Weather the Weather.

Isn’t it strange that in Britain we need to read articles about how to stay cool in the hot weather? Like we’ve never had hot weather before or no-one has the knowledge to pass down to our younger generation or new arrivals from the planet Zanussi.

When we have a snowfall here traffic comes to a halt, our supermarket shelves are empty five days later and A&E have additional winter stresses: broken bones from unrehearsed folk slipping on the ice.

Do we not know how to adapt to changes in the weather? Or is it that we are neither a very hot nor a very cold island thus we aren’t prepared for extremes?

My own frailty in these unexpected but welcome temperatures has been to stave off heat-induced migraine. It’s a combination of the glare from white-walled buildings, disrupted sleep patterns, dehydration and changes in eating habits that can create the malady.

In this particular sun-soaked spell of super-strength sunshine I appear to have come through it migraine-free. Hooray for that!

My own coping strategy is to drink even more iced-water than I generally consume on warm days. I always eat breakfast so that I am fed and watered before I use the hose or watering can to nourish my plants. I go to the shops before the heat is up too. 

I try to accomplish these chores by 10:00 or 11:00. a.m. And I always plaster myself with sun bloc, wear long sleeves, hat and shades. I dress as if I’m on my way for a sea-water swim in baking-hot Cyprus. Odd but cool and practical. Only a parasol is missing.

By midday I allow myself a rest or, when the temperature is mid-eighties (29C) or more, I take a siesta. The challenge is coping with the bright sunlight at 6:00 am. It’s a bugger waking up so early when you really want your energy to tackle household tasks before the heat becomes too much. And that lack of sleep can create a migraine. Oh the woes of the effects of glorious summer sunshine.

How must it be for the vast majority of people who are in full-time work? Labouring on a building site, creating bread in an already hot bakery or repairing wires atop a vertiginous telegraph pole, your head facing upwards, eyes blinded by penetrating rays from a fierce sun. I am the lineman for the county.

Sitting in a hot car, or on an airless bus or a delayed, overcrowded train must be, at the very least, exasperating. You’ve done a day’s work by the time you reach your place of employment. 

When at your desk you can’t lose your rag because of feeling weary after a sleepness night in a hot bedroom. You can’t shout at the phone because your stress levels from a hard journey into work are trying your patience. Everyone else is likely the same.

At least at home it’s easy to keep all the windows and doors open and just go for walks in the cool of the evening. And you can swear at things getting stuck down the plughole in the kitchen sink or flies hovering around the cat’s food. You can lose your temper and not risk alienating anyone else in the room or a client at the end of the phone. But what if you have to go into town or a big city, pollution hanging in the air like a toxic cloud? 

Yesterday my husband went shopping for our holiday. It was 85 degrees (29/30 C).Rather him than me. He came back ringing wet with sweat and could barely speak. He went for a lie down. Was it ever thus? Or is it getting hotter, drier and more stifling for longer than it ever did?

Today he needs to go in to the city to collect euros. Thankfully a delightful breeze has taken the sting out of the heat and temperatures are hitting a relatively cool 79 degrees (26C).

As I sit typing I sense I actually feel pleasantly warm rather than overwhelmed. The temperatures are dropping. I think we’ve peaked.

What other vagaries of the British weather will we endure next week? Hail storms or thunder and lightning? And how much does it matter when we have good water resources - at the turn of a tap - and enough to eat, petrol in the car and a crime-free neighbourhood allowing us to leave our front doors open?

We have a good life. It is frightening to think of those in refugee camps or living in perennially hot countries suffering crop failure. 

Enjoy the heat while we can, I say! In Britain it’s a gift. Not a threat.

The Zoo Keeper's Wife and Gilead

From the end of January until the last week of May I was on one kind of painkiller or another. By March 14 my lower back pain had responded to Co-codamol and Naproxyn. From March 20^th, after being given inappropriate physiotherapy exercises to try , I needed Tramadex simply to get to sleep. All the while I was taking my analgesics I was slipping in the odd glass of white wine and Aperol spritzer. (My GP said I could.) I was on the maximum meds and sometimes needed more pain relief than even those strong drugs could provide. At times I was unable to move but as the irritation around the disc and sciatic nerve got less, and once the cold snows of March had passed, I was able to walk for thirty minutes a day. I was visiting the GP surgery more than I had ever done and decided, in April, to have a health MOT. Oh woeful day!

