Daily Blog - Day 4 - There are no problems, only solutions yet to be found

So I realise that it's incredibly empty to be angry about something and moan about something if you have no solution to it, so here's my ideas on a solution to this rubbish problem.

At the end of the day people need to be taught, it's all well and good picking up after people all of the time and I have a lot of respect for people who do that, but that doesn't solve anything, that just covers up the problem.
In all honesty it's the birds, animals and fish, who have to live on the planet with us that I am concerned for.  They have no voice and they don't know they are swimming in polluted water and how it will affect them, they don't know that it would be a good idea to move and you can't tell them because Dr Dolittle doesn't exist.  Birds, animals and fish have no choice in what goes on.
Humans on the other hand, do, we understand what pollution does to the planet and everything that lives on the planet, but we ignore it, we choose not to listen and do nothing about it.


The canadian geese (which are supposed to be protected!) are currently sat on their eggs.

 When these cute little fellas emerge

shortly followed by these cute little fellas

they will have to swim in this...

I wonder what the death rate will be and if any of them will survive, not only do they have to try to survive against predators, but they also have to try to survive against us and our ignorance and laziness.  I don't rate their chances.

I strongly believe education is the key and I don't mean someone from the Waterways, RSPB or Keep Britain Tidy visiting schools once a year, or once every few years, I mean getting people doing stuff.

Little kids, turn into big kids, who turn into adults and they don't seem to be taught at home, therefore we start with little kids and teach them.  

You could explain it to them, but people don't listen much when you explain things, I know I don't, so it needs to be an active thing.  I say get kids at primary school picking up litter for 30mins everyday in the playground.  

Little kids will be picking up little kids litter, so we don't need to worry about dirty needles, used condoms, broken glass or other vile things like that, it will be perfectly safe.  The teacher or dinner ladies could always go around 1st and get rid of anything that will harm.  I imagine the kids will mostly be picking up empty plastic bottle, sweet wrappers and things like that, I may be naive, but I don't see why there would be any different type of litter in a little kids playground.

Obviously kids aren't going to want to do that, UNLESS, they have their own special decorated protective gloves and aprons to wear.  If they spend a lesson playing with glue and decorating their gloves and aprons with sparkly things and drawing all over them in bright colours then they will want to put their gloves and aprons on and they will want to go outside and pick things up.  If picking up litter isn't seen as a punishment and it is seen as fun and something that you get to do if you are 'special' then kids will want to do it, what kid doesn't want to be special?

It will have to be said, strictly, that they can't pick up litter unless they are wearing their special apron and gloves, which should always be accessible, otherwise they will be picking up things in the streets and that's dangerous.

Picking up litter is currently seen as a punishment in schools, which no doubt adds to the problem of people putting things in bins.  That needs to stop.  We need to change peoples mindset about picking up litter.  It's a good and positive thing that brilliant people get to do, it's not a punishment for naughty bad people.

Then there is secondary school, the 30mins a day picking up litter should continue there.  If big kids have already been taught to pick up litter when they were a little kid, then it's should just continue, that's not a problem.  

If this is a new thing that will be bought in to schools then it will have to be done differently for 5 years, until the little kids become the big kids.  

Big kids at secondary school need to feel cool and trendy, so I doubt the glittery aprons and gloves will work there, so we need to be wiser.  Teachers need to find out who the 'cool' kids are and get them interested in picking up litter.  The 'cool' kids are rarely the 'clever' kids, but the majority of kids will always follow the cool kids.  As these kids are older, they will probably need a better incentive than being able to wear their special apron and gloves, like being able to text and talk on their phones whilst they pick up the litter.  That will only be for 5years, so texting and talking on the phones can be phased out when the little kids who have already been taught to pick up litter get to secondary school.

I am basically talking about manipulating and conditioning children to pick up litter, but that's ok isn't it?

I am going to completely contradict myself now and talk about the prison service and community service, I assume they already do litter pick ups?  If not, why not?  

If we do actually get the little kids picking up litter and then the big kids picking up litter and make it seem like a fantastic thing for incredibly special people to do, then when people are doing community service and picking up litter they wont feel so bad (i'm not really a punishment person) and they may actually 'want' to do it, they may choose to do it.  Also, taking into consideration that the people who are doing community service are the little kids who turned into big kids, they will already be conditioned into picking up litter, so there shouldn't really be much litter around, therefore they could be getting on with other community service things, like helping the waterways.

