The List of Banned Words

The NY Times has a shorter list. 

So, I was sitting in Adrian’s office waiting to talk to BBC Hereford & Worcester about letter-writing.  Why wasn’t I in my own office? Cos I don’t have a phone in mine – well I do, but it doesn’t work – it sounds like someone sunk it in a bucket of water. So, even though he’d just come back from London, I turfed the poor guy out and was sitting there waiting for the radio people to call when I saw this piece of paper stuck to the side of his desk.  And laughed out loud cos it was something I’d sent him months back.  See, he does a lot of travel writing and usually asks me to cast an eye over it, to edit, before it gets sent off. 

And he’s wise to do that cos, IMO, every writer (no matter how good, no matter how brilliant even) should get edited.  And I’d told him that he got a bit clichéd from time to time and had sent him a list of banned words and phrases (which, to be fair, I’d cribbed from a travel editor of my own).  But it made me laugh, as it always does, cos really – you see these clunkers again and again. 

So, for any wannabe travel writers or bloggers out there – here you go…the ones to miss.

Banned words

A city of contrasts

Stylish accommodation

Chilling

Stunning

Nightmare

Dream

Footprints

Hubby

Kids

Brits

Whilst

Amidst

Winding cobbled streets  

Cobbled streets in general, not just the winding variety

Picturesque

Breathtaking

Chilled out

Chilling

Jaw dropping

Eyewatering

Romantic

Pampering

Blighty

18-30 Crowd

Airport hell

To-die-for

Summer’s lease

Delicacies

Vibrant

Vivid hotpotch of colours, smells and sounds

Teeming

Laid-back

Laid-back lifestyle

Tolkeinesque (as applied to any vaguely medieval defensive architecture)

Innate sense of rhythm

Choc-a-bloc

Azure

Crystal clear - as in water

The Bounty Ad

Sights-and-smells

Hearty

Rustic

Traditional

Authentic

En famille

No-frills

Under the stars

Al-fresco dining

Spa heaven

Traditional hearty cuisine

Whistlestop tour

Fed and watered

Magical Mystery Tour

Barefoot luxury

Luxury

Luxurious

Lux

Five-star luxury

Eco-friendly or anything friendly for that matter

Holistic

Back-to-nature

Time immemorial

Timeless

Time-warp

Yesteryear

Bygone age

Priceless treasures

Steamy

Subtropical (unless you actually mean subtropical, which invariably you do not)

Exuberant vegetation

Ooh-la-la!

Je ne sais quoi

Par excellence

Nothing but the sound of waves

Leaving the modern world behind

My own/your own/our own slice of paradise

Any reference to ‘attentive yet unobtrusive’ staff, butlers, waiters etc

Untrammelled

Family in-tow

Tranquility

Heaven

Paradise

Hell

Nestled

Nestling

As far as the eye can see

Powder white sand

Lapping waves

Dazzling

Quintessential

Rich and famous as in ‘attracting the rich and famous’

Ah, those cobbled streets...

And so I did the interview, resisting the urge to see how many of these I could drop into the conversation and then, as I put down the phone, my eyes fixed on a huge great paperweight thing in the shape of a celestial mountain. Ah yes. He’d been in London to attend the Czech Republic’s tourism awards and had won a gong.  ‘What’s the prize?’ I’d said, hoping he’d say a few grand.

‘A trip for two to Prague,’ he’d said. ‘I can show you the city.’

Ah yes, the picturesque winding cobbled streets.  The Tolkienesque architecture. The traditional hearty cuisine. The city of contrast with its priceless treasures.  Except...

‘You mean drink beer,’ I’d said.

‘No,’ he’d said. ‘Well, not just drink beer. There are…’

‘Bars?’

His brow had furrowed. 

‘Wouldn’t you rather take Keith?’ I’d said.  And watched the thought flicker over his forehead.

‘So,’ I said (back in the near past now, back in the office, just after the interview). ‘What happened about the trip? You've gone quiet on it. What’s the hotel like?’  Five-star luxury? Attentive yet unobtrusive staff, butlers, waiters etc.?

 His brow furrowed so hard it folded over.  ‘Ah yes, the hotel.’

