A bit of a ramble

I apologise for being a bit re-miss on the ole blogging front. It’s a mixture of being really busy, but having nothing very interesting to say at the same time.

 

I just wanted to write something before we disappear off next week…yes, only 2 working days to go before we are on holiday, horrraaahhhyyy! We have planned so many cool things to do that 4 days isn’t going to be enough! I have been watching the petrol crisis with interest but unleaded in our area seems to be alright. We have enough petrol to get us down to Pembrokeshire anyway, I don’t mind if we get stuck on holiday!

 

I won’t have internet connection until the 30^th so I don’t expect I’ll be blogging before then but I plan to schedule some posts for the week so you don’t get too lonely!

 

Have a lovely week!

 

(I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for Orcas)

What is Poverty?

What flashes into your mind when you hear the word poverty? Dirty children scrabbling through rubbish heaps, poor Africans living in mud shelters? I have a friend who is currently living and working in Zambia, and I know that she could sum up poverty perfectly, because she sees it every day. People who are devastated by AIDs and who just have absolutely nothing to their name (except beaming smiles and a great sense of humour – it’s funny how the poorest people are often the happiest isn’t it?).

 

Anyway, I was reading the Guardian yesterday and apparently we live under the poverty threshold for the UK, which frankly I find crazy, and set me thinking, what is poverty?

I couldn’t remember the figure that the Guardian stated, but according to ‘The Poverty Site’ (2005/06 figures) the poverty threshold for a couple with no dependant children is £182 a week. Josh and I currently live on around £120 a week (or £96 in a 5 week month) which puts us quite a long way under the threshold. However, I would not consider us to live in poverty on any level. We can afford to eat local organic food, we have more possessions than we need, a car, a lovely flat and we live in one of the most beautiful places in Wales.

Fair enough a lot of the ‘stuff’ we have were gifts, like wedding presents, and I do believe that God has provided us with money when we’ve really needed it and prayed about it (like the time we got £200 anonymously through the post when we were worried because we couldn’t afford to get Christmas presents – awesome!) but that doesn’t really mean that we haven’t been able to afford to live on what we earn.

Food and fuel costs are rising and we are having to make more cutbacks, but I still wouldn’t count myself living in poverty because I have to cut down on my car useage, stop going to the cinema so often, or stop eating luxury snacks or whatever.

 

Now, Josh is a Student and I am a volunteer, we have a few savings, and unless God decides he wants us to go on working for a church, or sends us to Peru or something, we pretty much know that in the future our earnings will rise. I can understand that for people that constantly earn less than the poverty threshold, the future must look bleak and the prospect of buying a house, for example would seem out of reach. But perhaps we should still try and get it all into perspective. The world poverty threshold is something like a $1 a day – these people have nothing. Maybe we can’t afford the latest gadgets, or the best clothes but compared to them we are millionaires, I think we need to get our priorities right.

 

Or am I totally wrong and do I just have my middle-class head up in the clouds? What do you think?

Is it ethical to own a dog?

I have always wanted a dog ever since I was a little girl. However my parents are not pet people so I had to make do with walking and playing with our next door neighbour’s dog as I grew up. Josh and I have always fantasised about our small holding, and having lots of dogs and children has always been a part of our ‘perfect future’.

 

However, I was talking to my friend the other day who was preparing a seminar on Vegetarianism and she made a comment that made my heart sink…”I’ve been thinking, it doesn’t really seem very ethical to have dog anymore, not now that food prices are rising. How can we spend thousands of pounds on a dog when there are millions of people starving all over the world?” I had never thought of it that way, but I knew that it wasn’t something I could dismiss.

 

Apparently there are 6.5 million dogs spread across 20% of UK households making them, after cats, Britain’s favourite pet.  Owning a dog will cost you around £1000 a year (and that’s not including those people who spend hundreds on sparkly collars and little cute jumpers for their darling Fluffy – I personally consider this barking). Now, according to my maths, this means that we as a nation are spending around £6b 500m a year on our dogs alone? (surely I have done my sums wrong here?!) Add to that the cost of cleaning up after dog fouling, which according to Keep Britain Tidy statistics costs the UK a further £22m a year. That is a lot of money. I couldn’t find any statistics on how much it would cost to eradicate world poverty but I would guess that this money would make a big dent in it. I know that there are lots of issues with solving world poverty including market crashes and the like – which I won’t try and understand – but it’s the principle. Should we be putting our pets before other people in the world who are living in awful poverty? I just read one shocking article in which someone declared that in a burning building they would rescue their dog instead of a total stranger, just because they didn’t know them, and therefore didn’t care about them so much.

And it’s not just about money is it? Our pets are taking up valuable energy and resources through the food they eat. Realistically the food we give our dogs is probably more nutritious than many in the third world will ever consume.

 

But I really want a dog! Many people rely on them as well for their work, of if they have a disability, and they are well known for their therapeutic qualities. I was thinking that maybe it would be okay to have a rescue dog, because they are alive anyway and have not been bred especially for you. Maybe this would be a more acceptable option than buying straight from a breeder…

 

…It’s a tough one and I haven’t really made up my mind. What do you think? Is it ethical to have a pet?

Breaded Quandaries

How much is a loaf of bread these days? £1.20, £1.30? It’s been so long since we’ve bought one I don’t know anymore, I just hear people complaining about the hike in its prices. It set me wondering if it’s actually cheaper for us to make our own, or if we would be better buying it from the bakery down the road. Ok, well I’m going to attempt to do the maths (which I must warn you may contain a glaring mistake, it really isn’t my strong point!)

