I went foraging this morning. I picked some more cherry plums, but also had a look at other trees nearby and found another variety of plum and what may be a gage or damson, also blackberries, although they are pretty common. The plum is not ready yet nor are the gages/damsons, so I shall keep a look out for them each time I go there. There are also crabapples, but they are inedible as a stand-alone fruit. I am getting more into the habit now of looking at trees I pass in the street or country lanes to see if they have any fruit on them. As I have a small garden and no allotment, and on a low income, I need to start seeing the countryside, the coast, local parks and hedgerows as an extension of my garden, a place where I can harvest food without having the bother of growing it; in permaculture terms this would be Zone 4, semi-wild areas. Local industrial estates, horse-riding centres, skips and flytips would also come into this category as wood, tyres, manure and other useful non-food items can be got for free from these places. A couple of years ago I saw some sweet chestnut trees in another part of my town, but I can't remember where I saw them. If I can find where they are again, I shall go picking chestnuts this autumn. When I lived in London, I used to love eating hot roasted chestnuts bought from a vendor in the West End.

I did some work in the garden this morning. I prepared a site for another fruit bush. Yesterday, I sowed some more winter tares seeds on bare plots of soil. I have started using rock dust which I received last week from the Organic Gardening Catalogue. It sounds like pretty amazing stuff if used correctly on the garden and its effects on fertility can last up to five years. Relatively cheap too.

I am determined to give up tobacco - for good. For my own health not because the Government nannies says it is bad to smoke but because I have begun to experience the effects of smoking myself and that is more persuasive than any Government health warnings which I have, at least consciously, taken with a pinch of salt. I am on my last pouch and shall have my last one this afternoon.

While I was at work yesterday, not having much to do, I started reading a booklet I received from the Society of Friends (the Quakers) recently. It is called A Light that is Shining by Harvey Gillman. It is only a short book, less than a hundred pages, but it gives an introduction to the Quakers and what they believe, how they began, what they do, how they worship and so on. From what I have read so far, I am impressed. I have had a brief flirtation with the Quakers before, way back in the late 1980s, but I didn't appreciate their style of worship then and wanted something which I regarded as more dymamic. Well, I have now been through evangelical Christianity and found it wanting. It may be absolutely right for some people, but not for me. It took me a while to find out, going through the Alpha course earlier this, going to church and attending various lectures and a weekend away. But I feel I can no longer subscribe to a form of faith and style of worship which doesn't feel comfortable, not for me anyway. Quakerism, on the other hand, at least from this book and my memories of attending services when I was younger, seems to resonate with me. They believe in a priesthood of believers, in other words, they have no priests but everyone is a priest. They have no need of a go-between or mediator between believers and God! This is very radical and it is no wonder that they suffered persecution in their early days in the 17th and 18th centuries. They also have no creeds and no baptism. Yet they are recognised as a Christian organisation. They believe in the 'still small voice', hence their quiet meditation in Meeting. Meeting is the term they give to their worship which takes place in Meeting Houses rather than churches. When I was younger and attended their Meetings, I have to say I was bored but I couldn't appreciate silence then. I believe I could now. One of the problems I have with church, and by no means the only problem, is not enough time is given to just being quiet. There are announcements, hymns (I must admit I do like hymns, but only the traditional ones not some of the modern ones we sang in my former church), prayers, the Creed, a sermon, and so on, but very little time for silence. It is as if they are afraid of silence. But I now rather like silence, a time of stillness, to meditate or contemplate. Of course there is always the danger of falling off to sleep but then that can happen during a sermon!! The lack of creeds, priests and sermons, its openness to the possibility of other paths to God, its eastern-style worship of just sitting there, its tolerance towards other lifestyles and its relying less on the Bible and more on personal experience and inner light is attractive to someone like me who has anarchistic leanings. Because there is no creed there are different ideas as to the nature of Jesus. Some Quakers believe in a trinitarian God, some believe that Jesus was a supreme ethical teacher, and others believe he was a man who had reached his divine potential. Many Quakers are pacifists, and in both world wars were either conscientious objectors or served in non-combatant roles in the war effort. Some are vegans or vegetarians. Many are involved in human rights campaigns such as Amnesty International or peace work. So I would like to investigate the Quakers further by one day soon attending a Meeting.

