Something a bit different...

Well no real news from the last post, still plodding along merrily with life.

Although this weather! What the hell is happening!!! Is this a symptom of climate change??? What-ever it is, its annoying, its July...and its just raining all the time! The weekend was kinda nice, yesterday was well lush, ended up in Glastonbury with Vic and the doggie! Was an amazing afternoon, i love that place so much, you can just do what you want, and no one thinks its strange, even had a free hug of some dude who was hugging everyone, which was brilliant...we really want to move there now, i can think of no town...anywhere...where i would rather live. :)

So yeah, no news on eco things, although i now have a rather groovy Tesco bag for life with ladybirds on it and everything, it rocks!


So i thought for a change, id post a photo up..this is me and Vic in Bath yesterday evening, thought you might want to see what i look like...im the dude in the photo..obviously! lol

I'm very sleepy...

But am going to just write this message!

Quick update on all fronts i think (pause while i put some decent Abba on itunes...Super Trouper...TUNE!) on the veggie front...

Its NOT going well :( Seriously, if i fell off the wagon last week...this week, I've fallen off the wagon and have been run over by the wagon that was travelling behind me! The weekend, well I'll be honest, Saturday, the evening consisted of an Indian take-away, then Sunday, consisted of an Italian meal out. :( I have my excuses, first up, Sunday, was such a rubbish day with the weather, you know those day's where you cant go out anywhere cos its raining that badly. Well all day was spent in the house, and was driving myself and Vic to despair! So we went out, and going out meant dropping in to get some food, which i can honestly say i did enjoy, but it wasn't veggie. Saturday was the same story.

I know, I know! Its bad...very bad! I guess this thing about cutting meat out isn't that easy after, 27 years of eating the stuff, its so hard to just stop eating it over night...must try harder though, maybe i need encouragement or something, i don't know, or maybe i need one of those kicks up the arse that people keep going on about!

On other fronts, the old plastic bag thing is going strong, still none consumed, must be a good couple of months now of non plastic bag use, i have a new bag for life...a CO-OP one, which has replaced my aging and rather decrepit Sainsbury on.

We have now found out about CO-OP, basically...they RULE! The shop's are really good, not skanking, good quality goods, at good honest prices! But...the main thing is that all of their own brand stuff, is fair trade and organic, plus its bloody nice. Their instant coffee, which is cheaper than Sescafe, is about 10 times better, plus its fair trade! Aside from that, its just generally cooler than the other market grabbing supermarkets, plus in a recent survey they were voted the most green supermarket, ahead of places like M&S and Sainsbury's. Even their insurance office in Manchester is taking the lead with mini wind turbines on the roof which generates around 10% of the building's energy at the moment. So huuuuuuuuurah for CO-OP, now get out there and shop at one!

Now I'm dreaming of owning a place near the coast, i guess growing up near the coast, and being dragged on millions of boat trips when i was a weee lad has worn off on me, and now, i would just love to live right next to the sea so i can see all its moods and eat breakfast on the beach. Off course, living in a log cabin in the woods is still my ultimate, ultimate dream, but everyone has to have a back-up plan don't they?

Thanks again for the comments, keep them coming, they do provide encouragement and its ace seeing what you all think :)

Fallen off...

Its official...I've fallen off the proverbial wagon! This weekend turned into a complete nightmare with the veggie thang! First of all Friday, that was OK, went well, had a lush cheese pizza from the dudes at Sainsbury's, was very nice and went down well with a glass of ice-cold cider. Saturday, well a strange day, breakfast was fine. Then at about lunch time, we headed for a large Volkswagen festival, which was amazing. Loads of cool old campers and beetles, as well as lots of cool hippie folk. Met up with my brother and my sis-in law and also a load of the usual suspects that keep going to these shows, all in all good. Again, the show didn't prove a problem as i consumed a large portion of strawberries for lunch, which kept me going. Its official, strawberries are now my fav fruit, they are bloody lush i tell you!

Sat night...this is where it starts to go downhill quickly....we all went out of some drinkie poos in Bristol, was most excellent, with lots of banter etc etc and much commenting on how girls can possibly wear such short skirts..slappers! lol Well anyway, we headed to a Noodle bar...where...i kind of ate chicken in Szechuan sauce...honestly, though, there really wasn't much on the menu in the way of non meat stuff, so had to give in.

That was bad...next day...Sunday...bad again! Ended up having a roast dinner with chicken!!!!!!! I will say it was organic,free ranger chicken, which makes things a tiny, tiny bit better, but still...not really proud of the weekend, but it did make me realise that cutting meat out, or at least down is not very easy, when you are so used to eating the stuff.

It has, however, made me more determined this weekend to get back to non meat consumption. Still gutted though, plus writing this, it makes it even worse! :(

On another note, the plastic bag thing, is still going well, none taken over the weekend, and my bag's for life were given a good airing with the shopping trips we went on. Just now wracking my brains to see what i can do this week that will help the planet. Well for starters, the car is again getting ditched, its almost needing a service, and i really, really, really don't want to spend any money on the thing, so its staying at home this week, instead the good old train will be used.

Again, not a problem, i don't really mind the train, its not as bad as people make out, and as long as you don't expect too much of it, then its fine. Don't expect them to be on time every day, don't expect them to be quiet, don't expect there not to be an element of stress involved in catching one, and don't expect there not to be some one standing next to you with a small child who is intent on playing with my numerous Greenpeace and pro-animal badges that adorn my "man bag". So, there, i don't expect anything, so most of the time, I'm not disappointed or surprised at what goes on in our great railway network. Plus what gets me is...if there were no trains at all, people would be up in arms, at least we have them and at least they are OK!

