Candles in the Darkness

Last night I joined a vigil for Gaza outside the BBC on Oxford Road in Manchester. Feelings of helplessness often overtake me in the face of such injustice and misuse of power. But holding a candle in the cold and dark last night, with around a hundred other people who shared by feelings of outrage, sadness and disgust, and hoped for an end to the killing and a peaceful future felt powerful.



Other people I knew had turned up, including a friend of Nick's who I had never met before. He is Gazan, studying for an MD in Manchester. His parents had come to visit him recently and were still with him, but the rest of his family remained in Gaza. I struggled to imagine what that must feel like. He had had some contact with them, and everyone was okay so far. Then he introduced us to his friend, M. M had a pale and sad face, that seemed somehow familiar. I wondered if I had met him before. A told us that one of M's family members had been killed today in the raids. I was speechless. I didn't know what to say. M said that he had just spoken with his family on the phone a few minutes ago, he said the bombs were falling now. All four of us were silent. The reality of this was speaking to us in the silence. Our candles kept being blown out by the passing buses, but we always found someone else's candle to re-light from. I thought about just how similar to campaigning and fighting for justice holding a lit candle on the street in wintertime is.

End the Killing in Gaza

Things you can do:

1) Write to your MP - they're on their Christmas holidays (conveniently), but still write to them, phone them and generally pester them. Find out their contact details on the Write to Them website.

2) Write to the Foreign Secretary on this email address - private.office@fco.gov.uk

3) Fax the Prime Minister +442079250918

4) Write to the Labour Party - fill in this form online http://www.labour.org.uk/contact

5) Go to to a Protest:

LONDON
Tuesday 30 December, 2 - 4pm
Outside Israeli Embassy, Kensington High Street, London, W4.
Nearest tube Kensingston High Street (turn right out of tube station and walk along the main road.
Wednesday 31 December, 2 - 4pm outside Israeli Embassy
Thursday 1 January 2 - 4pm outside Israeli Embassy
SATURDAY 3 JANUARY. DEMONSTRATION AND RALLY. Assemble 2pm Parliament Square, W1. Nearest tube Westminster

MANCHESTER
Tuesday 30 5pm, BBC Oxford Road, there will be vigils all week and a protest on Saturday 3rd January.

GLASGOW
Saturday 3rd January 12noon
Outside Lloyds TSB, St Vincent Street and then assemble for demo at Blytheswood Square, 2pm

EDINBURGH
Foot of the Mound, Princes Street
Saturday 3rd January, 12noon.

CARDIFF
Tuesday 30 December 12 to 1pm. Outside Cardiff Market/ St John’s Church, the Hayes
Wednesday 31 December New Year Vigil. Nye Bevan Statue, Queen Street

LEEDS
Tuesday 30 4.30pm-6pm, Outside art gallery, Headrow

BRISTOL
Centre, opposite the Hippodrome, Tuesday - Friday 5.00 - 6.00 and Saturday 3.00 - 4.00.

NOTTINGHAM
Tuesday 30 December 12 noon, Market Square

SOUTHAMPTON
Tuesday 30 December 12 to 2pm, West Quay Entrance, High Street

HULL
Saturday 3 January, 11am. Queen Victoria Square.

BRADFORD
Monday 29 December 2pm, Centenary Square. We will provide leaflets please bring placards, banners etc or bring with you marker pens and large size paper.

PORTSMOUTH
Saturday 3 January 11am, Guildhall Square

Slaughter in Gaza

The western world was sitting back after a big turkey dinner and too many glasses of wine. They reached for the remote to find another cheesey Christmas special to help them through the digestion of too many excesses. I'm not sure how many of them flicked to the news channel for a moment and discovered the horror that was being unleashed on a tiny overcrowded strip of land, far away somewhere hot and dusty where Santa doesn't go.

But it was happening. The raids began on Saturday morning, the 27th of December. Israeli bomber and helicopter gunships targeted police stations, Khan Younis and Rafah refugee camps, the Gaza city port and civilian targets. The first wave killed 200 people. Today is the fourth day of the massacre. At least 364 Palestinians have died so far. Thousands more have been injured, lost loved ones and their homes.

