I give all my photos on flickr.com a Creative Commons license that enables people to use them as long as they cite me as the original photographer. Recently I got a surprise email from another flickr user saying he had chosen to use one of my photos in a book he has created.

The book, entitled “ROY G. BIV a convergence of Flickr, Blurb, and the Creative Commons”, explores the colours of the spectrum; my photo is in the violet part One third of the sales is going to support Amnesty International. This is a project I am proud to have been able to contribute to.

I’ve been writing a load of stuff about serious issues here lately; it’s time for a bit of fun. Since I have a YooChube account now (since the garden video) I am able to upload odd bits of video I might find on my hard disk. Here, thanks to Jerome for taking it, is a movie of Nicolas, Mathilde and me doing an unrehearsed stealing jam in a big mall in Rennes.

If this is upbeat, I need syncopation.

The movie takes for granted that energy prices will rise steeply when oil reaches peak production, and all that that might entail for the lifestyle developed western countries — well North America in this particular case: the movie’s subtitle is Beyond The American Dream. It goes on to investigate the personal responses of a few individuals who are escaping from lives they consider unsustainable either by moving geographically out of cities and suburbs or by starting to re-invent their lives starting with how they think and behave.

South Central Farms was an urban farm and community garden in the middle of the city of Los Angeles where food for 350 families was grown by the local community organised by a non-profit organization called L.A. Regional Food Bank. It features in the movie as a paradigmatic example of local resilience and community. During the making of the movie, however, the farm was under threat from land developers and it seems the city sold the land in a back-room deal. The community gardens were bulldozed to make way for warehouse development.

Watch it for yourself (the bit with the bulldozers is towards the end, if you don’t have time to watch a five-minute video, skipt forward to 4:20 and watch from there to the end, and remember this happened in the middle of L.A.)

When I saw the bulldozers carving up the vegetable beds and those people crying I was reminded of that bit in The Grapes Of Wrath by Steinbeck where the bulldozers come and destroy the homes and farms of people who have stayed on the land in the American mid-West. The title of the book is taken from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, by Julia Ward How and, according to Wikipedia, refers to the book of Revelation 14:19-20:

And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God…

That sickle blade and the bulldozer became one for me, and yesterday, when I told my friend Anna about it, I sobbed big tears for the people who have been pushed off their land by the sickle of the angel of commercial growth.

• I learned plenty about me, what I like and dislike and what is important to me.
  Some of it was not that easy to interpret at the time (like storming out of class and telling my boss I would not set foot in the classroom with the students again: what was the learning in that?), but since then, and partly in response to what I had learned, I have been thinking a lot about what makes people tick, and I’m starting to see a picture.
• I learned some pretty important stuff about the world too.
  Quite a lot of stuff I didn’t like. Or, at least, stuff which didn’t make me rejoice. I was not rejoicing about the poverty and apparent lack of opportunity for my Kenyan friends, and neither was I rejoicing about the rich world I was accustomed to where mobile phone subscribers can get a new handset every 18 months and, in fact, are encouraged to do so. If felt, in fact, as if both worlds were suffering.

My experience as a dyslexic child lead me to choose a career that didn’t entail being examined by writing prose. I found out about my own dyslexia at the age of 37 and it was a profoundly liberating experience. Now I think of IT as a choice, not a necessity in my life. By the end of 15 months in France working as a computer science research engineer I had learned that computer science is just something I can do, and that there are other choices available to me. My horizons broadened and I started to read about other fascinating stuff that I used to believe were off limits to me as a techie kid: personal development, the psychology of change, theory of education, economics, spirituality. And I started looking for a way to be in the world that would give me a sense of working towards helping to heal the suffering.

I became self-employed and started to work fewer days, moved to Cambridge with Nic and started to work on my garden, I’m slowly learning about Nonviolent Communication, Neurolinguistic Programming and transformative eduction. My idea of who I am has changed and I’m feeling happy with it.

My course at Schumacher is called Certificate In Education for Sustainability. When I started it I was a little bit concerned that it might be focussed green living to help stave off chaotic climate change and that this might not be quite what I am looking for. Meanwhile my education has continued; I recently took the time to read a bit about peak oil.

Thanks to Robin for showing this video at his recent talk on Transition Leicester.

When I connect the dots I see a story wherein the availability of very cheap energy has fueled the global economy and contributed to disparities of power and advantage that contribute directly to the poverty of rural Kenyan communities and to my emotional dissatisfaction of participating as a consumer in British capitalism. And at the same time as we used up that fuel in the and political power-play of our time, we were releasing our exhaust fumes into the atmosphere and setting up the global greenhouse that is melting our ice caps in a startling way. Some people, some with notable credentials, say we are doomed. Others disagree, out of ignorance, denial, faith or contradictory data. I don’t know what the future holds. If the planet doesn’t make itself inhospitable, our societies might do so when the stresses of increasing fuel prices come to bear on our economic and social systems. Until I started to look into what I could do to help the present situation, I didn’t even know about those other risks to a comfortable life.

Just as I am feeling ever happier with who I am, I feel I am being called with even more urgency to do something. Best of all, even if the threats of social and economic disquiet and climate chaos should be false foes or foes easily overcome, how fantastic it will for me in my future to know that I did something.

I am challenging myself to begin.

We moved out from Shepherd’s Bush, erm [checks Google Calendar], three and a half weeks ago. I’d been scavenging for boxes for weeks (most were computer boxes from the new machines delivered to the BBC while I was there, the rest I picked up outside shops on the Uxbridge Road) which helped. Even more helpful was having Katy and Adie around. Adie is slightly taller and larger than me and was kind enough to act as a human lift-truck while Katy watched the doors so we didn’t feel the need to keep locking and unlocking them. That was Sunday. On Monday we moved in to Cambridge, helped by Nic’s Mum and Dad, and a pair of sack wheels. And, having filled our new home with boxes, I went back to work on  Tuesday in White City.

