2014 and the Common Wealth (Games)

This is not the title of a new sci fi novel. Oh no. 2014 is a magic date for all us Weegies (Glaswegians) because it's when the Commonwealth Games come to town.

The excitement is not just about the Games themselves, mind you. It's all about the Commonwealth Games Legacy, a lasting, positive, and all encompassing change to Glasgow which will benefit this city and the whole of Scotland. The Games for the Common Wealth of Glasgow.

A tall order in times of recession of course.

So what does it take to make Glasgow a better place? What changes can we bring about in the next 5 years to improve life chances and make changes which are sustainable? I think about this a lot, and have certainly been inspired by the Commonwealth Orchards - but surely there must be more we can do?

So I asked a group of Parkhead children what they would want to see changed in the next 5 years. That's an eternity to them, the mere thought of being 15 in 2014 boggled their minds, and caused lots of giddyness, jumping about and silly faces. They had some excellent ideas though and we explored them, thanks to the input of Media Arts + Services Scotland, through 3D animation (which above all is great fun and combines traditional with modern media). The film will be forthcoming in a months time, but there's lots to show right now. They used pens, photo cameras, plasticine, scissors, paper, tape records, film cameras and computers to express their views.

In words:
security doors so the drunks don't pee in our close
renovate Tollcross Park play area so it's safe and attractive to use
get rid of all the litter in streets
have vehicles that can fly so the roads are not so busy
have cctv so we don't get attacked and can walk safely
build a sports centre (that's actually being done!)

In pictures:

Podcast and animated clips to follow.

put your creative hats on!

My 90th anniversary of Save the Children hat knitting book is coming on well.

One thing I haven't got sorted is a title.

The project is about Save the Children's work. It celebrates the Knit One Save One campaign (where hats were knitted to literally save children from dying in their first year of life). It's the 90th anniversary of the charity. It's a book of hat knitting/crotchet patterns. It celebrates Save the Children's work.

I need a snappy title around those themes. Suggestions can be left in the comment box and if I pick yours, I'll knit you or your child a beautiful hat as a prize, pattern taken from the book of course!

My initial ideas: feathers in your cap - a hat in time - saved by the hat

I'm sure someone can come up with something better?!

Recycle Week: I failed and I succeeded

Now that Recycle Week is drawing to it's end, it's time for a recap.

The pledge I took thanks to The Rubbish Diet's initiative and the uptake of the tag my many British Mummy Bloggers (this is how I found out about it rather than getting tagged directly) was not to take home any new plastic bags from shops. I thought it was a realistic pledge and one that I should have made years ago after lapsing since moving to the UK/Ireland from Germany 13 years ago.

My plan was to stick bags where-ever I thought I might need them and then all I needed to do was remember to take them. Easier said than done, bad habits take some time to get changed. I forgot my bags twice, when I went for a lunch break clothes shopping trip (that's how I clothes shop, in a half hour slot!) and when I went food shopping with Cubling. My concentration always lapses when she's around, which is understandable because how could you concentrate on anything but my one and only cutiepie (on bad days I'd say that taking my eyes off her for only one second may result in serious disaster). On the first count I failed good and proper, took a bag home and only realised my mistake a day later (oops), on the second count I bought a sturdy bag for life and realised how fabulous they are - 0.39 p and my whole shopping fitted into it, it didn't fall over backwards in the car and I didn't need to fear that handles would break and wine bottles smash.

It's been both a success and a failure. The success is that I've finally done something about not using so many plastic bags, the failure has shown me that really it takes looking at something with fresh eyes and a bit of commitment to identify where improvements can be made. So on the whole it's been a success of course, especially because I do hope to keep up the challenge in the future, but I'll still have to have a day without chocolate (right, that was wishful thinking as hubby just informed me. My forfit is to go A FULL WEEK WITHOUT CHOCOLATE. OMG!!!!!). Just as well, I think I ate a week's supply of chocolate this weekend. I may skip this Wednesday's weigh in...

Now I'm looking forward to reading the Recycle Week Carnival over at the Rubbish Diet, which should be up some time on Monday. Please join me in reading how everyone else got on and how we can take recycling beyond this week's attempts.

feeling blue - in a flowering way

It was always a dream of mine to have a garden. Maybe it's because I grew up without one, although my dad would make sure there were always plenty of colourfully blooming planting pots on our small balcony. We also rented an allotment not so far away when I was a child, and while I remember that gardening as such wasn't too attractive, I enjoyed running about with the boys who were the sons of the Turkish family we shared the big allotment with.