The justification that Israel gives for attacking Gaza is the rockets that have been fired from within Gaza into Israel. 9 Israelis have been killed by Gazan rockets since September 2005. In the same period at least 1400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. I will never believe that there is justification for violence. It will never be right for Palestinians to fire rockets into Israel, even if they kill fewer people than are killed by Israeli forces. An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. But in this case it's not even an eye for an eye. My friend calculated that 3 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in 2008, and then Israel killed 345 Palestinians in 3 days. Therefore 1 Israeli = 115 Palestinians. When it comes to the Palestinians trying to rise against the Israeli oppressor, I come closer to understanding the motivation for violence than I ever thought I could.

So with this justification you would be expecting that Israel would be very sure that they could definitely catch the bad guys who've been firing rockets into their territory. But the dead are old men, old women, children... Innocents who have no affiliation to any militant groups. I guess they have to pay the price for falling under the same catgetory as those who fire rockets. It's just a pity it's such a broad category: Palestinian.



A home was destroyed while eleven family members slept inside. Five of the daughters died when the house collapsed on them. They were Tahrir 17, Ikram 15, Samer 13, Dina 8 and Jawahar, 4 years old. The Guardian Newspaper wrote this about their father:

Anwar, 40, sat in another house where a mourning tent had been set up. He was pale and still suffering from serious injuries to his head, his shoulder and his hands. But like many other patients in Gaza he had been made to leave an overcrowded hospital to make way for the dying. Yesterday his house was a pile of rubble: collapsed walls and the occasional piece of furniture exposed to the sky. He spoke bitterly of his daughters' deaths. "We are civilians. I don't belong to any faction, I don't support Fatah or Hamas, I'm just a Palestinian. They are punishing us all, civilians and militants. What is the guilt of the civilian?" Like many men in Gaza, Anwar has no job, and like all in the camp he relies on food handouts from the UN and other charity support to survive.

"If the dead here were Israelis, you would see the whole world condemning and responding. But why is no one condemning this action? Aren't we human beings?" he said. "We are living in our land, we didn't take it from the Israelis. We are fighting for our rights. One day we will get them back."

This latest Israeli atrocity comes after 18 months of the Israeli siege and blockade of Gaza, which has crippled the Gazan economy and caused starvation and malnourishment throughout Gaza. The Israeli blockade has brought to a virtual halt food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities and prevented UN and medical personnel from entering Gaza. This is the current situation in a local hospital, as reported by the organisation Medical Aid for Palestinians:

There were mothers, fathers looking for children, looking for relatives. Everyone was confused and seeking support. Mothers were crying, people were asking about relatives, the medical team was confused.

Some people were just lying there, some were screaming, some were very, very angry. There were a lot of injured arriving, ambulances coming in and out. The injured were coming by private cars and they were being left wherever. You could see blood here and there.

There is talk [the Israeli air strikes] were targeting the police and security forces but in Shifa hospital, I saw many, many civilians, some dead, some injured, some were children, some were women, some were elderly people.

There are people without their legs in very severe pain. The doctors and nurses were trying to give them painkillers and to keep them alive. Patients are lying there knowing they've lost their legs. Some were asking God if they could die. They were in a terrible psychological state.

The doctors and nurses were trying to do their best. They discharged all the patients from the chronic diseases ward and from the oncology ward to make way for the injured. They were using whatever they could.

There's no gauze so they are using cotton, which sticks to the wounds. They can't sterilise clothes for the operating theatre. They're using wrong sized syringes. They're working 24 hours. They're referring cases from one hospital to the next. One hospital was running out of anaesthesia. They're also drawing blood and there's no alcohol. This is a disaster.

Already this post is too long. But there are still so many things I haven't covered. The media coverage of these matters is inexcusably biased. The BBC and other mainstream media clearly show bias to the Israeli side by portraying these atrocities as the justifiable retaliation of a sovereign state against terrorists attacking it. I have been closely following the media coverage over the past few days and am sickened that whenever airtime is given to a Gazan reporting on the deaths, casualties and humanitarian situation resulting from these bombings it must be followed by a report from Israel about the dreadful situation Israelis are living. As if this was equal suffering. I do not mean to belittle the fear felt by Israelis living close to Gaza. The fear that a rocket may strike them. But this is not equal and parallel suffering to that the Palestinians are facing in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the most read article on the Guardian website is about Steven Gerrard's assault charges.

