I may post a little less here (though not like I'm incredibly regular anyway) as I'm trying to get something started in Bristol.
You may notice the little twitter-feed to the left. I'd resisted joining it until now as I saw no use in it - however IF we can get Bristol out of the swing-dance-hole it finds itself in (it's amazing, there's stuff happening all over the country but here!), then it might provide us a useful tool to keep people in the loop.
The new blog (and linked on it, associated facebook group) is Swing Dance Bristol, and I hope we can actually get things going.
My attempt to organise a little practice night rather died last year, for several reasons. BUT if we can just get a few of us out dancing in the city without having to go to specific organised dances, then I think we could grow fairly fast :)
Fingers crossed!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
FAIRTRADE
Is it?
Is it really?
Can someone please explain to me how favouring a few farmers and paying them a fair wage is actually benefiting the 3rd World as a whole?
I hear anti-FAIRTRADE arguments talking about how little of the inflated price gets passed down to the farmers, or how locking these farmers into the FAIRTRADE market means that they don't become impoverished enough to start an uprising, or lobby for mechanisation, or do other things that might improve their standing in the market.
OK, fine. I see those.
BUT more fundamentally, is it not obvious how economically UNfair it is?
This is good, how? Someone please help me out, here.
Bully for the original impoverished farmer. Bloody favouritism. Good for him! Sadly not for anyone else.
Is it really?
Can someone please explain to me how favouring a few farmers and paying them a fair wage is actually benefiting the 3rd World as a whole?
I hear anti-FAIRTRADE arguments talking about how little of the inflated price gets passed down to the farmers, or how locking these farmers into the FAIRTRADE market means that they don't become impoverished enough to start an uprising, or lobby for mechanisation, or do other things that might improve their standing in the market.
OK, fine. I see those.
BUT more fundamentally, is it not obvious how economically UNfair it is?
- Step 1) Impoverished farmer found. Impoverished farmer chosen to join FAIRTRADE scheme.
- Step 2) Impoverished farmer's wares finally make it to the Western world as part of a chocolate bar.
- Step 3) Smug posh people buy up the FAIRTRADE chocolate, happy in the knowledge that the impoverished farmer is getting a little more money and his kids are getting some edyookayshun.
- Step 4) Demand and hence sales reduce for other common-or-garden chocolate brands.
- Step 5) Other impoverished farmers (of which there are many) supplying non-FAIRTRADE choc brands, who were being paid the going market rate - are now paid even LESS as sales drop and less supply is needed.
This is good, how? Someone please help me out, here.
Bully for the original impoverished farmer. Bloody favouritism. Good for him! Sadly not for anyone else.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Just playing...
...and can't currently access any image-uploads sites or my own webspace...
Sexy, eh?
First I was reminded by spokey dokeys (a friend has one lonely one on his bike), then I started looking up tarty coloured tyres... then I thought I'd do a mock-up...
Voila, emobike!
Teehee, even better from Deebs:
Sexy, eh?
First I was reminded by spokey dokeys (a friend has one lonely one on his bike), then I started looking up tarty coloured tyres... then I thought I'd do a mock-up...
Voila, emobike!
Teehee, even better from Deebs:
Friday, March 27, 2009
Yay normality!
Nearly, anyway.
I'm maybe a little bit more irritable still but nothing like the last couple of months.
The old house keys are GONE and we are awaiting a well-deserved DEPOSIT.
There is SUN in the SKY (well, on-and-off).
I'm back on my BIKE.
Finally I've had a HAIR CUT!
I went DANCING last Friday and am going again TONIGHT.
My APPRAISAL at work went WELL.
My WEIGHT is now finally inching DOWN again.
Hurrah! :)
I'm maybe a little bit more irritable still but nothing like the last couple of months.
The old house keys are GONE and we are awaiting a well-deserved DEPOSIT.
There is SUN in the SKY (well, on-and-off).
I'm back on my BIKE.
Finally I've had a HAIR CUT!
I went DANCING last Friday and am going again TONIGHT.
My APPRAISAL at work went WELL.
My WEIGHT is now finally inching DOWN again.
Hurrah! :)
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Poor woman.
(Am happier again now and so can start to see things outside of my little bubble of happen-stance, hooray!)
I was just reading this article: Age and experience
And the following response caught my eye:
That makes me feel awful. The poor soul.
I realise we don't have the full picture here, but I bet she isn't alone in her frustration.
That's one reason I'm pleased about this, though obviously the majority of lonely struggling old ladies aren't going to be ex-forces.
