I believe in the future

I should be washing my car or hoeing the moss out of the perfume patch in the garden but I am sitting inside watching the stratus drift in lines over the blue sky of the morning.

How do I do it? Methinks my environmental opinions irritate people! I am not clever enough to understand the way bio-friendly equipment works but I feel we should try to do/install things to safeguard our children and their earth......

I must not get downhearted- there are folks who help - my magazines are being boosted by the several people who have started to add to my pile. Our hundreds of specs collected annually for Vision Aid Overseas must be all over remote parts of India and Africa! Last week J from our walking group gave me ink cartridges for the 'Each one counts' account I have for Breast Cancer Campaign-I was thrilled- word gets around- (and nothing will end up in landfill). Lots of friends have collected milk bottle tops and now gather used stamps (for our local hospice and a charity to buy/train guide dogs for the blind). Bras roll in for BCC's recycling campaign- makes a better use than burning them, Germaine!

My friends are good people- and they put up with me and my foibles!

I want to belong to a church of the future not a church of the past....
Instead of new celtic crosses outside churches carved with names from the past, or new stained glass windows- I would like to celebrate events with.....something for the community....an investment for the future....... a double glazed window?.... Lots of churches (altar in east towards Jerusalem and nave lying east-west giving a south facing pitched roof) in UK have started to put solar panels (hot water for heating) or photo-voltaic cells (electricity -some for your use and spare can be fed back to the National Grid for which you get payment). C&E have got those on their roof- I have always wanted some too but they are VERY expensive - where can we get help and advice?

See? I am riding my hobby horse- but for years we have explored windpower and in particular H1 wants a heatexchanger (downover if the garden isn't big enough across- but what if it needs fixing and hauling up from the bowels of the earth?!) Also we would have to have floors lifted and no carpets- and I find bare floors hard and inhospitable.

I admit I am a pain to some! I try to buy local and when I can't avoid the air miles eg bananas, I buy fair trade. I have roses from February 15th -not inflated-price Valentine roses)still beautiful- nowt clever just 2" and all greenery below waterlevel cut off/ water changed each week- and fair trade roses are perfumed!

I keep asking for (costly & bacteria-spreading) airconditioning to be switched off in (open-doored?) shops, banks and cafes- we are 55 degrees north for goodness sake!We have survived years without it!

I am by no means alone- I find lots of people are working away at environmentally responsible collections and schemes so why aren't bigger organisations like companies and shops aware they can recycle, cut costs on heating (We have our coats on when we step over shop thresholds!) and airconditioning.

Britain could be in the vanguard of building new ecotechnology to supply the awakening world- (and employment in Britain!)

OH well- Rome wasn't built in a day.