Seasonal Offerings

October's air hangs heavy with a sense of culmination and finality. Sometimes frosty carrying the scent of chimney smoke across a park lit by the last rays of indian summer sunshine. Sometimes moist with the scent of rotting leaves, returning to the earth, particle by particle, melting into layers of soil. The summer's sunshine is distilled and concentrated to the deepest oranges, reds and pinks of fallen leaves, every drop falling to the ground and burning like embers of golden fire against the green, the grey, the black of the canvas provided by lawns, fields, pavements and roads. Things are dying, ending their lives. Nights draw in, heading into the dark tunnel of winter.

But alongside rotting, decay, mulch and disintegration, the earth brings forth bumper crops of its finest efforts and full of life. Pumpkins, squash, marrow, beetroot, cauliflower, apples. Final offerings, a farewell gift. And a sense of saving the best til last. No more tentative sprouting salad leaves of spring, tender green vegetables of summer. Concentrated colours and flavours, bold and sensuous contours are autumn's signatures, a final flourish before heading underground to sprout the root vegetables of winter. I want to keep them in my hand, a source of warmth for the cold, dark, colourless, damp months to come. Frantically distilling them down to soups and curries to be frozen as a memoir for a later date. Curried Sweet Potato and Butterbean Soup, Purple Cauliflower and Roquefort, Borscht, Apple Pie with a Cheddar Crust, Cider Vinegar Muffins, Annapurna Daal Bhat... Squash Curry.



And as a I think of these things, pouring over recipe books for what to do with the season's produce... a 6 month old is gazing intently out the window from his seat at my feet. He's in my care for the afternoon and grumbled incessantly until I took him to the window to watch the light flicker through the trees. Mesmerized, he stares contentedly outwards and upwards, calm enough now to be put to rest in his chair by the window, facing out to the world. He's watching the patterns of the golden autumn light filter through the trees as they blow and shake in gusts of wind. He's watching the leaves spiral down from their lofty heights, dancing at ground level before coming to rest on piles on the grass. He's falling asleep with the light dappling his rosy baby face.

And elsewhere I see the culmination of seasons of growth. Day to day watching babies brought into the world, grown in a dark place for months, nourished and cared for and brought forth in a magnificent fashion when they are ripe and ready, I can't help but think of miraculous design, patterns, circles, rhythms, reasons.

But they come at all times of the day and night, all times of the year. And with slightly more risk and effort involved. I've not long finished my allocated week on delivery suite (so named to make it sound less medical than 'labour ward'). A week that I've looked forward to all my medical school career. And I did it in style, with multiple night shifts (including a Sunday night), 16 hour day shifts, lots of cups of coffee and basically wearing myself out. And it was worth it. I saw 8 beautiful babies blink their sticky eyes open to look at the world for the first time, and even managed to 'catch' an additional two myself.

It was a week of thinking, observing and reflecting... some of those thoughts are crystalising and will soon be ripe for publication. If you're interested, stay tuned.

Where's the Consultation?

Another good thing that happened over the summer was the publication of a report called 'Where's the Consultation' by the Global Health Advocacy Project.

In 2004, the Department of Health carried out a public consultation exploring proposals to deny access to primary healthcare to failed asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. The results of this consultation were never published and the department have resisted our attempts to bring them into the public domain.

This report summarises submissions to the Department of Health Consultation 'Proposals to Exclude Overseas Visitors from Eligibility to Free NHS Primary Medical Services'. It also details our ongoing attempts using the Freedom of Information Act to access a complete set of submissions to this important consultation.

To download the document in pdf format, please click here or see the Medsin Website.

The New Rules of the Blog

No blogs for 4 months... oops. And quite a lot has happened, there was the Iranian asylum saga during which I got face to face with the Home Office over an asylum case... (its an ugly face in case you were wondering), the epic trip to France by train (uncomfortable, but environmentally sound... or is it, where do I stand on nuclear?? Hrm...) involving a delicious quantity of rose wine and the best tomatoes I have ever tasted, the holiday in Scotland with swimming in ice cold rivers, the sea and the best seafood ever tasted... (and the rain), the last minute dash to Cheltenham for Greenbelt, and then finally (and ominously) The Return to the study of clinical medicine. Ussain Bolt's awesome 100m sprint was in there somewhere too. And it all went by so quickly.

I've been reluctant to blog. Mostly because my life is dominated by grossly mundane events, most of which take place inside a giant building with lots of beds (not as nice as hotel beds), sick people and not many windows. I have to live here, 1.5 hrs from home in Manchester, start early, finish late, do nights and weekends and spend lots and lots of time in the library.

