How many steps a day?

After a couple of months of largely rainy weather, local beaches busy with tourists (good for those local businesses reliant on tourism, but the Covid-19 pandemic has brought a new wariness of strangers), my dance mojo still absent and all attempts to get the garden under control and more productive having been thwarted by the excessive numbers of slugs and snails (and rain), by mid-August I had to admit to myself that I was in something of a slough of despond and apathy. 

I noticed some stasis dermatitis on my lower shins, a sign that the circulation in my legs could be better. Realising I needed to take action, I wanted something which would buzz me to move every so often, without having to set alarms, as I can get hyperfocused and end up sitting at my computer for hours. I finally cracked and got myself a fitness tracker watch. 

Not that I am very interested in step counting. The suggested 10000 steps a day is supposed to be roughly equivalent to five miles. However, I can no longer comfortably walk a mile, so I would have to scale back considerably when setting myself a motivational target number of steps. 

In the end, I chose a Fitbit Inspire HR, on offer because an upgraded version was about to go on sale. I didn't need anything very flashy, not being into sports and gym. The HR is the ability to measure heart rate, so I could look at cardio and sleep, and it would give me a little buzz at ten to the hour during the day to prompt me to complete at least 250 steps.

I settled on a target of 3000 steps a day initially, and found that my baseline was around 2000, 2500 on a good day. Gradually I found the number I did creeping up, but my 'crash' days, when my knees really hurt, and I feel tired and generally achy and low on energy, are obvious; I struggle to make 1000 steps on those days.

I saw a few complaints in reviews that there weren't enough instructions on how to use it, and that it was difficult to navigate, not intuitive. I found it easy to set up, and with a certain amount of 'poke it and see what it does', I found my way around quite enough to be going on with. I didn't feel the need to know everything about how it worked, because I was happy not using all the functionality (it can also allow you to record food and water intake, give message notifications and probably more besides, but if it's not going to make tea and cook a meal for me, I don't really care).

I found that if I walk slowly and smoothly with no arm-swinging, the tracker has a problem realising I'm walking and doesn't record steps. The upside of that is that if I do some seated exercise with arm swinging as I step, it still records them as steps. Not that it recognises the steps as part of 'seated exercise'; it's very walk/run/cycle/swim/aerobics focused. I did some dance on the beach when lockdown lifted a bit, and it finally concluded I was swimming. Obviously dance isn't 'sporty' enough.

The sleep function is a bit flaky, sometimes giving a nice graph of light, deep and REM sleep and wakefulness (although you get an error message informing you that the database didn't allow that sleep to be logged. Er, what?), other times just giving some basic measurements. I read from the help/forum that a lot of people have found this, and no one has found a way to resolve it. Fitbit's answer was to subscribe to the app and/or buy the latest watch, which is no help at all. I notice it is sensitive to 'wakefulness', as brief stretching a knee to relieve pain or sleepily stroking a cat means I am awake, however briefly. It usually recognises when I fall asleep again after I get up in the night for a quick trip to the bathroom, but sometimes, it doesn't. I start the 'sleep now' when I decide to turn off the light and sleep, but it sometimes doesn't record my sleep from that time. To get sleep details, it needs to be longer than three hours (I think it's three). I was watching a thriller on TV, very absorbed, and found that the watch had recorded me as being asleep. Despite the excitement, my heart rate didn't increase. She's not moving, must be asleep? I haven't seen a murder/crime programme yet where Forensics download the fitness tracker data to narrow time of death, but it surely can't be long now. 

Recording active minutes is another issue. If you aren't doing anything it can automatically recognise as exercise, it relies on heart rate being up in the cardio zone consistently for ten minutes. I quickly found I could work in the garden until I felt wobbly and light-headed from the effort, but it wasn't recognised as exercise or active minutes, and if I was working in one place, taking occasional rather than continuous steps, not recording steps either. FYI Fitbit, pickaxing bramble and sedge roots really is effort. Maybe I should experiment with recording it as aerobics or something.

it's been three months since I started wearing it. I still cannot conceive of managing 5000, let alone 10000 steps a day and I've found it easy to be so focused on what I'm doing that the hourly 'shift yer bum' buzz goes unnoticed too. It will be interesting to see if continued use changes anything.

A lot can happen in 10 years ...

One of the best sets of records to trace family groups in 19th and early 20th century England and Wales are the UK Census returns. I've been using them extensively to try to uncover my extended family's history, and have enjoyed looking up the places they lived, speculating on what  life was like for them. The starting point for a family tree is information from the memories of living relatives, but, unless you have a close family with lots of notes on who's who, perhaps even a family bible, maybe still living locally to your ancestors, then there are still plenty of gaps to be filled.

The census returns are a great resource, revealing a lot about how people lived; the size of families, the work people did and where they lived. The way in which, early on and especially in rural areas, there were no addresses - everyone knew each other, and few received letters because illiteracy was quite high.

The census returns are by no means perfect, something which, for me, adds to the fascination and frustration of working with them.

The recorders/enumerators had a very important job. Some created beautiful records, with clear handwriting, taking care to check and spell names of people and places correctly. At the other end of the scale, the records are almost faded to illegibility or are in a scarcely legible scrawl, with mistakes and misspellings, and on some, the black marks made by people checking or counting up the returns obscure the information.

This however pales into insignificance against the sheer weight of transcription errors I find. Many come from an inability to read older handwriting, failure to compare script on the same page and perhaps no knowledge of copperplate or cursive hand to work it out. (I'm old enough that we were taught 'joined-up' writing from age seven, with a big chart on the wall and hours of practice at forming the shapes of letters, then writing syllables and words.) Some errors are down to reading with insufficient magnification, the transcriber typing what they think they see, or expect to; others are due to downright laziness, or someone unfamiliar with the language, or perhaps they'd been drinking, or something. There was evidently no quality control, so if the genealogy company paid for this work, they were robbed, and if they didn't pay for it, well they can't expect anything of reasonable quality. Okay, so correct spelling is something I care about, but it's important in this context because of its effect on searches, in terms of their success and the amount of time and creative guesses it can take to get results.

An then there's the misreporting, which can be very entertaining. I expect most people told the truth to the best of what they remembered, but ages can float around (quite apart from the strange 1841 thing of rounding down adults' ages by up to four years!). I've had relatives grow younger by a couple of years on each successive census, or a couple who both reduced their ages by five years (which would have made their marriage illegal, if it were true) and a family of siblings, still single in their thirties, who variously selected ages up to nine years younger than they were according to their birth records.

