Talking the walk

I really have been making a more concerted effort in the last week or so to start using social media properly to publicise my sustainability and landscape architecture work. I have sorted out my linked in, tweeted at least a bit, and look, am I not thus blogging?

I am not, however, fooling myself that any of these actually count as ‘doing’ something : although it may turn out in the end to have been economically useful all along, I am not paid by the word (or even, at all) and although I am consuming energy, I am not producing anything, apart from maybe some amusement, and some CO2 emissions.

Because of my current work I have been reading a lot around permaculture, urban food growing, sustainability, transition movement, food education, etc. and initially, it looks like there’s quite a buzz going on in the UK, and definitely in the uber-something bit of NE London where I am.  City Farmers, City Leaf, Capital Growth, Project Dirt, Community Gardens, Growing Communities, Organic Lea, Food from The Sky, it’s all apparently going on.

I worry, though, about the sustainability of these projects : when the buzz has gone, and the inputs of funding and time of the highly-trained and committed visionary professionals I keep meeting at projects are gone, can these places carry on developing?

For example, food from the sky is an amazing project : the roof of a supermarket in north london has been transformed into a food growing garden.They got 300 old plastic recycling boxes, and craneloads of earth up on to the roof, and the community are there in their free time cultivating veg that can be sold in the supermarket below. I like this project, and am inspired by the vision and energy of the people who have made it happen, but I wish it was more sustainable, in terms of working with the natural systems which are the basis of life on earth. A plastic box on a roof is fine for a year or two, but is too small and too isolated to ever become part of the earth’s ecosystem. Now there are no snails, but they will come, and so will vine weevils and other pests : they can be controlled organically, with inputs of labour, nematodes, compost etc, but it all seems a bit, well, extra.

What puzzles me is why they ignored all the unused land that lies all around us : housing estates are wastelands of grass, which seems to function only to be mowed and display dog poo. Historically social housing providers have been very protective of these spaces : making clear that the grass is not to be played on, but to be preserved, perhaps for the  imaginary family stroll and picnic that was pictured in the original architects’ visualisations all those years ago.

Land like this is much more likely to be built on than to be used to grow food. This guy Mikey Tomkins  has done some interesting academic work around Hackney and Southwark, about exactly how much food could be produced by  using the capital’s vacant spaces :  http://edibleurban.co.uk/.

Anyway : as Build and Blossom, we are currently in the process of trying to convert shrub areas in the Pembury Peabody Estate to food production using permaculture principles. We are working slowly with Peabody, climbing over hurdles as they come up, keeping our patience, and refusing to let go of our vision of taking back the land from the corporations and authorities. I see it, perhaps grandiosely, as a reversal of the enclosure acts, whereby the peasants were kicked off the land by the government aristocrats, and herded into the cities to provide near-slave labour for the industrial revolution.

This land is ours : get yer seeds out!

Talk to Me!

It’s one of modern life’s many ironies that people are afraid of  talking to their neighbours because they don’t know them (because they never talk to them?) and yet will spend hours type-chatting to people on Facebook that they have also probably never met.  Partly it’s because they fear that their neighbours may be lunatics, and they can’t ‘unmeet’ them, once they have said ‘hello’ a few times. You’d think you’d notice, though, if you were the only sane person living in a whole street of nutcases. (or zombies! See below.)

Another of life’s ironies is that people don’t vote in elections, when the outcome really matters, but will pretty much vote in their millions, and even pay for the privelege,  for almost any “talent” contest on TV.

Where these two ironies intersect is in the arena of community consultation. Imagine this scenario : big change is coming to your neighbourhood! They are planning a tower block/global sporting event/teenager’s playground/local garden group/affordable housing/ drug rehabilitation centre/waste processing plant/insert almost anything you fancy! Common sense (and at the opposite end of the spectrum, Planning Law) dictates that you should know about it, and have a reasonable opportunity to give your views, either for or against.