‘Huh? Oh don’t tell me. It’s the beer hotel par excellence. Or right next to the best timewarp bar or something. Or there’s an obligatory quintessential brewery tour each day?’

‘Er, no,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s not even in Prague.’ 

‘So where is it?’

‘About thirty miles out,’ he said and then added with a look of woebegone misery. ‘And, er…it’s a spa.’

Oh my! Spa heaven. Or rather, my pampering paradise; hubby's untrammelled nightmare. 

Paul Freeman talks magic and myth

Yeah, he's a grumpy git. :-) 

Today I’m handing over the blog to Paul Freeman.  Paul’s a good guy, a seriously good guy, and he writes good books.  I always say I don’t really *do* fantasy, yet I’ve read Lord of the Rings a ridiculous amount of times and spent my teens immersed in mythology and magic (hmm, come to think of it, not much has changed).  I’m now dragon-deep in Game of Thrones so…  I don’t know, maybe we all need the occasional flap of wings to fan the flames.  Maybe when the present seems tough we need to immerse ourselves in alternative pasts (fantasy) and/or alternative futures (SF).  Anyhow.  Paul’s new book, Tribesman, is out now and so I asked him if he’d riff a bit on  myth and magic.  And he said yes.  And here it is. 

CUSTODIANS OF MAGIC by Paul Freeman

Cold air misted above the surface of the water. Translucent shapes clinging to the black pool. Frost hardened grass crunched under the boots of the traveller as he approached the glass-calm lake. White wraiths stirred and hovered over the dark waiting for him. Calling to him, beckoning him, needing him. He could taste the cold on his tongue, feel the ice in his blood. He turned away then, unwilling to face the ghosts of his ancestors.

Ever wonder where myths come from? There’s a road near where I live, and the maddest thing happens there quite regularly. A column of mist forms over the road in just this one spot; it’s the weirdest looking thing. Just a small section of road for about ten yards is shrouded in mist. Now, what’s not immediately noticeable is that a stream runs under the road, and every now and then when hot air and cold air interact they make magic. But how would this have looked to the ancients? Is it possible a ghost could be inhabiting the stream? Or a bridge spanning the water could be a portal to another world?

Or what about a burning red sunset? I Googled this to see why it occurs, because I could. I won’t bore you with the details, but I know for sure that if I were sitting on the side of a mountain two thousand years ago, herding my sheep, that red sunset would be a portent of doom.

And that’s before we get into hallucinogenic consumption. How many myths were created by people ingesting mushrooms and other substances? I remember this funny story from school. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it was told to me and the rest of the class by a teacher. An area close to me was famous for sightings of ghosts, (I live in a crazy place). Dozens of people all saw the same apparitions on the road, and legends grew out of it. Well it turned out some ingredient in the local bread had them all tripping out, and they were all having hallucinations. Like I said I don’t know if that is true. I hope so, it makes a funny story. That is unless you were one of the unfortunates seeing a headless horseman on his way home from work every evening.

And dragons! There is actual proof that they lived. At least – imagine an ancient digging up a dinosaur fossil.  How did they reason that? Which brings me around nicely to, well, me. 

I write fantasy books. A lot of my inspiration comes from mythology, Celtic mythology in particular, being as I'm Irish and all. I have a character in my book, the war god of the northern clans, and I loosely based her on a figure from Celtic mythology, The Morrigan, a dark god if ever there was one. The old tales were deliciously dark. Take The Children of Lír for example. Lír’s wife bore him four children, three boys and a girl. Alas for poor Lír and the children, his wife died, so he married her sister. The sister didn’t fancy having the four children around so she turned them into swans and cursed them to live for periods of 300 years on different lakes. When eventually a monk breaks the curse and turns them back into humans, they are nine hundred year old men and woman, and they die. No kiss from a prince and live happily ever after here.

So much fantasy written today is heavily influenced by ancient mythology, Lord of the Rings for example is laden with references to Norse and Celtic myth. There would have been no Gimli or Legolas without Viking lore, no dwarves, no elves, no ring. And what better place to find a source for our stories? It is our heritage, the dreams and fears of our ancestors come to life. In a lot of ways we are the new myth makers. Modern technology has dispelled the magic, myth and rumour. It is in our hands, in the worlds we create. It is up to the fantasy writers to bring the magic to life. To create spaces where readers can immerse themselves, and believe in the unbelievable. We are the custodians of the magic now.