Tracing the Irish parts of the family is proving very difficult, because the original census returns for Ireland 1861 and 1871 were destroyed shortly after the censuses were taken. Those for 1881 and 1891 were pulped during the First World War, probably because of the paper shortage. The returns for 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 were, apart from a few survivals, notably for a few counties for 1821 and 1831, destroyed in 1922 in the fire at the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War.

Wonderful though these ten-yearly records are, they are still only snapshots. Some families are quite stable, remaining in the same house or the same area, with the same spouse, and you can track the children growing up, getting married, leaving home. Others seem to disappear, a particular problem when dealing with common names and moving to another county, or if you happen to need some of the missing records.

And there are some things that a ten yearly snapshot will miss, because a lot can happen in ten years. For example, it's long enough to lose one wife, marry another, have three children, for the youngest of those children and then your second wife to die, and you decide to foster the two remaining children with their aunts and emigrate to the USA. There are no records which will reveal whether the younger children of the first marriage were left with their older siblings, or whether the second wife became their step-mother, no personal histories to know how they felt about that.

I feel like a detective. For every small step forward and question answered, a whole new crop of questions can arise. Every chink of light creates more shadows.

I can't wait for the 1921 census to be released, although it won't be available until 2022. It will be essential to help fill some holes in my knowledge of who did what, where and with whom. And I hope I won't see as many transcription errors!

Big Butterfly Count 2020

One thing still possible amid all the restrictions imposed around the Covid-19 pandemic is to linger somewhere quiet for a quarter of an hour or so, and count butterflies. Despite the changeable weather for this year's butterfly count (17 July to 9 August), including several days which were a complete washout, I did several 'counts' in my garden and became quite obsessed with going out to see what I could find, noting my observations in my diary.

Here are the results, which include a couple of day-flying moths:

Species/Dates	19-Jul	28-Jul	29-Jul	30-Jul	06-Aug	07-Aug	08-Aug	09-Aug
Small White			1	1
Large White		1	1	2	2	1	1	2
Common Blue						1
Small Tortoiseshell			1	1			4	3
Red Admiral		2	2	2			1	1
Peacock		2	1	2	3	2	1	1
Comma				1
Meadow Brown			2
Ringlet	1
Six-Spot Burnet	1
Hummingbird Hawk Moth				1
Day total	2	5	8	10	5	4	7	7

11 species was quite good compared to other years, but even on the best day, I could count the day-flying lepidoptera on both hands, so I could have wished for more. There were days where I didn't really look and others where I was out in the garden for a quarter of an hour or more, but saw nothing, and then forgot to record that I saw nothing. Most of my observations were more than quarter of an hour, which probably increased the number of species observed, but the numbers are the maximum number observed at any one time, to avoid double-counting.

What no Painted Ladies, Orange Tip, Large Skipper, Speckled Wood, some sort of Fritillary perhaps? I would also have expected to see Silver Y moths on the Buddleias, if not in full sun, then at least in the evening, but I didn't see any. It might be that the adult butterflies aren't on the wing in the three weeks of the survey.

Buddleia davidii is a controversial plant. I even saw a post of Facebook claiming that the nectar is toxic to butterflies and bees. Of course, whoever posted it didn't give a source or link for reference and I have found nothing to support this (because, of course, I cannot resist searching online to do a bit of fact-checking). There's no denying it is an extremely invasive plant, which can grow in all sorts of conditions, from nooks and crannies with very little soil, light, dry soils, compacted and often wet clay, and given a nice depth of fertile soil can go from seedling to flower within one year, and become a spreading, towering shrub within two.

I have a love-hate relationship with it. I was lazy last year and didn't dead-head assiduously enough or even prune, and this year there have been seedlings everywhere, and new shrubs which escaped being weeded out last autumn (I think I thought they were Verbena bonariensis seedlings. No such luck). None of the shrubs I have are in quite the right place, a visual reminder of how much work I need to do in the garden. On the other hand, once they flower, they attract all sorts of invertebrates; not just butterflies and moths, but drone flies, hoverflies, various bumble bees and this year, lots of honey bees. Various spiders hang out in the leaves and branches, as do snails, which don't seem to do much damage to it. When I work in the garden, I get to see them all up close and get wafts of honeyed scent.

The problem with invasive species like this is that in the wild, and potentially even a garden, they can affect local biodiversity. They outcompete and replace native species of wildflowers, so reducing both species diversity and nutritional diversity of those native plant species. Although the bees, butterflies and other foraging species love the Buddleia, they need diversity as well as quantity and quality of nectar and pollen, to ensure a good nutritional content and balance, 

When I input my observations and checked my profile, I found they have leaderboards for the number of observation sessions (counts) and butterflies. I am waaaaaay down the boards;  at 3000+ for counts, at 7000+ for total butterflies seen. Not that it ever occurred to me that this was a competitive thing, but there are some very serious butterfly counters out there. I was feeling very pleased with myself to submit results from 8 counts, now I feel like I should do better next year.

Clockwise from top left:

female Common Blue; Comma, just hanging around; Busy bee; Humming-bird Hawk-moth

A Virtual Walk around the Village

Not the village I live in now (although I might write about that sometime, too), but one I used to live in, a long time ago. My mother grew up there. Her parents lived in the same house all their married lives.

They seem so long ago now, those weekend afternoons when we visited. The Saturday lunch of fish and chips, picked up from the chippy next to the bus station in town, or a Sunday roast (with chilled Tizer as a treat, although the grown-up men preferred a glass of Mackeson stout). Then we might 'stretch our legs, get some fresh air and walk it off'.

It's one of those fine days, with blue sky and sun playing hide and seek with fluffy clouds and only a breeze. Come on, put on your coat and boots and let's take a walk.

Down the front drive with its chalky banks and garden full of weeds, although the gardens on either side are well-kept, with a bee-hive near the adjoining hedge on one side.

Watch for cars as we cross the road to see the horses in their meadow. Marina and Atlanta, manes and tails flowing like water as they canter away. As we walk towards the school, the vicar comes out of the vicarage drive, taking his Dalmatian for a walk, but he is going the other way, towards the common. At the staggered cross, there's a tree with a seat which circles its trunk. The lucky tree, to overhear the conversations of passers by, and watch little girls run around its seat, arms outstretched, face turned to the patterns of the leaves against the sky.

One road leads to the church and the main street, another heads up alongside the school to a housing estate. Look, that was my first classroom, and my mother's too. But today, we'll go straight on.

At Cuckoo Bridge, the old canal is overgrown with trees and nettles, but there is still water in the bottom, and probably deep mud. Silted up over time, the cutting was much deeper. For 120 years they had trouble with water levels and enough traffic to make it worthwhile, until it fell out of use and was lost, the last few miles forever dammed by motorway and ring-road, and housing developments. 

