They think it's all over...

There comes a time when a blog must live up to its title. Ladies and gentlemen, in the case of the Year-long lunch break, that time is 19th March 2010. A look back through Lunchista's musings will reveal an entire year of activities, thoughts, people and other curiosities. It also leaves me with the strange thought that as I write this post, the small spherical object on which I sit is hurtling through roughly the same bit of space as it was when I transmitted the first post, immortalising my boss, his exasperation, and an unknown committee at my former workplace. If I accidentally dropped anything there, now's the time to have a quick look for it.

So, what was the plan? "What do you do?". Well, there were never mighty empires to be built (too expensive, too unfriendly). The plan was to live in a place, rather than fall into the trap of using it as a dormitory. To find, learn about, and take part in, the many and various things that attempt to make local and national life better, and to do all that without much need of anything elaborate, like money.

As for the vexed question itself, well Lunchista did make the papers once during the Year-long lunch break, and the radio too, and for these purposes has been described as a "Sustainability Activist". I have also been the inevitable "Unemployed" (at the jobcentre) and "Housewife" (for our new insurance) as well as "Energy spokesperson" (for our Party), "Trustee" (for the Orchard and the Nature Reserve), "Consultee" (various campaigns) and of course "Urban Guerrilla" (gardener, that is).

I remain all those things, but for now anyone who has shared the Year-long lunch break will just have to imagine what happens next. Or better still, take a year-long lunch break of your own. You know it makes sense.

Has "Top Gear" really been going that long?

Yes, and The Year-Long Lunch Break has the proof, in the form of a rare sighting of what, some say, is The Stig's Ice-Age ancestor.

All we know is, that toboggan handled like a dream...

No such thing as a free launch

I can't remember how I got on the publisher's email list, but I get sent an astonishing number of announcements of new publications: fascinating stuff about energy, life, predicaments, forests, money, you get the idea. I wish I had time to read them all.

Sometimes events get announced, but they're always in London. There was one I particularly wanted to go to: Tim Jackson, who as far as Lunchista can tell seems to be a Professor of Everything, has written up the latest findings of the Sustainability Development Commission (who advise HMG about, yes you've guessed, Sustainability), as a book, and this was the official launch. Sparkling conversation with fascinating people, and wine and nibbles: sounded like Lunchista's ideal soiree. Pity it's 200 miles, and about as many pounds sterling, away.

Then events conspired to take Lunchista down south anyway: to sort out building-work, of all things. So I booked a place.

After spending the day with three lads heaving pieces of floor around I was glad the hot water worked and I could have a shower, put on a posh frock (full-length), walk safely across the newly-repaired floor and head out into the night and the pouring rain. I couldn't believe that rain: it wasn't like November, it was more like August. Except without the warmth, and with a Force 9 thrown in.

If you stay away from our wonderful capital for long enough, and then suddenly arrive there, it doesn't half look, well, desperate. Not desperately poor, or ill, or run-down, but just desperate to do business. Add in the rain and the gale and it was beginning to border on the surreal. Arriving at the launch Lunchista (and the friend whose sofa I was borrowing) must have looked like something the cat dragged in. Our only consolation was that we were all in the same boat. Which is in a way what the book is about. It goes like this:

Everybody wants economic growth. But on a finite planet you're eventually going to run out of, well, planet. So you want economic growth without resource-use growth. Except (carefully-documented chapter) we've never really managed to do this, and it might even be impossible. Oh, and as if that's not enough, in our part of the world the race for economic betterment, without social betterment, is doing our heads in. So, how about going for quality-of-life growth instead?

All of which provides something of a talking-point over your wine and nibbles.

I bought the book, I even got it signed. But lurking in the back of my mind is the fate of government advisors whose advice the government doesn't like.

Car Booty

The Party kitty was, well not quite empty, but perhaps feeling a little peckish. An election was, well not quite imminent, but in the offing. The Meeting was collectively wondering what to do about this undesireable state of affairs, when somebody mentioned a car boot sale.

Now as you can imagine this isn't something Lunchista could take on alone, lacking a boot, a car and indeed permission to move anything larger than a bike (with or without trailer) along the public highway. So I offered to be co-pilot to whoever took this on. And somebody (let's call him Will) rose to the challenge. It turned out that, lurking in Will's garage, was a load of stuff he wanted rid of. You know the kind of stuff that's absolutely indescribable until you look at it and try to enumerate it, and even then it can be a challenge. Old camera gear, board games, a bathroom cabinet, shoes, well-used sports kit, ugly ornaments. And that was before the call went out to everybody else to take a long look at their wardrobes, bookshelves, cupboards and (for the better-off) garages and perhaps even sheds (though we're not the kind of party to have many punters with stables and outbuildings...yet!).

