So much to do

The last few blogs have concentrated on our natural world mainly trees. But if we want a future for our planet and especially for our island we need to do a lot more. I am very aware of noise and air pollution as I live by a main road with bus stops outside my flat. Very handy when you want to use the bus but annoyingly noisy and smelly when you don’t. When I moved here I did not know how much traffic uses this road, buses, lorries delivering to the shops a bit further down and many cars including the cars owned by young men who try to make them as noisy as possible.

There was a lot of small industries here in the years past, shoemaking and brickmaking and many other small industries. The stream at the bottom of our garden was often polluted according to the locals but apart from shopping trolleys and rubbish dumped in it, it seems quite clear. It runs into a large lake system in the nearby valley. (Nene Valley). Recently the lakes and rivers have been flooded and this of course pollutes them with the runoff from the land some of which is still farmed.

Water pollution is high on the list of things that need to change but nobody seems to want to invest in the machinery which can clean the water. The water companies prefer to give their shareholders lots of money instead.

I recently got an email about a Peoples Plan for Nature. I downloaded their ‘brochure’ and found it extremely interesting. It states the following:

‘The People’s Plan for Nature is a UK-wide initiative powered by the National Trust, the RSPB and WWFUK. It is a unique collaboration with the UK public to protect and restore
nature in the UK.’

It makes interesting reading and I hope that some of it’s ideas become reality. There is a long way to go but we must keep trying and fighting for our natural world, all of it.

Houses, trees and TPOs

I have lived in many places during my time here on earth and have seen many different forms of housing. Many towns and cities have had tree lined streets and still have these. I remember walking as a child down into town on a wide road with large trees on both sides. These are still there. I lived in another town where council housing was built with trees lining the street. Oak Road had oak trees, Lime Avenue had lime trees and so on. I look at the style of housing currently being built. We went from large manors, villas and rows of two up and two down terraced houses, to lots of semidetached houses and some detached ones but now we have new estates of what are called town houses. These are the modern form of the old terraced houses. Many have no garden but have paved parking spaces.Small saplings have been planted in small open spaces but this is nothing like the tree lined roads of old.

Trees can have preservation orders TPOs, placed on them.So what is a TPO? ‘Tree Preservation Orders (or TPOs) are placed upon trees that have been assessed and identified as having ‘amenity value’. They are put into place by councils and can protect either a single tree or a group of trees on land within their authority.’ My son and all his neighbours have large trees in their gardens all with TPOs. ‘A Tree Preservation Order (TPO) is a legal tool to prevent harm being done to trees. It makes it a criminal offence to cut down, top, lop, uproot, wilfully damage or wilfully destroy protected trees without prior written consent from your local authority. It also creates a duty to replant a tree removed without consent.’

This last couple of weeks there has been a group of protesters around a beautiful avenue of ancient lime trees at a local beauty spot by the river. (all the trees have TPOs) I went to chat to them on Thursday and offer support. The embankment as it is known is a wonderful place to walk. There is a playground for children, picnic benches and a small kiosk selling hot food and drinks. Lots of swans and ducks too. The space is open and the trees wonderful. A new housing development on the edge of town, wants to cut down these trees to enable a new roundabout and road to be built leading to the new development. There are already problems with this new development as the sewer fractured and now the sewer pipe is above ground. Imagine looking through your windows at this huge sewage pipe outside. One of the roads leading into the nearby town is already showing signs of widening, Trees have been cut down and a digger was there on Thursday clearing the undergrowth.

Back on the embankment some trees have already been cut down but with help from other important people, the felling has been stopped and a proper public consultation is going to be held. Plans will be available for the public to see and comment on. Some trees many still have to be cut down but hopefully not very many.

So many questions is this; what is the point of a TPO if a developer comes along to build houses and wants to remove the trees? The original permission for this was in 2015 but times have changed and the cutting down of these wonderful trees seems to go against what the current government is planning to do in the future. Money talks though!

Here is a photo of some willow trees by the car park

Too much technology?

I remember when my elderly mother was given her first debit card and pin number. She just did not understand what to do and was not able to remember the pin number either. Nowadays we take these things for granted and shop online happily. Or do we? There are many who do not have the facilities to do this. Not everyone has a smart phone or a tablet or a PC.

Yet applying for bus passes and government help seems to be only available online. I am one of the lucky ones and know how to do these things but I know others who cannot. I have been helping a neighbour recently with her universal credit account. Everything seems to be done by text or online and she finds this extremely difficult to do on her phone and to understand how to do. I noticed that details of payments and any times when payments were reduced was available in a pdf file. She had no idea how to open the file or what it was. Why do governments think that everybody can do everything online? What if you don’t have access. I was told that for some things like the elderly bus pass you can go to a council office often some miles away and not always accessible on the bus. Not everyone has a car either. I don’t have one.

