Sometimes I feel like such a dad...

... I seem to spend my whole life walking around switching lights off and grumbling!

Can we flunk it? Yes we can!

No, not Obama this time, but Bob the Builder. I took my 2.75 yr old to the live show in Newcastle on Saturday (not my idea, honest, no really). The show was pretty well put on (although the young Muck fans behind me were to be disappointed), but it featured such a heavy-handed green theme it made me cringe. Bob and his team were set the task of building an eco-centre, featuring wind turbines, recycling facilities and the slogan "it's only rubbish if you can't recycle it!" repeated ad-nauseum. Pity they couldn't have provided any recycling bins in the auditorium - and don't get me started on the decidedly unrecyclable tat they were selling in bucket loads to the pre-schoolers as merchandise. Just a little more thought would have made it appear a lot less cynical. The Millennium Dome got slaughtered for this kind of not practising what they preach gaffe, you'd think people would learn...

Today (Sunday) we went for a greener trip - the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust at Washington. Unfortunately we got off to a bad start getting lost due to a road closure and some terrible signposting and, with the moans of hungry people in the car ringing in my ears, we ended up pulling into a garden centre with a coffee shop. We opened the door to my personal room 101 - a seemingly infinite array of gaudy Christmas tat extending as far as the eye could see, with Do They Know It's Christmas blaring over the top - Nooooooooooooooooaaaaaah!!!! Make it stooooop!

Anyway we got to the WWT with time to go around the inner walk - little Jimmy getting breast fed as we went (it really is a very mild autumn, denialists, isn't it?). Great place with loads of interesting birds and hides and some good interpretation panels (I'm a sucker for a good fact). Best one this time - 40% of all species which live on dead wood are under threat of extinction. This made me a bit smug as all the round wood that we can't burn at home I lay between the base of one of our hedges and an old stone retaining wall as a wilderness pile. I originally thought of this to provide somewhere for beasties to hibernate, but I didn't realise I was providing a habitat too. A great day out - despite Harry falling out with a goose - and a lot cheaper than BtB - we will definitely be back for a full day visit.

Mr James William Kane...

...aka Jimmy was born on Thursday at 8:30pm weighing in at 8lb 10oz. He's great, his Mum's recovering well and his brother keeps wanting to buy him presents, so I'm a very lucky man.

So posts here will continue to be a bit erratic for a bit. But eco-living wise, we're mega-recycling stuff from boy#1 most of which has been used by another kid or kids in the meantime. He has inherited his big bro's reusable nappies although we are using some disposables overnight as they do let the lil'un sleep better.

Harvest...

It's that time of year to collect and eat the allotment bounty. Problems include:

1. Some things are too big and heavy for some of our workers (see above).

2. What do you do with all this food arriving at once?

Well 1. will sort itself out in time and 2. - well it's the chutney season (below). Plums, tomatoes, onions and apples from the allotment, plus some vinegar, sugar and sultanas from the shop*. Shame is you have to leave it for 3 months before trying... The marrow has gone into a lovely marrow, pea and mint soup.



* I should be honest here! Some of the onions and tomatoes were shop bought - the former to get the quantities right, the latter because the home grown toms were too tasty to put into the chutney so we swapped them.

What's the most ecologically daft thing you have ever done?

On our last night in Bruges, I found myself using a hair dryer to dry a teddy. 1.2 kW of energy pointed at a toy. Probably the nadir of my attempts at eco-living.

My excuse is: we had 10 hours of travelling with small child the next day and he decided to chuck teddy in the bath. The thought of risking a sleepness night for all of us if teddy wasn't safely in bed with the boy was too terrifying to contemplate. Didn't stop me feeling pretty stupid all said and done.

So what have you done recently that's made you stop and think "What the hell am I doing?".

Hand me downs...

Any parent will tell you that children grow up very quickly and are hard to keep in clothes.

Very little of what our boy Harry wears is brand new, most of it has been handed down from two sets of neighbours with older kids (and better fashion sense) than us. It's funny when we meet in the park and they recognise everything he's wearing. When Harry grows out of it, it gets handed down to a friend's younger kid and some of that clobber has come back again to be passed on to a little'un who arrived just three weeks ago - that's four owners at least.

Nobody sees this as unusual, or particularly green, just good common sense. Who says we are addicted to buying new stuff and throwing it away when it's not wanted?