More and more stuff arrived at Will's house. I never asked (out of a kind of British politeness I suppose) but I'm willing to bet he was beginning to regret taking this on. Then a promising weekend materialised: the local car-boot, held at a former airfield, turned out not to need bookings, and the weather chart just said

HIGH

so we went for it. In mufti, so as not to scare off people (the vast majority of the population, in fact) who vote for parties other than ours.

By the time we got there things were already in full swing, and we drove past rows and rows of colourfully-laden tables, following directions and gestures, to a spot under a tree in the far corner. We had driven through the entire "field of combat", and it was massive!

As soon as we got out of the car and openned the boot, a crowd gathered round and people jostled for position to see what we had on offer: some of our things got sold before we'd even unfolded our table's legs. I began to get a bit worried about the money tin, especially now it already seemed to have quite a lot of money in it. As the morning grew hotter (it was high summer, literally, and we were becoming thankful for that tree and its shade) the action continued, at a scarcely less frantic pace. I couldn't get over the number of people there, or indeed the variety of languages that chattered past us.

We hadn't bothered to label prices for anything and it turned out that was just as well: better to adapt your price to your punter, using as a guide their apparent affluence and/or enthusiasm. If they stopped to ask, they were interested. If they didn't, my sales pitch became "come over here out of the sun, we're the coolest pitch at the airfield today!" or if people hesitated: "just because we're in the shade, doesn't mean we're shady!".

We took turns to sit on the one deckchair we'd brought along (there hadn't been room in the car for another), and were glad to have had the prescience to have brought along something to drink, and sunhats.

By about 2 pm we realised that most of the bulky stuff had gone, the crowds were beginning to thin out and the heat was just ludicrous. The shade from our tree was long gone and I had resorted to using my umbrella as a sunshade, far-Eastern style. A particularly long lull gave us a chance to consult the money-tin. It contained an indecent sum of cash and we decided to beat a retreat.

In case you may be wondering why I'm writing about summer exploits (and not even this year's, at that) when in fact we're facing the back end of October, it is for two reasons. Firstly to reminisce about hot weather (which is always kinder to memories than it is to real people at the time), and secondly to "compare and contrast" with a more recent car boot session.

Just last week we were back at the booty: same personnel, same venue, same vehicle. But making a wild difference to our fortunes were the range of goods we had on offer (lots of glass ornaments this time, and no ancient camera kit or home-made jewellery), the ambient temperature (although it was still bright and sunny) and of course the times of credit crunchiness to which we are now exposed.

One or more of those factors made the difference between clearing nearly £100 last summer, and our more recent, but rather less impressive, net total of £25. Sadly, however, it doesn't look as if we're in line for a bail-out from the government.

Where there's Muck there's Brass

"Find out how your Water Works!" said the email. It was from our water company, and I had to think for a while before I remembered how on earth they had come across my email address.

It all started with the premiere of "The Age of Stupid" in our city: Lunchista was asked to make up the numbers for a press stunt on the river bank. In the event our local eco-enthusiast par excellence turned up on his bike with the usual trailer full of cadged wood bits for his stove and stole the show, so I needn't have bothered. Except that, watching his small daughter skipping stones into the river, and totally innocent of our activities, was a bloke called Dave. We got talking, it turned out he worked at the water company and I happened to be curious about where our used water goes, so I gave him my email address.

The email offered a choice of times, so I chose the quietest, mid-afternoon during the working week. They'd booked one of the corporate-type meeting rooms (complete with bar) at the race-course. Togged up for a bike-ride to a working site, Lunchista felt distinctly under-attired for such a posh venue. But it was either that or wading through pools of muck in my green velvet cocktail dress and tiara. No contest, really.

The opener was one of those bland and eminently forgettable corporate films, following a perfect and immaculate family as they go through their perfect and immaculate day using whatever it is that the company provides. I'm sure there are college courses in making those videos.

Then things got interesting. Stepping off the coach at the site you're hit by the smell: the drop-off point happens to coincide with the part of the site where the waste water arrives. Mostly it's from the city's loos, but when there are floods some of the water washed off the streets gets in here too. The main contributor to this hum, though, was the grille that separated out all the insoluble things that people, in their absent-mindedness, flush down the loo. These all end up in a skip, from which, our guide told us, someone's false teeth were once retrieved...and they carried on using them!

Next stop was a giant metal shed in which lurks an Anaerobic Digestor. The stuff putrifies and gives off Methane, which is caught, purified (for example there's some Sulphur in there that has to go), and then used in essentially a miniature gas-fired power station. The electricity from this powers most of the rest of the site, and the heat is piped off to be used in one of the other processes further down the line. The stuff is now "sludge", which is a lot less unpleasant than before, but still brown and murky. The bacteria that start to digest this seem to work like a "yeast plant", in which some is tapped off at the far end and re-used to start the process off at the input end.