I'm let out for the occasional day at weekends when I get to look at the outside world. But mostly I'm tired and don't have time to look. Consqequently, my soul has suffered a few little deaths. My guitar is mostly idle against the wall, my books on subjects other than medicine are gathering dust (which I don't have time to clean), my kitchen is lonely and longs to be cooked in, newspapers are unread... and my brain grinds to a halt. So if I were to blog, all there would be to blog about would be medicine. The patients I have seen, the diseases I have learned about, the wicked doctors, the nice doctors, the rude doctors...

Medicine isn't all that bad. I suppose. I mean, I dide choose it for myself after all, so I can't really complain. And people would probably like to hear about it. There is a fascination with the human body, with medicine and with the gruesome tales we medics are capable of, a fascination I can't explain. And I won't play into its hands, because actually, it's all quite boring really.

So perhaps the primary function of this blog from now on will be to force me to think of things other than hospital, patients, examinations, drugs, diseases, and treatments. Each week I will challenge myself to blog you something of a non-medical nature. There will be one exception - I'm reading a lot around pregnancy, childbirth and the medicalisation of what are essentially natural processes. Most of what I'm reading it's at total loggerheads with what the obstetric profession believe. And I'm about to start my Obstetrics training next week. So that could get interesting. But it's more anthropology than medicine, so we'll allow it.

Going Local

It's all change in our shopping habits since my post about supermarkets. I was so unconvinced by my own arguments, that I've pretty much stopped frequenting their hallowed aisles.

Instead, I've been doing our fruit and veg shopping at Unicorn in Chorlton and only buying local
produce. This is a challenge in a period that is traditionally 'hungry' in terms of UK seasonal produce. The winter storage veg (carrots, potatoes, parsnips) are running out and the summer's abundance is yet to burst forth from the fields. Leaving a few meagre greens as the only fresh offerings from the soil.

It all started around the 6th of May. I cycled to Chorlton on my way home from hospital. Unicorn smells good. It's always been one of those places I have wandered around, wide-eyed and wondering at the organic wholesome goodness... longing for the day when I have a wage and can afford to shop there. But no longer. I still have no wage, but I'm going to see what happens if I try and spin out our veggies and wholefoods to the very best of efficiency. Is it really too expensive? We'll see.

So here I was, with my bicylce panniers and my shopping basket, breathing in the aroma of the grains and spices, all organic and all fairly traded. At Unicorn,packaging is kept to a bare minimum and the entire operation is a worker's cooperative. My kinda place. They do import organic vegetables from overseas, but for the purpose of my local organic produce experiment, I would be abstaining from spanish tomatoes and bananas from whoknowswhere. This also meant that my bill would be cheaper, since my food wouldn't have been transported as far.

As I picked a few potatoes and some dirty carrots from sacks, I overheard a parent chastise their child - "NO, you CAN'T have any more sunflower seeds, you've had ENOUGH today". Surely a conversation that could only be overheard in a fairtrade organic wholefoods store in Chorlton. I smiled inside, remembering kids I used to babysit for who had to be bribed into good behaviour with seaweed (Japanese Nori), as they didn't like sweeties.

So that week I came out with delicious tasty baby salad leaves from 3 miles down the road in Sale, carrots from herefordshire, potatoes fom Dundee, rhubarb from somewhere in the UK, leeks from herefordshire and mushroom from Ireland. On top of this, I got some canned tomatoes and some pasata - not from the UK but really, there's not much else to eat at the moment... Ideally, I'd like my local eating to be limited to produce from the North West, but having also been to the farmer's market this week, I still can't find much that comes from my local area and have had to stretch as far north as Dundee and as far south as Hereford.

Also visited the farmer's market that takes place on the 2nd and 4th Friday and Saturday of each month in Picadilly Gardens, Manchester. Not as impressive as I'd hoped, but Hungry Boy and I managed to get some awesome Lancashire cheese made in Goosnargh. It felt really good to buy it straight from the guy who made it. It was really, really tasty. We also bought some bread from Kirby, although I can make our own bread, I do find it difficult to keep up with Hungry Boy's demands.