Then I got inspired by my friend Brigit's garden, and when a Glasgow friend introduced me to allotment gardening, I was all for it. If it hadn't been for the effort of getting there after work or at weekends. The constant battle with weeds and juggling too many things meant I never made the most of it. Instinctively I knew that the only garden I would look after properly would be one just outside my door. Of course it didn't help that Cubling initially thought nothing of being stood in her pram while I tried to do some digging. She didn't like not being carried full stop, never mind being sat in a pram without any movement at all.

So this is the second summer in our new home, our small but beautiful terraced suburban house. Still juggling too many things and not spending as much time gardening as I wish, but at least the big advantage is that it's right there. And it's a garden that won't punish me for inactivity. It was in good state when we moved in, and bit by bit it's becoming mine. Some plants bought last year, two raised beds (one planted), occasional trips to the gardening centre and surprise plant sales later, I'm starting to be ever so slightly proud of it.

And I realise that for some strange reason, I'm really into blue/purple blossoms. There's blue and purple all over, it all happened without plan or awareness, until somehow my garden is blue, and I'm loving it.

short and sweet

Blogging is taking a back seat this weekend, although I have about 7 posts raring to go, but no time to finish.
Reasons:
-Sunshine, BBQ/Birthday Party
-I joined a book group, first meeting on Monday and I'm on page 16 of the book. Oh dear. If anyone is asking, the book is Chinua Achebe - Things fall apart. I'm a fast reader and it's a short book, I should be able to do it if it weren't for the fab weather (I'm not complaining, really)
-tired. I've survived on about 6 hours/night sleep for 2 weeks, and it's showing

Update on recycle week: I failed. It was a stupid silly daft lack of concentration. I went clothes shopping. Somehow my no plastic bag pledge was all connected with food shopping, so when I went into a clothes shop I never even thought about taking a bag. And only realised my mistake a full day later. Oh dear. On the plus side, I was seriously running out of plastic bags so it will be reused good and proper. Other than that, no plastic bags picked up from any shops.

I'll be reading my book now. Enjoy the sunshine (if you're in Scotland ;) )

27 months today...

oh nice Kette mummy. (On wearing a bracelet for the first time in years).
That's better mummy. (random comment on changing my clothes or shoes)
Bruecke Bahn! (when spotting a train bridge)
Truthahn! (to a weather cock on a tower - I didn't even know she knew the word)
Leuchtturm! (to a pylon...)
Leave me alone, no push me, I selbst! I do that! (whining starts because she can't manage) ... mummy helpen!
Cubling: My mummy! Daddy: yes this IS your mummy. Cubling: no, MY mummy.
Stop it mummy! Stop it doggy! Stop it xyz (substitute as appropriate)
Watch your fingers Dennis! (to the tiler working away at the tiles)
My Brust, milk. (points to her breast and giggles. No, not yet darling)
Mouse deep dark wood (randomly reciting the Gruffalo)
Mummy read book vor! (she can do separable verbs, even if the verb is half English)
I hier! I back! (just in case I hadn't noticed...)
Drive! (at traffic light) Oh, red Ampel. Warten. Green light. Drive!
I pullen (English word, German ending)
Elefantens (German word, and just to make sure we know it's a plural, lets add both German and English plural endings)
Clever boy mummy! (Nice to get praise for doing a wee on the loo)

Favourite past times: water painting everything, painting with real colours, watering plants, figuring out what a scooter is for, running away from mummy, watching Pocoyo, sleeping, trying to get dressed herself and getting us out of bed/dressed by pulling eyes open shouting WAKE! and bringing us clothes to put on, putting dolly to sleep in toy buggy by shuggling and singing twinkle twinkle little star, buying green top milk, kicking balls, swing parks and cousin's top notch playhouse. Pretending to mow the lawn and go shopping.

General enthusiasm about the world and its items. She can do colours (except red, which often still gets called green), count to 13 in English, to 10 in German, she'll pretend to spell, she can spot and name the number 6, spot a few other numbers without naming them, spot name S and O and A and i, distinguish between gross and klein when it comes to letters. And laptops are clearly meant for watching Mr Tumble and playing on the In the Nightgarden Website. Blogging? Checking emails? Stop it mummy! All done (closes lid).

Who can argue with a 27 month old?

is it really Wednesday again?

I can't get the image out of my head. With another few yoga poses unlocked on my Wii Fit (my current choice of exercise tool as I'm streaming with hayfever in spite of being on the top class of antihistamines. Any intention of jogging has been thwarted for the foreseeable future) I attempted the shoulder stand. I did not like what I saw. When hubby broke out into uncontrollable laughter at the sight of me, I couldn't but join him, if for different reasons: Suddenly, all that baby flabber that I'm reasonably proud of and happy with followed the new rules of gravity and threatened to make it's way towards my face and possibly drown/choke me. Scary. I'm not so sure why he laughed though.

No more shoulder stands for me.