I did some gardening this morning. I lifted the rest of the potatoes in my garden, and there were quite a few. We shouldn't need to buy any potatoes for a few weeks. The runner and french beans are coming on quite well, too. They hadn't got off to a very promising start back in late May or early June, but since then they have done quite well, and they now have a few beans on them almost ready to pick. I wish I could say the same about the broad beans. They have been a dead loss this year. This may be largely down to the blackfly. There have been very few beans off the plants, and certainly not worth the space given over to them. I did use organic insecticidal soap spray on them but I think it was too late; the damage had largely been done already. The runner and french beans have also been attacked by the blackfly but they haven't suffered as much and I was able to get the spray to them before they did too much damage. I have a squash plant growing from a tyre tower down the garden, and so far there are a couple of large-ish fruits growing on them. If I feed them with a tomato feed regularly until September or October, the fruits should be as big as footballs by the end of October.

I am determined to give up tobacco. I bought another packet of tobacco yesterday against my better judgement. But I have noticed that during periods when I smoke I have shortage of breath. I also cough more. I have always prided myself on my good health, with what I eat, the amount of exercise I get, being out in the fresh air, and yet I may be undoing all that by smoking. But giving up must be my decision and not based on what other people think or say. If someone tried to persuade me to give up I am likely to do just the opposite just to be bloody-minded because I don't like being told what to do. I shall give up because not to will be detrimental to my health in the long term. But I will do it on my own, and not with help from smoking cessation classes.

I received two DVDs yesterday which I ordered: one on Permaculture and one on forest gardens. I also received a book on forest gardening by Patrick Whitefield, which I ordered from Amazon a few days ago. I have watched part of the DVD on Permaculture and read a bit of the book.

I must now describe myself as a lapsed Christian as I shall not be attending church again and can't stomach the stuff that passes for Christianity in many churches any more. There are many good people in the Church and in my (former) church, but I can't continue to attend when I no longer believe in it. I felt like a fraud and a hypocrite when reading the Creed, for example. Holy Communion did nothing for me. Apart from a brief euphoria (and that was probably all it was, euphoria) on the Holy Spirit weekend on tha Alpha course back in March I have felt nothing more, and I felt the same when I regarded myself as a Christian as I did before, despite all the praying and Bible-reading. I had hoped that by attending church my faith, shallow and delicate as it was, would deepen. But lately, I have felt that attending church has had the opposite effect and made me rebel against it. I think there is much wisdom in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, but I don't believe it is all the word of God and infallible. There is also some dross, which somehow ended up in the Bible, but which is the words of fallible human beings, and bound to a particular culture which is not relevant today, for example, St Paul's pronouncements on homosexuality, and the dire warnings against homosexuality in Leviticus in the OT. Jesus himself said nothing about homosexuality, so I wonder why some churches and Christians give such credence to pronouncements by other figures in the OT and NT. There are some fundamental things that I do accept and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but there are also some things which I can't accept and can not feel comfortable about when I go to church.

I did some foraging this morning. I had heard about a plum tree that grows in a park near me. These are cherry plums, so small and unlike say, Victorias, are already ripe or ripening off. I took a bag with me and picked quite a few, including some windfall which were fully ripe and some from the tree. I tasted some before picking them to make sure they were edible to my taste buds and not sour like sloes. They are not as sweet as Victorias or Marjorie's Seedling, but they weren't bad. The fully ripe ones were reasonably sweet. There were plenty left on the tree and some were out of reach. Perhaps next time I should take a walking stick so I can hook the branches down and pick the ones higher up. I'm surprised there were so many. Evidently, not too many people know about it or if they do, can't be bothered with them. It's a place where people walk their dogs so I had to be careful where I trod. I shall be there again next week. Better than buying them from the shop, even if they sold this particular variety, which I don't think they do. My next venture out looking for free stuff wasn't so successful. Yesterday, I passed some skips with lots of wood in them in a country lane near me. I went back there with my trailer attached to my bike. Alas, it was all chipboard, so of no use whatsoever in the garden. I also passed a flytip on which there were some old car tyres. But most of them had their metal hubs attached, and I know from experience that it is hard work cutting them off the tyres themselves. Only one was hollow in the centre, and I brought that one home.

I did some work in the garden today. I decided to move one of my composting bins from a space near the bottom of the garden under an apple tree to a place near the top of the garden and therefore more convenient to use. It didn't have much stuff in it so it was easy to move. Before placing it on its new site, I laid some sheets of cardboard on the soil to suppress weeds around it as there is a lot of bindweed in that part of the garden and I don't want to have the horrible stuff growing around the bin and even getting into the compost bin. I put the bin on top of the cardboard and then put some soil around the base to hide the cardboard, which will eventually itself compost. I put some twigs at the bottom of the bin to assist aeration. I then put some partly composted stuff from an open compost heap in the bin, followed by some of the kitchen waste from the bin before it was emptied, followed by more compost, followed by more kitchen waste, followed by straw, some manure, some comfrey leaves, some urine and so on. It has a good mixture roughly in layers, so it should, by next spring produce good, rich compost. In the sun it will heat up nicely.