I believed I was doing well until the results of the MOT came through. A practice nurse told me I was overweight and I had to lose a stone. I also needed to have other tests run to ensure I hadn’t damaged vital functions through my carrying of extra fat. I did explain I’d been unusually inactive for a couple of months but she wasn’t impressed. Indeed I felt like a school girl who had turned up to class in dirty knickers. After that I had a dental appointment. Having got into the dentist's chair expecting a filling I came out, fifty minutes later, my mouth wedged with bloodied cotton wool. He'd had to extract a perfectly good tooth...and it didn't want to be pulled. Back to the heavy-duty painkillers for another ten days.

My concerns are nothing, however, in comparison with the plight of women incarcerated in war-torn lands or enduring oppression in misogynistic regimes. Women in such countries are likely frightened of, or indeed prevented from, walking the streets in the towns where they have grown up. Going shopping for basics in a war-torn city can be fatal and likely result in little or no food being left on the shelves once the stall, or whatever constitutes for a bazaar or shop, has been arrived at.

And I’m bothered, as are so many in the rich first world, about being overweight…

My weight-reducing exercises and diet are paying dividends, I'm glad to say. My waist is shrinking and the scales show I am losing weight effectively. So far, so good. But what of women who have no choice? No shelter? No food? These are quite different problems.

 While watching ‘The Zoo Keeper’s Wife’, set in Warsaw in 1939, just after the Nazi invasion, I couldn’t help draw a comparison between the lives of women there, being bundled into carts and hidden while Nazi guards checked the cart driver’s papers, and the life of June in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ June, the protagonist, is whisked into the backs of trucks, left in disused buildings - until ‘it’s safe to move’ - in the dystopia of Gilead, the USA of time yet to come.

In both novels women are being protected from soldiers who might rape them, others who might assault them or beat them, enslave them or send them away. What have we learned as a human race about how to treat each other? Margaret Attwood said, when writing ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ that all events – the hangings, the servitude, the forced procreation – had actually occurred at some time in some part of the world. In 1939 Jewish women were the ones targeted for brutal treatment, along with their men folk, their elders and their offspring. In dystopian America any fecund woman is treated as a reproductive machine. There simply to produce a child. Merely another part in the baby factory.

In both films, ‘The Zoo Keeper’s Wife’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ dark interiors, cruelty, fear - but also great bravery - characterise the prevailing atmosphere. Whether it’s Europe 1939 or a broken USA of the future the way human beings treat each other can be truly inhuman. To describe such cruelty as animalistic is wrong. Animals kill when they are hungry. Few are cruel.

My cat, who can be a terror when he’s hungry, is lying at my feet while I type. He’s behaving as a cat can: friendly, warm, purring and content. It’s only when he’s hungry that he hides, ambushes us as we walk past and grabs us by the ankles. Only when he’s hungry, mind. It is when resources are in short supply or one country invades another or men and women have become infertile that human beings inflict pain on each other, worse than any animal that’s hungry. One can only hope for world peace and for human interaction to become civilised and co-supportive. As a species we still have a long journey to make. And, according to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ the future will be no better. I should stop grumbling about being on painkillers and be grateful I'm allowed to take them.

Screech cycling

                         

Recycling a noble idea? Helping to save the planet without resorting to landfill? Reuse. Don’t throw out. Marvellous ideas, in theory.

But why, oh why is recycling so difficult to achieve in our neighbourhood? It takes hours to accomplish every week. Rubbish-strewn streets are now the norm on recycling day. Wildlife turn the recycling bags over and tug at the contents. The gull-proof bags are not gull-proof. The receptacles we are given are inadequate and it’s a strain for the elderly to push, lift or carry overflowing bags out for the recycling collection team. Of course it’s a good idea to use recycled plastic, paper, glass and card goods - but the strain is on the householder. Not the manufacturer, nor the supermarket chains, it seems. And our council-given receptacles are far from top notch. 

