A Walk

July 2, 2012 By in Harpenden, Photography Tags: , , , , , , , 27 Comments

I was chatting to a friend last week, someone who lives in the same town, and we confessed a slightly shameful secret. We love to take our cameras with us when we go out – she is a much, much better photographer than I am – but we both find the countryside around here completely uninspiring. I had never thought of myself as an ‘urban’ girl, but I would far rather take photos walking down a street of grotty graffiti than I would take photos of the fields and rolling countryside around Hertfordshire. I just find it all a bit… well, dull.

On Sunday it was a lovely sunny day, so I thought I’d try and snap myself out of the photographic funk by going out for a long walk with DorkySon.

We started in the park as usual.

Rothamsted Park, Harpenden, Hertfordshire
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Can I still call myself Green?

June 30, 2012 By in Activism Tags: , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Surfers Against Sewage campaign

I have been having a bit of a political identity crisis recently, as I question whether I can still call myself green.

I think it’s possible to say that you are ‘life-long Labour’ or ‘a committed Conservative’ even if you’re never been an activist and all you’ve ever done is vote for that party. But I’m not so sure that the same applies to Greens. I think there is an expectation that being Green means putting the politics into practice.

Five years ago I was Green with a capital G. A fully paid up member of the Scottish Party, an occasional candidate, present at every committee meeting. I knew exactly what ‘being Green’ meant. It meant knocking on doors, delivering newsletters, carrying the end of a banner at a demo, street stalls in the rain, boycotting Nestle, working for an environmental charity, wearing anti-war and pro-renewable badges on my jacket…  Being Green was about trying to make a better world possible.
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Project 52, Week 25. Feeling Hot Hot Hot!

June 29, 2012 By in Harpenden, Photography Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

grow your own chilli pepper plants

The chilli plants that DorkySon and DorkyDad planted at the start of the year have gone crazy this week! Oddly enough, the chillies are growing on the two short, stumpy plants. The red ones are Numex, and the green ones are Jalapeno.

We also have two very tall leafy ones – Habanero and Tabasco – which so far have produced nothing.

Can’t wait to chop one of these up and throw it into a pan with some crab pasta!

Map Geekery

June 28, 2012 By in Family, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , 18 Comments

Barefoot Books atlas

I mentioned in my BritMums post earlier in the week that once I’ve fulfilled my current commitments I’m not going to do any reviews on the blog… but that doesn’t mean that I can’t still have a big old gush about a company if I love them. This is one of those gushes. 

I’ve always been a map geek. I love them. Sometimes when I was a wee girl, instead of asking for a bedtime story, I used to sit with my Dad or my Grandpa and pore over a map of some place I’d never visited before. Maybe the Pennines, or Kansas, or Madagascar – it didn’t really matter – maps meant possibilities, adventures, fulfilling dreams. I had a brilliant jigsaw puzzle of the world, where all the countries were different colours, and you had to work out how they fitted together.

I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I never really grew out of the map geekery; when I was eighteen I won the award for being the top geography student in Scotland. Give me a packet of colouring pencils and a map to colour in, and it still makes me happy.
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