Shall we turn up the track to the railway footbridge, where we could check the signals for an imminent train, wave to the driver and count the carriages as it passes under us? Then walk down to the rec to play on the swings and watch the archers practising? Or run down the road as it dips to go under the embankment, into the darkness of the tunnel, pausing to shout 'Hello! Cuckoo! Echo!' and hear our voices rebound off the walls. Then perhaps a train would pass over us, turning the world to thunder as we run to the other side, our hands over our ears against the noise.

I remember a ditch running with water and culvert pipes to carry it under house entrances. Where was that? I learned the names of the wildflowers on those verges and watched for frogs and toads.

Soon we are at the corner with the old village well and quaint brick and half-timbered cottages with thatched roofs, and the topiary peacock,  A few steps on, and we join the main street through the village.

Back past the chapel and Goodall's Garage, where we'll Put a Tiger in our Tank on the way home? No, on to the river, past the lane which leads beside the recreation ground to the railway footbridge. Hard to believe there was a clay pit and the lane led to a brickyard, well before my time. Past the big house opposite the green expanse of the rec. There used to be a huge horse chestnut tree, great for conkers, on top of the bank opposite the big house, until the owner had it chopped down.

There was an old motte and bailey here, though there's nothing to see except a rise in the land. Then we are at the sparkling river, with swans and mallard ducks awaiting some crumbs of bread, and an old Muscovy duck who comes from the mill up the lane to the right, Stand on the bank here and look into the water, near the clumps of weeds, see the shadows move? There are trout in these crystal waters, camouflaged against the gravelly bottom.

Let's cross the bridge to go up the hill. Further along, the banks near the copse are a bed of primroses in spring. We'll take this lane which skirts the marshy ground where the young river is finding its way. It's a stroll to the next mill,where we can cross the river again and walk beside it, watching damselflies and dragonflies dart over the watercress which has spread from the beds upstream. Pause, feeling small under the tall arches of the viaduct, then carry on to join the lane near the bridge. Here's the Grange Farm, with its red brick walls and massive barns, Around the corner, past the drive, the wall continues. There used to be a haystack here, and so many sparrows, investigating every nook and cranny for spiders, insects and seeds!

On the other side of the road, the gateway to the site of a Tudor palace built on the site of an even older castle, destroyed in the Civil War. Centuries ago, there were people who also thought this village the ideal place to live. I've never seen the gates open when I've walked past, although it must be open to visitors sometimes.

We could carry on to the church along the main street and cut through along the lane to the seat around the tree. No, we'll turn up the lane by the pub here, it's not so far. The canal came under the road, but it was filled in and those houses are on top of it. I wonder if the owners know, or even care?

Here we come to the junction with the brick bus shelter where we could wait for a bus into town. There's the path to the common, but we'll go left, just a few yards and then we're home. Time for tea!

.

.

.

There has been so much development in and around the little village. The main street is a conservation area, so it's still beautiful, but the average price of those little cottages and village houses is now half a million pounds. There's a Mercedes on the drive where my grandfather's Ford once stood. The house has been extended. There were only two bedrooms, so my brother and I slept on camp beds in the front parlour. There was a fireplace, but I don't remember it being lit. A paraffin heater was used to 'take the chill off', the flame put out before we went to bed. 

I remember snuggling under the blankets in the darkness, listening to the muted voices of the grown-ups going up to bed. Once all was quiet, I listened to the wind in the trees and the distant rushing rhythm of trains passing in the night.

Two-of-everything ratatouille recipe

My first experience of ratatouille was not a happy one. While I was living in Paris, I treated myself to lunch at a little cheap and cheerful café in the Latin Quarter. Served with fresh bread, it was a bowl of acidic, over-salted mush in which the individual vegetables were unidentifiable. Not nice. It completely put me off even the idea of trying it again.

Some years later, when I started growing my own vegetables and had a sudden glut of tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes, I had a go at making it myself, using a few different recipes, until I settled on my version, which has become one of my comfort foods.

Recipe

You will need:

2 onions (I prefer red onions, but whatever you've got)

2 fat cloves of garlic, crushed

2 sweet/bell peppers (I like to go for different colours)

2 courgettes

2 aubergines

2 cans of chopped tomatoes

2 heaped teaspoons vegetable stock (bouillon) powder

A couple of big pinches of dried mixed herbs/herbes de Provence (or a small sprig each of fresh, thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage)

A couple of good glugs of olive oil

salt and ground black pepper to taste.

I  prefer to use one of my Dutch oven pans, heavy, broad-based and deep enough to add all the veg, water to cover (and more if I want it soupier) and not spit broth all over the stove when I lift the lid to give it a stir.

Chop the onions, peppers, aubergines and courgettes into roughly 1"/2.5 cm pieces.

Start cooking the onions and peppers in the olive oil, and add the garlic as they start to colour.

Add the courgettes and aubergines so that they start to cook and soak up the oil.

When the pan looks dry and the vegetables start to catch and colour, add the canned tomatoes. Rinse out the tins with hot water, adding this to the pan so that the vegetables are covered.

Add the herbs and vegetable stock, give it all a good stir, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally if needed to stop it catching on the bottom of the pan.

It may need longer; the vegetables should be soft and melting but still retain their shape.

Serve and enjoy. Fresh baguette or crusty roll, glass of red wine ... or over a baked potato. Or on its own if you are aiming to cut the carbs.

Notes

I find it best to keep the vegetables in proportion, so all medium-sized or all large (hopefully without the aubergines and courgettes being woolly and full of seeds).

Modern aubergine varieties often do not need salting to remove bitter juices, but if you've grown your own and they've been water stressed at all, it can still be a good idea, and do the courgettes at the same time.

It freezes and reheats well, so I wouldn't bother trying to make a small portion with small-sized vegetables, as two cans of tomatoes will be too much, although two big beefsteak tomatoes could work.

I don't know how many this will feed, because I invariably have a second helping, but it usually lasts me at least two days.

If you're feeding a horde you can double the quantities of ingredients.

You can stretch the definition of ratatouille and stretch this further by adding a couple of potatoes cut into 1"/2.5 cm chunks, or stretch it even further by adding more water so that it's more like a soup. Or just go mad and use it as a basis for a big vegetable stew by adding a can of chickpeas or cannellini beans, sweetcorn, chunks of butternut or other squash, increasing and tweaking the seasoning as needed.

Yearning for the beach

The weather has turned windy and rainy after six weeks or so with hardly any rain. On the warmest days, I would have loved to go to the beach, but what with the lockdown due to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic, it hasn't been sensible to go there. I've missed the sensory pleasure of being there (although not missed the inevitable crowds). My yearning gave rise to this ....