My work as a community landscape architect  involves a lot of this, and so I can say with authority that most of the good people working in built environment professions consider it a right bind. They just don’t want to talk to a load of tedious residents who will complain about all the annoying things their Local Council or Housing Association has done to annoy them since 1957. They just want to get on with designing public spaces and places, as they are trained to do, without the interference of the people who live there. But, Dammit! they are obliged to at least look as if they are trying to ‘consult’ ; so, rather cunningly, they organise a meeting, in a horrible community centre, with plastic chairs, overhead lighting, and a smell of loo cleaner, on a tuesday evening at about 7.30. They print out a load of drawings and put on their most professional looking jacket, and go and sit opposite, and talk and smile at the extremely few residents who bother to turn up at the meeting. They might even publicly lament the fact that people aren’t interested in the exciting developments planned for their neighbourhood, and then they will go home, satisfied that People Have Been Consulted.They forget, because meetings are their life blood and main way of acting in the world, that normal people hate them and find them stressful, and will not go to them if they can possibly avoid it. Children will not go to evening meetings because they are in bed: frail old people won’t go because they are afraid of groups of teenagers hanging about : teenagers won’t go because Fuck off!, the employed won’t go because they’ll have to hurry their dinner ; half of married parents and most single parents won’t go because of childcare : and what you are left with is very few people indeed. (see photo above, which is from a company website advertising how well they do consultation)

But. There is another way, and one that for me has come out of my thoughts about the permaculture principle of People Care :  it involves treating people as individuals, which most public bodies and companies seem chronically unable to do. Now I think of it : the seed of this probably cam out of the work I did while working for the (now defunct) Landscape architecture firm Parklife : which just goes to show that nothing is ever really a total waste of time, eh!

So what you do is you talk to people : you have a project or an idea, and you go to the place where it might be going to happen, and you talk to people about it : just random people that you see there, or you knock on their doors. You listen to what they think about it, and you use that information to modify the design, and you talk to more people, and you ask them to talk to others about it, and you give them your contact details, and you talk to them. Soon, everybody knows about the project, and feels involved, even if they don’t agree with it.

It’s mad, isn’t it? Too out there. It’ll never catch on.

That’s Yew that is!

I have always known this plant to be highly poisonous : and sometimes been a little scared just standing next to one, just in case! But this year, I have picked and eaten this fruit, and not only survived but prospered, thansk to the good people at Transition Finsbury Park, which is practising permaculture principles and helping local people start growing right here in N4.

They are very gelatinous berries, but with a mild flavour. The trick is to not eat the pip in the middle, which is the poisonous bit, but just the soft jelly-y bit around the outside. And even if you do accidentally eat a pip, apparently that’s no biggie either ; they just pass through!

The Triumph of Evil

I had a seemingly innocuous email today asking my community garden group for a small, easily granted favour, that ended with the words “If I don’t hear from anyone I’ll take it that silence is consent”, and I started thinking about whether this is true, and what other meanings could reasonably be construed from silence : and it turns out they are not only varied, but many!

I don’t care

I don’t agree, but I don’t want to be awkward

My opinion has not been listened to in the past so I have stopped giving it.

I don’t like you, so I am not going to afford you the respect of an answer.

I hate you, so I am going to express that by trying to make you not exist.

I do not feel entitled to express my opinion.

I wasn’t listening.

You got my email address wrong.

You sent that to another person with a similar name to mine.

I feel uncomfortable expressing views that conflict with the majority.

I don’t know what I think.

I am shy of talking in public.

I find emails too impersonal.

I don’t understand all the issues.

I am too afraid to voice my opinion.

What’s the fuss about anyway?

Not you again : forever asking people for their views!

If I tell you that you are now giving or have ever given consent by your silence, this cannot be seen in any other way but  as highly political and, in personal communications, deeply aggressive. It says  “I am going to do what I want regardless of you and what you may think, and you do not have the power to stop me”. It challenges you to have a view and dares you to make me listen : it’s like

” We decided that at the meeting you didn’t come to”

“Well you’re quite welcome to check the minutes”

“Well in that case I will be forced to resign”

Community groups, in my experience, no matter how ostensibly apolitical their aims, are exactly like political parties in this respect : good people and nice people go in for all the right altruistic reasons, but are quickly driven or manoeuvred out by people who are looking for validation and power.