So that's my idea, how do we get it done?

I assume we need people to join forces, individuals, RSPB, British Waterways, Keep Britain Tidy  and other people, then we need to contact the government to get that put into place. 

Women run for breast cancer, so what about a sponsored litter pick up for a cancer charity?
What about a sponsored litter pick up for Children in Need?
What about a sponsored litter pick up for Red Nose Day?

Basically we need to make a fuss, a HUGE fuss.  Sounds ridiculous, but I could always write to Jamie Oliver, he likes kids and schools and stuff like that.  Who else can I write to?  Who can I get on board with this?

Anyone got any other ideas, thoughts or opinions on how we can get that done?

Pessimistic negativity is not helpful and not welcome.

Daily Blog - Day 3 - Honking mad, this is RUBBISH!

 
I was trying to keep my blogs lighthearted and insignificant, they were supposed to be about nothing in particular, but this has annoyed me, it's just disgusting and there isn't any excuse for it. 
I could sit here and rant about the British Waterways for not dealing with this, but I doubt the British Waterways threw all this crap in the canal, I doubt that very much.  It is there responsibility to pick up the crap, but it is our responsibility to put our crap in the bin and not throw it in the canal int he first place! 
I am pretty sure the British Waterways have much better things to do with their time than pick up the crap we throw in canals.  We aren't 2 years old and they aren't our parents, so why should they pick things up after us?

You know those big rectangle or cylinder things you see all over the place with an opening on all sides and ashtray on the top?  Well, they are called bins.  These bins have an opening on each and every side because some people are so thick that they can't even work out that if there isn't an opening on the bin on the side they are standing they have to move around the bin and go to the other side to put their rubbish inside. 
We have no excuse not to use bins.  Everyone knows thats where rubbish belongs, nobody sees these things in the street and walks up to them as if they are some strange kind of alien spacecraft that we have never seen before.  We ALL know what they are. 
It's not hard to throw things in a bin, it's not even slightly hard.  It's easy, it is beyond easy.  It takes exactly the same amount of thought to throw rubbish in canals as it does to throw it in a bin. 

Caveman one "ugg I don't need this, what shall I do with it?"
Caveman two "ugg throw it away."

Caveman one throws the rubbish on the floor because cavemen didn't have bins!  But we aren't cavemen are we, this is 2011 and we should be able to do something as simple as thinking "ugg, I don't need this, ugg, what shall I do with it? ugg, throw it in a bin."
So why is this happening? 
Why is there litter everywhere?
People are lazy and don't give a flying f*ck about the planet, the future of the planet or anything that lives on the planet.  People are selfish, only care about themselves and the current second their brian is in.
The British Waterways need to sort this out due to our sheer laziness, they need to spend time and money sorting this out because we are too lazy to find a bin, money which they could be spending on other things. 
It's not like rubbish is even heavy, it doesn't break our backs to hold onto it until  we come across a bin, even a disabled person in a wheelchair could put it on their laps until they find a bin.   It's not hard, but if we can't even teach our children this one simple thing - put rubbish in bins - how on earth can we teach them anything else.
And to all of you d1cks out there that say "if I didn't throw it on the floor then bin men wouldn't have a job" you really need to get a grip and take your head out of your arse. 
If people didn't steal the police wouldn't have a job; if people weren't put in prison for rape then the prison wardens wouldn't have a job; if people didn't abuse children then the people at the sexual register wouldn't have a job, but does that make it right? 
If it does then I am well within my rights to go out and steal peoples children, rape them and dump their bodies in a canal, just to keep people in jobs. 
That's how it works, isn't it?
I was angry with the British Waterways yesterday, but today I am angry with everyone on the planet who can't be arsed to care for it.
If you see nothing wrong with the pictures below then you don't deserve to be on the planet and you should be shot into space, which no doubt is what is going to happen to all of our rubbish in the future if we don't sort ourselves out.  We are polluting and destroying our own planet by turning into a gallactic rubbish dump, which will turn into a toxic cesspit when global warming kicks in, and then we will go about polluting the entire universe with our stagnant rubbish! 
Well done us, we were given a wonderful planet to live on where we could flourish as a species, grow wonderful things and admire the beauty of nature, but instead of doing that we are turning the planet into a steaming stellar cesspit, the perfect breeding ground for flies, maggots and disease, well done us! 
Everyone should give themselves a good pat on the back.