Au bord de la mer

Hot bright sunlight on my face

Drying salty hair and lashes

Legs wet with sandy splashes

Feet tingle with shingle scratches

Cool wavelets’ sea foam catches

My skirt hem like liquid lace

Inspiration and Perspiration

This May I have mostly been making ... a mess.

I am determined to get this back garden productive and at least two thirds of it laid out, and the patio tidied, by midsummer.

The weather has been amazing since mid-April, in that there has hardly been any rain. We usually have a dryish couple of weeks in April and May, and it starts turning rainy and changeable from midsummer. But the weather has stayed beautiful, day after day, as if to spite all of us locked down due to the SARS-Cov-2 Coronavirus pandemic, not allowed to go to beaches. We are supposed to stay local - no more than 5 miles from home, and even if I parlayed that into 'as the crow flies' instead of road distance, the car parks and toilets are shut. If you can't walk there, you can't go there. I have been out in the garden every day, if only to do a small job, or just watering. I hit a bit of a wall mid-month, where I had to have a couple of rest days, as my muscles and joints were so painful. Little by little, I have started to be able to work longer or harder, resting as soon as I need to, resuming when I feel up to it.

The brambles spread atrociously last year, when between painful joints and lots of rain, I neglected the garden. It has been cathartic to hack them back and dig them out, even though I couldn't burn them as I only like to light the incinerator when it is at least drizzly, so that no neighbours have washing out. I have been tackling the garden on all fronts: patio, herb, mint arc, both herbaceous areas; as usual, all of my balls in the air, playing the moving squares game by tackling areas of weeds and brambles, trying to create space to move plants and plant contents of pots. The big prize is to clear the areas for the veg beds, which have become full of herbaceous plants and weeds, and said herbaceous plants need somewhere to go.

The progress is almost imperceptible. Only the compost heap gives a clue, having doubled in height.

The mints arc and herbaceous bed beyond it were to occupy the area between the house utility/shower 'extension' and the lilac, which was a gravelled area in which things seeded themselves and failed to grow well, except for Sedum rupestris, which must love the dry, limey conditions, and bramble, which is just a complete thug and grows everywhere. There is some of the troublingly ubiquitous bindweed coming though too. Huge old plants of Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) and a couple of Hellebores have established themselves right at the edge of the bed, and they will need to go.

I was told by someone, possibly the sellers mentioned it in passing, that there was some concrete under the gravel, but when I had previously stuck a fork in to work some bramble or dandelions out, I didn't find it. This time, having raked off a couple of inches of gravel, I found areas of concrete and patches of fine grade, blue-grey ballast or aggregate. I stuck the pick into the concrete a few times and it broke easily, in some place only half an inch thick or less, in others perhaps a couple of inches. It looked as though there might be a void underneath.

The gravel bed, having found concrete

I suspect it was a level base for a shed, but my neighbours don't know or remember anything about it.

I carried on clearing and digging, creating a sort of terminal moraine of gravel, concrete bits, aggregate and soil under the edge of the lilac. In places the concrete I broke and removed had a layer of aggregate under it, laid on top of a permeable membrane; in some places, that aggregate had another thin layer of concrete underneath it and on the membrane, in some places, stuck to it. So this all became a rather longer job than expected, but isn't that just the way of things?

It would have been so much easier to leave the gravel and use it as an area for pots, but I want to see my plans realised.  Part of that includes recycling the paving slabs donated by my next-door neighbours a couple of years ago into paths between the veg beds, and the gravel, aggregate etc can be recycled into a sub-base for the slabs, along with the rest of the stone I keep digging out of the garden. Another neighbour commented how much concrete and stone she finds in her garden, and how shallow the topsoil is. I would have expected it to be deeper, as these houses were built on damp meadow-land, so I suspect the topsoil was taken off to level the site for building in the 1950s and not put back again. Ah well, all the more reason to make compost.

I've become fitter and able to do enough to work up a sweat. Being out in the garden, with the birds and greenery, has been very enjoyable, my exercise and inspiration, saving my sanity a little in these locked-down weeks. 

Spider observations, and a new species for me

The garden seems to be full of spiders. The compost heap and all the paving is alive with some type of wolf spiders, and possibly more than one specie of them. I tidied the garden cupboard and evicted many 'house' spiders and most of the plant pots and trays which were hanging around on the patio have had a spider or two in them. A walk through the garden disturbs nursery web spiders. The house is still full of Pholcus phalangioides. The Golden Girl Araneus diadematus on my living room window frame survived the winter, then one day, she had disappeared, hopefully out to find food.

Strenuously brushing off some moulded plastic plant trays ready for reuse yesterday evening, their undersides full of snails, I found I'd also brushed out an egg mass in a case, which had torn. Out of the case emerged a slightly agitated female spider, so large (18-20 mm) when she uncurled, she made me jump. She was quite shy, very attached to her eggs, so I gathered them up to have a closer look.

Could this be Steatoda nobilis, the Noble False Widow? (Yes, the same one the press get so hysterical about, with horror stories of infected and necrotic bites.) I asked in the British Spider Identification group and it was confirmed. After all this time, when I'd never seen one, and if the females are this big, I'm sure I would have noticed! Come to think of it, if she has eggs, there's probably a male around, unless she's eaten him (apparently they do, sometimes). They seem to be getting more common and widespread, and this wouldn't be the first Pembrokeshire record for the species.

So, a new spider for my list. Except I don't have a list, so now I want to start one. I haven't been taking much notice of the spiders in the garden, but it would be good to identify what's here. The spider ID group is full of photos of jumping and crab spiders, to the extent where I have spider envy, as I haven't seen any here. But then, I also haven't been looking.

Meanwhile, I'll have to find this big mama a new niche, as she can't go back under the plant tray. 

Within Living Memory

A chance conversation when out walking back in January, as well as some conversations at my gentle exercise class, reminded me that once people get to a certain age, they have lived through history. They may not think of it as history, because it's their everyday life, normal, mundane, nothing remarkable. History is generally thought of as rulers, politics, wars and battles, inventions, constructions and disasters. The small, everyday lives of the little people, many of whom were illiterate, were scarcely recorded.