Permaculture has ‘people care’ as one of its three core principles : (the other two of which are ‘earth care’ and ‘fair shares’) and until now was the one I had thought least about, but I may start giving it the attention it deserves.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do (or say!) nothing.

Occupy the Land!

I am interested this morning in the contrasting images of the tent city at St Paul’s, where well-educated young people are politely and wittily encouraging bankers to think about the error of their ways, whilst co-operating with the police :

and the full scale eviction of travellers at Dale Farm in Essex, which looks like a historical re-enactment of the Miner’s Strike, where old ladies are apparently being booted in the head by the kind of Police for whom the chance to legally kick the shit out of people is the stuff of dreams.

I was planning to go to the Occupy protest, but what with the tents, the portaloos (paid for by capitalism?) and the spontaneous bongo playing, the only thing setting it apart from some cruddy festival is that its surrounded by York Stone rather than mud. And I don’t think U2 are playing.

At Dale Farm, obviously they are breaking The Law of Planning : in the countryside these days, you can own a field, but the state retains the right to decide what what you can do with it. Nomadic people literally have no place in our version of control-mad capitalism, which requires a house to fill with stuff, an address to register your supermarket loyalty card, a location by which your socio-economic status can be judged.

Traveller families are told they can pitch caravans only in these extraordinary little council-run concrete reservations, in London in places like Hackney Downs, the back of Peckham, and formerly in the Lea Valley, on land no one else wants, until the Olympics came along, anyway.

Traditionally, though, the Romany lifestyle was intimately in tune with the seasons : and the point of the travelling was to provide harvest labour to the farms of the south east, while overwintering mostly in London. A life of slowly working your way around the country, following what seasonal or temporary work you can find, living by crafts, and using the resources of the land : what’s not to like?. This Gypsy way of life has been having the shit kicked out of it by the state since the industrial revolution : which is why, I guess, Essex County Council chose to spend its money on riot police rather than on providing more facilities for these people and letting them live as they choose.

Now Hackney’s so over, let’s go to SoTo!

When everyone from Babs to Britney Spears is constantly filming in your neighbourhood, and everyone you go past looks like they’ve dressed from Oxfam in the dark,  you know It’s All Gone Too Far. And so it is, I fear, with Dalston : last year, I was a bit pleased that not only had drug addicts stopped shitting on my doorstep, but a few nice coffee shops had opened up. Now I have totally had enough : every other building is now full of mismatched furniture out of skips, selling overpriced flat white, and buying in croissants from the pastry depot in New Cross.

I always try and give them a  bit of (unasked-for, unwelcome) feedback : these cafe newbies : I won’t be going in the one in Beyond Retro again : those unnecessary paper cups really annoyed me. Seeing a woman drinking out of two paper cups at once made me think, though. Perhaps I have got it wrong, trying to reduce my carbon footprint (got rid of car, I am Hackney Box-Bike woman!) : maybe environmentalists should really be driving around in Hummers, eating lamb every day, buying new pants from Primark instead of washing them etc etc.

Thing is ; there is always somewhere grimy and real when places get so trendy you can’t even go to the bus stop without your gorge rising, and right now, that place is South Tottenham. I moved back here from Shacklewell last year, and I do feel quite fond of the old place : and now its even got a bit of riot-kudos. From my house, I can practically see the estate where Wretch 32 used to live when he was still called Jamal, and I found, while googling for images, this lovely set of Nicobobinus photos called Tottenham Tourist Board : beautiful grime : http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicohogg/920369497/in/set-72157623833520472/

Now, can someone Please open a nice cafe, with nice music and nice cake, within five minutes walk from my flat. Stamford Hill, Fairholt Road Shtetl, Seven Sisters Bridge : any of those will do!

Stuff it!

It is true that we live in the age of stuff ; plastic stuff, paper stuff, cotton stuff, metal stuff :  in western europe we have and waste so much that we are about to be engulfed in a Tsunami of stuff, that we can only cope with by shipping  it to the ‘developing world’ as rubbish for those without stuff to sort through.

