Thursday 9th August 07

A fairly relaxing day, although did bomb into town to sort out my youngest child's present, it's his birthday tomorrow.

Several years ago we got a second hand OO guage train set on the LETSystem and we decided that he's now old enough to use it and enjoy it, so we tried it out yesterday night and found that the engine didn't work very well, so went to the Monk Bar Model Shop where they repair model engines, so left it with them and bought a small engine so he has motive power tomorrow, not just trucks and track!

So not much to report, until the evening when I researched 'ethical death' and 'green funerals' and found a reference to 'promession' in one of Justin Rowlatt's blogs so Googled it and found out lots!

Basically promession is a kind of composting of dead bodies invented by Susanne Wiigh Masak, a Swedish biologist who's into composting and recycling in a big way. The corpse is frozen with liquid nitrogen, broken up into tiny pieces by a vibrating belt or table and the water extracted in a vaccuum chamber, freeze drying. Any metals are removed (fillings, hip replacements) and the dry dust is then placed in the top layers of soil, where oxygen and soil organisms can get to it, and within a year it has gone, 'back to nature'! I like the sound of this, apart from the liquid nitrogen and freeze-drying, as this is probably quite energy intensive. I found out that Crewe and Nantwich local authority is offering the method, and there's lots of interest in the UK, and laws don't have to be changed to do this. I'm waiting for various email replies to take my interest further.

So because of this, didn't get my column written, nor my blog, but hey, it was an interesting hour or so!