I did some research into the small Carmarthenshire farm I bought with my former partner in 1999. It was very difficult. Some locals shared their knowledge, although most of that resided with a local historian, who was loath to share what he knew as he was writing a book about the village (which ended up with very little indeed about 'my' farm). Chatting with the archivist at Carmarthen archives, I was advised to try to get to its history through the people who lived there. But it was a small farm with tenant farmers and north-facing land used to support the livings of clergy under Queen Anne's Bounty until it was bought out. Without original deeds and with little to go on from the tithe maps, there was no way of getting to the history of the buildings and farm itself. However, I was very interested in how the lives of those poor tenant farmers might have been. There were cottages reduced to rubble at the bottom of the hill adjacent to one corner of the land, apparently still owned by the family who'd had the farm from the early 1900s until the 1970s. There was also the remains of a cottage in a little corner of the adjoining farm's land, with no track and only the merest trace on an old Ordnance Survey map, presumably a farm worker's cottage. Was it a tŷ unnos - a cottage built in one night to claim that little parcel of land and create a home? They were usually built on common land, but some landowners allowed them, or wagered that their workers couldn't build their cottage and have a fire in the hearth within a day and night. I doubt the answer could ever be known now.

Yet in personal, family and local history lie all the details and stories which we can identify with. Who married whom, lived where, their occupations and how they lived their lives and coped with adversity and change; these are the things which are important to people. Who is on the throne, which laws were passed are all context.

Having moved a lot when young, I've never felt that I have roots and am fascinated by the stories of people who have been born and brought up in one locality. They are the guardians of a local and personal history which is still largely untold, although titbits are increasingly shared through social media. Similarly, interest has increased in family history, particularly since programmes such as the BBC's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' started.

The woman I met out walking in January said 'you should meet my husband, he was born and brought up down here' and it made me wonder how I should go about talking to people about their memories, and record them. Then I came across a project relating to shared histories between Pembrokeshire and Ireland called Ancient Connections. They were running 'History Hunters' courses on collecting and sharing oral histories, and since I very much doubt I have any ancient connections here or in ROI, but it matched a growing fascination, I asked if I might be eligible to join in. I was, and went to the first two sessions in St David's at the end of February. It was very well organised and completely engrossing. I left, looking forward to working out a project and coming to the two sessions in March, which, because of this horrible virus, have, understandably, been cancelled. Visiting people in their homes isn't really possible now.

At the same time that I was connecting with Ancient Connections, the family history bug bit me and I took advantage of a free trial on MyHeritage to start building my tree. Then I missed cancelling the fortnight's trial by a day and have ended up with a year's subscription, so I may as well make the most of it. I don't expect to find anyone famous, but who knows? Will I find ancestors who shared my passions for dance, art and crafts and the natural world, and uncover the truth of family stories about French ancestors on one side and Irish on the other?

Pandemic Pandemonium

Predictably - I wonder what odds the bookies were offering? - the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus  Covid-19 has been declared a pandemic, and all hell has broken out in the UK. Not only is it a public health emergency, it is also an economic emergency, with international markets in free-fall and people already losing their jobs as firms scale back and shut down.

Even before the UK had many cases, people started panic buying, noticeably toilet roll! Not that the infection causes problems with the gut, but because apparently that's what people can't do without. Hand sanitiser gel was also a must-buy. Supermarkets were slow to impose limits, because families come in different sizes and people may be shopping for others, but surely, surely, people could be sensible, given that there aren't shortages with stock coming in all the time? But no, you can't fix stupid, and people, especially when scared, will be greedy and selfish too.

The last time I went shopping, some of the shelves of a large supermarket were looking very empty. No toilet roll, very few canned goods, no pasta, hardly anything left by way of pasta sauces. I went past one couple loading Pot Noodles into their trolley, discussing how many they should have of which ones, dithering and debating because they didn't normally eat them (although I don't blame them for that!). I saw other couples, discussing numbers and needs as they loaded their individual trolleys, although I expect only one of them normally shops for their families. But, for all I know, maybe one of them was doing the family shop and the other shopping for a parent. Short of seeing someone steering a few trolleys piled high with toilet rolls and hand sanitiser, is it really possible to spot the difference between someone panic buying/stockpiling and someone getting supplies in for their family and older neighbours? Without leaping to assumptions, no. It's a tricky one.

There was lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and I bought a lovely piece of fish from the wet fish counter to put in the freezer, not because I'm stocking up the freezer, but because it looked so good and I already had that day's meal planned. (I'm currently addicted to ratatouille with a baked potato as comfort food.)

There weren't queues at the tills, as there were plenty of cashiers. I had a cheerful chat with the cashier as I put my things through. Apparently the limits she had were a bit higher than those shown in notices on the shelves, and the shelves were restocked regularly, but emptied almost as soon as they were filled. I shall be annoyed if I cannot find what I want as and when I want to replenish what's in my own cupboards (especially toilet roll!) and that's the thing. Even those like me who don't panic buy and hoard supplies, when threatened with the possibility of not finding what we want and feel we need, we're more likely to buy the items, in multiples, when we do see them. Also, when you think that maybe we will all be under movement restrictions soon, and you and yours may be self-isolating for protection because someone in the household is in the high-risk group, or you may go into isolation because you or someone in the household show symptoms, then it makes sense to have some supplies in and a regular online order so you can top up if you can't go out. It becomes both cause and effect.

Elsewhere, fights have broken out, and cashiers are subjected to insults and threats if they challenge the numbers of items people are taking. A friend who was on a course (only the first day of the planned three; it was cut short) reported that the tutor had stopped off at a supermarket for hand sanitiser (makes sense to have it if you're giving a course and you don't know what the facilities are like). She found the last bottle at the back of a bottom shelf, and an older woman saw her and knocked her over. The other woman's husband remonstrated with her and she grumbled that the tutor had beaten her to the last bottle (like that's an excuse for her bad behaviour).
In the USA, there are queues at gun stores, as people buy weapons and ammunition. It seems that they are preparing for a breakdown in law and order (whether they will be causing it or defending themselves from it) and possibly also a zombie apocalypse. I'm glad, once again, not to live in the USA.

Not that living in the UK is much less worrying. The government position last week was 'carry on as normal, no-one is immune, wash your hands, catch your coughs, best we just let the virus go through the community and build herd immunity that way. Some of you will die, especially the oldies, but most will be okay.' Cue outrage at the idea of having the Coronavirus version of a Chicken Pox party for UK citizens, the apparent disposability of our at-risk citizens and that this could potentially be a great saving in terms of benefits and a load off the NHS. We are used to the idea that herd immunity is created after a programme of vaccinations, not, as used to be, just leaving a disease to spread through the population and rely on people recovering and becoming immune. Diphtheria, smallpox, polio, whooping cough, measles, German measles (rubella) - all used to be like this. Perhaps the British are less fatalistic, stoical and stiff-upper-lip than we used to be, but some things are just not acceptable now.

