These Footprints Are Not Made Of Carbon

A year ago or thereabouts, the fashion nation was gripped by Not A Plastic Bag fever. People queued out of shops in the middle of the night for it, and very many exchanged hands on eBay in excess of £ 250, especially in late February, when they still had not hit Sainsbury's nor We Are What We Do. I found the craze entertaining to watch and read about, mainly because I recall the day I was first made aware of the bag itself, pictured in British Vogue at the beginning of the year as it was waxing lyrical about Anya Hindmarch. I thought in passing that it looked nice and that I would maybe get one eventually. There was no eventually about it. If you were seeking a Not A Plastic Bag, you were in for the very long slogging haul of hunting for an FBI most wanted.

Considering my carefree attitude to it all, you may be surprised to hear that I ended up with four, one brown (UK version) and three blue ones (USA version). I kept the brown one, where I currently stash my yarn, and scattered the others on eBay and to my mum. Recently, I noticed that I have pretty much phased out plastic bags, not because I carry one of Anya's green props, but because I make the effort to get the reusable bags out of the car and into the supermarket every time I go. Still, I am 20 years later than my dad, who phased out plastic bags in the eighties, when footprints were something you would leave with your feet and were certainly not made of carbon. Which got me thinking about the phenomenon at large. When I started work at the office after the uni, in 2001, carbon footprint was an unknown, unheard of concept. Global warming had only just started to rear its head in slightly more high-brow magazine, but it certainly wasn't poised like venom on everyone's lips as it is today. I recall old episodes of Ab Fab, with Edina being so deliciously politically in-correct and so deliciously right on every account while extholling the virtues of doing whatever one wants to do. She used to buy cheap Eastern European junk for her shop for little more than peanuts and got the little old woman still attached to it! It was ok to live dangerously at the time; it was ok to leave your computer on standby at night without a vatful of be-spectacled fascists vomiting a pie-chart at you and ranting that you will save yourself enough for half a Starbucks if only you shut down your computer every day of the year. Oh and the planet will also be grateful.

Yes, of course, the planet. I wonder about it sometimes and wonder what it thinks. If I were the planet I would pick up stones and throw them at office buildings, but I would not get upset at the pensioners that decide not to recycle the five tins of cat food they use every week. If I were the planet I would not resent the number of local papers thrown in the general rubbish, but I would probably go ape over the millions and millions and millions of papers that end up in an in-tray that nobody bothers to recycle anyway. The naivety of the We Are What We Do movement is perfectly spectacular and totally irritating. While in principle it is true that very many people doing small actions originate big changes, let me make an example of what really does happen all over the place where these very many people work for example, just to put my own efforts in context. I was training at a very large centre recently with free access to half-liter water bottles. Every table in the room consumed on average 30 bottles a day. Every room on the course consumed on average 180 bottles a day. The entire course consumed on average 1080 bottles a day. They all went into the rubbish. In the regular, bad-for-you, black rubbish bags that exist pretty much the world over. So I ask you, what difference do my very own 3 plastic bottles a week when there is one of many other places in the world that throws out 1080 plastic bottles, and that is for one session of one course over one day only? My mum and dad claim that mine are going to be three plastic bottles less that are clogging up the planet. But does all of this stuff even get recycled properly? And most importantly, has it ever occurred to anyone that rearing a calf for six months uses more energy than my boiling kettle will over a course of ten years?

I come from a family of serial recyclers and I also happen to be a vegetarian. But even I am now getting fed up with the Carbon Footprint Police; it was great to do something good when nobody noticed, now it has become so fashionable that it is irritating. Now it is so cool to recycle that I am almost put off by it. I want to collect plastic bags and be seen everywhere going crinkle crinkle crinkle with lots of bags dangling off my arms. Meanwhile, somewhere in the world and probably not very far from my own house, from this desk, from this very computer, batteries, lightbulbs, cables, mobiles, monitors, plugs are thrown out one hundred a second, maybe much more than that. One only has to reflect upon how much energy is used during a big-scales Hollywood production to be put off recycling for years. One only has to visit India to realise that there is no point in recycling at all. Yet, I personally cannot even take the lift anymore without some over-zealous message stapled by the side of it claiming that my 15 seconds journey up four floors uses enough energy to power the whole of Birmingham. Think before you ride. Wait a minute, I thought I was getting the lift, not a rocket? The office is full of recycling containers; for paper, for foam cups, for plastic bottles. Interestingly though, there is no container for paper cups, yet we have a Starbucks in loco which, yes, you've guessed it, pours drinks in paper cups. There are about one thousand people on my floor only; most people have Starbucks coffee multiple times a day. I have on average forty Starbucks a month and that's I alone. You do the un-recycled maths.

