Category Archives: everyday life

Making comfrey liquid feed without the smell.

I grow tomatoes every summer. I have always used organic methods which involve a high potassium feed made from Comfrey leaves. Well in fact I’ve found that Blue Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens sometimes called Green Alkanet or Bugloss), which grows prolifically … Continue reading

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Culture, information and a resilient community?

Notes from a short provocation for a workshop on Informational Inequalities at the University of Manchester Policy Week day conference on Education Policy and Educational Inequalities. I was asked to contribute one of five brief scene-setting interventions, mine being to … Continue reading

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The malign turn: organisational manners under austerity.

I’ve been meaning to write something on this for some months. The observation I wanted to share is about practices in organisations under the current austerity regime. Observations supporting it come from a variety of organisations, mostly public sector, or … Continue reading

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Winter

A bit of frost last night (12/13 November) – it’s cut back the achocha that scrambles over the hedge.  I picked the last of the fruits – here they are. So we’ve been using them from the end of August … Continue reading

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Uncommon fruits

I’ve written before about achocha (scroll down to the bit about the beard and the achocha), a ‘lost crop of the Incas’, also called caigua.  I think ‘achocha’ maybe comes from the Aymara and ‘caigua’ from the Quechua.  At least … Continue reading

Posted in everyday life, Latin America | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Too much green growth

An interesting concept, isn’t Green Growth OK?  One problem of the idea of ‘sustainable growth’ is that nobody yet has found a way to ensure that the resource throughputs of an economy are decoupled from its growth, whatever the nature … Continue reading

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A strange little town in England

post updated August, 2019 (corrections and links) I found myself with the task of driving alone to Dorset to join the rest of my family for a holiday.  I would much rather go by train (5.5 hours) but we were … Continue reading

Posted in autobiography, everyday life | Tagged , , | 26 Comments

A cooker that uses no fuel

Update, 4/7/13. It works! I had to fill the spare space with bubble wrap and toweling, but it stayed warm enough to cook a stew of beans and potatoes that had just been brought to the boil. Carbon saving – … Continue reading

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My hand … comrades

I’m just back from a sculpture course which was my birthday present from Carolyn, who came with me. This is one of the things I made.  It was a compromise – I wanted to make a human hand and this … Continue reading

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Jokes and the unconscious

More light relief from the usual heavy issues of social, economic and ecological crisis.   Have you ever made a joke while asleep?  Well I’ve woken up singing (sort of operatically!) and shouting.  I’ve spoken Spanish (when using the language a … Continue reading

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