Then there was something of a U turn; people were advised to work from home if they can and avoid going out unless necessary, especially to pubs, clubs, cinemas, theatres etc. A raft of financial support measures were announced, but there were still obvious holes. You might take a mortgage holiday, but still no help for renters. Your employer should pay you statutory sick pay (SSP, which is less than £100 per week, not a lot) but with only an advisory for people to stay away from leisure venues, the owners and managers of said venues cannot claim for loss of income on their insurance. Many will go under unless there are government safety nets in place. The self-isolating should be paid SSP from day one, but many employers aren't being flexible enough and still want a doctor's note, at a time when most surgeries are stopping face to face appointments. There is a proposal to make new claims for universal credit easier in an attempt to provide some support for the self-employed, so that will be good, if they can work it out.

Now the schools are due to close at the end of the week, and exams have been cancelled, all adding to the general confusion and anxiety.

One of the scariest things is that, being a new virus, there are so many unknowns. You can have it but be presymptomatic (not showing symptoms yet) or asymptomatic (not have symptoms at all). The incubation period is still up for debate, from three weeks to three days. Many people apparently can have quite mild symptoms and recover, but there are no numbers on this, as only those who are hospitalised with severe symptoms are being tested (much to the annoyance of health care workers and medical professionals, who would like to know if they are positive since they are on the front line of receiving the virus and passing it on, so knowing could limit the spread, even if it takes them out of the much needed workforce for a week or two, and even if clear, they might need to be tested on a weekly or fortnightly basis). It is still not known whether someone who has had it and recovered is immune, and since you can have something like it without knowing whether you've just got some unspecific, horrible fluey cough or whether it's Covid-19, you can't be sure of anything. Except that you are still alive, which is not something to be sneezed at (sorry, couldn't resist it!).

I do worry about my (high risk group) parents, over 200 miles away, although my brother is with them. All this worry and uncertainty leads to high anxiety, and I found this from Anxiety UK very inspirational:

APPLE
Acknowledge: notice and acknowledge the uncertainty as it comes to mind

Pause: Don't react as you normally do. Don't react at all. Pause and breathe

Pull back: Tell yourself this is just the worry* talking, and this apparent need for certainty is not helpful or necessary. (* or anger, annoyance, however you are feeling). It is only a thought or feeling. Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are not statements or facts.

Let go: let go of the thought or feeling. It will pass. You do not have to respond to them. Imagine them floating away on a cloud or in a bubble.

Explore: Explore the present moment, because right now, in this moment, all is well. Notice your breathing and the sensations of your breathing. Notice the ground beneath you. Look around and notice what you see, what you hear, what you can touch, what you can smell. Right now. Then shift your focus of attention to something else - on what you need to do, on what you were doing before you noticed the worry, or do something else - mindfully with your full attention.

I observed to a friend that, given a computer with internet connection (tick), craft supplies (tick), books (tick) and food deliveries (cross), I can hole up and entertain myself for weeks without feeling the need to be with people face to face. I'm lucky, I also have a garden to potter in, and live on my own in a house with a few rooms to choose from, so I wouldn't feel too claustrophobic.

Although I've let the people from my gentle exercise class know I can pick up shopping for them if necessary, I have no confidence that I could actually find what they need. With that in mind, I wondered what delivery slots might be available (given that you can book a slot up to three weeks in advance and amend your order until the night before delivery). My local Tesco has no delivery slots for the three weeks you can book. Click and collect slots are only available at the end of the three week period. A quick look for toilet roll showed only small packs of a couple of brands in stock. So much for regular deliveries and no shortages. I went in this morning and there was no toilet roll (apparently only people queuing up when the doors opened at 7.00 am got some!), and among other things, still no pasta, and even the fresh veg was looking a bit bare, with few potatoes left and no onions! Customers were limited to a maximum of three of any one thing.

There have been comparisons to being at war, so if I have to self-isolate I shall use it as an opportunity to make do and mend, and dig for victory.

Remember, coughs and sneezes spread diseases, so catch your coughs in a hanky and wash your hands. Don't Panic! Keep calm and carry on!


Earworms, a suggested playlist, in no particular order: Don't Stand So Close to me (The Police), Toxic (Britney Spears), Mad World (Gary Jules), Shake It Off (Taylor Swift), U Can't Touch This (MC Hammer), Stayin' Alive (The Bee Gees), Survivor (Destiny's Child), I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor), It's the End of the World (as we know it) (REM), We've Gotta Get Out of this Place (The Animals),

Local recycling saga

Pembrokeshire has a new recycling scheme, which has caused so much complaint that it even hit the BBC news. The switch-over onto the 'new scheme' was the first week in November, since when it seems to have taken over everyone's life and is the favourite topic on the Pembrokeshire Council Watch group on Facebook.

Several months before we switched over, we knew that there were changes coming, but there was very little detail available until a couple of months before the change over was implemented. Wanting to plan where to keep the various new recycling bags and boxes, I asked for information on their sizes, to no avail. There were some 'demonstration sessions', although I found out about the local ones the day after they happened, so along with many others, didn't appreciate the size and shape of the new box and bags until they arrived on the doorstep at the end of October.

Or not. Some properties were still chasing their receptacles in the first week of the scheme.
Some properties, such as blocks of flats, are not on the new scheme. A friend of mine lives in one of them, and tried to check where her new boxes were, or whether her location was exempt, but never did get an official reply, only finding out in conversation with her neighbours when none of them received boxes. It's just as well; I can't imagine how she would lug all the various bits up and down stairs, although at least she has a bin shed in an outside block. That's more than another friend of mine in a rented maisonette, which effectively has a small space in a front porch.

The driving force behind all of this is the need to clean up our act in the face of the global crises of climate and waste, reduce our use of plastics, stop landfill, with its use and pollution of land and production of greenhouse gases. The aim is for Wales to become a 'zero waste' nation by 2050. In 2017, Wales exceeded its target of 58% recycling, managing 63-64%. There is a target to recycle 70% of waste by 2025 and Wales is well set to achieve that, but some counties are better at it than others. Pembrokeshire was meeting the targets and improving, but not exceeding them, hence the need for changes. Councils face fines if they fail to meet their targets.

This wasn't really a big change, although it does seem to have caused a disproportionate amount of upheaval.

We previously had a green caddy for food waste, orange bag for recyclables (plastic bottles, cans, foil, card and paper) collected weekly; a green box for glass bottles and jars, and black plastic bags (which we had to buy ourselves, although a few years ago, they were provided by the council) for anything else - the 'residual waste', collected fortnightly. There is also an optional subscription for a wheelie bin for garden waste. Some supermarkets took (and still take) things like old plastic carrier bags, batteries and printer ink cartridges and the tip, sorry, 'waste and recycling centre', could take pretty much everything else, some of which is recyclable, such as electricals, lightbulbs and rags. (I knew that wearable clothing and shoes were collected, but rags and worn-out footwear was news to me.)