This stuff tsunami is, of course, a phenomenon of only the last 35 years. I grew up in a world without computers, wearing home made clothes : first by my mother, then by me, walking to school or going by bus, only ever having one Barbie (it was a Sindy in a blue swimming costume, which came from the back of a weetabix box)This isn’t it :  I would have killed for a proper Sindy with a poncho and leggings! Mine had, as I say, a Swimming Costume, maybe a small nylon towel, and NOTHING ELSE.

Maybe my experience of the 1970′s is not how it was for everyone : because wasn’t it then that the western world really embarked on producing the mountain of plastic that is now actually threatening our survival as a species? In my family we were encouraged to want stuff that was wooden and/or brown, but I gather most kids of the time lived in a beautiful shiny synthetic world of plastic.

I think it was the arrival of Tesco’s in the early 1980′s that really encouraged us to start getting stroppy if shops didn’t automatically give us as many free plastic bags as we wanted. I remember going  shopping as a child with my mother, with a string bag (it was the colour of fingernail dirt, rather than beautiful brights, as below)

 

and a green shield stamp book : the bakers, the greengrocers, the butchers, and even the tiny International Stores  supermarket : they might give you a paper bag, but getting your stuff home was your own problem.

Children seem to be quite notable consumers and excreters of stuff : charming but useless bright coloured plastic toys collect around them almost from birth, and then within a few years are surplus to requirements. And the cliche is true : they really do seem to enjoy playing with boxes (and packing materials) much more than the toys they think they want.

It’s Clothes  that cause me most sleepless peak oil nights : imagine every branch of Primark,  Peacocks, Next, H&M, New Look, in every town, in every country, all piled up, like jumble sales with their cheap disposable clothes. Then imagine  the impact of that on the earth that produces the cotton, and the bleach, and the dyes, and the labour of the people who make them, and the waste that doesn’t even get in to the shops. Then imagine what happens to all of it, within  a few weeks when we’re bored of it, or its last season. Scary, and it can’t go on for ever.

Really, the best thing you can do for yourself and the planet, is buy vintage, or if you aren’t rich or live in Dalston, make your own. People used to do this, right up til the 1970′s : and here’s a couple of patterns to start you off :

Shopping City

I know we’ve all forgotten about the riots now : it’s been decided that the ‘young people’ who did it were all morally bankrupt due to being brought up by single mothers (where would politicians be without their handy stereotypes, eh?), and the ensuing anxiety used to further erode our already battered cliff of freedom.

I was in Cornwall when this happened : the owner of the house where we were staying thoughtfully woke me up at 3am to tell me that Tottenham was rioting, and that the best thing to be done was to just bomb the place and start again with a New White Nation.

Luckily for me, and my flat (Stoke Newington borders, darling!) this didn’t turn out to be necessary, because it wasn’t ‘The Blacks’ rioting this time, but a motley crowd of randomers disenfranchised from capitalism by their inability to buy anything.

Fair enough, I say : isn’t this the basic trade of capitalism? Instead of working the land to survive, you exchange your labour for money : then exchange the money for the means of survival. So far so good, except that because capitalism evolved to legitimise greed, it requires not only survival but infinite growth. Capitalism convinces us to spend beyond survival by  removing our innate sense of wellbeing with advertising, which tells us we can get it back by buying stuff. The magic is that it’s a lie! Once advertising has diminished you in your own eyes because of your lack of stuff, you can try and grow again through shopping, but the only thing that grows is the mountain of crap in your house.

In the case of the Looters from the Ghetto, capitalism has unfairly withheld the ability to buy back wellbeing from these people, by restricting access to education, transport, social mobility, and exporting the jobs that people without advantages used to do. That’s why the looting was so enjoyable : all those people were just enjoying the shopping buzz, but on a slightly larger scale. Watch this space for the comedown!

La La La!

Human communication is a funny thing, isn’t it? Spoken language is supposed to be one of the things that distinguishes ‘us’ (people) from ‘them’ (animals) : but then you see a graph like this :

and you wonder why anybody bothers saying anything, ever. Because the chances are, No-one Is Listening.