We need magic, just as we need larger than life heroes. Who wants everything explained away by science? I want to believe in a time of legend when heroes came to life.

Long may the magic live.

Paul's new book is called Tribesman.  Here's the blurb:

A warrior in exile seeks a path home. 

Banished from his homeland, a warrior of the Northern Clans grows weary of life in a harsh, alien land. With the dark god Morrigu haunting his dreams, and a desert princess as a companion, Culainn, a warrior and champion sets forth on a journey north in search of a merchant's daughter abducted by clansmen and taken back across the mountains. Through a land baked by a scorching sun, where bandits roam free and dark beasts stalk the night. 
An ancient evil is rising from the desert. A Benouin myth of a ghost city inhabited by the souls of their ancestors, a bridge to the Underworld is unleashing demonic creatures on an unsuspecting world. Culainn and Persha, warrior and mage stand alone against a tide of darkness. All the while, Morrigu, the dark war god of the north seeks to use Culainn as her own tool, her own champion.

Dontcha just love those ancient evils rising from the desert?  :-)

You can buy it at Amazon.com here and at Amazon.co.uk here

You can also read his blog.  Which contains an excerpt from the book. 

Or just hang out with him on Facebook: 

In which I get overexcited about a scourer

While Adrian was away (Belgium this time, on some beer judging panel) it seemed like the doorbell was ringing every two minutes (okay, slight exaggeration but still) and there would be some poor delivery guy standing in the pouring rain with yet another box. Beer, beer, beer and more beer.  Yes, Adrian gets sent a lot of beer. An awful lot of beer. Along with the odd jar of pickled onions. 

So he had this great opening ceremony when he got back last night and all of a sudden the one small bin bag that I’d used all week was suddenly full to bulging with packaging.  And it bugged me.  Cos, see, I don’t hold with all this packaging stuff.  It’s…wasteful.  The other day I watched this item on the news about a local beauty spot by the coast which was vomiting old landfill.  The stuff had been down there twenty years or so and hadn’t disintegrated one teeny tiny bit. 

It’s why I’m into recycling in a big way. I simply don’t believe in throwing stuff away – everything here gets reused or revamped or recycled or resold. In fact, I just can’t get my head round people who don’t do this – who chuck everything out into the rubbish – I even have friends who fling out perfectly decent clothes and books that way. I mean… WTF?  

Yes, it takes a bit more effect but hey…   There is very little food waste in this house (we don’t overbuy and the dogs eat most scraps) but what is left over is either composted in the garden or goes out for recycling. Paper, cardboard, bottles, plastic containers, batteries and so forth all get recycled and I try not to buy stuff that’s been overly packaged. 

Wherever possible, I buy recycled stuff too – loo roll, kitchen towels, bin bags and so on. Why? Cos they’re just as good, not any more expensive and, well, every little helps right?

So that was why I was interested when I got an email from a really nice PR for EcoForce.  They make a range of household products from recycled materials – not yer average loo roll but sponges, scourers, cloths and dusters;  recycled pegs (see below - cute huh?), pegbaskets and a recycled washing line.  Plus nifty food bag grips.  Neat, really neat. Yes, I’m getting excited over pegs.  It has come to this.  I know.  Don’t say anything. Please. Just don't.

Cute pegs, huh?  

They asked if I’d like to try them out and I agreed with alacrity. Well, hey, I did like the sound of them but I also wanted to show Dulverton that it isn’t just beer that gets delivered to this house.  So they arrived and we tested them out pretty thoroughly and, yup, they did the business.  Really well.  Well, just as well as the ‘virgin’ variety and you get the added bonus of feeling like you’re doing your bit somehow.  In a small way.  Okay, so I already have a rotary washing line, so couldn’t test out the washing rope but then I figured there are other uses for washing line.  So I unwrapped it and yes, it makes a darn good skipping rope.  J

They also sent me three Dishmatics to try.  Now, stay with me cos this is a seriously neat idea.  It looks like a standard scourer or washing up brush but the handle is hollow and you simply fill it up with washing up liquid and, lo and behold, it dispenses it as you wash up.  Seriously, brilliant little thing.  I love it, as far as one can love a washing up brush. Do I not have enough love in my life?? Don't answer that. Anyhow, it costs £1.33 (RRP but I've seen them online for under a quid) and, when the head wears out, you simply replace that bit. Genius.