My elderly mother, however, at least had suitable trolleys she could wheel out on a weekly basis. And she didn’t pay for them.

Why can’t we have the same?

A really useful green bin on wheels for garden waste - just drop it in - is about right for us. We pay for it, though, £44 a year. Mum got hers free.

She also had a cardboard and paper only wheelie-bin, ideal - again just tear up cardboard packaging and push it in. No piles of card hanging around the kitchen waiting for recycling day. No need to fiddle with a velcro-flap on a less-than-useful bag (which doesn’t deter foxes, badgers nor gulls). And she had a third trolley for other household items plus bottles and cans - just drop them in. No extra charge.

But here, in one of the richest councils in the country, we grapple with a box for one set of items, an annoying floppy bag for other waste, a ridiculously tiny food waste bin and the rest we put out in our own bags. If things aren’t separated or washed ( in the dishwasher?) a yellow sticker is placed on the waste contents and left on the pavement to be hauled back inside again. 

For days at a time we have bags of metal cans, bags of bottles and another of see-through plastic littering the kitchen.

The answer has to be we’ll have to pay more to buy better recycling receptacles, which take up even more space in the kitchen, just to keep things looking tidy. Like I don’t want the space or money for anything else?

If my mother can have three wheelie bins, free of charge, via a less privileged council than Bath, why can’t we?

I would love to know how the rest of you manage the night before recycling day. We’re not getting it right. Thank goodness my husband doesn’t mind the mess and the sifting - up to a point.After an hour he’ll say ‘no more, not dealing with any more rubbish tonight.’  I resent the hours it takes and the mess it makes. Please give us some adequate recycling bins ...

                 The gulls are having a great time of it. 

                                        Scree-eech!

The Garden of Tranquility

I cannot believe the fuss and performance made by certain family members about our going to the crematorium today. Perhaps others have had similar experiences. If so, you have my sympathy.

When my father died, suddenly, in Italy, in 1993, mum, my brother and I thought a bench with a plaque, in his memory, was a fitting tribute to him. Our family doesn't have a burial plot. The only graves related to us are in another cemetery - for mum's side of the family - for the ancients - but from 1959 onwards nana, aunties, mum and dad have had their ashes scattered at the crematorium. There is no headstone for any of them.

Last year, after mum died and her ashes scattered, I orchestrated the removal of the plaque on 'dad's' memorial bench so that the wording represented mum too. It took months and many conflicting messages from 'Bereavement Services' to get the wording and the help we wanted. I was horrified at both the cost and the poor state of the finish on the wooden bench after the revised plaque had been repositioned. I offered, to members of our family, to go to the crematorium, sand down the bench and restain it in order to repair the botched job done by someone at the council.

However a couple of family members, referred to as THEY, THEIR etc from hereonin, live fifteen minutes away and THEY went ahead and restored the bench instead. (I live three hours away.)

Today, because we were staying with THEM, we had to purchase a spray of flowers - in secret - as THEY objected to my taking flowers to put on 'mum's and dad's bench'. THEY said the council don't like it and THEY said mum always objected to flowers on benches (first I knew of this but THEY are prone to magnifying a point in order to win some battle or other.)

Having purchased the spray of flowers, in secret, yesterday, I walked past a supermarket coffee machine, which had spare paper take-away cups. I have to admit to purloining one of these as I thought it had been set aside (and would help in my subterfuge).

Now ... how to sneak the flowers, unseen, into THEIR house and put them in water ready for the crematorium 24 hours later? I didn't try ... that's the simple answer. I asked Richard to open the rear door on our car, I placed the paper coffee cup in the rear cup holder, poured water in it from the glass water bottle I had with me ... et voila... mission - stage one - accomplished. The flowers could stay there, in water, safely, unseen, overnight.

Having only ever been to the crematorium in a limousine as a mourner I don't know the route as a driver. THEY printed a street map for me, being helpful, while telling me about all the potholes, roadworks and every other road problem under the sun. For the amount of troubles we would encounter we might as well have been setting off for a trek across the Sahara. 

Today I woke early (6 am) (with my ongoing back pain), washed my hair, went to make breakfast at some ungodly hour but THEY were already up. THEY were unable to cope with making me a hot breakfast drink as I was downstairs much earlier than THEY expected. The fuss my presence created doesn't bear description ... 