So many of us are very lucky to have this access to online things and we often take this for granted. It has become a part of how we live and many cannot survive without it. But there are other reasons why everything should not be available via the internet. There was a programme on the TV last week about the large number of servers required to keep the internet going. The amount of energy and water used was horrendous and would have provided power for thousands of homes.In one area new houses could not be built because there was no water supply. It was being used up by several buildings containing servers for the internet. Do we think of this when we attend meetings on Zoom, for example? No, we take it all for granted without seeing the cost. Maybe it is time for us to take a look at our technology and find out how much we actually need and how much we can do without.

Questions

We are almost at the end of another year and last night I thought about all the questions I should be asking and maybe you could ask these questions too.

Why are we still building houses on flood plains?

Why are people still paving their driveways and gardens?

Where does the water go then?

Why are we destroying habitats for insects and other wild things?

We have lost something like 68% of our biodiversity, one of the worst countries in the world, why and how have we done this?

Why are councils still allowing the erection of 5G masts in villages and near schools?

I check planning applications for my area. Do you? Do you oppose any if they are not right for your area?

Do you really need the new car, phone, or other gadget?

Do you grow your own vegetables?

I could go on but I think I have said enough. Look at the bigger picture and see how what goes on affects everything around you and others. Happy New Year!

A chaotic world

All around are the signs of chaos. I am really shocked at what is going on around us. What happened to common sense and reasoned thought? You can’t just flip from one thing to another without hurting someone or something. There are so many important things going on in our world that need to be dealt with sooner rather than later or there will be no later. Yet people dance around each other thinking things are funny when so many people are suffering not just here in my country but elsewhere in the world. All life is suffering, trees, birds, insects etc are all in decline.

We have had extreme heat over the summer, now torrential rain has arrived. There are so many signs that our climate is changing yet nothing is happening to help us to find solutions. In fact, those in power are making things worse by allowing new coal mines, new oil and gas offshore drilling and fracking. When are people going to realise that we have to change the way we live, the way we build our homes and the way we travel, grow food etc. If we carry on as we are doing then in a few decades time we will all be gone.

I used to believe that spirit would not allow our world to disintegrate but I find it hard to believe that now. It comes back to hope. We have to have hope or we have nothing. I’m sure I wrote this last week but things have got much worse since then. Is what is happening a sign that all we know will disappear and a new world miraculously emerge? If so how do we help that new world to emerge? I remember writing that we could imagine a better world and keep that image foremost but I am beginning to feel that we need to do more. But what? Do you have any answers or suggestion?

Coping with difficult times

Many of us are going through difficult times and also times which may get even more difficult. My difficult time is really about my mobility and my physical health but this also applies to many others as well. As many of my readers know I am now 81 and have mobility problems which vary from day to day. After doing very little during the hot weather I decided that I needed to walk more either using my elbow crutch or using my walker/rollator. I made a decision to walk every day even if only half a mile. The first few days were fine but then I chose a different route which went up a hill. Where I live, if you go off the main road you go uphill. This uphill was hard and I was out of puff when I go to the top but I found a different way back down. However the feeling of space at the top made up for the hard work getting there. The following day I went the other way and came down the steep hill. That was the straw that broke the camels back and my knees and ankles did not like this at all. So a decision is made now that I do not go up or down the steep hill but go the other way which is less steep. You could call this adjusting or adapting what I do.

I feel that adapting different ways of doing things or making little adjustments to how you do things can make a lot of difference. You can apply this to many other things, shopping, cooking and other what you could call household tasks. I look out for offers when shopping and have found that I can still buy good food but save money with offers.

There are other things that can prove difficult for many. Those on waiting lists to see consultants or have operations or treatment. This can mean a difference between life and death in some cases and some with savings are using those to get treatment. In the UK this should not have to be the way but lack of proper funding for our NHS has brought us to this position. How do you cope with the waiting? Some look for alternative treatment and this can work well for some illnesses, others sink into depression which only makes things worse. I really understand that staying hopeful is hard, very hard, and when I look at the state of the world I often feel that there is no hope for change but we have to have hope and we have to imagine our world as a better place however hard our lives are currently. Without hope there is nothing.

As a Reiki practitioner I know that working together is better than working singly. Thoughts are energy and if we all send out love to every person in the world at the same time on the same day I am sure things will change. If you believe in this then join me at 9pm UK time on Wednesday evenings when together with others we send out healing and positive energy to our world.

Autumn Medley

The Autumn Equinox has already passed and October is here. There are definite signs of autumn around. As Keats put it ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and so there are mists in the morning and the hedgerows are full of berries and crab apples. However there are many who do not notice these changes in the seasons. They walk or drive around not noticing the wonderful colour changes in the leaves or the abundance of hedgerow fruits. I feel that this is one of the problems of today’s world. Many have lost that connection with nature which is so important.

I have a small patch of garden here where I live and a small patch of hard ground where I grew veggies in large bags sitting on a pallet. Last week I bought one of those storage boxes for the garden to store my bird food and gardening things. Yesterday I decided to sort out the veggie bags and put the old plants on the compost heap. There were no beans or peas to collect but the pot of carrots reaped more than expected and I have some lovely small carrots to eat. Having tidied up canes and string and pots I felt very happy and also felt something difficult to define having worked with the earth and with plants. I suppose you could call it a deep satisfaction. It put the rest of my feelings about our current situation into perspective.