You’re shaking your heads, aren’t you?  But, honest injun, I love this stuff!  So much that I’m gonna share it with you.  You can try out everything I did for free (see the pic below) – yes, you can experience my life.  How wondrous is that?  Just leave a comment reassuring me I’m not a complete saddo and I’ll pluck one of you out the hat and you can skip and scrub too.  J 

I'll close the competition in a week, okay?  

In case you don’t win, EcoForce and Dishmatic are widely available in most supermarkets as well as from Oxfam, Homebase, B&Q and on line.

You can also find them on Facebook:

Here's the EcoForce page:

https://www.facebook.com/ecoforceproducts?ref=hl

and here's Dishmatic

https://www.facebook.com/Dishmatic?ref=hl

Life from the padded cell of BBC Somerset

So, I spent the vast majority of yesterday stuck in a cell at the BBC.  Doing a shedload of publicity for my new book, Kind Regards – the Lost Art of Letter Writing (Michael O’Mara Press). This is not a plug, btw, as I don't get any royalties for the book, sadly I don't make any more money whether anyone buys it or not.  :-) On the other hand, if you buy my Kindle books, I do - so please, be my guest.  

Anyhow, I’d fecklessly agreed to doing any radio or TV interviews that came along, in the sure and certain knowledge that nobody whatsoever would be remotely interested.  Wrong.  Seven interviews?  In one day?  Ruddy hell.

So I pitched up at BBC Somerset in Taunton clutching a copy of the book and some hastily scribbled notes and prayed they wouldn't ask anything too demanding. Cos the night before had been pretty late and I'd had about two hours' sleep.

I like Radio Somerset.  A lot.  They’re young and fun and make you feel right at home.  So I camped up in their kitchen for a while and ferreted around the fridge to see if there was anything worth eating (nope) and read Saturday’s papers (yawn) and nearly forgot what I was there for.  Then someone popped up and took me down to my studio and got me set up in. 

Now then. It sounds glamorous, right, 'doing press'?  Wrong.  The studio is tiny – a minuscule cell of a room.  You couldn't even stretch your arms out wide – if, indeed, you wanted to. No window. No air. Just a desk, a shed-load of equipment and monitors and stuff – and you.  And then they stick headphones on your head and poke a mike towards your mouth and …leave you.  It’s surreal.  You just sit there, twiddling your thumbs, staring into space, waiting for the next disembodied voice to come through on the headphones.

‘Liz?’

Huh?  I carried on tapping into my phone.

‘Liz?  Are you there?’

Oh, come on Liz, whoever you are. 

‘LIZ!!!’

Then I realized.  I was Liz. Liz was me. Why the hell did I use a pseudonym, for pity’s sake? 

And we were off.  I spoke to people the length and breadth of the country – from Norfolk to Bristol, from Sussex to Lancashire, from Wales to Wiltshire.  It could have been a bit boring, a bit samey, but no.  Each presenter was very different and so I obligingly morphed myself into a different person each time (just to keep it interesting).  So, one interview I was all bantering and blunt, the next I was grave and quasi historical, the next sort of sweet and simpering.  I felt a serious case of multiple personality disorder coming on. 

And somewhere in the middle or thereabouts, somewhere around number four or five, if I recall, I had a really surreal encounter.

There was the telltale crackle that meant someone was on the line and so I sort of woke up a bit, ready for the off.  And there was this long sigh through my headphones.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘*sigh*’ 

‘Er, hello?’

‘Jesus.’

‘Er, this is…Liz,’ I said, in a very unconvincing manner.

‘Oh God…’

‘What?  You alright?’

‘I am so so bloody tired.’

‘I know the feeling.’

Long pause.  This was the oddest start to an interview ever.  Was I supposed to interview her?  