THEY told me there was no point my going to the crematorium early as the roads would be dreadful. I said nothing. I, however, wanted to go before 9 am to place flowers and take a photograph for remembrance before funeral parties arrived. It is inappropriate, I feel, to be clicking away when mourners are in a state of distress over their own lost loved ones.

I was, of course,  ready to go to the crematorium as close to 9 am as possible. What happened next was not what I was expecting.

Before I left the house THEY handed me a bag of cleaning materials to do up the bench. THEY said it was in a terrible state. I was perturbed. Did I really want precious moments remembering my parents to be sabotaged by dish rags and detergents?

I was getting somewhat incensed at this point and went over THEIR heads. If THEY could be petty I could go one better. 

        'If there's moss on the bench it'll need bleach or a bathroom spray to clean it. Can you get me some?' I said, as if addressing domestic staff. Reluctantly some bleach, in spray form, was found. 

Thankfully the map THEY had produced for us worked. There was no traffic congestion, I saw none of the horrendous road works THEY anticipated, but because of the fuss and performance about avoiding a dreadful (15 minute) journey, three funeral parties were already at the chapels when we arrived to ... yes ... clean the 'family' bench. Having (badly) secured the flowers (lilies, roses, greenery) on the bench the wind blew and knocked them over straight away. My idea of placing the flowers in the take-away coffee cup with water, and covered with ribbon or similar, had to be abandoned as the wind was so fierce the whole display collapsed and had to be rearranged. In the end, ever watchful for funeral parties who may need to view their family flowers on the balcony where I was 'working', I made a wedge out of a floating ribbon which landed at my feet from another family's floral tribute and stood my flowers up, on the bench, without water. The spray won't last long without water, but what to do? I felt as desperate as Sgt Troy in 'Far From the Madding Crowd' when his pitiful planting of bulbs, in his sweetheart's grave, is destroyed and washed away by a torrent of rain water from a gargoyle sited above her headstone.

I was cross, sad, tired and frustrated that I couldn't have a few quiet moments with my parents at the place of their memorial bench. Mourners from funeral services began to drift out of one of the chapels. For two pins I wanted to abandon the 'clean up' and just pause for a moment, with a sense of dignity. That's why I was there, after all. The mourners didn't come our way, however. I looked at the flower display I'd created. I felt more relaxed and pleased, took a photograph and had a quiet moment. Mission - stage two - accomplished.

Next to our bench was the blasted bag of cleaning materials; latex gloves, sponge wash-ups, cleaning cloths, an apron and the bleach spray. Yes there were tiny spots of moss on the bench, but that's as bad as it got. It's kept outside for other mourners to sit on and is prone to a little moss-gathering. If I sprayed bleach on it would it really help anyone recently bereaved to have a dignified funeral ceremony while smelling noxious fumes as they looked at family flowers and paid their last respects?

The funeral parties from the other chapels hadn't yet made their way to the balcony where the benches are placed. I took a chance. I sprayed the moss, rubbed at it, without fiddling with latex gloves, and removed the vast majority of the 'offensive' moss and mildew. I wiped over the seat and arms of the bench and, remembering what THEY said, disposed of the rags in the waste bin.

Our family bench is the most well-stained, most polished and most attractive-looking of all on the balcony. But does that matter? Surely the spirit of calmness, relection and remembrance are far more important than an obsession with being the perfect bench hosts. 

Back at THEIRs, by roughly 10.30 am, not only was what I'd done to the bench not good enough but my suggestion that I sand down part of the bench and restain it - on another occasion - was met with ferocious outrage.

     'That bench needs completely stripping down with paint stripper. It'll take a whole weekend to do. It can't be done when funerals are on and it needs to be stripped on a dry day. We can't do it ...' (No-one ever asked THEM to.)

     'Then,' the harangue continued, 'the bench has to dry, then be washed down with soap and water, then left to dry again.'

     'I might manage to redo the bench where the new plaque has been put - maybe on a warm summer's day, at a weekend, ' I offered.

