Tangled Bank Foraging and Fibre Crafts
Learning about and trying to live lightly on this beautiful planet. The natural world, inclusive bushcraft, evidence-based environmentalism and sustainable living.
I was so lucky last month to marry Charlie, the most wonderful person I've ever met. I wish I was a better writer, I'm rather better at facts and figures about carbon sequestration than I am at heartfelt romance so I can't really do the whole experience justice but it genuinely was the best experience … Continue reading How we made our wedding as sustainable (and affordable!) as possible
I've been a regular cycle commuter in both London and Exeter so am pretty confident on a bike. I've also done a fair bit of long distance hiking, so have a fair bit of experience with packing light and managing menstruation on the trail, experience which you would think would translate well to bikepacking. But … Continue reading A beginners’ bikepacking adventure
Mastodon is a federated social network - unlike Twitter or Facebook say, which is run by one company, it's easiest to think of Mastodon as a tool like email. There are a number of different servers or "instances" where your data (your account details, the contents of your posts, the timestamps of your activity, the cute picture you took of your cat fighting your slippers) are stored, there are a number of different apps or clients you can use to access these data the same way you could access the same email account through Apple mail on your iPhone or Outlook on your work PC or Gmail on an Android phone, and Mastodon is the set of instructions that allows them all to talk to one another.
I spent yesterday evening lying on my back in the middle of a B road, my legs steepled awkwardly to avoid the woman lying in the road behind me, squinting as I stared straight into the bright sky and wishing I'd thought to put my sunglasses on before I lay down. It was too late … Continue reading Lying down for a better world
I've had a rather bewildering week, having tested positive for covid but still having no idea whether I've actually had it or not. I'm feeling absolutely fine physically, but the whole experience has taken rather a toll on my mental health and taken me on something of an emotional whistle-stop tour of despair, guilt and … Continue reading Schrödinger’s covid: my experiences with covid testing in the UK
As the British government continues to fumble its way through its response to the covid-19 pandemic, it is becoming increasingly apparent that if our leaders cannot provide guidance on how to protect ourselves and one another we will have to make our own judgements. We absolutely should not be in this position, with the government … Continue reading We all wear masks
For World Environment Day, which this year is on the theme of air pollution, I was invited to write a blog post on the Library staff blog about the plants I grow in my office at work. You can read it here.
Is it worth trying to reduce your personal impact when we need to tackle climate breakdown on a systemic level, or is it just, as George Monbiot calls it, pathetic micro-consumerist bollocks? Edit 20th May: replaced the embedded Facebook video with a Youtube one as it didn't seem to be visible to some people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir-XjQhOyNQ … Continue reading Pathetic micro-consumerist bollocks
With the recent growth in interest in sustainable living I'm seeing a lot of posts of beautiful people with Instagram-worthy lifestyles sharing their clearly enviable life decisions, and I just wanted to push back a bit against the rather intimidating impression this gives that no one ever gets it wrong. I've certainly made some mistaken … Continue reading Failure Friday: coffee filter funnel
Four people tried to follow the link to the essay on battery recycling on my last blog post Ways to reduce single use, which I have since discovered linked to the file on my computer rather than the correct url. I've now updated this on the post itself but just thought I'd post an update in … Continue reading Tiny update
Tangled Bank Foraging and Fibre Crafts 