Thanks for the comments on previous posts guys, its lush to see them, feel free to give me a good old grilling over falling off the wagon this weekend, ill make up for it though! :)

Earth saving update

Well it's been a week since i last said anything about my little things that I've been doing to help out our planet. So...what have i done....well first up, my bedroom no longer has those evil incandescent light bulbs that you can still buy in the shops. Now i have nice shiny energy saving bulbs. I must say, I'm IMPRESSED! They cost around £4 each, which i didn't think was that bad, considering they last up to 10 times as long as a normal bulb and don't cost anywhere near 10 times as much, normal evil bulbs don't cost 4p do they???

Also, I'm impressed by their performance, they not the ones that take a day or so to actually switch on, as soon as you flip the switch, its on! It gives a really nice warm glow in the room, a lot more subtle than my previous bulbs. So not only are they a little step in stopping climate change, but they are generally better. Oh and in case your interested (which you should be reading this blog! :) ) i ordered my light bulbs from www.lightbulbs-direct.com I must say i was super impressed, good delivery time and good value as well. So if your reading this in room with those horrid bulbs that waste so much power, get yourselves onto that website and order some! And no, i don't work for them before you think i do, I'm just trying to spread the word.

Which brings me neatly onto my next thing. I signed up to Greenpeace's "7 step climate campaign" Its great, its basically a task every week for 7 weeks that you can do, to help combat climate change. I am in week 3. The task this week is to spread the word about banning incandescent light bulbs, and letting people know about the campaign. I guess this blog is part of that, as well as that, you can download funky signatures and posters for your website or to print off and put in your windows at home or at work. Please go here...http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change and sign up to the campaign, then you will get a task every week to complete, no kids, its not a difficult, exam-like task, before you start shouting at me. It's fun, I'm REALLY enjoying it, it really encourages me to think about changes and really provides good, solid goals to achieve.

So there you have it, since my last post, i have ditched the evil bulb, completed Week 2 of the Greepeace campaign as well as starting to complete the Week 3 step. Other than that, not much news, i ditched my car from Tuesday off last week until yesterday. Just relied on train to get from Swansea (nearest city to me) to Cardiff (where i work) and then from Cardiff to Bristol (where Vix lives) for the weekend. All in all, was good not to drive, in a twisted way, i do like trains, you see some bizarre people and its just fun, even when they are late, i don't see the point in slagging the trains off, cos at least we have trains, yeah OK, they are late at times, yeah they are crowded at times etc, but id still rather be in a train than driving on our congested and quite frankly, evil roads.

As well as the above, obviously my plastic bag thing is going well, still not had a plastic bag from a shop, must be getting on for over a month now since i have clapped eyes on the evil things. I still think shops should not offer plastic bags to you. I have seen so many people buying one thing who have almost been "convinced" by check-out staff to take a bag. WHY??? Wouldn't it be better for the shop to wait until a person asks for a bag? Rather than putting ideas in peoples heads that they really must have this non bio-degradable bag, which they will probably lob in the bin once they get home. Seriously, some major shops need educating, they are all there with their bags for life, but then still are too quick to offer people other bags. Not naming shops here, but the big food supermarkets, some of them need to look at their plastic bag policies.

Oh and hello to the "Adopt a grandma" girl from outside Cardiff Central Station, she was kinda cool, even if she was confused by my shemagh which i was wearing around my neck.

Hopefully now this weekend, i can continue my quest for eco-fying myself and helping our planet. Please go to the Greenpeace site and sign up to the climate change campaign, we can all make a difference, and it doesn't even take much effort.



Cheers guys :)

Veggie transformation - Results

Well first of all, sorry for not updating this yesterday, wasnt feeling too great so was off work and really couldnt face using a computer.

Now I'm feeling a bit better and am back at work, even though id so love to snuggle up in bed and go to sleep, i cant wait to go home! :)

Anyways, the weekend, i DID it! Well i slipped up once, but arguably that wasn't really my fault :)

Let me explain, Thursday, Fri, didn't eat any sort of meat on these days, completely meat free. Friday night we had a chili made out of Quorn. It was really, really nice. You really could not tell it wasn't meat in there, and was as good as any Chili i have had out in a restaurant, it also cost only about £2 as well! Which is a bargain!

Saturday then, we went to my brothers house, where unfortunately, i ate meat. I know, i know, but in all honesty there wasn't much i could do about it. It was this pork thing with roasted potato's, was nice. Seriously though, there wasn't anything i could do about it, as it was a spur of the moment decision to go my brothers and i felt it would have been rude to suddenly turn around and say i didn't want the food as it was meat.

Anyways, aside from that, i went the whole 4 days without meat, every meal that i had influence on, i didn't eat meat. I must say it was no where near as hard as i first thought, in fact, it was quite easy. Yeah, it required a bit of thought and it required a bit more thinking, but it was so worth it. It was so nice to know that the meals i ate, the produce didn't come from an animal being killed specifically for it.

So now its back to the Gower where i live with my parents until Thursday. I will try to keep the veg thing going, but not fancy my chances. This weekend coming though, i shall be doing exactly the same thing and not eating meat. Just a small step in the right direction so far :)