      'And then when you've done all that you can restain it. And it'll have to be done the same day. It'll look awful otherwise. AND you'll have to unscrew the plaque and rescrew it tight afterwards.'

     I was so furious with this nagging I poured myself a huge glass of white wine, even though it was only 10.30 am. THEY never drink, of course, and found my behaviour extremely odd.  Good. I went upstairs and packed, wanting oh so much to come home. We had, however arranged to have coffee out and a fish and chip lunch, with THEM, before driving back. In fact having coffee then fish and chips were pleasant enough experiences and by the time it came to leave THEM we were all in much better humours.

But, as for the garden of tranquility, was it ever envisaged to be the scene of such domestic disharmony? Surely going to pay one's respects to one's parents should be a time of peace and quiet contemplation? Not an episode of 'How clean is your house?'

      

Ordeal by Trivia

Strange, isn't it, that a Sunday evening's TV viewing has to be marred by trivia?

The trivia to which I refer are passwords and the rewriting of classic yarns, whereby the outcome, the whodunnit, is the whodintdoit. 

After several weeks of back pain, please do refer to my earlier posts for the tiresome details, I needed, today, to go for a walk, have a coffee and a read of the Sunday newspapers, ahead of the luncheon crowds, by the river. Richard said I was walking well and later, in our garden, I even managed to bend to do two minutes weeding. 

This afternoon I watched a film without the aftereffects of the weeding playing havoc with my back. After a truly soothing bath I settled down to Sunday night TV. I was feeling better.

As I write my back feels easier than it has for some time and the only irritation I felt tonight was my attempted viewing of an Agatha Christie adaptation at 9pm. I never did rate 'The Night Manager' nor did I like another Christie adaptation 'And Then There Were None' but I know the Denis Lawson and Jane Seymour version of 'Ordeal by Innocence' and wanted to see part two of the new production tonight. If only to compare. However, lurking in the back of my mind was a feature I'd read which stated that the ending (the whodunnit) has been rewritten for this latest BBC offering. And I agreed with the article which suggested rewriting the ending such that the murderer's identity changes isn't the done thing. I do know the sad, hunted 'Jacko' in the Lawson/Seymour adaptation of 'Ordeal by Innocence' ... SPOILER ALERT ... isn't the perpetrator, but the housekeeper ( played gloriously by Alison Steadman) is the murderer. Why alter that?

After enjoying the sunshine of Corfu in 'The Durrells' and the fiestas, intrigue and medical dilemmas in 'The Good Karma Hospital' I decided to lie in bed with my ipad to watch 'Ordeal by Innocence' on the iplayer. Great, I thought, if I'm late for the beginning I can click 'restart'. Easy. 

But no, just because my back is less troublesome, all the irritations of the world don't simply disappear. The iplayer announced my device ( i pad) didn't support the transmission and to retry. I retried and got the same message. I turned to my iPhone 6 plus. It has eaten up my data allowance as I've used it more when lying in bed at the top of the house - for back therapy - where the signal is too poor for my ipad. But today my new monthly allowance starts and I can watch the beeb on it without any problem.

Or so I thought. I tuned into 'Ordeal by Innocence' on my iphone, now ten minutes into transmission, and I got the same 'this device won't...'message. I pulled out my Mac, which was purchased for writing my novel, and nothing else! and tried to open up Google Chrome to find BBC iplayer as I don't use Apps on my Mac.

Google Chrome had to download. Then it had to download on my iphone and ipad too - why? I already have it on those devices. Then I had to find 'Ordeal by Innocence' and begin watching it - 20 minutes into the programme. Ah. Not so fast. 

Not quite yet.

I had to sign into the BBC. I can't remember if I've done this before; the site knew my email address but after three attempts rejected my password. I clicked to change my password, went on to MAIL to receive the link to change it but couldn't understand why no new mail was coming through my inbox. Meanwhile the programme, 'Ordeal', was half-way through.

I clicked a few things on the inbox page of MAIL on my Mac and I was asked to sign into Google - with another password. Fingers crossed I hoped the password was correct. It was. Over 1000 emails swooped into my inbox and low and behold there was the one I wanted.( I told you I use the Mac for writing my novel - hence other installations are redundant or underused. ) I found the email for the BBC link. I clicked it, changed my password, signed on, crossed my fingers again, and found I was on the iplayer page and - yes - my Mac was a device able to show 'Ordeal by Innocence.'

