Up and Down

That is how I am at the moment. Now, I do tend to the volatile at the best of times, and usually February is not the best of times for me, but I have to say I'm rather more violently up and down at the moment than is usual even for me. I guess things have been changing so hugely and I've been clinging to a small wooden raft of sanity riding the heavy, storm-tossed seas of a completely and rapidly changing life. Given that circumstances have been so extraordinary, I have found within myself an emergency measure of optimism and a genuine sense of excitement and anticipation at the thought of our new life which has kept me going over one of the greyest and dullest winters I can remember recently.

But yesterday I felt so utterly down and defeated, and do you know what triggered that feeling? Something so utterly stupid that I was ashamed at myself for letting it get to me so much: the internet broke. It's not the first time this has happened and I'm sure it won't be the last time, but this time it did it half an hour before a friend came to take the children to the home ed group for me so I could have the rest of the day to do some much-needed work. I work online. Do you see where this is going? This was Thursday, the phone helpline assured me that there was nothing they could do to fix the fault right there (we'd already tried all the usual quick fixes) and that an engineer would speedily be with me... on Saturday. I nearly cried. Then I started swearing. Not at the call centre person, I hasten to add.

So I spent the whole day not being able to work, and not being able to do much else useful either due to a broken toe preventing me from walking very far. And do you know what? Five minutes before the children were due back, the bloody, sodding internet magically came back! And how stupid did I feel that I'd let such a trivial thing cast me down so much? Very stupid. And yet, could I manage to pull myself out of the Slough of Despond. No, I bloody well couldn't. So there you have it, a day in the life of my emotions. I have enough distance from them to be able to see how silly I'm being and yet can't seem to use that self-knowledge to fully change my state. Very frustrating. But hell, today is a new day, the internet is working, it's Friday, I still can't walk very far, but the determined optimism is back. Everything *will* work out OK. I hope anyone reading this is also having a better day.

Inspiration crashing down to earth

So, as you may not be surprised to hear, I've been reading again. This time The Self Sufficient-ish Bible by Andy & Dave Hamilton, and Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth? which is a series of essays by various learned people, edited by Andrew Simms. As always, these kind of books are really inspiring and make you want to get out there and make some redical changes! And then real life kicks in and I'm deflated.

Okay, we don't have a car to get rid of, we never fly, we're vegetarian and we try to grow as much of our own food as we can in the garden and allotment. We use public transport and cycle and walk. We buy second hand clothes or strictly fair-trade if new. We buy fairly traded tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, bananas, rice and everything else we can manage to. We buy as much from our local farmer's market as we can. We don't buy lots of new 'stuff'. We have 1 small, old TV and 1 computer which was second-hand. We turn everything off stand-by, have low-energy light-bulbs and try to conserve water. We have a water butt in the back garden. We use only environmentally household cleaners, ditto with the minimal toiletries we use.

But I'm not saying all this to be smug - I know there is loads more we could do (there always is unless you live in a yurt in a field in total harmony with nature), but right now, I can't see how. And this is depressing. I look round the house in a fresh zeal for getting rid of stuff and clutter, and for reforming the way we live, and come up against a brick wall. What could I get rid of - PC, no I use that for working. Cookbooks? No I use them for cooking. Printer? No. SAD light? Definitely no. Table? No. Kitchen cupboards? No. Books? Maybe. We do have a cull every now and again and are quite strict about getting rid of stuff but the ones we keep are ones we read again or refer to. Similar with CDs - we try to download individual tracks mainly these days, and have culled our CD collections as much as we can right now, considering that music is a big thing for both of us.

Obviously, we do have a fair amount of kids' clutter, but looking at it, most of it is fairly harmless, if widely spread - paper, paints, penicls and crayons and pens, scrapbooks, works of art (!), worksheets, packaging recycled into craft creations, glue, scissors, lego, train track, toy cars, books. We're not talking high-tech consumer hell here. Upstairs - can't get rid of stored bedding, or clothes, would be foolish to get rid of sewing machine. Downstairs - tool-box is vital, sewing box, felt, wool, other crafting stuff, bicycle helmets, play pop-up tents, vacuum cleaner, clothes horse, crockery, cutlery, baking tins, string, seeds, matches, candles. All of this stuff is pretty basic day-to-day stuff. Of course, if we lived in an African village, we could and would do without it. But living here, in the UK in the 21st century, this stuff is fairly low tech and basic.

