Rose Coloured World

Sorry June 26, 2011

I hate doing pictureless posts and will update soon – sometimes life seems very hectic even for an unemployed hermit!

Main headline – we have water!  As of Thursday I could brush my teeth with the tap running if I should be so devil-may-care! A bit like when pain stops, the joy of the mundane is unconfined and simple tasks like turning the washing machine on become occasions worthy of champagne.

However – just so that the Lord High Universal Lord Over  All Foolish Ego’s is not forgotten, the Rayburn has had a melt down so whilst we await a call from our engineer Hughey Lewis (I know!!!!), cold food is the order of the day!  Luckily he/she also provided a heat wave so salad will do.

Once I do get around to picture taking, I will show you my lovely gift from Hazel over at Knityoga and take you through the highs (few) and lows (many), of my first attempt at an art quilt.  I am one of the few who have completed The Artist’s Way, and thoroughly recommend it to all budding artits with demons to wrestle, but I remain, nevertheless, a person who finds it hard to quiet the intellect, and listen to  intuition and imagination.  I overthink and thereby sit sometimes like a rabbit in a beam of light.  Nevertheless – I have also learned to carry on regardless and, soon, all will be revealed!

The boy has finished Uni – 2:1 – Well Done Son!  He is at Glastonbury – his pet, Roger Moore, is here.  Roger Moore is a Bearded Dragon.

Actually, stealing from his Facebook photos  - here is a picture

He eats live crickets.  For a vegetarian (moral reasons) with an insect phobia, I have shifted the perimeter of my comfort zone this week! He is quite fascinating, but not as strokeable as Biddy! Once the boy is home (for a while) I will feel otherwise challenged as we return to the random sock placement, and empty fridge, that living with a young man entails!

Dry June 10, 2011

Our spring is still dry and if one more so-called weather forecaster speaks of another lovely sunny day, I will have to eat a whole packet of Bourbons and thus compound my sorrow as I don’t even like them.

This is serious now.  Brilliant as we are at water conservation, and prepared as we now are with four rain tubs, which are all full, the tank that the spring feeds is way, way down.  The WFV brings two 5lt bottles home, refilled at  work each day.  Yesterday, I bought two 9 gallon containers and the neighbour with a new bore hole, (hmmmm…….. I wonder……….) has said we can fill them whenever.  I filled them yesterday and nearly gave myself a hernia getting them into the car.  I told myself that the first time would be the worst and that my muscles will build from this point onwards, but goodness me they were heavy.  We are tipping them into the garden tank.  18 gallons/approx 70 litres, each day is more than we use at present, when we flush the loo with buckets from the raintubs, the WFV showers at work, I limit my showering to twice a week and use a bucket of heated rain water on the other days.  We are using about 11lts per day each. Apparently the average person uses 160 litres every day.  No wonder there is a world water crisis.

Using only 11lts per day is depressing though.  Nothing feels as wonderful as a long hot bath, but as our bathroom has been out of service for at least two years, the water shortage can’t be  blamed.  We reached deadlock in our renovations when we couldn’t work out how to fix plasterboard to a very, very uneven (horizontally and vertically), wall.  We ponder.

 A daily shower seems like a 21C necessity, but like all our 21C necessities it is, in fact, a luxury.  A dilettante Westerner like me can say – everybody needs a little luxury don’t they – knowing that the majority of the world knows no such ease, but Oh! how I long to stand under a hotter-than-it-should-be stream of water, then paint my toenails and slaver myself in body lotion, to hang about in my cleaner than clean shower room, dawdling – because I can.  I say cleaner than clean, because, of course, the housework is on short rations too.  I have started using various ‘wipes’ which totally go against my eco-philosophy.  Gawd, it’s depressing.

I investigated getting 600 gallons of water delivered to fill the tank right up and thus dwell in a fool’s paradise, (but a sociable one – who can invite visitors to a fill-your-own-bucket house?) for a while.  £600 for 600 gallons.  Everyone says that petrol costs are extortionate!!

A bore hole of our own (and goodness knows whose supply we would then disrupt), would cost £7000 minimum. Don’t have it.  Gawd it’s even more depressing.

Our whole county is threatened at the moment by the prospect of being covered in wind-turbines.  The Welsh Assembly came up with flawed legislation over 10 years ago that mean that the beautiful hills of Mid Wales are fair game to any speculator who wants to cash in on the myth of on-shore wind as the only way forward for renewables in the UK.  I say the myth because the drawbacks to on-shore wind are manifold, not least being the best kept secret, (especially from those who, as I once did, see the turbines as having a certain elegance about them) of such factories – that they require miles of pylons and acres of substations to transport the energy in proportionately decreasing amounts, along miles and miles of cable, from the dark-at-night and uncommercialised greenery of Wales to the 24/7 urban world where overheated stores keep their doors open all winter on lit streets. Gawd, it’s depressing.

I want to make my own green energy, and with the wind we have, I could make some for you too.  Sadly I haven’t got £20,000.  Shame the government won’t subsidise individuals.  It prefers to fund foreign corporations. Gawd, it’s depressing.