‘Umm, how about a coffee?’  Trying to make conversation. 

‘Yeah. Thanks. Thanks a bloody lot.’

Heck, was she ever going to start talking sense?  Then I realized, slowly, that she couldn’t hear a word I was saying.  Was just some woman somewhere, some poor sap in another box in some other radio station maybe, who was just talking out loud to herself. 

Anyhow.  It was all rather good fun really.  But I don’t think I’m cut out for radio.  Reasons being…

1.       I have too much hair.

2.       I forget it’s the BBC and swear.  Pissed off?  Who knew that pissed off was considered ‘foul language’? 

3.       I fling my arms around too much.  Ouch.

4.       I talk too fast.  But, on the other hand, I’m good value – you get a helluva lot of words out of me in ten minutes. Twenty minutes and you’ve got a small book.

5.       I’m too intolerant.  Shouldn’t try to hurry up the presenter when he umms and aaahs.

6.       I can’t help falling into the same intonation as the person to whom I’m talking.  Honestly, I’m not taking the piss (there we go again) but it could be misinterpreted.  To Wales in particular – I’m sorry.  

Free quasi crisps up for grabs...

As you know, I get sent stuff from time to time… with the hope I’ll review it on the blog or in print.  The stuff is often weird, generally wildly random and, to be honest, I don’t inflict most of it on you. 

James has become horribly blasé – he pokes his nose in the parcels and then rolls his eyes.  ‘Jesus. How old do they think I am?’  Okay, so as I pulled out the teeny weeny T-shirt and the yoyo I could see his point.  It takes a lot to impress him these days…unless it’s food. 

And in the last couple of weeks we have been sort of inundated (in a non watery way) with crisp type things.  I say that advisedly because they’re not technically crisps.  First up was Special K’s Cracker Crisps.  Several box loads. I’m not entirely sure why we were given such largesse– and, who knows, more may be on their way.  One parcel had been dispatched to ‘Exmoorjane Blogger, Somerset’ and still got here which was pretty good going. 

‘Say hello to new Special K Cracker Crisps,’ sang the press release. ‘A new savoury snack that, at 95 calories and three percent fat for a serving of 21 crisps, you can enjoy without the worry.’

Which gave me pause. 

First up I wondered who was the poor sod who had to write that press release?  And then I thought…95 kilocalories?  For 21 quasi crisps? That doesn’t sound very many – quasi crisp-wise.  And that sounds like quite a lot - calorie-wise.  How many are there in a normal packet?  So I Googled and found out that, actually, they are pretty low-calorie, well in comparison to other crisps and crisp type things.  Walkers Cheese and Onion crack in at 184 kcals, Wotsits are a hefty 212 kcals and McCoys Flame-grilled are a whopping 252 kcals (with 14.6 % fat). Incidentally they also apparently contain 0% alcohol.  Dontcha love labeling? 

By this point I’d gotten (sorry, I know it’s American now but I like it) a bit obsessed (as I tend to) and started wondering if they really were the lowest calorie crisp type thingies (not that they were claiming to be, but, y’know, you wonder, right)?   So I carried on Googling but "Page Not Found" came up and gave me the answer to ‘How often do pugs come into heat?’ instead.  Dontcha just love the Internet?  And, if you were wondering, the same amount as most other breeds apparently.  Providing the pug in question is a bitch.  Anyhow, eventually I discovered that Walkers Lites come in at 132 kcals.  But my all-time favourite – Quavers (the ones that sort of stick to your tongue and fizz) – are a paltry 87 kcals.  Go Quavers!  

Meanwhile, James was steadily working his way through three large boxes (yes - they also come in boxes ‘ideal for a night in’).  ‘These are yum,’ he said. 

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah really.’

I’m not sure he’s part of their intended demographic.  Not sure he ever feels ‘racked by guilt’ by food or that he plans on slipping an individual bag ‘in his handbag’ as the press release suggests.  And I do wonder about this;  about whether it’s fostering healthy eating; associating food with guilt.  And how the hell do you turn crisps into diet food?  By packaging them like it, I suppose.  But hey, it’s your choice; it's down to you. We just test ‘em out… To be honest, they didn’t rock my boat but, like I say, James thought they were pretty good.  And, while I winced at the packaging, James didn’t even notice.