So, where do we go from here? Well, we just used the last possible spare money we have in replacing a window which was (according to the man who replaced it) in severe danger of falling out, with a new, A-rated double glazed and properly vented one which hopefully will help eliminate the black mould on the bedroom wall (eww) and add to the insulation of the house overall. Given that other windows are also in a similar state, it would probably be eco-friendly to replace them too but we can't afford it. I'd like to try and convert our toilet to run mainly on collected rain-water but that again takes money and know-how, neither of which I have right now. Apparently we can't do solar hot water as we don't have a water tank, but other PV panels might be a possibility. If we had the money which we don't. We could maybe add to the loft insulation, but it's pretty thick already, and we don't have any more money.

So here I am racketing round the house alone (kids asleep, husband out earning the cash we don't have), keyed up with righteous inspiration and no-where to expend it. Am I just deluding myself that there's nothing we can do right now? I don't see the point of getting rid of stuff for the sake of it, especially not stuff that we actually use and is constructive or harmless or both. Now I just feel depressed.

Better & Worse

We seem to have a had a real catalogue of disasters since my last post - most of them relatively minor (but annoying!) domestic problems such as the light bulb in the fridge blowing, the doorbell falling off and some parts disappearing in the night, the handle of my daughter's window breaking meaning we can't open the window.

Others have been more worrying - another round of colds meaning none of us get any sleep, the fact that fell down the stairs getting up with my son in the night and hurt my back quite badly. This last one has set back many other things too - planting the rest of my onions and garlic, getting parts and mending the items damaged in the recent wave of domestic disasters.

It's very frustrating to be able to see what needs doing, have the time to sort it, but be unable to walk or cycle to the hardware shop, not to mention being unable to bend down or lean over to do the work itself.

But on the other hand, it was really nice to have a friend round yesterday and chat about stuff that had nothing to do with the kids or their education. Hooray for talking about other stuff!

And I also had a builder from a local green construction firm round to give us some advice about all our damp and condensation problems. I wasn't sure what to expect - maybe a hard sell for their firm to come and sort things out? But no, he was incredibly nice and incredibly patient. He looked at all the problem areas and gave me his opinion on what to do to sort them out. By the time he left, I had a list of stuff which would all help, in order of priority and in order of expense. None of the things were that expensive, a lot of it we could do ourselves, and one suggestion he made seems to have helped already, overnight. So, I'm feeling a bit better about the house now, hoping we can stop the damp and mould in its tracks. It's been a real weight off my mind, I had been so stressed about it all.

This year is really getting away from me though. I can't believe it's almost my birthday again. I'm determined to actually do something nice this year as last year everyone had a sickness bug for several weeks around my birthday and we couldn't do anything at all. Maybe a bit of celebrating in the greyness will help.

This post is brought to you courtesy of Philips Bright Light my cheery winter breakfast companion which, together with a couple of days of sunshine, is helping me continue on my weary way with at least a thread of humour...

Insulation

And as the weather turns colder and the condensation starts running, my mind turns to insulation. We've really got to do something about insulation this year, but I'm totally at sea and don't know what to do for the best, plus we have about £25 spare to do it with, if that!
So far, I've just spent our 'spare' £25 on some reflecting panels to go behind our radiators so that we are not losing the heat we do have (not that I've switched the heating on yet anyway). But we have a much bigger problem - leaky double glazing, especially in the main bedroom where the window is actually misted in between the 2 panes. The only outside wall in the main bedroom gets really cold on the inside and then runs with condensation over night, causing damp and mould. We also get a lot of damp and mould in our bathroom, mainly on the ceiling. We have solid walls in our 1920s terraced house and no airbricks, but we have loft insulation and gas central heating with radiators.
Whenever I talk to people about all this, I get completely different replies, but all given absolutely authoritatively: more ventilation needed, more insulation needed, external insulation, internal insulation, better heating, more loft insulation. Given that most of these options involve serious building work and serious money, I don't want to get it wrong. I'm happy to save up for a proper solution but I have no idea which one *is* the proper solution. Can you get an 'eco' building/insulating company to come and give a free quote of what could be done to make your house more efficient? If so, how do you find someone knowledgeable and reputable?
I'm finding this all so frustrating as I know we could be more energy-efficient if I could sort this problem, and I don't want to keep on opening windows with the heating on just to get rid of the condensation. There has to be a better way!

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.