Considering I had 2 really busy weeks (work - did I tell you I met the Secretary of State for Scotland this morning? update to follow soon - and Cubling taking her sense of independence and self and ownership one level up), I hope that 2 1/2 hours of total exercise will be complemented by constant mad chicken style pose (yoga masters watch out) to make up my 3 1/2 hour a week pledge. On the food front I've been good - lots of leaves, occasional tiny weeny cakes and a wee stress busting naughty day (read: chocolate) today. One big family meal. Admittedly, I've had a few glasses of red wine. My excuse: They were very much needed.

I cheated for the weigh in because I was in need of seeing success. I weighed myself before breaky in the morning, rather than the usual evening spot. My weight loss is therefore potentially not there, but after the last two weeks of constant go go go, I couldn't bear to have a zero in front of me. I'm also still struggling with conversion because as far as measurements of any kind are concerned I'm still firmly continental - Wii Fit tells me I have another 10lbs to go, but my calculation here states 8lbs. I'm confused. Maybe I should just stick to kg and stop converting. On the other hand counting in kg shows up even more slowly. Argh. The sums don't add up.

starting weight 164 lbs

weight last week 161 lbs

weight this week 158 lbs

gained/lost: 3 lbs

target weight: 68kg/ 150lbs (minimum) 65kg / 143lbs ideally.

how much to go 8lbs (15lbs ideally)

Go me!

Recycle Week Day 1: Reduce and Recycle

There was no opportunity of me breaking my Recycle Week pledge. I didn't have time for any shopping, yay me. Downside being that our fridge is empty and we had a rather, well, strange dinner. Nevermind, I liked it anyway.

Back to the point. I challenged myself a bit further to find out how I can reduce my waste or recycle more. Any step I may take has to be simple and fit into the daily routine of a working parent household because time is limited. In a previous post I already mentioned that my local area, while providing blue recycling bins to households, is limited in what materials can be recycled through these bins.

A second look into my cupboard revealed that cereal boxes and plastic packaging which is not a milk/drink bottle are big bin fillers which cannot be put into our blue bin. I'm not even sure if say a shampoo bottle is meant to go into the blue bin or not, and it takes some effort to find out. Ideally, recycling bins should take any plastic packaging, but that's simply not the case where in my local area.

So I had a look at nearby recycling centres which would take those bulky items.

I'm not impressed. There are 3 in the whole of Glasgow, all of them at least 4 miles of a car drive away (no public transport). However, one is close to where I work, and I may be able to drop off stuff there during my lunch hour. It still involves car use though.

Secondly, I asked my colleagues to pledge for recycle week and that I would include their efforts on this blog. Not sure if the latter offer is alluring or counter productive, we'll see.

Here are 10 energy saving tips that we try to practice in our household:

1. switch off all appliances at the socket to save energy. We're in the habit of doing this every night.

2. switch off dishwasher (guilty as charged for using a dishwasher)/washing machine after use.

3. dry clothes in conservatory or in the garden instead of using a dryer. It works for our small family even in winter.

4. use the short cycle for general washing, which in our case is less than a quarter of the length of the full cycle.

5. take glass to bottle bank, collect empty jam jars for making jar or giving away to other jam makers through freecycle

6. freecycling stuff I don't need anymore, or selling it through ebay for a second life

7. frequenting charity shops and NCT nearly new sales to buy toys and clothes to reduce the amount of new stuff bought for baby, also sharing with friends, handing down, borrowing items. In fact, in Cubling's 2 years 3 months I've almost not had to buy any clothes for her.

8. energy saving light bulbs - well not in every room but getting there. Why don't they work with dimmers?

9. contributing to green office scheme and a cycling policy for the company I work for

10. Always consider walking/cycling/public transport for journeys and only use car when either isn't an option (which is a relative decision, so we do use the car quite a lot).

And as a bonus,
11. put lids on pots while cooking. This really saves energy.

What are your top tips for recycling, saving energy and generally reducing your carbon footprint?

photo credit: how can I recycle this

Mummy recycle or what's in my cupboard

Well, Recycle Week is approaching fast and I've packed my rucksack, workbag, changing bag, car and buggy with plastic and cloth bags. The latter incidentally all from Germany, where small shops give them away to customers, as a way of marketing their business through the print on it. (hark, small shops, great marketing idea, no?)

Recycling of course is the last in the line of the three R's, reduce, reuse, recycle.

So I had a look at the first R. As a quick exercise, I looked into my cupboard and fridge and considered which of the packaging was really superfluous and could be reduced by simple (!) changes in my lifestyle.

