A litter picker's tale

One of  my big hates is litter. Some years ago I joined a local environment group and have volunteered to pick up the litter in three streets. Every time I go out I think about how I am feeling and wish I could record it for a blog but it is not easy to capture the mood and that bit of sweet wrapper at the same time.

I was interested to read a blog which recorded people's feelings on picking up litter http://litterwithastorytotell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/earth-day-how-i-feel-when-i-pick-up.html and I can relate to all of them. But I find it is much more complex than that.

Let me tell you about my patch - it is three streets of  terraced housing that includes a Chinese Takeaway, a paper shop and a circular seated area and small "flower" bed. Pictured is a typical Saturday night/Sunday morning scene.


And what I find so difficult is that  every piece of litter that I see dropped has behind it a person with so little interest in the world around them and so little insight into the effect of their actions that when I look at it it seems to throb with indignation. And then there is the wry knowledge that the tomato sauce sachet won't be alone - it will be followed by its mates - the cup, its lid and the straw, and then the napkin, the foam box and some of the uneatable contents - we have other takeaways within walking distance and one major offender a short drive away. Plastic spoons are the worst - when they have been walked on repeatedly and splintered into tiny intrusive shards.

It is interesting to observe the psychology of all this on others when I am out litter picking. I am always pleased when people speak to me - especially as they have to make an effort to engage me as I am usually focusing on getting that picker to clasp a cigarette end [don't get me started] or something that needs head down and concentration. Apart from the cheery quip "Doing community service then?" I have noticed though that less people want to have eye contact with me than if I was just walking along. Do people just see a little eccentric old lady and nothing else? Is it a collective guilt? A few do speak admittedly but those with children most don't use the opportunity to tell them - and they are clearly interested - why someone is picking up litter in their street and there is a distinct scurrying. I find it hard to be assertive because it feels accusative. One lovely resident brought out tea and scones though for a group effort around this bench and its flower bed and that was a great feeling.

I get a sense of satisfaction out of recycling. I always collect recyclables separately while I litter  pick and make sure that those drink cans [funny how you get a sixth sense about them being full still] and glass bottles and plastics get to my recycling bin. That alone makes me feel that it is all worthwhile and apart from bad days like the takeaway above the litter is - I think - reduced. In the mean time we work on other strategies to stop it being dropped in the first place.

Goodbye to all that

There is a reason for the dearth of posts and absence from blogging land and it is a four letter word that I may well have given up for good! WORK!

Farewell to my workplace - time to move on!

The focus of my blogs for the next few months will be about making adjustments to a new way of life following a long period of change and then three months learning a new job and heavy commuting. The fateful day of the big decision has come and gone and now here I am keen to enter a new phase in my life.

So will I be able to focus on all the things I have imagined for so many years that I would do as I entered by later years free from the 9-5 drudgery? Will I finally be able to use all the arts and crafts materials taking up a whole cupboard, all the fabric scraps lining my wardrobe waiting for textile projects, read all the books - the big hardbacks no good for the train - that I have collected together over 40 years? Do some serious baking again?

Every time I go for a walk I want to find out more about what I can see about me. Fungi and lichens fascinate me and the fabulous patterns in plants and I love to photograph them.

Common Puffball

I want to sing more than one evening a week and have the time to practice. I want to give more time to my local environment group and perhaps inspire people to bin their litter if nothing else. I want to get more into "guerilla gardening" too.

Then there is family and friends - quality time with family and friends - a grand tour perhaps. We'll see...so this is the plan and I will be watching this space to see how I have been getting on!

Wish me luck...

There are bag pipes

Having been in that barren blog free land since September I have, today, decided to take up my ..keyboard. Two prompts - a comment on my last blog jogged me and an hour later I found in the pocket of my trousers a piece of paper with eight words on it - Bag pipes. There are some pipers in kilts.

handwritten note

This note goes some way to explaining the sudden drop off in my blogs after 16 months. The note was passed to my Mother in law who was sitting by her bed on a rehab ward in hospital after a fall that fractured her hip and arm. She fell not long after my own Mother had had a nasty bout of pneumonia.

It was not the mobility problems that ensued after the fall, or the problems with dressing or even the delicate dressing and bathroom arrangements that caused the most anguish....it was her hearing. Before the fall she had been very deaf and stubbornly refusing to have any investigations with a view to seeing if there was anything that could be done. This meant that specialist services for deaf people were also not part of the picture too. She had once been told as a girl not to let anyone touch her ear ...yah ..yah and she just turned up the TV a bit louder very week.

But after the fall she went completely deaf. Not even yelling one inch from her ear would get through.  We have resorted to writing everything down. The bonus is that we all know what has been said and she can keep messages with times and dates on them. This message was to tell her that just outside her door two men in full Scottish dress were playing bagpipes - and was it loud. [actually it was excruciating..an acquired taste are bag pipes!] She had no idea. It was then we realised the extent of the problem and when we moved into full message mode. She is just about to start on an investigation 2013 style so let us hope she can get some of it back as she is getting mighty  weary of subtitled TV..even if the neighbours are having a quieter time!

What shall I wear?