The bill

So, the Improving Schools and Safeguarding Children Bill is listed already on the timetable for new legislation for when the Government come back from their nice, long summer recess in October, including the innocuous-sounding part about 'improving monitoring arrangements for those children educated at home'. It's nice to know that Ed Balls is really open to listening to the results of the Consultation of these proposals. I'm still very up and down about this whole subject. Part of me just thinks it can't possibly happen, it's so draconian, so mad, so far-reaching; the other part of me just feels numb at the inevitability and frantically makes plans for safeguarding my own family in the face of new legislation.
My own MP seemed quite resigned to the proposals becoming law, despite disagreeing with them, whereas I see other people's MPs (such as on the Sometimes It's Peaceful blog) take the opposite view - that there's no way there'll be time for any legislative changes before a general election is called.
I'm also finding the same pattern of thinking with the swine flu - one day I'll be completely blase about it. It's only flu, we're all healthy, it's a mild kind of flu, we probably won't catch it and even if we do we'll all be ill for a week and then fine. Then the next day, I'm terrified again, imagining horrible things that I don't even want to think about, let alone write down.
The whole up and down thing is wearing me out. I tend to be very up and down anyway, but these 2 current issues are exacerbating it and are really not good for my mental health. And there's no sign of any ending of either issue until the Spring either, so I'm going to have to learn to deal with it.

Thoughts on swine flu

I am the kind of person who tends to panic about these kinds of things, worry that we'll all die, and then makes plans to move to an isolated Cornish island while also being unable to put the worry out of my head. Due to this, I tend to research these kinds of health scares a bit obsessively in the hope that I can find out that the *real* story is less alarming. Right now I am vacillating between panic and insouciance which is very uncomfortable, but I thought I'd share my thoughts and research in the hope it my comfort other hypochondriacs and also that others may have other hope to share.Firstly, it seems that actual facts are hard to come by. Given that the UK, at least, has given up doing serum tests to confirm swine flu infection and is advising people to stay at home and not contact anyone unless they feel 'very unwell', there is no way to have a true estimate of the number of infections. Worldwide cases have reached 125,000, but some sources seem to think up to 10,000 are coming down with it *per day* in the UK alone. It seems to me that without any actual hard facts, it is hard to make any kind of estimates about the damn thing.However, despite the lack of facts, the WHO have given a tentative mortality rate for this outbreak of 0.4% - to put this into perspective, ordinary seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%, bubonic plague a mortality rate of 30-75%. The 1918 flu pandemic is estimated to have killed 50 million people worldwide, while malaria kills 1-3 million people *a year* every year and is only classed as a 'health problem'.Experts have related this swine flu virus to the pathogen in the 1918 pandemic, just to wind us all up, I think, but looking back to that outbreak, conditions now are very different. For one thing, we haven't just had a world war. Which is always a good thing. The 1918 outbreak has been traced to mid-America and was then taken by American soldiers to the trenches which provided a fantastic bredding ground with their crowded, unsanitary conditions and their immune-suppressed inhabitants. From there, it spread worldwide due to troop movements as soldiers were demobbed after the armistice, and spread further due to victory parades held in various countries. Some have suggested that its unprecedented virulence (estimates vary from 2.5% to 20%) was mainly to do with the wartime conditions in that those who had it mildly tended to stay put and not infect anyone else whereas those who had it badly were often put on crowded troop trains to be transferred to field hospitals where they spread their virulent strain further. This is the opposite of usual conditions whereby people who have it badly are isolated and those who have it mildly spread their strain. I am hopeful that the wartime situations won't recur.And on to the vaccine. This I am also perturbed by. In what has become known as the Swine Flu Fiasco of 1976, the American govt panicked at the start of a relatively mild outbreak, announced a nationwide vaccination programme and had only managed to vaccinate 24-33% before realising that the flu had infected only 200 people and killed 1 person and the vaccine had killed 25 people and crippled up to 500. Of course, on that occasion, the flu luckily did not spread as it is now spreading. But it raises questions about the safety of vaccines which are rushed through. The UK govt has announced vaccinations will start at the end of August when the Head of the WHO has stated that the vaccine will need 2-3 months of safety testing starting at first availability at the end of August. Our givt seems to think that 5 days of mock-up safety testing will be adequate to start using the vaccine on our most vulnerable people - the elderly and children and those with these now-famous 'underlying health problems', those of which are immuno-suppressed will not be able to take a vaccine anyway. And the govt wonders why no-one trusts it.And the effectiveness of the vaccine? A recent piece of research has found that children receiving the vaccine against ordinary seasonal flu are actually 3 times more likely to be hospitalised with flu than those who have not had the vaccine. Plus the govt are stating in their NHS advice that having the swine flu now may not give you immunity if the virus mutates and returns in the winter. In that case what is the point of vaccinating everyone with the vaccine grown from this strain of the virus, if it won't help if the virus mutates into a different (and possibly, or possibly not,more virulent) form?Gah! Is it any wonder that I'm worried and don't know who to trust? Other thoughts welcome.