Now obviously, the human condition is such that we pass our lives  locked in the inner turmoil of our own consciousness, and will therefore never know what anyone else is really thinking, even if they tell us. But I would still like to know what is actually going on for the 93% of the time when people are basically ‘not listening’. Here are some of my observations :

1. Thinking of what they are going to say next. It’s a sad fact of life that no-one is ever as interesting as you, and yet they seem to expect you to give them at least half of the available conversation time. This is why you should interrupt them as many times as you can : they will eventually realise how fascinating you are, and stop talking.

2. Trying to guess the end of your sentence. People do this to me a lot :  maybe I speak too slowly / get distracted / bore people / repeat myself? Thing is, they never get it right, though : they don’t know the end of the sentence, even though they must be listening to the beginning.  Sometimes I ask them to stop, and sometimes I  let them talk while I plan what to say next.

3. Thinking about having sex with you. This maybe sounds better than it is. For example : I used to work with road engineers, and we had a lot of meetings, talking about their projects. The first 20 minutes could be occupied with choosing which biscuit to have next out of the Peek Frean Family Assortment they favoured (public money, plenty more where that came from!). But after that I used to amuse myself by putting them in reverse order of who I would have sex with, if I really really had to.(shudders involuntarily)

4. Staring at the telly. If you have one or more children, you will know that they never listen to the first word of any sentence, which is why warnings like  ‘Don’t scooter down that hill at top speed’, ‘Don’t eat all those sweets, its nearly dinner time’ and ‘Don’t hit your brother, he’s smaller than you’ are all wasted breath. If they are watching the telly, though, this increases to the first three times you say any sentence. This is why they are indignant when you come into the room, shouting ‘I SAID, WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR BREAKFAST!’, because they missedthe first four times when you asked them nicely. In some cases this is understandable : Almost Naked Animals, a cartoon about animals in underwear running a hotel, is manifestly more involving than anything you have to say, ever.

The terrible fact is, though, that if you have ever met anyone that really truly listened to you with their soul, giving you their full attention, even for a minute, you can understand why we can never get enough  of this wonderful feeling. All of us operate with a huge ‘listening deficit’, which is why, I think, we are constantly trying to get ourselves heard with the talking talking talking.

Did you hear that?

I did think I might end this piece with a sincere plea, much in the manner of Rabbi Julia Neuberger on Thought for the Day, to anyone reading this (why, given the topic, am I imagining anyone but myself…)  to give someone today the wonderful gift of truly listening, without claiming back from them your right to be heard. Don’t, though, because if you do, they will so love the feeling of being totally interesting and valued, that they will constantly seek you out for longer and more frequent dollops of the boring crap inside their head, and probably never even think to ask how you are.

On Venting

I am currently in the process of making elderflower Champagne : the above, while it may look like a photoshop airbrushed Scarlett Johansson in a Moet & Chandon advert, is in fact me, letting the air out of the bottles.

This is a very satisfying activity, because boy, does that stuff produce some gas! When I threw out the challenge to my fellow community gardeners, i forgot to mention that you have to let the pressure out very very s-l-o-w-l-y, or the above will happen, and you will lose the lot to your kitchen floor.

I have always been a ‘better out than in’ kind of girl : a bit given to impulsive behaviour : sometimes this is good, and fun, but most of the time it scares people and makes them run away. I remember an occasion when I was five, I was at school, and we were all walking along carrying chairs, and Amanda Straderick accidentally hit me with hers, and before I knew what I was doing, I bit her nose and made her cry. I had just acted on instinct : I couldn’t hit her because I was holding a chair, but I remember a few minutes later, when I wasn’t angry any more, begging her not to tell anybody because I didn’t want to get into trouble.

Now I am 44, I think it may be time to try and stop letting the top off some of my powerful emotions so quickly.  I calm down as quickly as I explode, but it’s not so easy for those caught in the crossfire. I found out yesterday that it  may have lost me someone I care about very much.