Notes from Catherine Rowett, former Green Party MEP for East of England and deputy coordinator of the Eastern Region Green Party*(UK). Biographical reflections on life as an MEP. Longer reflections and discussions on issues relating to policy, the good life, justice, equality, anti-austerity economics and the future of the planet. This is also a forum for exchanging ideas on how to tread lightly on the planet and avoid supporting exploitation and corrupt practices. Here we go...

Monday, 31 December 2007

Ecologically sound Christmas presents

The best one I received this year was two glass milk bottles to return to the milkman, presented without christmas wrapping but with an optional, re-used, biodegradable paper carrier bag.

I suppose a better present in this case would have been for the giver to sign up to have the milkman deliver regularly...

Thursday, 20 December 2007

Things that gladden one's heart!

Nice people in Norwich who turn off my bike lights (and don't steal them) so even when I accidentally leave them behind on the bike when I park it at the station, and I get back a week later, the batteries are not flat.
Hooray for generous kind people like that, whoever you are!

Wednesday, 12 December 2007

My guilty secrets

I confess...

This weekend we're flying to Naples for a wedding...

I can't even hail a taxi...

Overheard fleetingly on the way to the station last Monday, the middle of a conversation:

"And then she said 'why, I can't even hail a taxi!'". The speaker, on uttering this, was raising her hand above the shoulder, as in hailing taxis.

Now I don't know for sure what this conversation, of which I caught such a fleeting moment as I cycled past, was about. But it rang a sort of bell.

Why have so many people got rheumatic aches and pains in their arms this Autumn? And pains in their backs? I know of at least four with a similar rheumatic inflammation in the shoulder and arm that makes it hard to move the arm or lift anything. I feel sure that the person telling her interlocutor this story from her front door was reporting another case of the same illness. I've had it since the end of September.

Is it a virus going round Cambridge at the moment? Or is it a reaction to some kind of pollution? Or is it the effect of the vitamin deficiency we're all suffering following a summer with no sunshine? Or what is it? Does anyone else know of any cases? Are there any cases that are not women?