 

Yeast (I can’t remember the price but I would guess around 5p per loaf)

Flour = 60p per loaf

Butter = 13p per loaf

Sugar and Salt = Around 5p or less per loaf

Milk Powder (although I don’t use this because we ran out and I’m too lazy to go searching for it around town) = around 10p per loaf

 

So this suggests that it is cheaper to make our own…I don’t really have a clue about how much electricity would cost to run the breadmaker, but I guess it’s costing us about £1.10 for a large loaf of bread?

 

The thing I love about making our own bread is that we know what’s in it. I’ve read horror stories about supermarket loaves which are just filled with fat and salt to make them stay risen because they haven’t been given the full amount of rising time due to production pressures. Even if we were paying the same price –or more- I think that knowledge makes it worth it. I guess that goes for all the extra prices we pay to get organic or local food.

 

…although I must admit that we had Subway last week, which I know if all very uneco-friendly and probably full of gunk, but I had never had one before and they are SO YUMMY!

And then there was one…

I’ve had a pretty hectic weekend. I worked on Saturday and then had to cook for 12 on Saturday night when I got home, and then get up early on Sunday to prepare Sunday lunch for our neighbours, phew! And then they didn’t come anyway as one of them was ill! It was really nice actually because we were both exhausted and just ate lots of good food and drank some nice wine, which is a change from our recent ‘grab what ever is in the fridge and chuck it all together’ approach of late.

 

And now my husband has gone. BOOHOO! He’s gone for 2 weeks do his dissertation research in the hoverfly infested fields of Devon because Wales just wasn’t good enough – can you tell I’m bitter?! I’m trying to look on the positive side though…Just think I will get to drink as much milk as I want and get the snacks all to myself. I might even get round to making the scrap book I have been planning since before we got married!

Dreaming of Pembrokeshire

I’m at that really lovely stage of planning a holiday when it’s not too far away so you can get all excited researching everything that you could do while you’re there, but you’re not quite at the panicked ‘I need to get everything packed and the fridge cleared out’ stage.

 

We’re going away at the end of June for three to five days (depending on the weather!) camping in Pembrokeshire. I AM SO EXCITED! I adore camping, although this will be the first time that I have camped on my own simply for accommodation, rather than it being an organised ‘camp’ or camping with a big group of people. My church homegroup is giving us a tent as a late wedding present so we need to go and choose that soon.

 

We already have lots planned, including a trip to Skomer Island and a jet boat ride around Ramsey Island. We are hoping it will be a deep water Whale and Dolphin cruise but that depends on the weather and demand from other people. Apparently you can see Orcas around that area but I’m stopping myself think about that because I’m bound to be disappointed if I get my hopes up (Okay, lets be honest, I already have my hopes WAY UP!). We also plan to do lots of walking around the coast path and visit wildlife reserves, as well as some of the towns in the area (I hear so much about St David’s working for the church, it will be good to finally see it!), and maybe….Pemberton’s Chocolate Farm…EEK! I wonder if they give out free samples!

 

I have ten days off in total and I’m so looking forward to just mooching around in Aberystwyth for the rest of the time. Most of the times we have holiday it’s always a rush to get down to Devon as quickly as possible so it’s going to be good just to relax, do our own thing and spend as much time outside as possible!

New Links

Check out some of the new links on my blogroll. They all have lots of entertaining, informing and downright amusing things to say.

 

At the moment I’m especially loving Town Mouse, Confessions of a Young Married Couple and Life at the end of the Road

 

Also, my other half has finally taken the plunge (after lots of prodding from me) and set up his own blog. Check it out here. I can tell there are going to lots of arguments about who gets to use what photos in their blog entries!

Spring Watch

 

At the risk of sounding like a loser I must say that one of the programmes I really miss not being able to watch this year is BBC’s Springwatch. It’s such a cheery programme and it’s hard not to get caught up in all the little dramas of nature, and how all the little families are getting along. I feel like we could have given the makers of Springwatch a run for their money yesterday though, we saw a veritable feast of wildlife at the RSPB reserve at Ynys Hir, as these photos will show.

 

 

 

We saw lots of swallows which were nesting and feeding young in a couple of the hides. I tried to get an ‘inflight’ picture but they fly so fast I got frustrated and gave up!

 

Large Red Damsels

Common Blue

You might need to enlarge this photo to see it, but there is a hare right in the middle of the photo. Great views.

 

This Phesant really didn’t like us being near it’s chicks. We made a speedy getaway, but not before getting some photos.

 

 

This cute little Blue Tit had only just fledged from a nest box right by the path, so we were able to witness its maiden flight.

 

I also nearly had a robin come and perch on my head while sitting still watching birds on a feeder. Unfortunately I didn’t realise what was going on and flinched, which scared it away.

 

The best find though was just after we were watching a Willow Warbler calling aggressively at us and going down to the ground. It took us a couple of minutes to realise it had a nest down there. We peeked inside the tiny domed shaped nest nestled in the undergrowth only to see two eggs, and the most minute cute little blob of a bird you have ever seen. It must have hatched only recently and was smaller than a ten pence piece. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a photo without disturbing them all too much.

 

All in all, an amazing day. We didn’t realise we’d been there for eight hours until we got back into the car!