I received some stuff I ordered from the Organic Gardening Catalogue a few days ago. One of these was a 20 kilo bag of rock dust. This is an animal free and organic top dressing for the soil, which remineralises the soil. It contains a range of naturally occurring volcanic minerals and trace elements from a sustainable source, and is a lot cheaper than most soil conditioners, except for horse manure which is of course, free from where I get it. Also I received a sickle. It is very small, and is called an Eastern sickle. No, it's not made in China, where most things seem to be made nowadays. But Eastern sickles are widely used in the Far East for harvesting and cutting back vegetation, rice for example, and although I don't grow rice in my garden, I shall find it useful to hack through the weeds and overgrown honeysuckle in my front garden! It is made from carbon steel and believe it or not, is made in this country, of Sheffield steel.

I watched the film Lost Horizon on BBC2 this afternoon. Made in 1937 and directed by Frank Capra, it is one of the best films of that era, very advanced for its time, although there were a few stereotypes at the beginning of inscrutable Chinese. It is based on the novel by James Hilton, which I read a few years ago, and it is not a film that is shown very often on tv, or at least not terrestrial or non-digital tv, which is what I have. A small plane carrying a group of Westerners rescuedfrom revolutionary China is deliberately diverted to an unknown country somewhere in the region of Tibet. They crash and are rescued by a deputation of people from Shangri-la, a mountainous country in the Himalayas. The Westerners, of course want to return to good old civilisation but there is no communication with the outside world, and they have to face the fact that they will probably have to stay there. But the leader of this disparate group of people is a diplomat (and would-be Foreign Secretary) named Robert Conway, played by Ronald Colman, and he was brought there for a purpose, to become the wise leader, the High Lama, of Shangri-la, as the old High Lama, at over 250 years old is close to death and wants a good and wise man to replace him. The idea of reincarnation and destinty is hinted at in the film. Gradually all but one of the group get used to their new life in the mountainous utopia, as they find a new purpose to their lives. Why should they, after all, want to go back to so-called civilisation where people are routinely killing each other? In Shangri-la they have everything they need for a good life, lived in peace and security, with no need for a police force or army. But the one who wants to return to the insanity of the rest of the world, Conway's brother George, hires some porters to help him get out of the country along with an attractive, apparently young woman who has lived in Shangri-la for many years, and manages to persuade his brother Robert to go with them. The two are killed in an avalanche but not before the young woman has turned into a hideous hag as she leaves the youth-preserving influence of Shangri-la. Conway manages to survive and return to Shangri-la. This is a great film that should be shown more often because it contrasts the madness of the world (then, and perhaps even more so, now) with a sane, peaceful and utopian civilisation.

Buckwheat plants in forest garden

A view of the forest garden

Did some more digging in the garden today, and have prepared another spot for a fruit bush by digging a hole and shovelling in some muck and covering it up again. I have some buckwheat growing in my garden which I use as a green manure, but it also has flowers and then seeds which can either be used to grow more buckwheat next season or sprouted indoors as a salad green. It is a long time since I sprouted buckwheat groats but I do recall that they have to be grown with their hard shells on, so I am going to give it a try. There are not enough to use as grains and besides that would entail the laborious job of extracting them from their shells. So today I collected some buckwheat seeds and will soon attempt to sprout them.