Last year, when I returned to the office after the Christmas break, I found a calendar on each desk. You know the sort, square, propped on a clear, plastic CD case. These were We Are What We Do calendars. Come June, fifty-six of these were piled high in my proximity, their indestructible cases gleaming under the ever-present overhead lights. I emailed We Are What We Do reproaching them for producing desk calendars that come in clear plastic cases, notoriously difficult to get rid of and recycle, and also reproaching them for giving them away on their website on a one-and-one free basis come March. I also offered to collect as many as I could, working my way throughout all floors and dispose of them sensibly, if only they could indicate where CD cases are recycled. They never replied.

Spring Is Coming Part III

This time it's for keeps.

Today Is Another Day

Who would have thought I would have been on such a high considering I closed down April feeling slightly down and indeed going slightly downhill? I am thrilled that an agent has requested my book proposal today and totally thrilled by The Diary of A Provincial Lady which I found in a limited edition Cath Kidston cover. Virago has re-issued some of its modern classics dressed up in fabulous hardback covers. Catch them while you can at Waterstone's.

Assessing April

In my eyes, April is always a hybrid and certainly more so this year as it lacked Easter. What does April have going for itself if not Easter? No day within it marks the astronomical beginning of spring; there are no bank holidays; it is bang in the middle of the non-sale season, three months after the winter sale and three months ahead of the summer sale; daffs have whithered into papery yellowness; the trees are undecided and the weather is neither good nor bad. Perhaps this last point is what has most characterised this April for me; it was foul most of the time, with only a few sparks of light and tentative springy-ness around about now. So very different from April last year, when I had started dabbing in sunny fields and I couldn't yet tack up a horse.

On the plus side, I strung in a lot of riding, despite the lashings and lashings of rain, and I started blitzing agents for my upcoming book. Well, actually, I blitzed one agent only, but I had a constructive exchange with her which has strenghtened my proposal as well as my resolve. Now I just need to find an agent that will, not only really like my topic, but also be prepared to fight for it. I cannot say to be thrilled that she decided not to be this agent, for I deeply wanted her to be The One, but I am afraid that in publishing, and in life in general, wanting in isolation isn't good enough. I cannot say that returning to my proposal is easy after this rejection, but I realise that this is the time when I must stay focused, for obstacles are those things we see when we take our eyes off our target. It would be even too easy to re-open my neat .pdf, dissect it until it is torn into shredded words and put it back together in a completely different fashion. I am all for helping oneself, you see, but I do think that cosmetic overhauls do not benefit those who do not need them. I could inject further novelty value into the proposal, I could facelift it to high Heaven until I do not recognise it any longer, yet I do not want a stilted plastic doll in place of writing that smiles, frowns, laughs and sighs at every sentence. Tonight I will return to my list, assess the non-fiction agents that already caught my eye and see who to tackle next with the proposal as-is.

Still, progress has been made on multiple levels in April, whether I like April or not. I am ready to go on my riding course next week, I have attended my first knitting workshop, which was helpful and great fun from start to finish and I have a really good proposal to send to more agents starting now. Oh and I also have a lovely hank of pure silk yarn to start a waterfall scarf with. Who says that you cannot do something of value in lousy April? I am hopeful, albeit through the sting of rejection, and ever so positive. Let's see what May brings.

Horsey Day Spa

Despite the lashing rain, I managed to treat the boy to a full-on service. Now I need to buy him some mane extentions...

