Friday 22nd May 09 Transition Network Conference (day one)

Woke quite early as Lisa's family were getting ready for a normal day.

Usual breakfast, then tried to get onto the 'net to do emails, but Lisa didn't have the password for her WiFi connection so I gave up and got ready for quite a long walk. Lisa had told me which trains I could get but I decided to walk, as I like walking in London, and Lisa had printed off a map for me to follow.

So at about 9.30 I set off, crossed the railway line on a footbridge/cycle track and walked past Honor Oak, Camberwell New Cemetery. Cheltenham Road and across Peckham Rye Common. East Dulwich Road and up Dog Kennel Hill, Champion Hill, Denmark Hill and over Ruskin Park. It was very sunny and warm, I was hot with the rucsack, laptop and carrier bag. I decided that as Coldharbour Lane was pointing in the right direction to get me to Clapham Common, that I'd get a bus... and as I'd walked for 90 minutes, I was happy with the £2 bus fare to a stop within 4 minutes walk of the Battersea Arts Centre, a huge and imposing building where the Transition Conference was being held, is actually, as there is a WiFi hotspot (not that hot actually, as connection is erratic and speeds slow. But, it does work! You may be reading this on the day of the conference...)

I had pre booked and pre paid, so there was a badge waiting for me and I had an offer of my bags being put into storage, instead of lugging them around. I put my rucksack in, but kept my hand luggage and laptop with me.

The main conference hall is a lovely place, huge and beautifully lit with ever-changing LED colour spotlights. Apparently the lighting, all low energy, has been installed specially for this event. There was food available and Edward arrived and sat with me and a bunch of people from Cambridge, which is where he is originally from.

At 1pm, there were greetings and intros, which included the excellent news that Ed Miliband MP (Sec. of State for Department of Energy and Climate Change) was here in the capacity of a 'keynote listener', which raised a laugh! After this, there was an interesting 'mapping' exercise... all the tables and chairs were moved to the side, and standing up, we had to organise ourselves into 'elders' down at one end of the hall, and 'youth' at the other. I found myself in the middle, along with other not-old, not young 40-somethings. The roving Mic was used to introduce a couple of oldies, sorry, respect those elders, and some of the younger contingent. Other mapping involved looking at the size of the population of your Transition Initiative, the highest being Hong Kong with 6 million plus, and the smallest being a settlement in North Yorkshire with 400. We did geographical mapping too, which finished with a group of us from the North East and Lincolnshire, Sheffield and Gronningen in the Netherlands all getting together and doing an exercise with a sheet of paper, post-it notes and 'what went well, what is challenging and what are you looking forward to' colour coded.

When I had a look around other regions versions of this workshop, some had been much more creative with paper wind-turbines and annotated spirals and wonderful stuff. Ours was tame by comparison!

After tea and cake it was the first 'Open Space' event, and I had volunteered to do one on, guess what, home composting! I had two lovely conversations. Both very worthwhile.

I had also volunteered to help facilitate the Energy Descent Action Plan thing after tea, so I posted a quick blog, ate some lasagne (again, and not a patch on the one last night!) and just got finished before the EDAP prep meeting.

EDAP is a Transition methodology for 'doing a Transition Initiative' and it has 12 steps, which are:
Set up a steering group ans design its demise from the outset;
Awareness Raising;
Lay the foundations;
Organise a Great Unleashing (aka a launch, or if in Kirkbymoorside, a 'Springboarding';
Develop physical manifestations of the project;
Build bridges with Local Government;
Organise a Great Reskilling;
Honour the Elders;
Let it go where it wants to go;
Create an Energy Descent Plan.

These do not have to follow this order, and some may take place at the same time.

So, this evening's EDAP work was for an imaginary place 'Anytown' and was with 400 or so people and took just two hours!

Some of the things that were contained in this session:
Information from theoildrum.com such as graphs and other information;
This little film 'Peak Oil, How will you ride the slide?'



The following subject areas were used as what I know as a brainstorming as part of the 'unleashing 'stage:
Food, Transport, Health, Arts/Play/Learning, Work and Livelihood, Heart and Soul, Water, Waste as Resources (this is the one I helped facilitate), Buildings, Landuse, Local Democracy and Energy. This was really good as everyone got involved and the ideas, aimed at what we envisioned 2029 to be like, or wanted it to be like, were written on big sheets which were to form the pages of a huge book.