Lots of packaging is convenience, and like any working mum, convenience is important. This is why I shy away from the task of going entirely waste free for now. I can't see it (yet). Quite a lot of items are there to feed Cubling, so are recent packaging sins. However, there are items where convenience may be overrated. So here are the big non recyclable bin fillers that I can really do without:

- fruit shoot bottles. Yes, Cubling loves fruit shoot, and they are very convenient, right size for toddler hands and tummies, fun, reasonably healthy and mess free. I have 16 fruit shoot bottles in my cupboard. I don't have much cupboard space. Getting rid of them would be good for the environment and for my limited food storage space.
Solution: Squash plus normal toddler cups. It's cheaper, as mobile, the same stuff, and inconvenience factors is close to 0, especially as offset by not having to carry heavy packs of fruit shoots home. Of course I could also revert to water and milk only ...
Barrier: Peer pressure (when Cubling sees another toddler drink a fruit shoot, she wants one too). Could carry an old fruit shoot bottle and fill that for those occasions.

- yoghurt pots. I have two types, plain yoghurt in 500g tubs (not so bad) and the wee ones marketed at babies/toddlers with sugar and fruit flavour. The latter take up a lot of space, the tubs can't be recycled in our council area, and they are not as healthy as plain yoghurt
Solution: stop buying them. Just buy the plain stuff. If I'm really keen: get the yoghurt maker (yes I have one!!!) out and make yoghurt the handmade way, using the glass containers that come with the yoghurt maker which can be reused forever.
Barrier: none. Cubling doesn't mind which yoghurt she gets, she loves all yoghurts equally and would choose to live on a diet of yoghurt and chocolate if only I let her.

- broccoli florets wrapped in plastic foil. Onions, carrots, potatoes in plastic bags. Not a lot of rubbish but rubbish that is unnecessary. Every shop also has unwrapped broccoli etc.
Solution: pick unwrapped veg. No barriers (apart from price on occasions). Easy.

- fruit and veg tubs (e.g. mushroom, strawberries, tomatoes that all come in plastic containers).
Solution: for most of these there are choices in most shops. Go for loose mushrooms and tomatoes instead of tubs. I have no solution for the fruit. Only few shops will sell them in cardboard boxes and none I know sells them loose.

- toddler fruit pots: Cubling doesn't eat fruit, or rather, only in the pureed form (and that's a struggle most of the time too). So I have lots of plastic fruit pots in the cupboard, which I mix into porridge or give her with meals if she doesn't eat the veg.
Solution: cook and puree using reusable plastic containers.
Barriers: This requires extra time input to put into practice. Cubling may not like my homemade fruit puree because it's not as smooth and may taste differently.
Probably the hardest on this list to implement but worth a try.

- toddler snacks: lots of little bags in bigger bags (multipacks). Here's a tricky one. Cubling doesn't eat healthy snacks that have minimum packaging, so to get rid of those packs I have to try and change her eating habits first to go for less packaging. Again, there's a peer pressure problem. What I can do is reduce how often I grab a bag of snacks.

Reuse:
- Egg cartons: In my hometown, we recycle these by taking them to the market and refilling them with the next load of eggs. This is not offered around here. Hence no immediate solution.

- Jam jars etc: Can be reused for home made jam, or if like me, you don't get time to make any at this point in time, offer them on your local Freecycle network where there's always people desperate for extra jars for their jam making endeavours (as I once was).

So tell me, what's in your cupboard that you could get rid of with minor simple changes?

videotainment - home is where the heart is

Here's some worthwhile video entertainment to be enjoyed:

Camera Obscura, a project by Street Level Photoworks. It was run at the famous Red Road high rise flats in Glasgow, once the highest dwellings in Europe. They are to be demolished over the next decade because nobody wants to live in them anymore. Currently, lots of asylum seekers are being housed in the flats - because they are empty and nobody else wants them. The flats are impressive, and with the influx of asylum seekers to them, more vibrant than in a long time. There's a real buzz going on there, they really aren't as bad as their fame, and I'll shed a tear or two when they'll be knocked down. Of course nobody wants to live in these monstrosities, so that reality needs to be faced. It's good though that there is an attempt to document the people behind the towers, their lives, their sense of home. Street Level Photoworks has lots of great community art projects, check them out - such as Mother of Purl, also based at Red Road.

My favourite Red Road anecdote: Once, when visiting someone at Red Road, I made the mistake of turning up when all the kids got home from school. With 30 floors, 2 lifts of which one was broken, it took me almost an hour to get a turn - and I jumped the queue (or was made to by a parent).

Remaining on the theme of home (which incidentally is the theme of this year's Scottish Refugee Week) is a little feature on what home means to refugees in Glasgow (and once you've watched the clip, there's more little clips to be chosen from which magically pop up. I particularly like them because I know some of the people in the clips):



Finally, there's a nice feature film also on the theme of home. Home is a non-profit film. Home has been made for you: share it! And act for the planet. Above all, enjoy it!!!