This afternoon I went to see a forest garden at the house of someone I know in our eco-group. She lives a few miles away from me and so it is a good cycle ride to get there. Going there I went part of the way along a bridleway across a field and had a bit of a mishap when my front tyre went into a dip in the path, and I almost came off. Fortunately neither I nor my bike were damaged. A forest garden is a designed system of growing edible or otherwise useful plants at different levels: ground level plants such as herbs and strawberries, a slightly higher level with fruit bushes and small shrubs, small trees, larger trees and every size in between. Vertical space is utilised as much as possible and shade is used for plants that thrive in shade. But as well as being productive, they are also havens for wildlife and so are good for the environment too. In Britain the forest garden was developed by the late Robert Hart who had a forest garden at his farm in Shropshire. But forest gardens are much older than that, and have been in use as places to grow food since ancient times in other parts of the world such as India. The concept of forest gardening is closely linked to the practice of Permaculture, though Permaculture does not have a monopoly on the concept. It is something I want to introduce into my garden albeit on a small scale as I only have a small garden and I have to work with what I have got. The forest garden I saw today is in its early stages, and has only been established for about a year. There is still obviously much to be done but already it is fairly productive. Some of the fruit trees must have been there already as they are bearing fruit. There are apple, pear, cherrry and plum trees, raspberry canes, gooseberries, strawberries, some perennial vegetables, and some annuals such as runner beans, tomatoes and onions. And there are also lots of flowers, mostly perennials because they are less hard work than annuals, and these attract bees and butterflies. There are also some insect boxes for wild bees, lacewings and ladybirds. But what makes it a forest garden is not just the plants grown but how it is put together, making best use of the sunshine. There are also water butts to collect rainwater so hosing is kept to a minimum, shade is made use of, and there are composting bins in convenient places. Bark is used as a mulch to keep weeds down and to make it attractive. There is a greenhouse and a cleverly placed old radiator painted black to help heat the greenhouse in winter. The house has a solar panel. The whole garden, though not that large (though larger than mine) is a peaceful and green sanctuary. At the end of the guided tour, there were refreshments, and a time to ask questions and chat. There were six of us in all, including the owner, and mostly made up of people from our Eco group. One of the people suggested a seed/plant exchange scheme for the group. I am thinking of planting bamboo in my garden but am not prepared to pay the ridiculous prices in garden centres for a plant, so I asked one of the group if he had bamboo in his garden. He does and offered to propagate some for me this coming winter, it being the best time to propagate bamboo. I would like to be able to grow it for the canes which can be used for plant supports rather than buy them in which cost money and are invariably imported. Also I would quite like to eat the young shoots once it is established as a plant. I think we all left feeling inspired. I cycled home by a different route, the seawall path, with someone else from the group. He is a tree warden and asked if I had thought about becoming a tree warden. I hadn't but I shall. I shall have to look up what is involved in the role. It sounds interesting. I took some photographs, two of which can be seen above.

Last night I saw the second in the series of the BBC2 documentary, Coast. Immediately afterwards, there was a drama called Desperate Romantics about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of romantic artists in the sencond half of the 19th century, who were inspired by, and immitated the style of, medieval art, full of romantic images of chivalry, nature and red-haired women! I rather like the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, although some have accused them of being pretentious. This was the first of six episodes. Immediately after that, although I recorded it and saw it today, was another series of Wainwright's Walks, in which an intrepid walker follows in the footsteps of Alfred Wainwright doing his Coast to Coast walk using one of his famous books as a guide. Beautiful scenery. AW, as he is called, died nearly 20 years ago but his books with the line sketches of places to be seen on the route and his maps live on.

Some of my veggies are coming to the end of their season now. All the onions were lifted a few weeks ago, there are just a few potato plants left, the rhubarb chard is now finished. So I have cleared the ground vocated by these plants. One the piece of plot where the chards were I have dug it over and broke up the clumps of soil with a canterbury fork and levelled off the soil as much as possible and sowed some green manure seeds, Winter tares or vetches to give them their alternative name. These I sowed in broadcast fashion. They should cover the soil during the autumn and winter and enrich the soil for next season. But I shan't be able to grow beans there as tares are a leguminous plant and so fit into the rotation system as a bean. Elsewhere, I have prepared the ground for sowing turnips later this summer. I have not grown these before, but I want to try them as I want to try and get some veggies during the winter. Turnips are in the cabbage family so are not considered a root crop for the purposes of the rotation system. My runner and french beans seem to be doing quite well despite the unpromising start. They are quite tall and are in flower. I have had to use insecticidal soap spray to get rid of some blackfly but these have not affected all plants. Some of my potatoes had scabs on the skin, and this may be because the soil was dry or it may be because it was soil that for many years grew shrubs and very little else, which I have converted into a vegetable and fruit plot. I am looking forward to the next stage of converting my garden into a more productive place. Flowers are all very well and nice and I still grow some of them, but with hard times coming I have got to try and grow more edible plants or plants that have more than one use. I am also considering buying a small polytunnel so that I can grow things like tomatoes and cucumbers more successfully and extend the season for other plants which would normally grow outside in summer. There is only one feasible place in which it would fit in our garden and that is on the front part of the lawn which gets most sunshine, the other part being more shaded because of a tree next door. The polytunnel I have in mind costs about £170. Unlike greenhouses they are easier to erect, but some of the lawn would have to come up and the plastic sheeting of the tunnel would have to be buried under soil or upside-down turfs on the outside. A good permaculture principle would be to have a chicken house adjacent to the greenhouse/polytunnel in order to keep each other warm, and if I do eventually get hens this would be the most obvious place to situate the house.