The following week brought Spring Greens (Sale), Beetroot (Ormskirk - stored from winter) and Chicory (Sale) into our diets. It is becoming more and more exciting to see a new vegetable crop on my visits to the grocery shop. Yesterday there was a new variety of lettuce (Sale) and even CHERRY TOMATOES from Blackpool!!! There was also Spinach and Runner Beans. My day was made. The simple joys of watching the earth turn out new things for us to eat in a timely and sustainable fashion.

So are we just eating vegetables? Pretty much... I'm allowing us to eat some stuff that is not from the UK - mainly staples like grains and pasta. We also have frozen broccoli of dubious origin and a cupboard full of spices. And some of these we still get at the supermarket. Hungry Boy needs fed and pasta is only 19p in Sainsbury's, what you gonna do? And dairy. Unicorn's vegan. This is a great disappointment to me - i'd like to buy local organic milk from them. And local organic eggs. And honey.

I'm trying not to get religiously legalistic with my locavorian tendencies. I'm concentrating on the positives of eating local fruit and veg rather than the negatives of not doing so. I'm still eating out, especially tasty Chinese, and it has yet to become socially acceptable to inform hosts in advance of attending for dinner that you are now a locavore.

Things I made out of this veritable feast of local delicacies included Beetroot and goats cheese salad, Aduki bean pie, Carrot and Lentil Burgers and Macaroni cheese with Spinach and Mushrooms. Yummy yum yummy.

ps - does anyone know how to make chicory taste nice?

Supermarkets

Late afternoon on a Saturday. I look up from my textbook and realise that I'm going to have to go and buy some food. I have friends coming for dinner tomorrow and they probably don't want to eat the bit of floppy celery that constitutes the contents of the fridge.
ARGH.
Don't get me wrong, I am in love with cooking and will gladly cook for anyone who needs fed. I also welcome distraction from studying multiple myeloma and anaemias. But I hate having to go to the supermarket. There are many, many things wrong with supermarkets...

I set off with my old bags - a sticker on the back of the front door to remind me to take my own carrier bags shopping has helped reduce the number of bright orange poly bags gifted to me by that well-known purveyor of all things super and marketish. First of all, I'm in the car. I don't like being in the car. I feel guilty and dirty every time I have to drive somewhere. Which, thankfully, isn't that often. But since I am on my own for this trip and the quantity of stuff I will be purchasing is too much for one small feeble girl such as myself, I turn the key in the ignition and set off on the 5 minute journey to the nearest venue.

When I get there, there are plenty of others pulling up in the car park and walking in line towards the mothership, called home to purchase and consume. At least people are bringing their own bags, I note with some reassurance. I smile at the irony of the canvas shopping bags bearing slogans like 'Shop Local'. But I can't feel too superior, I've got mine with me too. I'm put to shame by a couple in their sixties packing their weekly shop into paniers and attaching them to their bikes for the cycle home.

Inside, the travelator talks to me. For my own safety. She very politely informs me that I should hold onto the hand rail whilst traveling.

Vegetables
First section, fruit and veg. This is where I have regular tantrums of sheer frustration at the lack of local, seasonal fruit and veg on offer. According to a couple of sources seasonal fruit and veg available in the UK in May includes asparagus, cauliflower, new potatoes, broad beans, rhubarb, kale, salad leaves, spring greens and of course, the good old parsnip. So in this well known supermarket chain, the asparagus was from Peru, the rhubarb was from holland (probably grown in one of their massive heated greenhouses), the broad beans from Kenya... I could go on. I just don't get it. WHY? WHY would you fly in asparagus from Peru when locally available asparagus is in season and totally delicious? WHY? How can it possibly make sense? It just can't possibly be easier and cheaper to fly all that asparagus all the way from the southern hemisphere, can it? Can it? And this is how the seasonal fruit and veg tantrums begin. I chuck a couple of curly leaf and round lettuce into the trolley, get a little bit annoyed that they come in cellophane bags and get on with it. I decide not to waste what remained of my sense of inner calm on questioning the price of the organic vegetables.



Honey
My most memorable supermarket tantrum was about honey. I was looking for some Scottish heather honey with which to make some honey and whisky ice cream. I went to another well-known supermarket and searched through the many, many different types of honey available. There was honey from Argentina, lavender honey from France, New Zealand Honey, South African Honey, but no Scottish heather honey. I stood in disbelief and stared at a shelf full of jars imported from literally all corners of the global and marvelled at the inability to transport local honey to the supermarket. I might have let them off (might have) if they'd had honey from the immediately local area (Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire). But no. I had to be calmed down by a gentle husband, and stroked on the back of the head until I was docile enough to make it round the rest of the aisles.