Now, we have kept the food waste caddy, the optional garden waste subscription and the glass box, although the latter is now emptied weekly along with the other recyclables. There is a new service with purple bags for nappies, incontinence pads and the like, collected fortnightly, for which users register. The orange bag has been replaced by a blue lidded box for (clean, dry) paper, a blue weighted woven plastic bag for (clean, dry) card and a red weighted woven plastic bag for plastics (all sorts of recyclable plastic bottles, boxes and trays except for brown or black plastics, and excluding plastic bags, wrappings and films), tetrapaks, cans, foil. We can also put out batteries for recycling in a separate (ziploc, plastic) bag. Once every three weeks, we can put out 'residual waste', now in council-supplied grey bags, which are not opaque, so recyclables carelessly tossed into the residual waste can be spotted. We get the equivalent of 52 bags, one per week, and 'a household' can put out a maximum of three bags at a time, although large households can get additional green bags and put one of those out per collection too.

We have new, big, colourful bin lorries with a number of holes down the side. And for many people, their bin day changed.

Changes. Oh deary me. People are largely resistant to change, and when changes are made which people find difficult, impractical and onerous in terms of time and energy, there will be problems.

When changes are planned and implemented, communication is key. There was some drip-feeding and a demonstration at the county show (for those who could afford to go!). Eventually, we received an information pack through the door, which included a glaring mistake in the collections calendar for some areas, including mine. (And, I later learned, other mistakes.) What, no proofreading? Evidently not.

It soon became clear how inconsistent and unclear some of the information was, and together with queries about missing information packs, boxes, bags and so on, the Council became overwhelmed by calls for information, as they didn't have enough staff with enough information to keep up with demand. People calling the council would find themselves queued, then their call would be cut off before they even got into the queue's single figures. The website was not easy to read (e.g. an infographic of what was recyclable where, but which was too small to be legible and wouldn't click-expand). Many people were concerned about the size and number of containers, and were asking how and where they were going to store all this. This generated a good discussion with people sharing ideas, but implicit in the question was another, to the Council: 'You've created this issue, what's your suggested solution?' The council's condescending answer was that it was 'up to you where you keep them'.

The various recycling containers take up half my (small) kitchen floor. The orange bags hanging on the door handle are for theTip or Terracycle charities

My new containers live outside, the weighted bags folded into the blue box, which doesn't sit neatly on the green glass box because they are different sizes. It would have been good if they'd stacked neatly ....  The blue box has drainage holes in the bottom, and if left at an angle, water drains into the box.
A grey bag has replaced the black one in the kitchen bin, which holds the door from the kitchen to the utility room open. It's an unsightly nuisance, but in a small 1950s kitchen, there's no other place for it. I still have an orange bag in the undersink cupboard for the recyclables, which would go into the blue box, blue sack and red sack. On a Thursday evening, I bring them in and sort the contents of the orange bag into them. I don't always put out the glass box and don't always have batteries or food waste, because all the fruit and veg peelings and cores, cat litter, tea bags, coffee grounds, household dust go to make compost, as well as garden waste and some paper and cardboard. I bought a wheelie bin when I moved here, to hold any black bags between collections, so that now holds grey bags until collection day. I bought it on special offer, and it's become as essential as my compost bins.
It takes me about 20 minutes to sort everything and take it out. At least I just have to carry it through and out onto the front drive, but that can take 3 or four trips if it's a week when everything goes out. After that, my knees are generally screaming at me to sit down!

Depending on how full my orange bag is, some weeks I don't bother to put anything out. It's not worth it to have such a small amount in each sack, which despite being weighted, get soaked and blown away in a windy, rainy Pembrokeshire winter. I sit the blue box on top of the sacks to try to keep them down, but that gets blown off too. My garden wall and driveway don't provide enough protection from a blustery wind. One week, my blue sack disappeared. A neighbour found it had been blown into her driveway (three doors down across the road!) and put it by her wall, too late to be emptied, but at least it wasn't so full (and the cardboard therein not too wet) that I couldn't cram it into my wheelie bin and put it out the following week.

When the bins are emptied, they are left open to the weather, so I often have to tip water out of the blue box and shake the worst of it off the weighted sacks before putting them away. They are often still wet when I bring them in the next week, leaving wet and dirty puddles on the kitchen floor. I tell myself the floor has to be cleaned sometime, and a Thursday night is as good as any. If I were teaching on Thursday nights, I'd resent coming home tired and having to clean the floor as well as sort the rubbish. It makes me wonder, how many people don't go out to an evening class, simply because they are already tired from work and feeling the pressure of housework?

All in all, I'm not having significant issues with the new bin scheme, but I do wonder sometimes at the apparent lack of consistency. One week my glass box was left unemptied, although everything else was taken. I just took it and put it back out the following week, when it was emptied. Some weeks, the sacks are folded neatly into the blue box, with its lid tucked upright into it, to show they're all empty, and they are placed neatly back by my garden wall. Other weeks they are just tossed back down again. Did some people on the crews not get the message to leave things tidy, does the crew include someone who just can't be bothered, or is it someone trying to keep up with the lorry?

The 'new scheme' has now been running for nearly four months; enough time, surely, to resolve teething troubles and straighten out the kinks, but many issues have still not been resolved.

Some people found slashes on their rolls of grey bags, and find they can split easily. Now some are finding that they are running out already, having had to double-bag or otherwise discard the split bags, reducing their usable quota. Several people had their grey bags nicked from their doorsteps, and haven't all successfully had them replaced. The council allows more bags to be bought, but they are expensive, and considering that people aren't allowed to put out more than the equivalent of one grey bag per week (thus no more than three on the three-weekly collection) I would have thought the council could allow those with issues not of their own making some replacement bags.

There have been many complaints from people saying they are putting more in the grey sacks and recycling less, although on inspection, it seems many people were formerly putting the wrong things in their orange bags. Much of that was plastic with a recycling symbol on it, but which the council didn't take. They now take a lot more, but not plastic films.
The other aspect of 'putting more into the grey bags' is that they are in fact larger than many of the old black bags, and if you pack your plastic film down, you can indeed get more in without exceeding the weight limit.

There is a perceived increase in the amount of rubbish blowing about, whether from split sacks or escaping on the wind as the waste crews empty the sacks and boxes.