I pressed restart and play and began to enjoy the Agatha Christie retelling. As I said I know the story and find this adaptation slow but whilst I adore Matthew Goode here he is an embittered wheelchair-bound Phillip Durrant and is anything but 'good'. Ten years ago he was an excellent Charles Ryder in 'Brideshead' but I don't recall that the nasty, foul-mouthed, bitter cripple whom he plays in 'Ordeal' was so surly in the Lawson/Seymour version. Yes, he adds drama, and is a brilliant actor but is he just a red herring? Is he there to make us think he was the murderer? He must be, mustn't he, as he's so foul. Except he's suicidal. Maybe it's Calgary, that lonely 'witness' who knows Jack was an innocent, played fretfully by Luke Treadaway. He is sidelined by the living protagonists, the family whose mother is the murder victim, is almost run over by the detective who convicted Jack and, as a scientist, cf Einstein, has unwittingly released an annihilating bomb on the world. Calgary has a world-death fixation. A sad character. And, because I had a thousand emails wanting to show themselves, ancient messages from 'Sky' or 'Majestic Wines' distracted me from following the drama by appearing in the top right-hand corner of my handheld screen.

After thirty minutes watching I tired of the pop-ups and the nastiness and, despite the effort I'd gone to to log on and watch the programme, I switched my Mac off, only to find the programme was now available on 'all platforms'. Pity was, I didn't want to watch it whether it was available on my ipad or not.

My husband won't watch 'The Durrells' because he says it's nothing like Lawrence Durrell's work. I don't like this 'Ordeal by Innocence' because it's nothing like the original Christie and last week a friend of mine watched 'Fahrenheit 451' with me (the Oskar Werner and Julie Christie version) but she didn't like that because it wasn't like the book. I like both the book and the film. Will I like the new 451F film when it's out in May?

The trivia of passwords is always a pain but the details of novels which we know well are more than trivia. In 451F one of the leads in the book dies before the ending but miraculously lives on in the film. Ray Bradbury liked the film's new ending, however, and rewrote her story for his stage version of the book. However 'Ordeal by Innocence' can only have one murderer can't it? To change the whodunnit is surely taking dramatic licence too far? I don't think altering the ending is trivial. But next week, if I decide to tune in, I'll watch it on the box, not on a lap top nor tablet, to fiddle with passwords. 

Oh hang on. We'll be away. And my aunts won't want 'that sort of thing' on their TV on a Sunday evening. Better record it in advance and hope no-one tells me who the murderer is before I've seen the ending. But ... SPOILER ALERT ... it wasn't Jacko ( or Jack as he's known in this production) - perhaps in this version it's the Matthew Goode character - Durrant - who murders the wealthy householder. He's not in love with his wife, and surely only married her for her money. Hence the murder. Or it's Calgary, lonely, unwanted by the family, is a former mental institute patient and is unstable. There. Case closed. I know whodunnit.  I don't need to tune in and endure the trivia of passwords, do I?

And Fahrenheit 451 predicts we'll all be governed by screens rather than by books. Since it was written in 1953 that's strangely, frighteningly prescient. 

More on plastic - or is that less?

Cling film has been around since my childhood. As a youngster I was fascinated with the way this clever material took up and enveloped the shape of the bowl or plate of goodies it was covering. And I always had the urge to punch a whole in its skin - stretched as tight as a drum over a salad bowl or a plate of sausages on sticks. But what a pain it can be to unravel it from its cardboard roll. So many times have I scrunched cling film or torn it in the wrong place, leaving strangely-shaped stretches of plastic film which won't fit over a tub of party snacks.

And we don't need it. A paper napkin or fabric coated in beeswax - which is washable and re-usable - does the job, as does a simple tea-towel. Edwardian homes managed to keep party food fresh by simply covering their scrumptious offerings with cloth. No devastating newspaper reports of the 1902 curly sandwiches scandal come to mind!