Wine
The supermarket's busy. The sun's been shining and people are wandering in from local pubs, where they've spent the day building up an odour of alchol seeping from their pores and turning a nice shade of pink. I sound really grumpy. Fair enough, it's a bank holiday, people should be having fun. Just cause I have to sit with books all day doesn't mean I should get annoyed with them. But they are clogging up the booze aisle, trying to decide how many bottles of the supermarket's own budget range spirits to buy for tonight. I push past to get the wine for tomorrow. Now, I haven't yet found any wine on the shelves from England. I love Australian, South African and Chilean wine. Especially when I can get wine that was produced under fair conditions, for a fair price and that helped develop communities in the global South. So the wine aisle is where my ethical schizophrenia of food miles vs. fair trade comes into play. Which to buy? Genuine dilemma. I want to support the local grower trading their way out of poverty under fair conditions, but I also don't want to be responsible for air or sea freight of lots of heavy bottles of wine and the carbon that this entails. I reached a decision on this last year which resulted in me limiting wine buying to France and Spain. Obviously, I'd give UK bottles a try too. Nick and I came to this conclusion when we did some research and read about the devastating impact of climate change (mainly contributed to by the rich countries on our planet) on the global South. Climate change was going to lead to further poverty and crop failure in the South, and we didn't want to be part of that. Also, I have become less convinced about the benefits of fair trade as a means to achieving social justice. But we can talk about that some other time.

Milk



Now I needed some milk. I use a lotta lotta milk. Skimmed milk cause it's the only kind I like. A few weeks ago I changed to organic. It has always been my goal to be able to afford to purchase all my food from organic sources. I found out a few years back about the ridiculous amount of hormones fed to cows to keep them producing milk and decided that it was a bit mean to the cows and a bit unhealthy for me to keep drinking non-organic milk. But the price has keep me slugging down the white stuff tainted with cow progesterone/oestrogen for the time being. That was until recently when I read the following about the non-organic dairy industry in a BBC magazine:

Whenever you require milk, the mother has to produce an offspring... If it's a male calf, it has little use in the commercial world. Females join the dairy world, but bull calves can't be milked and are uneconomical for beef production. Of the 482,000 calves born in Britain last year, 136,000 were shot at birth.

Olive Magazine

So I switched to organic. I'm not particularly squeemish about animal cruelty, but this just seemed a totally, selfish, wasteful principle. Now, my supermarket of choice today does stock organic skimmed milk, but in smaller bottles so I have to buy a few of them, thereby increasing my plastic wastage. I consider this a lesser of two evils for the time being (until the UK government gets its arse into gear about milk bottle recycling) and move on. I used to get my milk delivered from the local milkman. They didn't have organic though and I no longer have a doorstep for a milkman to leave my milk on. I could go vegan. I'd be fine with that. See the really good environmental reasons about veganism here on BBC Green Nick wouldn't. And having been forced into vegetarianism since he married me, I think that we should hold off on removing anything else from his diet for the time being. Maybe one day, I'll get my own cow. I'd like that. So would Nick. He has a weird cow fascination.

Checking Out
And so my battle continued as I browsed the aisles. I had to continue making decisions about whether or not to buy something based on its over-packing or its country of origin. And ended up not buying some things I had perceived that I needed. I doubt that I'll miss them that much. I bought a few things I hadn't intended too as a result of very careful product placement on behalf of the supermarket chain. And inevitably, my bill was bigger when I got to the till than what I had bargained.

There are plenty of other complaints I could make against supermarkets related to their buying up of land, monopolising local markets and putting small shop holders out of business. Their treatment of the farmers and producers of the goods that they sell onto us consumer mugs for inflated prices, whilst keeping market prices low.See the Tescopoly site for more info

I packaged my loot into my old, tatty reused polythene bags which are split and bursting and waddled back to the car park.

Why do I still Go to Supermarkets?

So... You might ask, why do I go to the supermarket if I dislike it so much. Aren't there alternatives? Yes there are. So why don't I go off to the hippy grocery stores and stop moaning. The reason is simple. Price. I already have 5 years of student debt and another 2 years to go. But I promise myself every single time that I leave that place that as soon as either one of us starts earning a wage, we'll never darken the door of this or any other supermarket ever again. And I do try and get some of my stuff from more ethical sources wherever possible.