Then, suddenly, it was Easter. Good Friday was my first chance to spend a whole day in my new home since moving in. We went out. We went out and ordered a 6′9″ bed; I’m really looking forward to sleeping without my toes hanging over the end. On Saturday we were back in London for a Stag & Hen party (Congratulations Ollie an Helen!) and from there I was down to Totnes on Sunday (thanks Dom) so I could visit the library in Schumacher College on Monday, a day early for module two of the Certificate in Education for Sustainability course.

Last time I was at Schumacher I blogged every day (instead of morning meditation). This time I didn’t take a laptop; it just isn’t as nice to use one of the three derelict PCs in the classroom, though, so that week too passed unreported upon. Shame; lots of interesting stuff happened. I’ll tell you later.

After a week in Dartington I was glad to have a day off before going back to the Beeb: my second whole day at home in the new home. We went out (again) and did important stuff in banks and shops. Next day I was back in White City. The commute from Cambridge to London is much like the Tube: often standing room only, full of Bromptons, free London newspapers and strictly no talking. After two days of that, guess what? I’m back in London for four days (thanks Zoë and Declan) doing more NLP.

Yup, I’ve joined the Master Practitioner training at module two. There’s a story to that which, you guessed, I’d love to tell here but have not found the time to do so. Those four days of NLP with Suzi Smith were great, including the snow on Sunday. And, no sooner were we back in Cambridge after that course, I was back in White City for the last three days of my contract at the BBC.

All of which means that today was the third day I got to spend in my new home. We went out .. into the garden and set about the bramble bushes that have taken over in the past few years. And what a lovely day it has been: Nic’s home-made Hot Cross Buns for breakfast, home-cooked lunch and supper, out for a run in the park, hacking back bushes and a bonfire of dried brambles, finished off with a hot bath to rest our aching muscles.

• A couple of times now I have stood up to offer my seat to someone and nobody has taken it. Both times I remained standing and I remained puzzled by the contrast between this behaviour and the great impersonal no-eye-contact struggle to get on board and get a seat before the train departed. Could it really be that the difference is that if I stand up, anyone who takes my seat will know whom they are depriving whereas during the initial game of dischordant musical chairs there may be “winners and losers” but you never really know who’s seat you’ve taken.
• Yesterady a suited man stood up and went down the carriage to speak to his friend. This entailed pushing past some standing passengers, including myself. We looked expectactly toward his seat, only to find he had put his brief case there. As we approached the next station he put on his coat and his friend pushed his way past us to take his seat when he got off. “And thanks for the seat”,  I heard him call as his friend disembarked. Meanwhile several other seated passengers got off and, once again, two seats remained empty, dispite the standing passengers all the way to Cambridge.

This last story reminds me of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: “Property is Theft“. To what extent does a man own the seat he is sitting on in a train? And to what extent is it his after he gets off? Can this thing be given away to someone else? What about all the standing passengers who? And to what extent are the forests oceans and atmosphere of this planet ours? What about after we have died? Do we have the right to claim it as ours and to pollute the places where our grandchildren might sit?

A group for all people who have moved away from Lowestoft for whatever reason; to reminiss and generally say what they want about it.

What do people want to say about Lowestoft? Here’s a sample:

I will be soon to escape from this place known as “Lowestoft or to the locals “lowie”. [A] very damp and depressing place where there is nothing left to do then reminisce in your own miserable memory’s[sic] and end up marry your relatives, then get a low paid job or survive on benefits, for then as fast as clicking your finger the next 40years have gone by and now you old enough to receive a free bus pass and the only thing you look forward to is bingo on a Monday afternoon!” — Kate

When I left Lowie, in 1984 by becoming a student at Leicester Polytechnic, I wasn’t posessed of quite such a fearsome loathing for my birth-town, but it did feel like the time had come to move on. I imagine, however, that there are those, too, who celebrate their having escaped from Leicester (and I don’t mean the prison). Leicester didn’t seem to me to be a qualitatively better place, just a different place. That’s not the point, is it? The idea of an “I escaped from …” group is to celebrate one’s growth: to view the place from outside rather than to bemoan it as the pits of the universe. The town in question is not important; one could create a generic group called “I escaped from the town of my birth”, (though the effect might be to make those who have lived out their lives in one place feel picked on). I think the escape Kate is talking about is a change of spirit. It’s escape from the prospect of suddenly growing old (and discovering that you are related to your spouse!?). It’s about taking control of one’s destiny; “escape” from a place is, I believe, mostly symbolic of that. I say mostly because I think it is possible but difficult, in our culture, for a young person to experience taking control of his or her destiny without making such a move.

I have heard many people describe what feels like a trap, or a vicious circle, in an expensive city like London wherein one rents or buys a pleasant home and the necessity of paying its rent or mortgage obliges one to work, and to continue to work, beyond what feels pleasant. Nic and I were starting to feel that way too. This week we moved to Cambridge. Cambridge is an expensive town in its own right; nor do I find it qualitatively better than London. That’s not the point, is it? It’s about Nic and I choosing to take control of our respective destinies. There are a bundle of choices associated with this move, the change of home-town is one of them. And, for me, there is a slight sense of going back, since I have, briefly, lived in Cambridge before; in the same house, in fact, and with a different partner. Nevertheless, this does feel like a time of taking risks; a time for celebrating newfound liberty.
Yay for our new home!