An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
I went to my younger 2 kids’ school play last night. They did ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, a wonderful celebration of children singing, acting, forgetting their lines and generally making every parent in the house go ‘aah’ and all watery-eyed on regular occasions. Wonderful. I did think, as I cycled home, about the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Roald Dahl was a master of creating wonderful characters and fantastic situations. Although it has nothing to do with the usual subject matter covered here at Transition Culture, the thoughts I thunked did make me smile as I pedalled through the damp Devon evening, so I thought I would share them with you.
We are delighted, after many months of work, to finally announce the release of a major piece of groundbreaking research developed by Transition Town Totnes, Transition Network and Geofutures, with support from Land Share CIC, entitled ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself: exploring the practicalities of food relocalisation’. You can download the paper here. The report is a key part of the Totnes EDAP, taking Simon Fairlie’s Can Britain Feed Itself paper and applying it to Totnes and District.
I know you were all gripped by Monday’s potato competition, so I can now unveil the correct answer and the winner. The correct answer was that Bob Dylan did NOT write ‘Blowing in the Wind’ as a ballad about the tragic loss of his Manhattan balcony-grown potatoes to potato blight, it was complete nonsense that I made up (not a new phenomenon here at Transition Culture you might argue). Congratulations to James Pavitt in Statford whose knowledge of potatoes was sufficiently robust to beat off the competition. What James will do with his Transition spud remains to be seen; boiled, mashed, or perhaps even chipped? Thanks to all who entered, and James, buon appetit!
In the ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself’ paper due to be launched here in a few hours (get ready…), one of the recommendations is a relaxation of the laws surrounding the collection of local food waste and feeding it to pigs. This will need to be a key element of more localised food systems. There are a variety of reasons why some might oppose this, but I’m sure that none of them will have considered the potential rather alarming risks that are revealed in this news clip below.
Clearly the markets weren’t the only source of food. The High Street contained a far higher proportion of shops selling food than today. The way the shops were run was very different to today. ML describes a trip to the shops in the early 1950s;
“I used to go to the grocers and I could sit down, lovely. They’d go through your list and say, “yes, yes, we’ve some new whatever it is, would you like to taste some?” You’d have a little snippet of cheese or something, “great, yes, we’ll have that”. “Now we’ve got a tin of broken biscuits, but they’re not too bad (half price you see), would you like them?” As soon as you put a biscuit in your mouth it’s broken isn’t it! Then they’d say “now Mrs. L, you’re going to the butchers, yes, yes, and going to get some fish? Yes, yes, and paraffin? Yes, yes… and they used to say to me now bring any parcels in, we’ll put it in the box with your groceries and bring the lot up for you. And they did. They’d come and deliver and you’d go through it and say that’s fine and would you like a cup of tea….”
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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I went to my younger 2 kids’ school play last night. They did ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, a wonderful celebration of children singing, acting, forgetting their lines and generally making every parent in the house go ‘aah’ and all watery-eyed on regular occasions. Wonderful. I did think, as I cycled home, about the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Roald Dahl was a master of creating wonderful characters and fantastic situations. Although it has nothing to do with the usual subject matter covered here at Transition Culture, the thoughts I thunked did make me smile as I pedalled through the damp Devon evening, so I thought I would share them with you.
