Earth Hour

 

Today is Earth Day. This evening I shall be observing Earth Hour as I do each year. I invite you to join me. It is quite simple - at 8.30pm local time (no matter where you are on the planet) just turn off your lights for an hour.

I usually go the whole hog and turn off all the electricity at the main switch. I reckon an hour isn't going to be enough for the freezer to do any serious defrosting, and having all the electricity off helps me to really savour an hour by candlelight. Instead of whiling the time away surfing the net, vegging out in front of the TV, distracting myself with radio or watching a movie, I can really be 'in the moment'.

I will light candles, and the woodburner will keep IB and I, the cats and the house cosy. In previous years I have spent the hour meditating, chatting, playing chess, knitting... Today, my dear friend Donald's wonderful blog post on 'Family' has me thinking about my loved ones, near and far. I plan to use Earth Hour tonight thinking of them all, wherever they may be: blood family, heart family (or hearthkin as Donald calls them), ancestors, descendants, Mysterious Ones. I hope that many of them will also be observing Earth Hour, and I love the sense of connection that brings.

Tonight, for one hour, won't you join us? Take some time out to honour the world. Light the candles, turn out the lights, and feel the connection to all your fellow Earth-lovers around the world. We are all interconnected and that is a great responsibility, a great strength, and a great gift.

Earth Hour

Just a quick reminder that today at 8.30pm, many of us will be observing Earth Hour, by turning off our lights (and as many other electrical items as possible) for an hour. I wrote about this last year, and I shall be observing it again this year. Please join me!

Let it Blow, Let it Blow, Let it Blow!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to announce that we have finally got our wind generator erected! We bought it earlier in the year, but for a number of reasons we have not got around to putting it up. Until now! So we can just say that we erected it in 2007.

Here's a couple of photos of T and Harry with the wind generator, moments after we realised that yes, we had managed it and no, it wasn't in imminent danger of collapse:

The boys did most of the clever stuff, whilst I served as a combination of 'go fer', photographer and cannon fodder ("Just stand there and tell us if it looks like it's going to fall over...")

And just in case that sounds too easy, here is a photo of my feet, to show you what conditions were like (well actually you can't see my feet as they're sunk in the mud - just my legs and the tops of my wellies).

But really, despite the mud and our apprehensions about how difficult it would be, it all went rather smoothly. Hopefully another good omen!

It's only a small wind generator, but as we only have low-energy light bulbs in the house it should be sufficient to supply enough power for our lighting needs and possibly run the computer or another small appliance. Naturally I will keep you up to date with its progress.

Happy New Year!

Candles, Cats & Cawl

Well, it's been an eventful few days since my last post.

On Monday, the senior citizens' lunch club that I work with went out to the local pub for cawl, a traditional Welsh broth/casserole of slow cooked beef or lamb with vegetables, served with bread and cheese. It's often eaten at this time of year to celebrate St David's Day (1st March), St David being the patron saint of Wales.

That evening gales were forecast and they arrived with a vengeance, knocking out our electricity supply just as we were about to cook dinner. We are well prepared for such events, so we passed a not uncomfortable evening thanks to candles, torches, a battery-powered low energy light and our woodburning stove with a kettle singing on top of it! I tend to think we are fairly sparing in our use of electricity, yet being without any for the night really highlighted how much we actually do use and take for granted. We couldn't watch TV, videos or DVDs, listen to music or check our emails, (not that we'd do all of those at once, but it's nice to have options!), we couldn't cook the meal we'd planned (we had to change to something we could heat on the woodburner), put on our electric blanket when we went to bed or use the central heating (which is oil-fired, but has an electrical control panel) etc etc. Plus there was concern about the food in the freezer defrosting, and the mains-powered fire alarm kept 'pipp'-ing to tell us the electricity was off. All of this we normally take for granted.

The next morning we were still without power, so we rang the Electricity company. To their credit, they were round within an hour and soon had the fault (power lines shorting out on tree branches) sorted out.

I spent the afternoon clearing stuff away in preparation for the building work we're having done. In the evening I went out for... cawl! This time with the WI, which I joined a couple of months ago as part of my resolution to get properly involved with the local community. I'm not sure the WI is really my 'thang', but for now I'm persevering - and it was a good evening.

This morning I was up at the crack of dawn to get all the animals fed & watered early so I could take our cat Tigger to the vet for an X-ray. She was diagnosed with asthma a while back but has been wheezier than usual just recently and the vet wanted to check her over properly. I stopped on the way home for some shopping, and to my embarrassment when I got back Harry & Andy (who are doing our building work), were waiting on the drive! Most of the rest of the day was spent in a haze of brick-dust, but by the end of the day the good news was that the wall between kitchen & dining room has come down and we are well on the way to our new kitchen-diner!

The bad news was that Tigger has some kind of growth in her chest cavity, most likely a tumour. We should know the full results in a week.

Tonight I'm tired, feeling a bit brain-dead. More building work tomorrow.