As a woman who has reached her late 50s I have lived through - and worn - miniscule mini skirts, crushed velvet hotpants [purple if you must know!], hippie peasant skirts and hair, loons [remember slitting open the bottom foot of a pair of trousers and inserting flowered fabric?], the 80's big shoulders and big hair [I had an afro perm along with everyone else], the 90's gauchos,  leggings, dungarees and all in one pant suits...well you name it we have tried it.

1970s fashion

The topic of how women present themselves to the world has always interested me and it is clearly a pre occupation of Vanessa Feltz. She has written an article called "Over fifty and not in the shade" today in a national newspaper. She coins the phrase "swoftie" for woman over 50 [the s was for single but she extends this to all women with "a twinkle in her eye and scarlet toenails peaking out of vertiginous stilettoes". 

She describes the concept of "mutton dressed as lamb" as a stultifying notion. She says "Lambs are frisky and furry and up to gambolling mischief. Of course we want to dress like them. Who doesn’t when you can enjoy fashion, flaunt your wiggly bits, experiment with new necklines, new career challenges and new adventures?"

The problem for me is  I no longer feel an irrepressible urge to climb a tree or skip down the road like I did when I was five. Yes to new adventures but not to wearing the fashions of a young girl. I have embraced my grey hair. I have resisted the bare mid riff look so popular even in winter not long ago . I have turned down the idea of wearing a tiny ra ra skirt. I feel uncomfortable wearing clothes that make me feel like a little girl. I think even as a young girl I felt uncomfortable in them. I want to match - I don't want to be viewed from the back as a 15 year old and turn round to reveal someone 40 years older. Is that empowering? Why can't each period in our lives be lived assertively and with dignity?

Note to fashion designers. There is a gap in the market all the same. How often do I meet women unable to find clothes they can feel comfortable and confident in that don't make them feel like a little girl or their mother?

The power of a baby

I really hope that an approach that was taken last month on the first anniversary of some heart breaking, gut wrenching street riots in the UK works. In London an area particularly affected by the riots and now full of dull shuttered shops has tried something new. Apart from creating a focal point with giant outdoor TV screens the innovative idea involves babies.

The idea is that the faces of babies might stop hooligans from acts of aggression. Professional artists were brought in to paint massive baby faces - inspired by photos of the real faces of local babies.

anti vandal baby images

So far so good...be good to see if it works.

It is always interesting to see how environmental tinkering can affect behaviour. I like the idea of prison cells painted a calming, warm pink, or classical music to work on mood.

Surely better than that red rag that is a sign. How many of these have you seen?

Unexpected places

Last weekend I spent in Norwich, East Anglia and I didn't realise how my interest in the oddities of my surroundings had crept up on me. Instead of the usual snapshots of the castle - which we went to and enjoyed in the shade too on this 30 degrees day...instead of the views of this lovely market town...what did I take pictures of?

tree art

These trees are wrapped in paper depicting different aspects of the Olympics. It sparked a long debate on "What is art?" as we walked along! I worried about the trees being damaged.

We went to the castle and museum. Want to see the lovely tapestries...? Ha..no here are the sinks in the ladies wash rooms:

poetic sink

The wording on the sink was "It is always pleasant to sail with a light breeze in these narrow waterways where you must handle your boat as if it were a thing of silk and threads". Peter Henry Emerson. Loved it but not quite sure it was appropriate ...still more so than these shoes.

shoe pictures in sink

graffiti wall

Later we went for a walkabout - listened to buskers, sat in the park but then I noticed this which brought a smile to my lips.

If I had had my camera with me in the evening there would have been Banksy style pictures too but I will have to go back for those.

What I like is the unexpectedness of things. Just when you think you know what to expect something comes along and pulls you up short. Great eh?!

101 Things To Do before I die

Staying at a cottage on holiday recently I picked up a paperback called 101 Things To Do Before You Die by Richard Horne. Clearly I am the wrong demographic. This book is for 17 year old lads. It has 99 totally self centred target activities and perhaps two altruistic ones. You know the kind of thing ...bungee jumping, get a tattoo, get arrested, master poker and win big in casino. Want to know about the exception? Save someone's life...
Not saying that a bit of adventure isn't called for...had always wanted to go up in a balloon and managed to do that this year...But how's this - the only entry under "nature" was to see a volcano erupting...

tamed rain forest

But what would be appropriate for a woman in the last ten years of working life? I started to think. I am not interested in the boys own things though I would keep saving someone's life of course. I haven't got even the tiniest adrenalin gene. My list would contain:

Take part in a river clean up
Donate blood 50 times...12 more to go...had so many interruptions
Stay in a yurt ...but there would have to be a mattress!
Stay in an ice hotel
Snorkel on a coral reef...
Explore a rain forest
Sign up 5 more people to give blood
Sign up 5 bone marrow donors ...it means chatting
up under 40 year old men who are really in short supply....
Get involved in a woodland preservation project
Help create a community garden
Train to be a recycling volunteer
Inspire people to get on the internet and change their lives
Sing a solo and feel good about it
Find a new craft and really explore it...how many things have
I picked up and discarded over the years
Acquire a regular drawing habit

Could I really come up with many more?? Go on tell me yours....