The Socks Have It

They all say that there is something addictive about knitting socks. Personally, I find that there is something addictive about knitting and crocheting and needles, about markers, hooks and yarns in general. As I reported below, I am far from an accomplished knitter. Or crocheter. But wherever I am at in this knitting journey, I owe it to one place that has been instrumental in my wish to get into knitting seriously, not just as a mere passer-by observing others having fun, but as a hands-on knitter. Fibre and Clay is the place responsible for this fever, one that has progressively escalated since the first time I had a look through its windows and had a peek at a world that was only a couple of hooks and needles away. It was July 2006. Even though I attended the knit gatherings on and off in that autumn, it was not until this year that I got knee-deep into knitting. I am now a Ravelrer, I have visited knit stores all the way to New York, and in fact I returned from it with an amazing stash.

Today saw my first formal knitting workshop and it was about knitting socks. Yes, they are fiddly, yes, you may be asking yourself why on earth knitting socks when you could be doing something else. I don’t ask myself that; usually, I ask myself why on earth am I filling in this spreadsheet with info that means nothing to me, instead of being at home knitting socks? But then maybe that’s just me, someone trapped in an alien world made up of batch runs, migration of data, interfaces, code drops and test environments, when my heart and my mind are consistently elsewhere. It was hard to concentrate this morning because the first air of spring wafted in through the open window after a looooong winter and because I pondered on how wonderful it would be to be doing this all the time, to have the luxury of getting up in the morning without the tyrannical schedule of a grey, soulless office inhabited by people who could not be more different from me if they tried, to go to this lovely place and knit in the company of women who are very interesting and very talented as well.

Helen run the workshop and I cannot wait to take more of her classes. I now do not feel so hopelessly finger-less when holding the tiny needles and once I’m finished here, I will go back to my lovely Regia hot pink yarn and start following a pattern. I will also try to knit in the round with circular needles and see whether that is any easier than holding three, four or even five double-pointed ones. Practice makes perfect... not that I expected perfect socks tonight but I do expect lots of practice.



The lovely Fibre and Clay.



Helen at the workshop.



My sock yarn.

For more about Helen and her work click here.

Literary Superstar

I discovered Jacqueline Wilson a few years back, on a lunchbreak spent trailing Waterstone’s at the corner of Fleet Street near Blackfriars Bridge. Secrets had just come out and because you can judge a book by its cover, I decided to buy it. I was so taken, I used to sneak it under my desk so that I could read a bit further , sheltered by the open laptop and the knowledge that my manager had popped out for coffee. It is a known fact that children’s authors are particularly good in the UK, and that Jacqueline was Children’s Laureate in 2005-2007. But even among a flurry of talented authors, she remains head and shoulders above the rest. She is real, un-sentimental, comical and dramatic; her stories aren’t tear-jerkers, nor are they pointless fantasy romps with Tolkien-esque pretensions (and just as deadly tedious). She is more engaging than Lewis Carrol, her world more fascinating than over-rated Narnia, her characters so memorable I remember all of them and I never ever re-read books. I am particularly fond of Vicky Angel, an exceptional exploration of bereavement, The Illustrated Mum, a fabulous analysis of mother-daughter love, and Girls Under Pressure, a sensitive, comical analysis of thin and fat issues. My Sister Jodie which I have just finished reading and is currently still sitting on my bedside table, is another gem.

‘The teachers stood in a sober line, gripping their hymn books. Jed was there too, in an old donkey jacket because it was clearly the only dark garment he possessed. His head was bowed. He looked white and watery-eyed. He could have been grief-stricken, but then again he might simply be suffering from a hangover.’

Leaving New York Never Easy

A whole chapter of my PhD is dedicated to movies. Horror movies and super-hero movies to be precise, but movies nonetheless even though to some both of these are the epitome of dumbing down. They are not; they are socially extremely powerful. Still, a part of me wishes I could drop in references to old movies (say, Casablanca) because that is what is regarded as the intelligent thing to do, isn't it? Yet, there is one movie above all others that I could never tire of watching or playing in the background as I iron or tidy up; You’ve Got Mail. Mail is hardly Tom’s most sparkling one, yet it is clearly symptomatic of why he makes so much money and nobody minds one bit about it. Mail captivates me every time as if it were the first. Even now, its catchy soundtrack distracts me and I find my gaze wandering from this to the small window in the top corner where Meg Ryan too is sitting on a bed with her Mac on her lap and her charming online companion offers her advice from cyberspace. What I love the most is that it is set in New York, a New York very different from the one of Wall Street or American Psycho or any Woody Allen offering. No matter how many times I visit, I go on a Mail pilgrimage, hopping from Riverside Park to the endearing townhouses overlooking it, from Zabar’s to H&H Bagels, from little upper west side cafes to the ever-classic Starbucks.