I am now almost totally disillusioned with Christianity, or perhaps I should call it Churchianity. I don't think I shall be going again unless something happens that persuades me it is good for me to go. I don't feel any different inside from when I was not a Christian. Some Christians report amazing experiences when they become Christians but I have yet to experience that and there seems no point to following a particular path unless it brings one benefits such as joy, peace and inner understanding. It might help others but it hasn't helped me so far. I spoke to my next door neighbour the other day about some of my feelings as they go to the same church as me and she said try hanging on in there, but despite her reassuring words, I don't feel any different about my recently-adopted faith. I was to have gone to a meal this evening with a couple from the church but it was cancelled this morning and I am glad in a way, as I was going to cancel it myself a few days ago. I now feel that the Alpha course I did earlier this year was largely a waste of time. I enjoyed it at the time and I liked the food and company and discussions, but I don't feel as though it has changed my life, and that was the real point of the course. I also still have problems with some aspects of Christianity which have never gone away such as the doctrine of the Trinity and their belief that salvation can only come through Jesus Christ, which would seem to invalidate other spiritual paths such as Buddhism or Taoism. So I think I am going to have to continue searching for spiritual enlightenment and see where it may lead.

I have started smoking again. My excuse this time is that I am going through a crisis and need a crutch now that my spiritual crutch has left me high and dry!

I have decided not to go ahead with the Christian Studies Course. Apart from anything else, I think my time will be more wisely spent learning more practical skills than academic courses. In the years to come, it will be growing vegetables, carpentry, making one's own clothes, Permaculture, and so on that will be the most important skills one can learn, as things get harder with the onset of peak oil and climage change. As a matter of fact I have found a distance learning course in Permaculture which I could do. This would save me having to travel for it, paying for accommodation, and would be cheaper, too. They do both introductory and full design courses. See the following link:

www.permaculturevisions.com

I am fed-up with hearing about swine flu. Ever since it was first announced that swine flu was to be declared a pandemic, I have been suspicious. The government, the doctors from WHO(!) and sections of the media have been trying to spread fear and panic. Now they are talking about mass vaccination of, first children and health workers, and later the general population. What will it be next? Compulsory vaccination? I for one won't be having the vaccine. There is no way I shall meekly and sheep-like, succumb to the panic and fear-mongering of this government and its agents as they try to convince us we are all doomed to be ill if we don't have the jab. I was cynical and suspicious before but after watching the following David Icke video on Youtube, I feel vindicated in my cynicism and suspicion. I don't agree with everything David Icke says, but I do think he is right on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkiclMWy3Ns

I have been thinking of doing a course in Christian theology run by the Diocese of Chelmsford starting in September. These courses are quite cheap as the tutors are volunteers, and only cost £120 a year and the course runs for two years. I am quite interested in the subject and one doesn't have to be a Christian to do it. I am still having lots of doubts about Christianity but am interested in theology as an academic subject. Well, last night I, along with some fellow Christians from our two churches went to a taster session to see if I might like the course. It was held in Elmstead Market, a few miles from where I live, and consisted of some talks given by a couple of tutors and a couple of former students. There was also a sample exercise to stimulate discussion on a topic. I found it interesting and part of me would like to do it but am reticent because I have done courses before which I have not been able to finish because of lack of time or motivation. It is quite a commitment and I don't want to rush into it, so I shall have to think about it. The course will cover topics such as discovering God, people of the Bible, understanding the Bible, spirituality, sacraments, ethics, and doctrine. Apart from the contact time of once a week during term time at the centre where we went last night, there would be study time at home and students would be required to submit some essays if they want to get the qualification at the end of the two years. Two of the people I went with have already enrolled for the course so there would be no problem attending the course as there would be several going in a car. But I don't yet know if I could keep up with the work entailed in the course, when I have other commitments and interests. I need to make up my mind soon otherwise there may be no places left on the course.

I went out for a ride this morning. I took this picture of the offshore wind farm. Work has been ongoing for some time although it stopped for a time when the money ran out but I understand another company has taken over the project and the work has resumed. So far there are 15 turbines up with more to come but the whole thing won't be fully operational until the end of 2010. I'm afraid the turbines are not very clear!