I am usually more radical about these things, so I find myself somewhat surprised that I still give into the cheap prices and convenience of the evil supermarket dominators of the world. Usually price is not a problem. I'll pay the extra, bankrupting myself until I'm happy that my actions will not be having a negative impact on the people who produced goods for me or for the world as a whole. If it was solely down to me, I suppose I would get on my bike, buy some decent sized panniers, head to Chorlton, stock up on local produce at Unicorn Grocery Store, hand over a much larger wad of cash, buy maybe one third of what I buy now cause that's all I could afford, be a bit hungry and have my conscience eased. But I don't make decisions like that on my own any more, and all this is part of a large and beautiful compromise known as marriage. Nick is equally outraged by the food miles represented on the supermarket shelves, the packaging and is even starting to consider animal cruelty (he's a big fat carnivore, but i'm working on him), but has a stronger awareness of our financial responsbilities. He's also hungrier than me and most likely wouldn't survive on what we could afford to buy at more ethical venues.

So, there we go. Excuses given. I'm not convinced by a single one of them and long for an income with which to make better choices and a patch of ground to grow my own food in. Ideally, everything I ate would come from within a cyclable radius. That would fill me with satisfaction and joy. But in the coming decades, I fear it will also be necessary. We can't carry on with supermarket culture and everything it entails - plunder, pilage and destruction left behind in a trail of bargain prices, special offers and cheap junk food. We also have to rethink our concept of 'need', what we 'need' to eat and what we 'need' to buy.

You will see the word 'need ' appear throughout this post. I'm not totally unaware of how selfish it sounds. Like I said before, I don't really 'need' milk. I could go vegan. But for all of us, redefining our 'needs' is a transition, a learning curve... and one that we're going to have to make quickly. You'll also have heard me contradict myself in a lot of places. I may well look make on this post in future months and years and wonder why I dithered for so long about what will then seem like obvious choices and endless possibilities for an alternative method of living.

I'm getting there.

Singing

An extract from 'Birth and Breastfeeding' by Michel Odent* :

Singing is a specifically human activity. And the need for a resurgence of fundamental humanity is strong during pregnancy. There is no example of a human society where singing was unknown. Thus, anyone who would study what makes man special in the world of mammals should certainly reflect on the function of singing. I grew to understand this over time, after singing with pregnant women in France, the UK and the US.

A birthing centre or a maternity hospital is an ideal place to realize that the voice can be at the service of the most primitive brain structures. This is so in the case of the scream that characterizes the last contraction before birth, and also the first cry of the newborn baby... Finally, when singing, the voice is at the service of the primitive brain and the new brain (which makes language possible) at the same time. The direct communication of emotions through melody and rhythm is completed by the use of words. Among human beings endowed with the capacity to speak, singing is a perfect example of how both brains can work in harmony.

Studying the function of singing is a key to understanding human beings. In fact, any artistic activity , a technique - which is governed specifically by the neocortex - puts itself at the service of a function controlled by older structure. The technique of a musician makes it possible to transmit emotions through sound. The technique of a painter can transmit emotions with visual signals. Poetry is the transmission of emotions via our elaborate form of communication called 'language'. The technique of a dancer tends to arouse emotions induced by body movements and rhythms. Gastronomy is related to digestic functions; the art of the perfume maker, to the sense of smell; eroticism to the mating instinct. There is no physiological function that cannot be the basis for artistic activity. It is significant that words like 'art' and 'artifice' have the same root. Indeed, art is an artifice used by humans to harmonize their two brains.

* A fascinating book that mixes comment on modern obstetrics, philosophy, anthropology and art. pg 65-66, Clairview Publishing.

Ps - Mum, if you're reading, I'm NOT pregnant and not planning to be either. You can chill out.

The Tools of Democracy

This morning, still sleepy and coffee in hand I was met with news from Southern Africa.


News that a shipment of small arms had arrived off the coast of South Africa en route from China to Zimbabwe. The Chinese vessel is docked just outside of Durban harbor, waiting for a row to pass over whether it should be allowed to dock, be unloaded and have its cargo transported across the country and on to Zimbabwe. The ship contains millions of rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, thousands of rocked-propelled grenades and mortar rounds. South Africa's government has said that there is nothing it can do to prevent the cargo from being transported across their territory and on into the hands of Robert Mugabe. Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, opposition supporters endure beatings as they wait peacefully for election results.