This is NOT post apocalyptic england, this is right now, just outside your window.

 

One for sorrow

Would you drink that water?

 

Why should they have to drink that water?

 

Would you swim in that?

Why should he have to swim in that?

I could go on, but I am too annoyed, I hope everyone is suitably ashamed of themselves.

Daily Blog - Day 2 - Films 2cry2

I had a very quiet day yesterday, Steve was out all day, he was supposed to be home by 10pm, but he came home early at 9pm, just in time to watch a film I wanted him to watch.  

That was just a coincedence, he didn't know it was on.

I don't usually cry in films, but just thinking about this film makes tears come to my eyes.  It's such a nice film.  If you ever feel like a good ole cry, here it is whilst you wait for it to come get a bottle of wine, a big box of chocolates, some kingsize tissues, put on your cosy clothes, cuddle up and cry your eyes out.  I think I cried from the beginning, but I had seen it before so I knew what was going to happen.

By sheer coincedence, she played a piece of music in the film that I was looking for a while ago, but I didn't know the name of it.  I've not seen Schindlers List, but I reckon this tune should be in it.

When I was in my early to mid 20's I used to be really into zombie films, but then I watched this scene from this film, and the flood gates opened up.  I even very nearly cried in the film Marley and Me, and I can't stand Jennifer Anniston, but it had a sad ending, I wasn't expecting a sad ending as it was a disney film, but there it was.

Daily Blog - Day 1 - Wicked Wicked Woman

My first day of writing a daily blog and something interesting happened, go figure.  I am a wicked wicked woman, but it's ok, i'm not incredibly bothered.  

My boyfriends divorce came through yesterday!  Yes he was married when I met him and there aren't really any buts or excuses for what happened, I am the other woman, a home wrecker, that's me.  I have no shame, no-one is without flaw.  There were no kids involved if that makes it any better.  Admittidly a week or so after I met him I moved 400 miles away so all we did was talk really, but neither the fact that he was married or the fact that I was so far away stopped the relationship growing, it simply gave us the chance to get to know each other better for 6 month.
So, 2years after meeting, his divorce came through.  It was more meaningful to me than him as he said the relationship was over anyway and getting a piece of paper to prove it didn't really mean much.  Even though I was the home wrecking other woman, I still thought it was a bit crap that a relationship can die after 18years.  They are both happy now, so it's all good, everything came out in the wash.

If you've never been divorced, a divorce is just a crap piece of unimpressive paper that symbolises nothing.  I expected a drum roll, fireworks or something significant to happen when I read it, but it was just a few words written on a piece of headed paper.  It may as well have just said their names and been stamped "done and dusted".  It was such a pathetic symbol of the end of an 18 year relationship.

We decided to go out to celebrate.  

Below: Interesting wall art in the pub...

and a silver buddha sat on a mirror tiled piano.

I have no idea what possessed someone to do this

We actually managed to go out and get all the way home before an alcohol fuelled argument broke out.  We had way too much champagne and cocktails really, and when I drunkenly made my love some stodgy chicken and pesto mayonaise lingunini he wasn't incredibly impressed, I believe he called it 'slop'.

With hindsight the slop was the best decision I made that night as I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom hugging the toilet and throwing my guts up whilst making anagrams out of the words Armitage Shanks.  That should have been a bad experience, but it was fine as everything tasted like pesto and I really like pesto!  It was probably the best 'being sick' experience i've ever had.  

I decided to drink some apple and mango juice after I had been sick, to wash my mouth clean, and I was surprised to see how well it went together with the pesto puke when it came back up later, the orange juice pesto puke mix wasn't that bad either, I wont go so far as to say it was great, but it was much better than what happened even later when I decided to drink some milk and threw up some pesto flavoured curdled milk out my nose, not good.  It's very unusual for me to throw up when I have been drinking, it was the vodka in the cocktails, I should have known better, vodka always makes me sick.

Everything is now sorted out, I don't feel sick, the divorce is through, the argument is sorted, my boyfriend finishes work tomorrow, we are packing over the weekend and off on our travels early next week...

A daily blog...perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

Since realising nobody reads my blog on blogger it's opened up a whole new world of open honesty for me, so I thought I may do a daily blog.  That may all go out the window when my boyfriend finishes work next week, but until then it's definately an option.  I think i've been trying too hard, in a lazy kind of way.

A new sense of freedom...