By now I was either getting used to the smell, or in the grips of sinusitis again. Or else perhaps it really was the case that this bit of the site was just plain less smelly. After that it was time for a spot of aerobics (not for us, but for the sludge). This stage is polished off in the bit of a sewage works that everybody's seen, in which water-jets come out of long gantries that sweep slowly round a giant circular pool. We came up to the edge of the 50-yard wide pool, and the water coming away was clear. It smelled slightly "earthy", but that might just be because we're all used to a spot of Chlorine these days.

I got out my camera for what would have been a terrific shot of the circular pool reflecting our city's two famous landmarks (the Minster and the old Chocolate Factory) and the absolutely cloudless sky...but no photos were allowed on site, and they didn't sell postcards, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with a picture of our tour-guide's file. Which is a pity, because they also have something of a wildlife reserve, next to where all the solid results of the enterprise are composted in long rows. There's an arrangement whereby local farmers can ring up and ask for deliveries of the end result, to use as fertiliser. With no heavy industry (not even chocolate manufacture) in the vicinity, this stuff remains refreshingly free of things like Cadmium, which were a problem in other places in the past. It also means we get to keep things like Phosphorus and Iodine, without which the whole of life on land would collapse, swiftly followed of course by Lunchista's house price.

I also noticed there were no flies on the site. And it was spotless. And all this for only 17 million quid, the sort of sum they find down the back of the sofa during a bank bail-out.

Small price to pay to stop the country going down the toilet.

Consultation Nation

We come now to the next installment of the wonderful Sustainable Communities Act process and what the good burghers of hereabouts are doing about it. To refresh your memory: this is the new act under which suggestions are being asked, once a year, for changes in national law that would enable improvements to be made on a local scale, with the first lot being requested by 8th May. Do have a seat (this one's from a nearby private park!).

Anyway, back to the Act: people rose to the occasion with alacrity, with hundreds of ideas being sent in to the local council. It all happened so quickly that the person on whose desk they arrived hadn't had time to look through the brief, and on being asked to select the best 50 or so ideas, rejected them because "They're beyond our powers and would require national legislation..." Ooops!

After a quiet word-to-the-wise, it was all sorted and 48 ideas went through to the next stage. Which it has to be said our City Council carried off with quite some style. About 50 of us, some of whose organisations had sent ideas in, and some who sit on a long-standing panel (erm...bad metaphor day!) of semi-permanent consultees, were invited along to a beautiful old hall for an evening's brainstorming, munchies provided. We sat like wedding guests at several round tables, each of which had a bunch of the ideas that fell together into a theme (such as "Transport" or "Local taxes and economy"), and we read through the list of ideas and offered our thoughts, while someone from the Council "facilitated" (I'm trying to think of something like a Chair only less bossy) and took notes.

Some of the ideas were quite radical (for example letting the Council keep all the business rates and landfill tax), while some looked like out-and-out Spam (for example allowing only compressed-air-powered cars in the city centre, letting one firm who allegedly make the things set up a factory in our midst). Some of the ideas really appealed to Lunchista and I was, quite rightly, put on the spot and asked to explain why!

It transpires that the next step in the proceedings is for the most popular of the 48 ideas to go up on a website, where we can offer further comments. These in turn will be used by the Council to put together a 6500-word case for the best ones, to be sent to HMG Central.

Now a lot of people get all cynical about consultations, and with reason. Lunchista, however, is only cynical about some consultations. For example:

Like many other places, our city is in the throes of putting together something called a Local Development Framework. For several years leading up to this, it had been on the point of completing a Local Development Plan, but then "It Was Decided" (by HMG Central) that this wasn't complete enough, so Local Development Framework it was, then. This meant starting all over again, and a lot of people in our city council had to temporarily put aside the mundane business of running our libraries, old folks' homes, rubbish-collection and addressing the rather urgent question of how to avoid having us all disappear underwater. Then, just yesterday, a survey arrived at Chateau Lunchista on which the public could register our views. It was a classic. Here is the first question:

"Key Themes:
1. Building confident, creative and inclusive communities
2. A prosperous and thriving economy
3. An environmentally friendly city
4. Special historic and built environment
Question: Do you think these are appropriate?"

Now in all honesty how could you say "No" to those? And yet, when someone wants to build a massive out-of-town supermarket, for example, they could easily say (or more accurately write, ideally in a glossy brochure with lots of pictures, including that one of the child blowing dandelion-seeds) that they were addressing all four of these points.