The physical manifestations section was presented using a film called Haringey Connections, about some of the recent activities in Tottenham, with the Wards Corner Coalition and the Living Under One Sun allotment group. Well worth a watch.

The local authority stuff was very well described by a local Camden Councillor, Alexis Rowell, who moved from being a BBC correspondent and then a businessman to having a 'green epiphany' and running for election, and becoming the Camden Eco-Councillor. He has done amazing things in Camden, and has been wholly or partly responsible for the council having a policy of installing decentralised energy in all new projects (such as 20% of the predicted energy use to be generated on site), installation of free cavity wall insulation and roof insulation for all properties, whether poor or wealthy, mandatory green roofs and grey water recycling in all new builds, free fruit trees if a sensible place is suggested in which to put them, and a real push for local food growing wherever possible. Have a shufty through the Camden Council website to see if it mentions any of these!

For the reskilling, a ball of string was used to demonstrate that there were loads of skills in the room which could be shared, that people were able to offer and teach these skills, and that there were ample takers or people who were interested in learning them. The string went from person to person, making a huge web of skills offered and wanted...

In 'Honour the Elders', a local gentleman, John Prince, born in 1928, was interviewed and told some of his life story. He was born in St Kitts / Nevis, and grew up in Antigua with his grandmother who grew all her own vegetables plus cash crops. He worked as a teacher, but since retiring has worked on his poetry.
I chatted to him afterwards and he gave me the text of the poem he read out. This was written just a couple of weeks ago.

Reminiscing on the Lea, by John Prince

I sat on the bank of the River Lea,
Pondering the global, human tragedy.
Here, once had been a paradise of earth,
Where flora and fauna balanced the beauty,
In perfect co-existence of a fragile complex ecology.
I sat on the bank of the River Lea,
Thinking of the past, remembering
When across the face of London City
We fished in rivers, which flowed freely,
Enhancing life: developing human communities.
But no more to be seen,
Progress covered the waters clean
And turned them into sewers.
No more the River Fleet;
No more the River Tyburn,
No more the River Westbourne
They are covered and forgotten;
The measure of our progress:
Exchanging rivers for sewers,
Disrupting earth's natural ecology
To inherit a toxic polluted wasteland.

Millenniums created the evolution
Of species and habitats;
But we, in centuries, created the degeneration
Of earth's harmonious ecology;
And we continue its destruction.

We need humility, a new philosophy,
To guide our co-existence on Mother-earth.
The alternative is global catastrophe;
Like the cosmos-created ice ages,
Which nearly eliminated our ancestors.

I sat on the bank of the River Lea
Thinking of the past, remembering
When across the face of London City
We fished in rivers, which flowed freely,
Enhancing life, developing human communities..


(I have reproduced this exactly as it was written on the sheets John gave me)


The big cake which had been made (I'm not sure of it's significance!) was cut up and given out and Edward and I got ready to go. A number 345 bus took us all the way to Peckham and we were soon knocking at Peckham Anna's door, whom I first met through the Carbon Rationing Action Group website and subsequently, when we were both winners of the Oxfam Carbon Footprint Competition, and we (along with Kat from Scotland) spent a day talking to MPs including Hilary Benn at DEFRA. Anna's housmate was away, which meant there was plenty of space for us both, most welcoming and comfortable. It was great to see Anna again, I love her enthusiasm for low carbon stuff.

Spent another hour and a half doing my blog!

Sunday 29th March 09

Woken ridiculously early by an enthusiastic 5 year old, who always wakes at 6am.

During the morning I did some balloon models for her and my first successful balloon flower, for Ali. Sarah was amazed at the 'dogs dinner' model, where I put a small marble-sized balloon inside a dog. I can also do this with someone's watch, and call it a 'watch dog'.....

I watched Countryfile at 11 and then we went to a garden centre to get some things for Ali's forthcoming raised bed garden project. She got various seeds, seed potatoes and bags to grow them in, seed trays with propagator lids, biodegradable pots and some peat-free general compost. She has ordered some huge pots and will find some good local topsoil. Also a compost bin, water butt and wormery. I've offered her some rich compost to mix with the soil. Nice one Ali!