Empty toothpaste tubes are a devil to recycle and a jar of paste, available at health-food stores, are a perfect alternative, and you don't waste it by squeezing too much out of the tube. Less mess, more fish, less rubbish. Dental floss made from silk will break down more easily over time than traditional materials - that might be a better option for those who love to floss.

Tea bags - who needs them? Nowt wrong with loose tea? It is messier to empty teapots out afterwards  if using leaf tea and you can't drop tea leaves into a cup for a single brew as you can with a tea bag, but there's nothing wrong with an infusion. Or we can simply use tea bags which don't contain micro-plastics - it'll take more effort to read the label on the packet carefully, but  if 40 million of us in the UK alone do this the oceans might have a chance.

A friend of mine is now taking her own container into take-away restaurants for her lunch. And you don't need plastic cutlery if you take your eating irons with you. It's a minor inconvenience but herring gulls are at less risk of filling their stomachs with bits of broken up plastic handles if we ditch throw-away knives, forks and spoons.

Small acts could be the beginning of a change of habit. The end of our relationship with plastics. Who wants to see images of turtles swimming through trails of blue plastic bags? Or fish with throttling scarves of the stuff cutting into their flesh? Seals who have grown up with a cummerbund of plastic that slices into their blubbery skin, creating wounds and pain from a belt which won't move on a notch as the animal grows fatter?

It's getting easier to carry your own shopping bag to the grocers, removing the need for plastic carriers. Such actions can make a difference to our seas and oceanic livestock, victims of man's desire for that wonder material: polyvinylchloride, low-density polyethylene, polystyrene or styrofoam.

Any more for any more? Are you managing a break-away from plastics? Do let me know your suggestions. 🐙🐢🐠🐟🐳🐬🐋🌊 The oceans will be glad of it.

On the subject of plastics

I am old enough to remember being told at school,  'In a few years time we might all be wearing plastic shoes, using plastic bags, buying plastic phones ...' I was about eight when our class teacher told us this and I thought plastic shoes would be very inflexible and tough on the skin. Of course I wasn't sophisticated enough to realise there are many hardness and softness grades of plastic.

Many decades later the sight of mishappen turtles and seals with rings of plastic cutting into their necks has persuaded me to think back to when I was eight and we weren't routinely using plastic as a covering, for bags, for bottles or as wrappers.

In the garden I am putting all my plastic pots out for recycling and will be going back to using clay or terracotta ones. I tend to re-use old plastic bags as liners for bins or seed trays and I will continue doing that. Inside the house I've gone back to bars of soap - rather than liquid soap dispensers - and use glass bottles rather than the plastic alternative. I will use more pencils than plastic biros or felt tips. We are weaning ourselves off ready-packed apples and buying them loose - to be packed - along with other fruits and veg, in newspaper or brown paper bags. However, even biscuits packaged brightly in thin cardboard boxes are doubly wrapped in see-through polythene and black plastic trays. What to do about that is stumping me at present. Similarly washing up liquid and detergents will be in plastic containers until the forseeable future - I assume we wait until 'ecover' ( other brands are available) re-use glass bottles in place of plastic ones.

It's easy to throw out plastic toothbrushes and nail brushes to replace them with wooden bristle versions. But it is the act of throwing out that is causing the trouble. Wash ups can be replaced by cotton dishwashing cloths - and I do recycle my old ones - eventually, though, the plastic ones will have to be thrown out and end up in landfill or in the seas and oceans. I tend to buy cotton clothes and I do recycle or car boot them or donate them. Our pre-loved garments will rot down, in time.And they still make good rags. I try to buy toys for the children I know that are wooden rather than polypropylene but packaging, again, can reduce the effectiveness of trying to have a plastic-free world.

Take out food is likely to be an ongoing issue. Perhaps we should try to sit down and enjoy a drink or bite rather than consuming on the move? But take aways cause problems: 25% of plastic produced globally is packaging. Even without a packet the film around a sandwich or similar is likely plastic. Plastic straws, cups and cutlery go with the take away territory and add to an already enormous problem.

Currently only 14% of plastic is recycled. By 2050 there will be more of it than fish in the sea. Anyone got other good tips for cutting down the use of and the throwing out of this fish-suffocating material?