Recent storms around the world and government decisions are a wake-up call. It is time to think deeply about how we live. Here we pay a service charge for communal lighting and water and also electricity for communal areas and use of the laundry. We have been asked to think about the use of the laundry and only to wash full loads.One of the things I find is that many wash clothes at too high a temperature. This may be linked to the fact that clothes were often boiled to get them clean.Nowadays, manmade fabrics can be washed at lower temperatures and are much better dried outside or inside on a clothes airer where they dry naturally.

There are many other ways of cutting down on energy use but I will leave them for you to think about. Life should be enjoyed and we could focus on the good things in our lives and I am sure there are many and not focus on the bad stuff. What we think about most will come to us later so it is better to be positive and look for the joy in our lives. Imagine the world you would like to see and feel that it is what is going to be. Keep seeing this world in your mind every day so that it manifests.

A new era and what next?

One era has now ended and a new one is beginning. There is a lot of ‘conversation’ about whether we should have a monarchy or not but there are far more important things to think about I feel.

How would you feel if you lived in a country which was now covered in water for around a fifth of its area? You would have lost your home and all your belongings and would be struggling to live on small ridges of higher land. Your food would have been swept away too. Would you expect help from others? Another scenario which is quite possible is the large eruption of a volcano which could darken the sky for months. This has happened before and is likely to happen again at some point.

We all need water and food to live and clothes to keep us warm. Fire is also generally essential. Yet the threat of our changing climate is not taken seriously. Politicians seem to think only about themselves, being seen out in public and making money for themselves. We have known that our climate could change quite drastically for many years. It’s not something new but this years extreme heat in many places and extreme rainfall in others has brought the subject sharply into focus for some of us at least.

We need to decide what is most important for us, decide what is most important to do, and whether we want our planet and its inhabitants, all of them, to survive. If this is our decision then we must start to do something about it today, not tomorrow or next week or month but now. Do you want to lose our birds and butterflies and other insects? They all play an important part in our ecosystem. We are not alone in this.

Are you ready?

There are a lot of changes on the way so are you ready for these? Are you prepared? It is much better if you have some idea of how to cope as the changes are then not such a shock.

The world we have known is falling apart and collapsing around us. Most of this is about material things but governments are not doing so well either and no-one in charge really seems to understand how important our planet is and how to protect it better. Humanity in the western world has always seemed to take things for granted. You want it and it is there for you. This will not happen for much longer and in many parts of the world it has never happened. We have just had one of the hottest summers on record with little or no rain, yet many still go on as before and do nothing about saving water in their daily use of it, still drive more than necessary and still fly on holidays abroad.

Many habitats have been destroyed by lack of or too much water in some cases. We can save water by using it sensibly so why don’t we? We can save electricity and gas by using it sensibly so again why don’t we? Do you need to wash your clothes every day? Do you throw away clothes after wearing them a few times and buy new ones? I still have clothes that are very old, like ten or more years old, but still wearable and I love wearing them. My mother taught me how to repair clothes so they are as new and I do this. Every little bit helps.

But one of the most important changes to come will be in how we treat others. We all come from the same source, we all have a spark of the divine and we are all equal in the eyes of Spirit. It is not just about us but about all of us. We need to make sure that we all have food to eat and clothes to wear and a roof over our heads. There should be no-one homeless anywhere. Homes should be built where they are safe and not likely to be swept away in a flood but we still build houses on flood plains.

The future seems uncertain but hold that vision of something for everyone living together in peace and working together to provide food and clothing for all. It will be different from now but it will be better. Hold that vision and stay strong!

Moving onwards

When I was 60 years old I wondered if I would reach 70. 70 came along and passed and I wondered if I would reach 80. 80 came along and passed and now I am 81 and wonder if I just might reach 90. To do this some changes had to be made. I am an empath and pick up all kinds of positive and negative energy. I used to protect myself against it all but somehow in the last few years I had not done so and was feeling all the negative stuff that goes on in small communities like the one where I live. I decided to do something about this and now have some kind of protection when I am about. I also use my Ting-Sha to cleanse the energy in my flat and made sure all the crystals I have were cleansed and ready to use.

What a difference this has made but there were still some things to deal with. I have been reading about the connection between the brain and pain and decided I would do something to alleviate my pain as well. Mind over matter as I told the nurse when I saw the consultant last week. He could not believe that my pain was only one on a scale of 1 to 10 and that I only took paracetamol. But I will be stopping that soon and seeing how I go. I do have a definite injury but I believe that I might even be able to heal that as well.

I do believe that being outside in nature can heal all kinds of things and I continue to do this. My friend gave me two outside chairs which have arms and I am finding these very comfortable when I sit outside which I do as often as I can.

Thinking for myself is very important but I do listen to others if I feel they can help me in some way but I am trusting my intuition much more than I have for several years. I feel as if I have been given a new lease of life and hope this feeling will continue and that I might even be able to walk unaided. Positive thought works wonders!