Human Lifestyle

Another early start for me, as due to be in Dewsbury for 10ish, so I got the 8.58 train and chatted with a nice couple, students, heading back to her home village of Giggleswick for a few days over Christmas.

Dewsbury was quite snowy and very cold... there is a big building near the market with a digital display and as well as the time and date, it shows the temperature, which was -7 Celsius, and during the day it got no warmer than -5 C.  However, I was in a grotto which had a little electrical fan heater, which kept it slightly warmer, but the grotto was open to the elements and was I think at or below freezing all day.  A local animal petting place called Ponderosa supplied two Reindeer, which attracted a bit of attention.

But I did 10.30 til 12.30, and was due to restart at 1pm but was called down as a queue had developed.  And I worked on through the afternoon, coming to the doorway when the place was quiet, to wave at passers by and try to attract family groups over to hand their £2.50 per child to have an audience with Santa and be given a pre-wrapped present.  Towards the end of the day we had two incidents.  Firstly, a woman appeared who had brought an 18 month old girl and a 3 year old boy in, either last week or earlier today, and she had both their presents.  The boy had got a board game based on bingo, and the girl a pottery VW campervan moneybox.  She was complaining that these weren't appropriate.  The woman in charge of me, Trish, dealt with the complaint and gave the complainer her money back.  Then at about 3pm, half an hour before our finish time, the rickety fan heater got knocked by my flowing robes and fell on it's front, and burst into flames!  The grotto filled with smoke, Trish unplugged it and put the fire out (not sure how) and went to get one of the bosses.  This person said that we should finish early as the room was stinking of burnt plastic and kids shouldn't go in there.  So I went to get changed and set off for the station at about 3.20.

I dozed on the train as I was very cold, and got into York at about 4.30.  My bike chain had been jumping so I decided to pop in to Cycle Heaven to book my bike in for some work... but amazingly, they said I could leave it there and pick it up at 6pm if I wanted.  So I borrowed a shop bike and sped round to Peter and Jenny's house, where they were having a party.  I explained to them that I'd have to go in less than an hour... but was very grateful of the warm 'port in a storm' which I needed, as I was still cold from the day working in sub-zero temperatures.  I had a couple of mugs of home-made mulled cider, the cider was home made from apple concentrate apparently, and two delicious mince pies.  This, plus the conversation, all worked to elevate my mood. 

At 5.50 I got the bike and cycled back to Cycle Heaven.  They'd found that the jumping chain was due to a stiff link in the chain, but whilst finding this, they'd found my pannier rack was not fixed properly, it had broken, and needed replacing.  However, this would take another half hour, and the shop was shutting, so could I pick it up tomorrow?  I explained that I was going up to Masham tomorrow but should be able to pick it up on Monday, on the way to Huddersfield.

So I cycled home on the shop bike.  There was a parcel waiting for me, from Rory in Canada.... he'd found a jester hat, a stripy cap, stripy socks, stripy jumper thing and stripy waistcoat.  Oh Wow!  A costume rejuvenation!  Not sure how I'll use the cap, but all the other things either will or could come in useful, and I love the socks and waistcoat.  I have no idea what I've done to deserve this from Rory, but it moves me that he has sent this, and several other gifts. 

I had a quiet evening as the rest of the family were watching some dance thing in the other room, and I couldn't get Tracey Smith's radio show to play on Apple am.  Never mind, I kept myself occupied and had a reasonable evening.

Today I spent most of the day polishing and massaging the new website that I've been working on for a while. It is called Novaterium, a made-up word based on 'nova' meaning new, and 'cometerium' which is a tract of land used for burials. It is a worldwide directory of green funeral options.

Over a year ago, Rory Rickwood, a Human Resources professional from Canada, lost his father who was a bit of an 'eco-warrior' and Rory wanted to give him an environmentally sound send off. But he couldn't find any green funeral choices in his area... but he did find this blog, where I've been mentioning Promession for a while, a 'composting burial' technology. He contacted me and asked if Promession was available yet, and I had to tell him it still hadn't been launched commercially, but was at least a year away, and would first be available in Sweden and South Korea.

So earlier this year, Rory contacted me and asked me how much I wanted to promote green funerals. I was, as you'd expect, enthusiastic. He suggested that we could co-operatively start a website with information about the issues and a directory of goods, services and 'natural burial' sites around the world. So, since then we've been working on it, using the professional services of Jim and Jamie at Semlyen IT. Today, the website went live. The worldwide directory is still being populated... it's a very slow job, involving two mapping websites and pretty laborious cutting and pasting of co-ordinates. The website is dedicated to Rory's Dad.

I got a couple of emails from people who either received the Press Release that Rory sent out, or have a 'Google Alert' on one or more of the key words. One was from the Netherlands, the other from an operator of several UK woodland burial sites.

I did nothing but add these sites to the maps today. Adding one site takes between 20 and 40 minutes. If any reader of this blog knows of a 'green funeral solution' which ought to be on this website, please send me the details.

I had already made a facebook page for the site, and I clicked 'publish' today, and by midnight there were already 19 fans on this page. My next job is to send out the Press Release to UK recipients.