Meanwhile KETTLE® (they’re finickity about the way you write their name) Tortilla Chips don’t give a toss about calories, fat and guilt.  Their press release was all about the taste; it positively oozed and unctuosed (yeah, it’s great as a verb, huh?).  And at 466 kcals for the bag (we’re talking a big 160g bag by the way) they aren’t gonna be your best bet if you’re trying to lose weight (but then I don’t think any kind of crispy thing is really).  Great zingy packaging.  Four flavours, the usual suspects – Nacho Cheese, Cool Sour Cream, Sweet Chilli Salsa, Sea Salted.  Are they any different, any better than other tortilla chips?  A bit richer maybe…but I’m not entirely convinced that’s a good thing (I rather like a non-invasive tortilla chip myself).  James “loved them”.  Not sure Adrian even got a look-in. 

Anyhow.   There you go.  A rare product review from me.  If you wanna try the Kellogg’s Special K Cracker Crisps (what a mouthful!) for yourselves, Kellogg’s are offering three readers the chance to test all three flavours (the big(ish) ‘evening in’ boxes, not the diddy ‘slip ‘em in your handbag’ bags).  Just leave a comment and make sure I have some way of my getting touch with you if you wanna give ‘em a go.  If you want to try the others – you know the ones I mean (I can’t be arsed to do the trademark thingy again), they cost around £1.85 a bag from most supermarkets. 

Giveaway closes on Thursday morning so get in quick.

Lost weekends and the Hedgerows Heaped with May

Weird old weekend, spent mainly in the past.  As anyone who knows me on Facebook will have realized, I finally got a scanner and indulged in a totally over-the-top nostalgia fest.  Pictures spanning a century (no, I’m not quite that old – I found some of my mother’s old photo albums too). 

Living in a box, living in a cardboard box.

It was bittersweet, the way looking at the past often is.  I compounded it by reading through old diaries.  And then, just to cap it all, I decided to tackle my box files and weeded through a decade of accounts and cuttings and clippings and other detritus.   Dear god, I was another person entirely – earning a packet (THAT much?  SHIT!) and spending a packet (mainly, has to be said, on doing up the derelict money pit otherwise known as the Rectory).  I didn’t have time to think – one year I think I wrote six books (quite apart from doing a shedload of journalism and TV and radio).  Funny old world, huh? 

Shoulda spent more on hairdressing, huh?  

Anyhow, the passed is past and I had a big bonfire (of my vanities) and there you go. 

Burn! 

And then lovely Zoe and her lovely husband came over to visit and I was going to be all Nigella-ish and make them pukka tea with scones and wotnot but they came early so the poor sods ended up taking me out to lunch (at lovely Woods, of course) and then I spent a bit of time dragging Zoe round the estate agents in town and pointing out the delights of Dulverton in the hope she would decide it really was time to ship out and come on down to Exmoor. 

And then, the post came.  A thick parcel from Aurum Press.  Huh?  I opened it up and there were two fat hardbacks sitting inside.  The Hedgerows Heaped with May.  Huh?  The Telegraph Book of the Countryside, edited by Stephen Moss. Huh?

And then I remembered.  That piece I’d written for the Telegraph, years back, about Liz Jones being such an arsey cow when she moved to Exmoor.  22 August 2009, to be precise.  Time flies, huh?  Based on that blog post. 

Anyhow, it was being included in a compilation of ‘the best writing’ on the countryside from the Telegraph.  Well, well.  Even better they were asking me to invoice – for fifty quid.  Not quite a fifteen grand royalty cheque but hey…every little helps right? 

The book is quite nice actually.  It’s got contributions from people like Clive James, James May (hey, how come he gets his name in the title??), Max Hastings (The Hedgerows Heaped with Hastings?), Joanna Trollope (umm, better not) and Boris Johnson. And, er...me.  

Shyman saves the world...