I was sitting in the garden this morning when I saw a peacock butterfly landing on the lavender plant several times, so I took a photograph of it. The lavender is the most popular plant in the garden with bees and butterflies at the moment, although the Buddleia is also popular with the butterflies.

I have ordered a couple of DVDs from Green Books on Forest gardening and Permaculture as I want to try to design in more of my garden according to Permaculture principles as far as one can in such a small garden. Click on the link to see a sample of one of the DVDs I have ordered:

http://greenbooks.co.uk/store/forest-garden-year-p-324.html?osCsid=o38kl7o7nhq7l3mgah63mdtdf7

I watched the first programme in a new series of Coast on BBC2 last night. I think this is the first series of this excellent documentary that they have made for at least a couple of years, and this is the fourth series. It explores the geology, natural history, geography and history of Britain's coastline and sea although in this series they will also be exploring the coasts of our neighbours, including France and Norway. Last night the various presenters explored the south coast of England from Whitstable in Kent to the Isle of Wight, and visited a relic of the Second World War in the sea, a Victorian railway running along the beach in Sussex, now long defunct, a lighthouse and took part in the making of a film using very early, hand-powered film cameras. This programme is made in conjunction with the Open University and is both quirky and informative.

Gordon Brown says fighting the Afghan War is our patriotic duty. If political leaders themselves took part in wars like they did in the old days, then perhaps there would be less wars. After all, the politicians who tell us that it is our patriotic duty to be involved in this war or any other unnecessary wars like Iraq, don't get their hands dirty in the actual killing involved so can remain aloof from it. I respect the courage of those soldiers involved in the fighting, and there is a code of honour amongst the soldiers involved in these wars which is very admirable, but I oppose these wars and want all our troops to withdraw before there is more bloodshed. The war against the Taliban is unwinnable. The Afghan people have never been defeated in a war in the past. The British were defeated in two wars against Afghanistan in the 19th century and even the mighty Soviet Union couldn't win the war when they invaded in 1980. Sooner or later the Taliban are going to have to be negotiated with, as repugnant as they are. 25 years or more ago it would have been inconceivable that we could negotiate with the IRA/Sinn Fein, but we did and now Northern Ireland is relatively peaceful, apart from the odd skirmish or terror attack by breakaway IRA groups. If it could be done in Northern Ireland I see no reason why it could not be done in Afghanistan. All that this war has succeeded in doing is driving al Q'aeda into neighbouring Pakistan and destabilising that country and spreading the influence of the Taliban. The Taliban are not a threat to the UK interests outside Afghanistan itself. The British Government has blood on its hands and I refuse to accept that it is being done in my name. If Gordon is so patriotic let him go and fight in Afghanistan. This is not a just or justified war like the Second World War was, in which we were fighting for our survival and Gordon is no Winston Churchill!

I went to a meeting last night of our local eco-group, and we had part of our meeting in the garden until it got a bit cooler. There was a report of how things went at the stall our group had last Saturday at a county show in Lawford. The theme for our stall was home composting, and a lot of people showed interest in it. But the main topic of last night's meeting was transition towns. We had a speaker from Transition Wivenhoe, a small town near Colchester which is in its early stages as a transition town. The transition towns movement in the UK started in Totnes, Devon, initiated by Rob Hopkins. As climate change speeds up and as the age of cheap oil comes to an end, we are all going to have to face the consequences of life without oil. This won't just affect people who drive or rely on oil-driven transport, but every single one of us who buys food from shops, who uses plastics, and who engaged in the economy, because our lives have become dependent on oil over the past hundred years or so. Most of our food bought from supermarkets and small shops has been grown non-organically, which means chemicals, which means oil. Unless we live in a cave, with no electricity or gas, never go anywhere, never buy food from the shops, never use plastic, and grow and rear all our own food, every single one of us in the west is dependent on oil, and over the past hundred years or so we have squandered it. Had we used it wisely, we would have had enough oil to last us for hundreds of years. One solution to the twin problems of climate change and peak oil is the concept of transition towns (TT). It is an idea whose time has come even if most people are still in denial about the problem of peak oil. The phrase coined by the green movement, Act Locally, Think Globally applies here, because TT is local solutions for local people to help combat a global problem. As the age of easily extracted and cheap oil comes to an end, we shall have to go back to eating food that is grown locally because food grown thousands of miles away will no longer be feasible when oil is either too expensive or just not available any more. We shall have to source our energy more locally and be more efficient with our use of it. We shall have to use cycles and walk more to get to places, and fly less or not at all. We shall have to build stronger local economies. All these issues are tackled by the TT movement and if handled successfully will make for greater resilience amongst communities. But there isn't much time left.

