my family and I decided that we wanted to buy an electric car. Personally, my conscience was nagging me and I just didn’t want to run a petrol engine any more. We took our time over about a year researching the running costs to justify the expenditure to ourselves. For example, we estimated that the approximate £1200 we spent on petrol annually would probably come down to around £300 a year on electric. It’s too early to say how accurate this forecast will be but with the help of some of the apps that our suppliers (ecotricity, podpoint) provide, we’ll probably get an accurate reading. There’s no road tax. Minimum maintenance costs. Insurance has gone up a bit.

The biggest stumbling block for us is that we don’t have a driveway or a garage. And we hesitated for some time before purchase as to whether we could make this work. At the point of demonstration of our new car, the salesman was unsure about selling the car to us, until we discussed how much thought we had put in to this move. One of the more interesting things that we found out from our salesperson is that he himself ran a Renault Zoe and relied on charging his car at work rather than at home.

So how are we making this work so far? I have formal employment three days a week, so for the moment charging the car has become my responsibility. The routine described above has not been problematic for getting around the city and in the absence of a family dog, its been pretty good at getting me out and about. We manage just fine in dropping the kids off at their various activities, doing the shopping, going out places and excursions to the Gower.

All of these experiences have got me thinking about what does a future look like in which many more of us are running electric cars. Are we going to have obstacle courses up and down roads as we cross a trail of fluorescent strapped down cables from terrace houses? Can the authorities in Wales move forward as they are in London and get some street charging options in place through lampposts and /or the new generation of armadillos, geckos and limpets? Can more sharing of driveways and garages be encouraged between relatives and neighbours?

Some of my early research found communities of “early adopters” on sites like ‘Book my charge’ trying to support each other in getting around the country by providing a network of home based charging stations with booking systems and regulated fees. We’ve yet to try that but I wonder if something like this could work on a community level. I’ve found that EV drivers are only too happy to exchange information on keeping their cars running and people stop me every time I charge in a public place to ask me how its going and what it costs to run. When the infrastructure is there, I’m sure word of mouth and new forms of co-operation will help take things forward.

And for the entrepreneurs out there, as a friend observed there’s probably a competitive position to be achieved in future if you can have a coffee and cake and charge your car at the same time. As I write, I see that Gower Power are installing Tesla charging points and I ask myself what new routines would I be building in to my life if I was to be using that facility? Maybe in the future more of us will be asking those sort of questions?

In the future, we plan to travel further afield in the Leaf to my native Yorkshire and a holiday in France. Again apps and information aplenty in the internet, but I won’t know what its like to drive an EV over long distances until I have actually done it. In theory, with around 100 mile rapid charge we should be able to stop every couple of hours and recharge but you’ve got to be able to access rapid chargers over a much larger unknown terrain and I am told they don’t always charge as quickly as you’d like. We’ve already adjusted our camping holiday plans so that instead of a trailer, tent and other equipment which a Leaf won’t really carry, we’ll use a readily erected tent with Huttopia. The plus side being it won’t be exhausting packing or leaving. If anybody has any tips to share, I’ll be grateful to receive them.

If this sounds like too much, I understand that some dealers are offering electric cars on lease with the option to swap back to a petrol lease car for holidays. This can work pretty well, we learnt from another couple on our campsite last year.

So that’s my first proper post. Happy to write about the Leaf again if people are interested. Just please don’t expect Top Gear. And now with my battery charged, to the open road!