I was just reading this article: Age and experience
And the following response caught my eye:
I am 80 and find life awful. Nobody seems to care about us wrinklies. We can't go out after 5pm because of druggies and dealers and drunks. Children by day even push you off the pavement. We have less and less money because we saved and now have to use our savings. What do we do in the future when there are no homes you can trust or afford. Carers are expensive and not always trustworthy. If you have no relatives you get more and more depressed and worried. I don't understand pressing buttons when phoning nor can I hear a mechanical voice. How do you get your shopping?
The tiddly buses are a struggle to get on or off. I tried learning about computers at Age Concern but it has made me more stressful. Doctors don't see you unless you contact them and then you can't get through in the am and when you don't feel well it makes you worse! I can't get to church and have asked three vicars if I could see them as I am so frightened of dying and also would like Communion once a month. They haven't bothered.
Barbara Duncan, Northwich England
That makes me feel awful. The poor soul.
I realise we don't have the full picture here, but I bet she isn't alone in her frustration.
That's one reason I'm pleased about this, though obviously the majority of lonely struggling old ladies aren't going to be ex-forces.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Stress.
I don't like it; I'm unused to it; it feels like the last couple of months have been nothing but stress, anguish, upset, occasional excitement, and disappointment.
Warning all, morose post! Stop here if you're not in the mood to be dragged down.
My blog tends to have the odd rant in it, but no real downer-posts. Usually because such feelings tend to be quite transient in my life.
However, not this quarter.
I guess it started when our current/soon-to-be-ex- landlady was basically incommunicado around the tenancy renewal period. And then tried to charge us a higher rent - despite having left a leaking roof to be leaky for nigh on 6 months, and a bath panel broken ever since we had moved in (the replacement's hung around propped against walls since March last year. Still there).
Since then, we had such a difficult time with her that we chose to move out, and luckily found a new place just a couple of days before she (in pretty much the last minute) refused to renew our tenancy altogether.
The snow then came - it should have been wonderful fun - I have wished for snow in Bristol for YEARS. But instead of calling a snow day and going out to enjoy it ASAP, I called into work racked with guilt about not daring to drive in the snow (I'd had a scary experience sliding down the powdered hill a few nights before - I'm incredibly lucky I didn't hit anything).
I stayed in bed for 3 hours or so, sending tetchy messages to H over MSN (I apologised for it later), getting increasingly angry about being stuck, occasionally looking out the window and trying to asses how dangerous it really was. For some reason it didn't occur to me that if there was an artic lorry completely stuck and unable to move up the A37, that it may have been a little sketchy for my small Corsa too.
Then some days later, Nanna (my maternal grandmother) died. She'd been a bit lost mentally for some time - so I didn't have to deal with a shock of losing an active member of the family - but it rushed back a LOT of old memories. She was the last grandparent standing.
I not only cried for my happy memories of her, I cried for all my grandparents, I cried for the emotion showed by my mother who had just lost her mum and was now really and truly 'grown up' in the sense that she no longer had the comfort of either a father or a mother to fall back on (even though she'd been looking after Nanna rather than the other way round for some years). She really choked on the end of the poem and the eulogy she read at the cremation and funeral service. I cried for the day when I will watch her deterioration and eventually lose her myself.
Between Nanna's death and her funeral, I took a trip to Stockholm - H came, we saw family, Stockholm and a gig (yay Frank Turner!) - and it was extremely nice. However I came back to Earth in the UK with such a resounding bang - it was raining, Gordon Brown was finding it necessary to comment on Jade Goody (?!), I had a funeral to attend, and I was exhausted.
It was a couple of weeks then before getting the keys to the new flat. I got myself excited and worked up and so glad to be out of the old place and looking forward to the huge flat I remembered and... Oh. Not as big as I remembered. Several things not ready for us - several things broken, needing a clean. Letting agency incredibly ditsy, unprofessional, slapdash. I've had an argument with them today as they only gave us one set of keys and won't reimburse us for cutting the second set. I'm unsure today whether the freezer works or not. The doorbell and Lau's bedroom blind /might/ get fixed soon.
They did sort the shower curtain and towel rail. But as I came down from the bath having checked and tightened up the shower rail, I loosened the towel rail again by leaning on it and crumbling some plaster. STUPID! God, I was so angry with myself, the flat, the agency - I was disappointed, having been hugely excited - then excited and disappointed again.
By the time poor H came around that evening I was a crying mess, I didn't know whether I was angry or upset or frustrated or what.