The speaker explained through diagrams and graphs the concept of peak oil, and described what a transition town may look like, although there is no one right model, no 'one size fits all', a model which governments are very fond of. People have basically the same needs everywhere, but each locality has its own traditions and culture, and so there is no blueprint for a TT just some ideas about how communities may become more self-reliant. Initiatives within TTs include land-share schemes to enable people to grow more of their own food, credit unions so that money stays within the local economy instead of being syphoned off as it is now by banks to go elsewhere, time banks or LETS schemes to boost the local economy and stop skills going to waste, car share schemes and bike-users' clubs, and local sourced energy. TTs seek to work in partnership with other community groups. It is not party political and not affiliated to any religious or philosophical group, which might alienate many people. Typically, community groups and facilities might include Women's Institutes, trade unions, credit unions, churches and mosques, village halls, schools and volunteer bureaux.

She referred to something called the 12 steps. This has nothing to do with Alcoholics Anonymous, although it could be thought of as a way of weaning ourselves off our addiction to oil. For a fuller explanation of the 12 steps go to the following link:

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/Primer/TransitionInitiativesPrimer.pdf

The talk certainly gave us all some food for thought. I am by nature, though a pessimist, and I can't see it happening in our town any time soon if at all. It is a very conservative area, and despite the credit crunch, there are 4x4s to be seen everywhere. As everywhere people are addicted to their cars, shopping, their holidays abroad, and all the other carbon-heavy activities of modern life. There is no tradition of radicalism in this area like there may be in some of the towns that have become transition towns. This is not to say it can't happen, because we shall all have to face the reality of peak oil some time in the future, whatever our political leanings are. But in my opinion, and it is my opinion, the towns with a more alternative tradition, such as Totnes and Brighton, were always going to be easier to convert to the idea of TTs than a conservative area like Clacton. If we do attempt to turn Clacton into a TT, it will be an uphill struggle. But despite these misgivings on my part, the TT movement has the potential to appeal to people of different political persuasions and none, and people of different faiths and none as long as it is not seen to be party political or the preserve of one party or interest group, or as just a white middle class thing. For this reason I think TTs could be the most important movement of recent years enabling local communities to be resilient in the face of huge challenges. The alternative might be too awful to contemplate.

Here are some websites on TTs:

http://www.transitionwivenhoe.co.uk/

http://www.peakoil.net/

http://www.totnes.transitionnetwork.org/

http://transitionculture.org/

http://www.transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/Criteria

It is a week since I last had any tobacco, and I am feeling the strain! Several times over the past week I have had the desire for a rollup, but have resisted the temptation to go and buy some more baccie. But I don't know how much longer I can keep going without it. Certain words trigger off the desire, as do certain times of day and certain activities. It is not as if I have been smoking for years. I usually only smoke for a few weeks at a time, but not smoking leaves a gaping hole in my life. So I suppose I must be an addict to a degree!

I have now received the details of my penfriend on death row through the organisation Human Writes. He is at a prison in Texas and has been on death row for 10 years. I shall be writing to him in the next few days. I have also joined the Facebook Human Writes group in order to make contact with other people who are members of HW.

I have done some gardening over the past few days, much of it harvesting vegetables, including potatoes, broad beans and swiss chard. The runner beans look healthier now than they did. There are courgettes growing on the courgette plant in a container and also small squashes growing on the squash plant in a tyre tower. However, I think they need help with pollination by pushing the male flowers into the female flowers, or maybe using a light brush to do this as it isn't always easy to do it directly flower to flower.

I went to church this morning for the first time in three weeks, and I am glad I went but after only three weeks it felt a bit strange, or maybe it was me who was just feeling a bit strange, as I have been under a lot of stress this last week. My mother has been ill for the past week, and has needed a lot of help. Her illness started on Tuesday, with being sick. On Wednesday, she appeared a little better. On Thursday, she was worse, and was very confused, and in a bad state, and I feared she would die overnight, but she is still with us, and she has made some improvements since, but is not eating or drinking as much as she should. Indeed, it may have been dehydration that caused the confusion on Thursday night when she was unable to get into bed. I cried that night as I felt the end was near. I also prayed and that helped a bit both to make me feel better and maybe it helped her to feel better the next day. Every time she gets an illness, her memory gets worse, and now she can barely tell what day it is. She can still recognise me and my brother and say our names, but for how much longer, I wonder. We have become her carers now, as in some ways, she is helpless at the moment, and even if she recovers from this latest illness, her underlying mental state will not get any better. She has had dementia for some time, although not yet full-blown Alzheimers. We shall look after as long as is needed, and wouldn't dream of sending her to a nursing home. For one thing, I wouldn't want to see her go to a home and neither does she. She wouldn't even agree to having a doctor come and see her last week, as she was afraid she might be sent to a hospital, and I can understood her fears. Hospital, with its risk of MRSA and other bugs would probably finish her off. And if she went to a nursing home, it would have to be paid for out of the house where we live. She wants to live out her last days at home and I don't blame her; I would too. Between me and my brother we can manage. We may eventually need to get the help of a district nurse but in the meantime we shall manage as best we can on our own.