More receptacles means more wet and dirty bags and boxes to deal with. The holes in the bottom of the paper box let in water. The woven sacks have a flap which folds over as a lid/top, held down by Velcro closures, but they're not sealed and rainproof. Some sacks were very badly made, with stitching coming apart and misaligned sections, which left large gaps and Velcro with unmatched hook to hook or loop to loop faces. The flap closure is unwieldy and the Velcro catches onto clothing, hair, skin, so that sorting into and doing up the bags can be an annoying, scratchy affair.

Some report finding cats and dogs (and possibly foxes) have peed or pooped on their sacks.

Bags and boxes have disappeared. Mistakenly taken, blown away by the wind, or nicked? The weighted sacks are heavy enough to be a problem for those with mobility issues, but not heavy enough to stay put in the wind. And the food waste caddies in particular, if they are just tossed down, especially when open, can shatter or be blown by the wind into the road, where passing cars can complete their destruction and leave shards of plastic around the place.
Finding replacement or additional sacks and boxes has been an issue, as stocks were low when demand was highest after the change over. Residents then have to find out where there is a stock of what they need, and go to pick it up; some have then found that the location ran out in the meantime. An absolute pain if you don't drive, and a surprising number of people here do not, often for reasons such as health issues or expense.

Missed collections can be reported, and they are supposed to be picked up the next day, but in practice it may be two or more days. Some people find in particular purple sacks can be left for a week or more after their scheduled collection date. (plus,when everyone knows what a purple sack is for, having them left outside is indiscreet and potentially embarrassing). Considering they can become quite smelly after a week, people are beginning to ask that the collection be weekly, as in the warmer weather, the smell could be awful from bags hanging around for the best part of a fortnight.

In the first couple of months, there was a process of tagging a sack or box with a label, to show it contained incorrect items. The idea was that the label would state what was wrong and if possible, take the recyclables and leave the incorrect item(s). Many found that the whole sack or box-full was left, and the the tag was blank, leaving the home owner with no clue why their refuse had been 'rejected' and having to organise taking it to the tip or finding some place for it until the following week, with the added issue of finding somewhere to put that week's recyclables.

Cardboard boxes are no longer just picked up; all card has to be folded or torn so that it fits into the 50 cm-cube blue sack. It's not really a problem for cereal and cat food boxes, but boxes from new furniture or moving house must now be taken to the tip.

Whatever the failings of the Council and their new processes, what has shocked me the most is people's attitudes. The selfishness and sense of entitlement are staggering!

The fire brigade saw an increase in bin fires, as some decided it would be simpler to incinerate their rubbish now that they couldn't put as many sacks out as they liked and couldn't be bothered to sort the recyclables. Some claim that since the grey sacks are generally incinerated, they are cutting out the middle man, ignoring the difference between an industrial-scale incinerator, with particulate capture and use of the generated heat, and their little garden bin. This includes burning plastics, using their garden incinerator on a fine day or when the smoke will blow into their neighbours' gardens or across a road or path, rather than into their own property. I don't object to incinerators in general; I have one, and use it to burn garden waste only in damp weather when my neighbours don't have any washing out, then tip the resulting wood ash onto the compost heap.
Some people are refusing to recycle, perhaps burning some things, or putting as much as they can into the grey sacks. They consider this reasonable, that they are punishing the Council for what they see as their unworkable scheme, especially if they have had experiences where their rubbish hasn't been taken, sacks tagged with no detail of what's wrong, with no response when they try to complain. Some are doing it in protest as they consider it the Council's job to sort their rubbish, others to protest that as the Council is not taking some items marked as recyclable (not that they used to take them!) then the whole idea is fundamentally flawed.

This type of all-or-nothing, over-reaction is also seen in posts where a little news is blown out of all proportion, complete with big-brother type conspiracy theories and escalation of fear and despondency. An example was some news that Denbighshire were trialling microchipping some food waste bins, 'to check that people are recycling their food waste correctly'. The problem with this was an assumption that if you don't put out a food waste bin regularly, then you are probably putting your food waste into the 'residual' waste, although of course, it could be that you compost your fruit and veg waste and don't eat meat, so no fat or bones to go. Suddenly, there was talk of people in Pembrokeshire being fined, ranting about 'big brother' and threats to withhold council tax payments.
Of course, the councils tasked with meeting their recycling targets will have to collect data to prove that they are doing enough, and finding solutions to policing and educating those who wilfully disregard the rules and cause problems.
Pembrokeshire Council started a new policy some time ago that black bags dropped at the tips, now formally the 'waste and recycling centres', would be inspected for recyclables. The general reaction to this was that it was none of their business what people choose to throw away and a certain hysteria that the Council would pass their fines for insufficient recycling onto the people who fail to recycle. (Though in some respects, that sounds like a good idea to me. Why should anyone refuse to recycle what they can?)

There are a number who are climate change deniers and/or those who don't see why they should change their lifestyle and take no personal responsibility for their consumption and the waste they create.

There is also a perceptible increase in fly tipping, on which the council has now declared war.
There are also variations on the typical fly-tipping of rubbish in the wild - some rubbish in black/orange bags has been dumped with household rubbish, particularly galling for any householder who finds that some bags have been slyly added to their neat stack, and then left by the bins team for them to deal with. Bags of mixed rubbish are also left for the Terracycle recycling for charity company Pembrokeshire Care, Share and Give. They rely on volunteers to sort and pack the types of recyclables which the Council doesn't take but can be returned to specialist recyclers in return for money to charities. Adding unnecessarily to their work and leaving them with additional rubbish, especially when some of it contains disgusting and potentially dangerous items, is outrageous and has pushed them to the edge of closing some of their drop-off points.
Bags of all colours, shapes and contents are also being left next to rubbish and recycling bins in public areas. Some of the bins have now been removed. This is a typical Council response to the misuse and abuse of facilities - removing or closing them so that no one has use of them because of vandalism and abuse by a minority, punishing everyone for the misdeeds of the few.

This was an opportunity to look at the quantity and type of waste we produce, and educate our children too about the ecological impacts of waste and consumption, and for us to make changes, big or small, as and when we can. It's such a shame that some people are just too selfish, short-sighted and stupid to realise that we all need to do our bit for the world in which we live.


Links for further exploration
https://www.recycleforwales.org.uk/recycling-knowledge/turning-welsh-waste-energy/one-wales-one-planet
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/wales-household-waste-recycling-england
https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/about-terracycle/recycle_your_waste?utm_campaign=admittance&utm_medium=menu&utm_source=www.terracycle.com
https://myrecyclingwales.org.uk/local_authorities/pembrokeshire?finyear=2018
https://www.facebook.com/pembrokeshirecareshareandgive/