At least he's a stable part in all this (however melodramatic I'm being about it), and he's done such a good job of cheering me up that he hasn't seen the really morose and grumpy me that's been coming and going. Poor Lau has got the brunt of that - clipped-voiced phone calls, me storming into my room and closing the door on the world, possibly some aggressive driving...
...ah well.
The new room thankfully is starting to feel more like my own. Once all my clutter is in and I'm starting to fight the laundry-cycle once again in the new place, I'll know I'm home.
Give me a couple of weeks and hopefully I'll be back to my swing-dancing, pub-going, cycle-commuting, pun-slinging self.
If anyone reads this far - apologies, and congratulations(!). You've won a beach ball.
S xxx
Warning all, morose post! Stop here if you're not in the mood to be dragged down.
My blog tends to have the odd rant in it, but no real downer-posts. Usually because such feelings tend to be quite transient in my life.
However, not this quarter.
I guess it started when our current/soon-to-be-ex- landlady was basically incommunicado around the tenancy renewal period. And then tried to charge us a higher rent - despite having left a leaking roof to be leaky for nigh on 6 months, and a bath panel broken ever since we had moved in (the replacement's hung around propped against walls since March last year. Still there).
Since then, we had such a difficult time with her that we chose to move out, and luckily found a new place just a couple of days before she (in pretty much the last minute) refused to renew our tenancy altogether.
The snow then came - it should have been wonderful fun - I have wished for snow in Bristol for YEARS. But instead of calling a snow day and going out to enjoy it ASAP, I called into work racked with guilt about not daring to drive in the snow (I'd had a scary experience sliding down the powdered hill a few nights before - I'm incredibly lucky I didn't hit anything).
I stayed in bed for 3 hours or so, sending tetchy messages to H over MSN (I apologised for it later), getting increasingly angry about being stuck, occasionally looking out the window and trying to asses how dangerous it really was. For some reason it didn't occur to me that if there was an artic lorry completely stuck and unable to move up the A37, that it may have been a little sketchy for my small Corsa too.
Then some days later, Nanna (my maternal grandmother) died. She'd been a bit lost mentally for some time - so I didn't have to deal with a shock of losing an active member of the family - but it rushed back a LOT of old memories. She was the last grandparent standing.
I not only cried for my happy memories of her, I cried for all my grandparents, I cried for the emotion showed by my mother who had just lost her mum and was now really and truly 'grown up' in the sense that she no longer had the comfort of either a father or a mother to fall back on (even though she'd been looking after Nanna rather than the other way round for some years). She really choked on the end of the poem and the eulogy she read at the cremation and funeral service. I cried for the day when I will watch her deterioration and eventually lose her myself.
Between Nanna's death and her funeral, I took a trip to Stockholm - H came, we saw family, Stockholm and a gig (yay Frank Turner!) - and it was extremely nice. However I came back to Earth in the UK with such a resounding bang - it was raining, Gordon Brown was finding it necessary to comment on Jade Goody (?!), I had a funeral to attend, and I was exhausted.
It was a couple of weeks then before getting the keys to the new flat. I got myself excited and worked up and so glad to be out of the old place and looking forward to the huge flat I remembered and... Oh. Not as big as I remembered. Several things not ready for us - several things broken, needing a clean. Letting agency incredibly ditsy, unprofessional, slapdash. I've had an argument with them today as they only gave us one set of keys and won't reimburse us for cutting the second set. I'm unsure today whether the freezer works or not. The doorbell and Lau's bedroom blind /might/ get fixed soon.
They did sort the shower curtain and towel rail. But as I came down from the bath having checked and tightened up the shower rail, I loosened the towel rail again by leaning on it and crumbling some plaster. STUPID! God, I was so angry with myself, the flat, the agency - I was disappointed, having been hugely excited - then excited and disappointed again.
By the time poor H came around that evening I was a crying mess, I didn't know whether I was angry or upset or frustrated or what.
At least he's a stable part in all this (however melodramatic I'm being about it), and he's done such a good job of cheering me up that he hasn't seen the really morose and grumpy me that's been coming and going. Poor Lau has got the brunt of that - clipped-voiced phone calls, me storming into my room and closing the door on the world, possibly some aggressive driving...
...ah well.
The new room thankfully is starting to feel more like my own. Once all my clutter is in and I'm starting to fight the laundry-cycle once again in the new place, I'll know I'm home.
Give me a couple of weeks and hopefully I'll be back to my swing-dancing, pub-going, cycle-commuting, pun-slinging self.
If anyone reads this far - apologies, and congratulations(!). You've won a beach ball.
S xxx
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Getting the keys to our new flat tonight!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
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