I went to the council waste depot this morning and took some garden waste in my trailer. There is still a lot more to go, but I shall get rid of most of it by the end of the summer. It is quite a long ride to the depot, and I only ever go on Sundays as the roads are quietest then.

I saw a film last night called The World's Fastest Indian, made in 2005 but set in the late 1950s or early 60s, and based on a true story, in which an elderly New Zealand man, Burt, played by Anthony Hopkins, isn't content to sit back and grow old gracefully in his slippers and cardigan, but wants to set the world land-speed record in a motorbike on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. This is a feel-good film in which our hero meets many obstacles on the way to Utah and at the race itself, but is determined to overcome them and needless to say, does, otherwise there would have been no film about him. In his 40-year old banger, and his 72 year-old body, he beats the world land-speed record at more than 200 miles an hour, a record which has not been beaten since according to the message at the end of the film. The Indian of the title refers to the old bike. This was one of the best films I have seen in recent years, which I found immediately engaging when I saw Burt use a grindstone to shorten his toe-nails!

I went out this morning to sit on the seafront, have a walk, and enjoy the sun before it got too hot. On my way home, I stopped off at my smallholder friends' place to buy some organic vegetables. I did some work in the garden, and picked lots of blackcurrants and gooseberries which I ate straight off the bushes. Although the gooseberries are a culinary variety, once they really ripen, and are yellow, they are good enough to eat raw. They are a bit like slightly sour grapes with hairs on. I made a milk shake using redcurrants and blackcurrants, muscovado sugar and soya milk. To make this I picked about half a basin of red- and blackcurrants, washed them, put them in a blender, and then pressed the mixture through a sieve. I then added a little sugar, put the mixture back in a cleaned blender, and added a little soya milk and whizzed it for a few seconds. The result was surprisingly tasty considering that redcurrants are rather sour. And last night I had one of my home-made blackcurrant and yoghurt lollies, which was as delicious as I had expected! I am now using home-grown potatoes in our meals, which taste far better than shop-bought ones.

Last week I ordered a back copy of The Idler magazine from Foyle's online bookshop. The Idler is the magazine produced by Tom Hodgkinson twice a year. In fact it is more like a book, being the size of a paperback with over 200 pages. Being a back copy I got it cheaper than if it were new, but even so it still cost me just over £8, and this issue is from winter 2006. But it is full of articles on music, book reviews, interviews, and practical idling, and is well illustrated. I wouldn't buy it every six months but I shall buy the odd back copy now and again. This issue had a lot about the ukelele, an article on Gaia, how to sow a meadow, and how to use one's shit and piss in the garden! For more information on The Idler, click on the following link:

http://idler.co.uk/

I made a batch of ice lollies today using a recipe I got from the River Cottage programme and website. The main ingredients are blackcurrants (of which I have loads in the garden at the moment), natural yoghurt and caster sugar. I haven't tried any yet as they are still freezing, but I am sure they are delicious, if the unfrozen mixture is anything to go by. I made enough to keep me in lollies for a few days.

I also did some work in the garden, supporting some of the artichokes which are now quite tall, so need stakes to keep them upright in the event of strong winds.

An election must be in the offing. The Government has backtracked on compulsory identity cards and has decided not to privatise the Post Office - for now. These moves are welcome, but it is obvious why they have backtracked; it's not rocket science. I can't help thinking that Jack (Man O') Straw's decision not to give parole to Ronnie Biggs is also something to do with the upcoming election. He wants to be seen to be tough on criminals, so he chooses a frail old man, who is not a threat to anyone, to make an example of. Such is the cynicism of a dying New Labour government, anxious to win voters back. Well, I hope it backfires in a big way, not that I have any truck with the Tories, or the Liberal Democrats, for that matter. But New Labour has been the most authoritarian government in the UK in decades, yes, even worse that Thatcher.