When I watch Mail, I feel like I am taking a bed tour of my favourite places, like the movie was shot in my back streets. And even though I may not live in New York, it is fair to say that I have enough of an emotional attachment to it, and this movie, to call it a second home. I got married there and I met my husband online in the days when Mail was new and online dating did not exist. I hang onto a very romanticised view of New York where my life is perfect, where I haven't got a care in the world, where all I need worrying about is hopping from cab to cab and from museum to shop. I suppose that's also one of the reasons why leaving New York is never easy. Much as many people claim that we need, even crave, the regular domestic space, the regular work routine and so on, I know that, at least for me, it ain't true. I would quite happily swap my intellectually challenging working life for one of leisure. And anyway, who says that working inside the house is less challenging than working outside of it? I'd sure love to try.

Summer Beckons

This morning the sky grew darker and darker until it eventually released so much rain you’d think it hadn’t rained for years. Victoria was startled by the thunders while William ensured he was out of sight as I approached the patio doors for a couple of pics. He probably feared I would send him outside for a toilet break... As is often the case at this time of year, the day later turned into something quite different, with clouds scuttling across the sky and quite a potent sunshine. It coincided with the arrival of my food order from Northern Harvest. I know I shouldn’t insist so, for it is not July yet, but I am so enamoured with tomatoes that I try and eat them all year round, even when Summer seems far, far away still.



As it happens, these are absolutely wonderful and flavoursome. Just the sight of them, still attached to the vine, with a whiff of fruit, grass and soil sent me back to the vegetable patch that my dad was maintaining when I was a child. I used to walk around the tall plants without a care in the world, snapping peas, pulling tomatoes and eating straight from the trees. I would often spot dad, the epytome of tidiness and precision as far as I am concerned, walking around the paths, picking pea shells I had dropped behind like a Greatel sans the gingerbread or the evil old woman. I suppose I already knew then I was born to be a vegetarian. With the tomatoes, I pulled up a large bunch of asparagus; they made me squeal like caviar would a Fortnum and Mason foodie. I like mine steamed, plunged in the very classic boiled egg sprinkled with white pepper. In fact, I may as well forfeit dinner out tonight and get steaming.

Hopeful Reflections

Last August my dad cut the pear tree right down, so that my garden won’t be infested with dead pears come October and my dogs wouldn’t feast on them day and night. It may seem silly, but the tree really did need a rest; it was producing a ton of conference pears, all of abysmal quality, small, hard and very often mouldy before they got ripe. After many twiglet months, life has returned to the branches and today I noticed tufts of frilly white flowers high up to the sky. It made me smile and I had to take a picture of it, especially after the right downer of a day I had at work. I was stuck in a meeting with one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met in my life. It is indeed true that consultants are usually a bunch of asses that fly very high with the unclippable wings of self-importance, but this one beats even the most blown-up kytes I’ve encountered so far. He told a colleague to shut up; another immediately left the room in outrage. I wavered and pondered, firmly in my seat, having an out of body experience, observing my life from the top of the room, wondering why and how I ended up sharing my days with people who can be so disrespectufl towards some whom they barely know. It is not the working life I had dreamt of and certainly not the working life that my studies had even remotely hinted at. I have a degree in wonderful English literature and I am completing a PhD in cultural studies. What am I doing in a heartless, soulless technical job? Yet, I smell the so-called winds of change. I have seen the tree, fatigued and bent over by the great strain. I have seen it naked and broken, contemplating the thundering clouds and the quieter days. Something is happening in my life right now and I am clutching small flowers and curly petals.