This is brilliant, I looked at my blog demographics (how boring) and nobody reads this, so that means I can write anything I like!  How incredibly cool is that.  A blog on blogger is like an unknown flea on an incredibly hairy Great Dane, there is an ocean of people expressing themselves with the written word and absolutely nobody reading it!  It's complete freedom of speech!

I was posting my blogs on blogger in the hope that someone may read it and go "Wow!  That's the most interesting and incredible thing I have ever read, lets give her a big bag of cash and publish all of her books, she's amazing!" so I was trying to be interesting, which takes effort, but now I know nobody reads this I don't need to make any effort whatsoever.  That works for me as I am incredibly lazy.  It's like buying a lottery ticket.  You buy a lottery ticket hoping that you can spend £1 and get a £1,000,000 in return with absolutely no effort or hard work, the lottery is the epitome of being lazy.

It's 9.10am and I am sat here in my dressing gown thinking I should have had a shower by now, but instead all I have done is feed my goose and ducks and now i'm watching the news out of the corner of my eye with a cuppa.  There's nothing going on in the world today except the Royal Wedding and a remake of Arthur.  I probably would have watched the royal wedding, but i'm going to a little folk festival instead and the likelihood of me watching the new Arthur film is incredibly low so none of it is news to me.

I should also be packing, probably, but I know I can do it all in a day so i'm not fretting.  I'm moving all my stuff into storage next week and going off in a motorhome around cornwall with my boyfriend.  I think I may spend the day thinking about packing rather than actually packing, as i'm lazy, and I will do something else instead.

I've started writing a new novel, but i've just thought of something amazing and new to put in it, it's a make believe hippo who likes wearing stripey jumpers.  He's called Henry and he's going to pop up all during the novel, there may also be a turtle.  I'm going to write it as we go around Cornwall, it's summer so I can sit outside.

I'm going to put my paint brushes down for 6 months whilst I work on my new business www.easelchallenge.co.uk so that should be interesting.  The website isn't finished yet, but it wont take too long if I pull my finger out, i've only got to do one page.

I dont' play the lottery so i'm not going to win, I suppose I will just have to work very hard, which is a daunting prospect for a lazy person.

Whats good for the goose…(clever inventor required)

isn’t always good for the gander especially where british waterways are concerned…

At night when you try to go to sleep things that have happened during the day come to the front of your mind, which is why dreams are so weird at times, they are just fragments of your day, single words and whole images, cut into pieces, put in a bag, shook up and arranged by your subconscious to make some kind of bizarre story. It’s usually best to write things down so you can sleep, otherwise you may dream of them or they can keep you up all night, so here is my animal magic midnight rant.

It’s strange what people get used to.

When I was little I used to count the dead hedgehogs along the main road on the way to school, there was always 4 or 5 of them. Then as I got older I started to notice dead animals out of the car window as my parents drove down the motorway. I’ve noticed more recently. It’s mainly the remains of dead foxes on the roads down south, but as you go higher up the country the animals change.

In the north wales and manchester area you don’t really see mangled foxes with their entrails pounded into the road, it’s mostly flattened badgers, like minty humbugs mashed into tarmac; and squidged pheasants, I can’t get over the amount of pheasants, they are such stupid birds, but they don’t deserve to be plastered all over the road. Then as you get higher up the country, in the Lake District area, there are hundreds of rabbits throwing themselves in the road and getting splattered by rich peoples 4×4′s.

I think it’s quite strange for people to get used to seeing dead animals everywhere, but we do. In the lake district it’s not unknown for people to pick the dead animals off of the road and to cook them up in a road kill stirfry.

I had never heard of that before I went to the Lake District so I was a little shocked when someone saw a dead flattened decaying badger at the side of the road and suggested picking it up to put in a stew.

They were really happy with themselves, “Waste not want not” they said, to which I subtly replied “i’m not eating f’cking road kill!” then they muttered something about me being a southern snob, but it’s better to be southern snob than inbred northerner. I’m not being rude, they really were inbred and they really were northern. Anyway I digress…

In some places they have special animal walkways built under the road for frogs, badgers and rabbits, so the animals can cross the roads safely, which is brilliant, but I reckon they should be everywhere really. If we can do it then we should do it. That’s one of the things I shall be doing when I get my £205,000,000, that’s two hundred and five million pounds. The donkey sanctuary are getting a cool million as they do lots of great work and I love donkeys http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/ and i’m going to buy all of the tigers and the land they live on to save them from extinction http://www.wwf-adopt-a-animal.co.uk/charities/wwf-animal-adoptions/adopt-a-tiger/

I would probably have to buy loads of horses too as loads are being neglected and killed because of the resecession and people can’t afford to look after them, which is completely disgraceful. And I would get the Grand National banned too. Two horses died at this years Grand National and any race where horses can die really shouldn’t be run, I don’t care how nice people’s hats are.