Churning over this news with coffee slowly making its way round by system, and with it bringing the clarity that comes with caffeine, I began to feel sick to my stomach. This all sounded terribly familiar. I reached for the bookshelf and a copy of 'We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families' by Philip Gourevitch , but scouring the pages of the journalistic novel on the Rwandan genocide, I could not find what I was looking for. To google.

A keyword search using 'rwanda machete china' quickly turned over the pages of my memory to the information I was seeking as dreadful confirmation:

In 1993 the government of Rwanda imported, from China, three quarters of a million dollars worth of machetes. This was enough for one new machete for every third male. Machetes were used for many of the murders committed during the genocide.
- BBC

Arms from China. Used to by Africans. To kill other Africans.

Sprouting is Good for the Soul

Sprouting is really easy. And sprouts are tasty.

Not having a garden or an allotment, the only thing I could really grow (except my window box of herbs and a pot of lavender, see post below) was sprouts. I started small and grew some Puy lentil and chickpea sprouts. And you don't need one of those fancy sprouter thingies they sell in health food shops.

Here's how you do it.

1.Get an old plastic see-through container (you don't need the lid)and an old pair of tights (preferably nude-coloured).

2. Select a seed or bean to sprout - so far, I've only experimented with puy lentil and chickpea, but there's a whole host of stuff you can sprout out there. Some of it you need to buy seeds for, like broccoli sprouts (which apparently contain 50x the antioxidants than the heads we usually eat). You can also sprout a lot of stuff in your cupboard though - any kind of dried bean or pea, like aduki beans, or seeds like mustard.

3. Soak the lentil/pea/ overnight in a jar of water so that they swell in size.

4. Rinse them and spread them out (not too thickly) in the bottom of your plastic container.

5. Squeeze the container inside the old pair of tights and place in daylight or in the dark, but not in direct sunlight.




6. Rinse the sprouts twice a day and leave them slightly damp, but not sodding in the container. Watch out with the chickpeas, cause they tend to go a bit mouldy.

7. They'll be ready after a few days - when they look long enough to be tasty.
I guess you're probably supposed to cut the sprout part off from the main body of the lentil or pea, but the Puy lentils were pretty tasty attached to the sprout, so I left them on.

8. Eat the yummy sprouts on a salad, sandwich or whatever...

Growing Things

Every spring I have an urge to get my hands dirty in soil, planting things, digging things and poking things with sticks. When I was wee, my parents would spend entire days gardening at this time of year. Inevitably, being Scotland, it was freezing and would rain most of the time. I didn't have much choice about getting involved though - they would ban t.v. and order my brother and I outside for 'fresh air', and to help with digging and weeding and planting things. So I would be out there, up to my elbows in compost, dirt under my finger nails and mud covering my clothes and face. In those days, our family had a decent sized garden and vegetable patch in a clearing in the middle of a forest within a national park. Mum grew leeks and potatoes and carrots, I think. I grew strawberries. The rhubarb grew itself. We even had our very own swamp and meadow.

Nowadays, I live in a one bedroom flat near the centre of Manchester, a grey place. The only vaguely green space anywhere near the house is a patch of neglected, litter-strewn grass outside of our patio door and the park across the road. Nick and I have been talking about appropriating these fertile stretches (that is, if Manchester's concoction of litter, dog crap and other stuff i don't want to think about hasn't destroyed the soil's ability to grow stuff)and using them to grow our own food for the next year. I daydream about it a lot. I think we'd be good at it. There are allotments near by, but the waiting list is 26 people long and there are only 40-odd patches so I doubt we'll get one. I would grow carrots, potatoes, leeks, beans, strawberries... I watched Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage programmes with envy. Imagine being able to grow all that stuff to eat. The idea of never having to go to a supermarket ever again is deliciously exciting.

For the mean time, we bought a wee trough that can sit at the window in our flat, and planted it with coriander, tarragon and mint. The mint's gone crazy and taken over. We're not sure why we decided to get mint, since we don't really use it in any of our food. I think I was just looking for something easy, that would instill confidence in my ability to encourage plant growth. We've also planted some lavender in a pot by the window, that's growing strong.

But that wasn't enough... I was still longing to help in the production of new life. That's when I thought about sprouting.