The ‘bloody blog’

Yes, this is my continuing and probably fruitless effort to make a difference and my son referred to it as my “bloody blog”. Nice. But all I have is words.

We’re still in lockdown but our government is this week putting together a plan for how to lift it. Meanwhile, we’re either getting really tired of having to comply, or we’re getting so used to it that we aren’t in any rush to be unlocked. Many of us have had plenty of time to think about who and what we are, where the world is heading and how we got here. I for one have been up hill and down dale in my head; top of the world one day and deep in the shadows the next, depending on who and what I’ve been reading, watching or listening to. And do I have any answers yet? Of course not! 

Well, that’s not exactly true. One thing I do know - we can do so much better.

‘In what way better?’, you may ask. We are clever and can solve so many things with the development of better technology; apps, vaccines, green energy (whatever that might be - see Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans” on YouTube and discussions of it), but that’s not what I mean. I mean that we can do better in terms of self-restraint instead of voraciously munching our way through our planet’s resources. We can do so much better in terms of giving instead of taking. We know it’s possible; we see it in the self sacrifices at the front line of the pandemic and in the streets of our communities. We can all do SO much better.

How do we proceed from here, I wonder. What are the important changes we each need to make if we are to create the better world so many of us are dreaming of? Instead of identifying ourselves as humans we’ve got accustomed to being identified as consumers. The word “consumption” was a word used in times past for a wasting disease. Funny that we have all succumbed to a new wasting disease - wasting energy, wasting food, throwing away stuff that cost good money but was built to be quickly obsolete. What if we made more effort to make-do-and-mend? What if we all eat locally, seasonally produced food, not overbuying, not throwing food away, growing at least a few herbs and salad leaves and composting instead of throwing vegetable matter in the bin? What if we try harder to shop plastic-free? Shouldn’t we all be doing more to reduce, re-use and recycle?

What if we think twice, or even three times before falling for the seduction of a new outfit, trinket or gadget? Could we live like that, or have we been so suckered in to consumerism that we can’t imagine how?

Lately, there have been so few people around in this seaside hideaway that on our daily beach walk, the only sign that others of our species exist is the tide of litter spewed up on the sand. Now, bit by bit, after six weeks of lockdown, people are starting to emerge. When we are unlocked will there be a surge of beach-seekers; towns emptied as everyone heads off for a long awaited picnic or holiday? Will the snack and tat stores open wide to greedy gaping mouths and shopping bags followed by a fresh tide of discarded plastic to decorate the wonderful outdoors?

Trepidatiously I await. 

And this is the ‘bloody blog’ that hardly anyone will read anyway.