I could save the children and house the homeless, but i’m going to save the animals first. It’s the year 2011, humans really should have learnt by now, we are an intelligent race, but people still choose to shoot each other, invade other people’s countries, do nasty things to children, pollute the planet, and we are so very wasteful that I can’t really be arsed to save humans and most of the time I think the planet would get along a lot better without us. Anyway, I digress…again

So we get used to things, but even though I am used to seeing dead animals all of the time on the roads I was really shocked to see a dead goose floating belly up past my bedroom window. Especially as I had been feeding her and her gander everyday for the last 6 months. I wanted to get her out of the water, but the british waterways had to do it.

My geese woke me up every morning shouting, honking, calling, or whatever you call the racket they make, as they wanted to be fed, so as I am soft I would go and get them some bread. You can see them in the video below loitering outside my window waiting for food

http://youtu.be/cRqv21EU8YI

Geese mate for life and the gander never left her side, even when she had died. The british waterways took two days to take her dead body away and he swam next to her the whole time calling for her, it was heartbreaking. What was more heartbreaking was she had just laid 3 eggs so they were cold and dead in their nest and they had to be thrown into the canal so the gander would stop protecting them and go and find a new mate. The poor gander had lost his whole family in one day.

I was ready to go on a rampage around manchester as I thought the w*nkers, who live around here and think it’s fun to shoot a pellet gun into the canal, had killed her. I wanted to find them and shove their pellet gun up their arse and pull the trigger a few times. I also thought she may have died from the pollution in the canal and the w*nkers who walk by and throw their used needles and empty beer cans in the canal had posioned her, which made me want to buy my own pellet gun so I could shoot them as they walked past. But the waterways said she got egg bound and died of natural causes, which made me feel slightly better and not want to maime everyone.

Here is my gander, he’s ok now, He’s stopped protecting his nest and calling for her at night. Beautiful isn’t he.

My lovely gander

Today I decided to go down and feed him to see if he recognised me from my window, he came over when he saw me and he doesn’t usually do that to people, but he was probably more interested in the bread than me. I have no idea, I don’t know how clever geese are or how far they can see.

I also decided to go and feed the other geese along the canal as it was sunny and guess what I found…ANOTHER dead goose decaying and floating belly up down the canal. That’s two dead geese in two weeks along a stretch of canal thats only about 300yrds long, if that. That’s not a coincedence, that’s a bloody problem. There were only 8 geese living along that stretch of canal and 2 of them have died in 2 weeks, 25% of the geese have died. That’s atrocious!

As I am sure you can imagine I came home and put all my anger and upset in an email to the british waterways, both the local waterways and the head office. I expect to see dead animals on the road, that’s a sad part of life we get used to, but I don’t expect to see two dead geese, in as many weeks, floating outside my window. I included a photo of the decaying dead goose floating belly up down the canal in the email so they have to carry the image in their heads too. They need to sort the canals out, the geese may be dying of natural causes, but natural causes happen a lot more regularly when the canals are full of rubbish, pollution and decaying dead animals and that needs to be sorted out.

There must be some way to clean canal water without hurting the fish and wildlife and if there is, which I strongly suspect to be true, they need to do it way more often. The canals were built in victorian times, so the people who built them were clever enough to put something in place to keep the water moving so it doesn’t become stagnant, but that just means pollution goes up and down the canal until it’s cleaned.

Someone, somewhere, needs to invent something that can be used on a regular basis to get rid of the rubbish and pollution in the canals. Canals aren’t naturally occuring, we built the canals, therefore it’s our responsiblity to look after them and make sure they are safe for the wildlife who live there.

I probably sound like a vegetarian, but i’m not. I like steak and I like it bloody. I don’t eat duck, rabbit or goose and I went off of meat all together for 6 months when I saw a cow being shot in the head, but I eat it now. You’ve got to support the farmers, britain was built by farmers.

Now I have got that off of my chest, maybe I can get to sleep