Many of the subsequent questions asked if we want more of something. This was done by first saying "There will be x more of this", and then asking "Is x too high, too low or about right?" Why on earth does this remind Lunchista of that sketch ("Well, which result do you want, Minister?") from Yes, Prime Minister?

Right, enough of the cynical divertissement, and back to the nuts and bolts. Done properly, as our Council's Sustainable Communities Act excercise seems to be doing, a consultation will give a government proper information, which with a bit of luck can be turned into genuine knowledge.

But there's more. Anyone remember how absolutely confident Saddam Hussein appeared during the Iraq invasion, right up until practically the very day of his defeat? He was no actor: that confidence was genuine. It came from the simple fact that no-one ever wants to break bad news to a dictator: no-one could tell him that the current course of action wasn't working. It's the same in any aspect of life: a system which has no negative feedback, in the face of even the tiny, everyday changes that it should be able to correct for, is bound to go unstable in the end and fail. Even if the road is straight, driving without a steering wheel would be a dodgy proposition.

I would like to think that this is what well-designed consultations, held with honest motives, do in the long run. Tapping into our collective know-how means we can keep looking, and keep steering. And who says the road's straight anyway?

Support your local

What is the most-abused word in the English language? I mean, this year, because fashions in word-abuse come and go. Anyone remember "Aspirations" (from the 1970s)? "Care" (from the 1980s, once used notoriously by the PM to describe her attitude to the National Health Service)? More recent victims have included "Empower", and there is at least one word which has been abused so badly it has effectively died and had to be replaced. "Sympathy" (which literally means "the same feeling") is now no longer strong enough for those who wish to profess their fellow feeling. These days it has to be "Empathy" (which also literally means "the same feeling"), thank you, and nothing less.

But all that is just the warm-up act to the most-abused word of this decade. That word, in case you've just come back from an extended holiday on another planet, is "Sustainable" (and its relatives). Appropriately enough, it looks like remaining so for quite some time. It all started in 1987 with a nice clear definition by the then Norwegian PM Gro Harlem Bruntland:

"Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"

and it's been downhill ever since, a recent landmark (well all right then, low-tide-mark) being Lunchista's home city's adoption of a "sustainable growth strategy for retail" or somesuch, which presumably means they'll carry on building shops forever.

But (and this is a big But) one abiding characteristic of abused words is that, from time to time, they turn up in places where their use is entirely justified. An example of this happened in Lunchista's front room yesterday.

Our Parish Council has created a Sustainability Working Group, whose job it is to advise the said Council on all matters to do with Sustainability, which Lunchista interprets as "the black art of how to use things (including abstract things like Goodwill and aesthetics) without using them up". Lunchista was invited on board. Meetings rotate around various venues, so Lunchista offered the front room.

One of our first jobs is to look at how the Parish Council's own places can be made more sustainable. Lunchista's suggestion to start with simple energy audits led to the interesting revelation that for some of these places the bill-payers, and even the owners, were not known. Going from my previous experience of this type of work, this is not unusual. You nearly always find that energy efficiency isn't a physics problem, it's a chain-of-command problem. Except chains of command are So Last Century and we now have "Partnership working" instead, which gives everybody the opportunity to advance their career by blaming someone else. Meanwhile it transpires that our most important building has just had a total refit, so the most Sustainable thing to do with it now, in all probability, would be to leave it alone.

Next, and a bit more interesting, is to look round our parish and find all the people and places which are already quietly getting on with being sustainable, and see if any of them needs any help. While doing that you often come across places which provided local needs in times gone by but are now derelict and could, with a bit of TLC and the right Insurance, be brought back into use. Like the old Orchard, for example. Or old manor gardens, woods that could be coppiced, water-mills, tythe-barns, you get the idea. All of these classic pieces of infrastructure could carry on being useful indefinitely, without the need to constantly source petrol/plastic/electricity or take away rubbish (other than things you could just bung on the stove or the compost).

However the liveliest bit of all, at least in this particular meeting, was talk of what we'd like HMG to do to help all this stuff happen. Welcome to the shiny new Sustainable Communities Act, which came about after some nifty campaigning, and enables anyone whose Council has signed up, to put in ideas for national laws which can come in on the side of people who are working on a local scale to do the sort of thing that our Sustainability Working Group is trying to do.

The deadline for the first round of ideas is 8th May (VE Day no less).

For those who can't come up with ideas on an empty stomach, I offer scones, made and brought home from school by the same younger member of our family who brought you Vegetarianism and Football.

Put the oven on gas mark 7. Rub 50 g of butter into 200 g of self-raising flour. Add in 50 g of either sugar or grated cheese. Then gradually stir in 120 g of milk, until you have a smooth dough. Roll it out onto a floured board and put circular pieces onto a greased tray. Bake for 15 minutes.

The scones were not very sustainable, in that they didn't stay around for long.