Back for a late lunch and potted up some herb seeds and the potatoes. I got away at 4 to get the 4.20 tram and the 4.50 train. Chatted to a very nice chap called Alan who works at Ampleforth College, involved in Transition, and might meet him at the Kirkbymoorside 'Springboarding Day' on April 25th, their name for the 'Unleashing' that is the more usual name in Transition for the launch event. Back into York just before 6, collecting some compostables from both shops on the way home. When I'd unloaded, I cycled over to Fulford to collect our eldest who'd had a fun day all day with his friends, lots of pretending to kill people with sticks, sorry, Excalibur, and shooting people with pretend guns etc etc... and no adults trying to direct them into more wholesome activities! He'd had a lovely time, and was happy to see me, good chats on the way home and had supper and was in bed by 9pm... presumably completely worn out!

I had to amend my Community Care blog written yesterday as when Ali and I looked at it, we found that when the link to Danny's myspace page was clicked, it opened up in the same window, replacing the blog window with the poem written out. So, no easy way of reading the poem and listening to Danny reading it... I'll have to learn how to open something up in a new window...

A relaxing evening, spent on the laptop, enjoyed a chat to a new Facebook friend who writes an interesting blog http://hippiechickdiaries.com/ which I like. Like her too!

Moday 26th January 09

Another tough morning. I am not enjoying parenting one bit at the moment.

Took our youngest to school and came back to get ready for the Compost Doctors training; Catherine the York Rotters was also booked in so she picked me up and drove me to Elvington Airfield where the training was taking place.

Cath and Doug ran the training and I was slightly disappointed that the DEFRA offer is for 'third sector' organisations which promote composting, not individuals who might be wanting to be consultants. So if I am to be a 'Compost Doctor', I'll have to do it through York Rotters. Now York Rotters is a 'Master Composter' scheme... it trains up volunteers to promote home composting, not businesses' organics composting or 'commercial' composting. The Compost Doctors scheme is aimed squarely at businesses... schools, prisons, greengrocers with a garden behind the shop, a cafe within a park... basically any catering establishment with grounds in which to compost their catering waste and, importantly, grounds which can use the resultant soil-improver. However, I enjoyed the training and participated in my usual enthusiastic way, and the issue of working through York Rotters needn't be a barrier to my doing this consultancy work. It might be good for York Rotters, providing some good publicity and and some income.

The food was good, and I enjoyed meeting the other potential Compost Doctors, including Chris from Leeds BTCV who goes into schools and teaches about 'education for sustainable development', something I'm keen on. Hope to meet him again. The training finished just after 4.30 and Catherine and I came back into York. She too thinks that if I do the Compost Doctor stuff, she will not need to do much admin, so I won't be using up her core York Rotters time. So a decision is needed soon as I have just 8 weeks to do the work!

Things were calm at home... as calm as waiting for a volcano to explode. But we all had a civil teatime, not much talking and no arguments or the like. Gill manages to just keep going and kind of 'surf' over the difficulties, but I am feeling depressed.

However, I cheered up when I got a phone call from Kirbymoorside in Transition, who are launching their Transition initiative in April, and after seeing my spread in The Ecologist, have been asked to speak at the launch. How nice! I also got a Fiddlesticks booking for an event in Hull.

Monday 23rd June 08

A relatively easy day! Spent the morning doing paperwork... writing letters and sending cheques to people, also sent a huge bag of dried fruit to my Sis who's requested some as healthy snack material, as have two of her workmates. I sent it first class, signed for, which cost £9, but I want it to get to her quickly as it's been a while since she asked me to send some, and signed for so so it actually gets to her! The signed for was only an extra 70p, and wasn't available with the second class postage price...

I got a letter with the dividend in for shopping with the Co-op, as I'm a member, so earned £16 for banking, using their insurance and going to their shop for fair trade tea, cereals, hommous and Lambrini!

Cannot remember where the afternoon went but at 3pm I went to get the little darlings, and soon after we got home, I played with the lego with them in the garden, under an apple tree, on a play-sheet thing Gill got to prevent little plastic bits going into the grass. I made a wheeled buggy with wings and a horse's head, helped by my lego-mad 10 year old. Gill made tea and I had this whilst downloading emails and getting ready for this evening's meeting, which is on York becoming a 'Transition Town', which I support wholeheartedly. The meeting was at St Nicks and was well attended and fruitful.

I collected a load of blown-down branches on the way home at 9.15, and went down Windmill Lane to pick up more before I came in just after 10. I will spend some time later this week shredding the twiggy bits and breaking up or cutting up the thick bits for drying for the woodpiles....

An early night.