Jakey (aka Si Jakeman, aka Shyman) is another great guy I met on Twitter.  Probably via Hen, if I recall.  We don’t chat a lot but we have the odd exchange on shamanism, on dreams, on the earth, on deep ecology, on the concept of the 100^th monkey. J I love his open heart and mind, his enthusiasm, his huge desire for understanding, his respect for the world and everything in it, his total lack of ego.  I also share his frustration that people just don’t open their eyes and see what we’re doing to this beautiful world of ours. 

Anyhow, the other day it popped into my head that I’d ask him to do a guest post for the blog. And he said, sure, what do you want me to write about?  And I said, how about How to Save the World? And he said, Crikey, is that all?  And he laughed and said he’d go away (probably to his allotment) and think about it.  And this is what he said…

“HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD? 

Sounds like something you would ask Flash Gordon, James Bond, Superman or Wonderwoman to 

help out with. Arctic melting, floods, Trees being cut down in the Amazon; Animals and Birds facing

extinction, overfishing and bees dying. You know the drill.

You’ve been preached to and teached to over the years. We’re all aware of the problems the world

faces. The trouble is, it all seems so separated from our everyday thoughts. We are all on an

increasing speeding treadmill trying to keep plates spinning as we juggle our busy lives.

There is so much information coming from different directions, the little voices in the wilderness are 

often drowned out by views from others with more power and greed-biased agendas.

We are in strange times at the moment. Economic and social collapse seem to be heading towards 

us like a huge tidal wave, which our politicians are obsessed with controlling, like King Canute (even 

though he was actually showing that even a King couldn't control nature.) - it always seems like we 

are on the verge of impending doom, a new fear factor. The trouble is, it makes us hide away our 

thoughts.

A few years ago, on a spring morning, I was pondering all this mess. In a split second of clarity I 

realised none of this really mattered. Just out of the blue, I noticed I was not outside but in and 

amongst nature. Bees buzzing, Birds singing, Trees about to burst back into leaf and clouds racing 

across the sky.

I just realised it was all Interconnected and I was part of it all too… not in a tree hugging or a

religious way…more of a smelling the coffee kind of way. As a child of the 70’s/80’s, a scout, 

a cross-country runner, I grew up outside. My dad always taught us names of Butterflies, Birds

and Trees; looking at the Stars etc. My grandad grew fruit and veg and my godfather’s family 

even owned a farm… It all just flew into place. As kids, my generation was always outside, 

the kids that stayed in were the strange ones. I started thinking about how could we expect 

the next generation to protect nature, if they didn’t know it?

While our politicians were banging on about Economics and Society…I was thinking that the 

environment was the keystone that held them together. I wanted to play my small part in 

changing attitudes towards it. As a frontline Firefighter for nearly 20 years, I’ve been one of 

the bods in the boat evacuating people from flooded houses; I’ve chased wildfires through the 

woods and picked up the pieces of storm damage. I’ve stared natural disasters in the eye. 

It all seems a bit personal. I wanted to do my little bit in slowing this, but how?

An idea of growing a bit of locally grown fruit and veg with family friends and neighbours was the

start, a way of getting everyone back outside, meeting the odd Bird, Bee, and Bug along the way

and reconnecting with nature. I even started growing a small amount of food at work on the 

fire station roof, and eventually became a green champion. Turning the odd light off, recycling, 

getting a cycle rack installed etc., etc. - all little actions slowly adding up to make a change. Even 

by putting recycling bins and a few signs in the right place has made a difference.

I’m now studying for an Environment Studies degree so I can get more informed. I’ve never 

preached to anyone, just tried to set a quiet example. It’s amazing how many people have come

on board in their own time…

It’s been about planting little seeds so people change without knowing.

People hate being told what to do, especially about how to save the world. But if everyone could

just be mindful that everything is Interconnected… things will change. Even if it’s not taking a 

plastic bag to carry bread and milk in, on the way home from work. If you think about it they’re 

already in containers.

Every little action counts: a marathon starts with one small step.

So… How do you save the world? Well I’m not sure… but I know there are heroes with 

thousands of different faces..

Thanks for listening…….laters.”

Huge thanks, Jakey! 

Check out Jakey’s website here – and then, well…it’s up to you. J

Also check out these sites he recommends…

Save our Woods

Incredible Edible Todmorden

Take a look at what Todmorden is doing...