Transition

I have been working up to this post because I really wanted to do it justice, but if I try to do a long, and erudite post in the way some people do, whose blogs I love to read, it will never get done. So it will have to be short and to the point.
I have been getting involved in my town's fledgling Transition movement, and currently it seems like an uphill road - I have days of inspiration and days of feeling very discouraged - but I have been changed by this already. It's hard to describe. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, the Transition Movement basically takes as its starting point the fact that climate change is real, is happeneing, and that peak oil is real and is happening. It then suggests that, rather than waiting for the government to do anything about these things, or worrying that we'll turn into armed survivalists and it'll be the end of the civilised world, we start planning and changing our world now, starting with ourselves and with our communities. We re-localise, re-skill ourselves, establish local links, local trading, even local currencies, ahead of any catastrophic happenings in the enviornment, or running out of oil, so that when these things do occur, we will have 'resilience' built in to our communities. Plus it will make our communities nicer places to live in right now! Win-win!
Anyway, this is something to be inspired about. This is life-changing. Read The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience by Rob Hopkins and start seeing the world differently. Check out The Transition Network for loads of information and help to become a Transition Town. Check out this blog for updates and other snippets.
I can't do this justice in words. Reading The Transition Handbook made me feel hot and cold all over, it gave me shivers up and down my spine. It made me feel very depressed and very inspired. It was one of those books where you *just know* that you've come home. I think everyone should be given a copy. It should be required reading at school. Then maybe we'd have a better world.

Weird head space

I feel like my head is in a very weird place right now. We've had a lot of challenges recently - my daughter is needing a lot from me, some of which neither she nor I can quite identify - and I'm finding that very draining and very difficult.
I've also been getting involved in my town's fledgling Transition Initiative and I've been finding that challenging too, on several different levels. I find it hard meeting strangers and going amongst people a lot. I also find the ideas underpinning Transition to be very scary - peak oil and climate change are presenting a huge challenge to us all right now - and now I know more about it all, I'm finding it even scarier. Transition Initiatives are all about finding a positive response to these challenges and making a better future as a result of them, but I can't help also finding the solutions a bit challenging as they involve a lot more dependence on neighbours and community, a lot more shared stuff and working together, which though I'm attracted to, I also find difficult. I'm also finding the process difficult - I can see what needs organising with our group, but I'm reluctant to take charge and organise stuff because I already feel over-extended with everything else I'm doing and really don't think I can cope with anything more right now. And yet I'm torn as this is so imortant. (When I finish reading The Transition handbook, I'll post up a more detailed discussion of its ideas)
I'm also finding our Home Ed group more work than I anticipated, in that now that it's set up I'm still organising lots of the sessions, finding new stuff for us, liaising with the local museum, checking out local scrapstores, hoping our bank account application will go through smoothly now after an intial hiccup, and lots of other stuff. Which is fine, it's still very new and other people will join in more as it all beds down, but it's just bad timing s far as the rest of my comitments go.
Not to mention my own studying, the shopping, baking, cooking, allotment etc... I need more hours in the day and much more calmness in my brain.

It feels really good...

... to eat our own produce for tea! So far, we've had strawberries for pudding, a lasagne made with our own onions and our own courgettes, had roast potatoes which were our own potatoes with our own rosemary. I now have 2 strings of onions hanging up in the kitchen (although the first string is much depleted as we use onions so much. I think I'll have to plant even more next year now that I've worked out how to dry and store them properly!) and another lot of onions that I'm drying to dry out before I hang. Though the rain the last few days has somewhat scuppered me.

It has just been announced that our town is starting its own Transition Movement, which is great and something I had been hoping for. So, even though I am somewhat busy at the moment with setting up the Home Ed Group, doing my course, the allotment (not to mention the kids), I *have* to get involved. I totally think the Transition Towns things is a good idea, even though I'm not sure how exactly I can help. Maybe we'll become another Totnes with our own town 'money' and a plethora of locally-sourced food. Ah, I can dream!