Earth Hour 26th March
Dan, Helen and Alexander came over for the evening and, after dinner, we turned all the lights out and sat by candlelight playing games. We started with building Jenga towers but Alexander found it great fun to knock the towers down as quickly as they were being built. The next game was to make sculptures out of one A4 sheet of paper, some sellotape and a straw. Each team of two had an element (fire, earth, water, air, etc) and had to make a sculpture to represent it. We then guessed what each team had made. Brian and Beccy started by making the word 'fire' with their straw! We had the lights out for well more than the one earth hour and we all decided that we should do it more often. All our candles are now much easier to find.
TUC Rally - 26th March
Earlier in the day I marched with my union ATL and many other public service workers on the rally against the spending cuts (March for the Alternative). It was a very peaceful rally until, apparently, the later part of the day when some groups started to make trouble. I met other teachers in my branch of the union and from this volunteered to be union rep at work with a role of communication with members.
Youth Hostel Voluntary wardening
We signed up for one week at Llandeusant youth hostel in the Black Mountains/Brecon Beacons in Wales. Having wardened at a number of hostels in Devon, Pembrokeshire, Northumberland and Bushmills in Northern Ireland we know what to expect. This hostel will be quite remote but will allow us to do a lot of walking in the mountains as well as trips to Swansea and the beach.
WWOOFing
I heard about this from Joe, my nephew, who is in Australia and has been volunteering on a farm there through this agency. When I heard about it I thought it might be a good experience of real work for Beccy when she needs to do her work experience week. As she wants to do French for A level a farm in France was likely to be doubly useful and I could learn more French at the same time as Beccy. I joined the organisation and started to send emails asking for places. After a while I started to get some replies and have so far had two offers, one of which we will take. The farms run businesses where they sell either organic meat, vegetable or fruit products direct to the public, through their own restaurants or at local markets or they make bread, jams, wine, etc which they also sell. Some also have sustainable building projects on the go as well. We should get the opportunity to help with bread making (if I can learn to make French bread as well as learn to speak French more fluently then I will be really happy). In exchange for our labour we will get food and accommodation. Can't wait to try it out.
Bar Work
I tried to get places for Brian and I at Glastonbury in the stewarding team provided by Oxfam. I have tried a number of times to do this before but have never been lucky. We need to steward at some smaller festivals in order to get our names on the priority list. It was disappointing not to get a stewarding place, especially as the tickets sold out really quickly and I wasn't able to get us any. I decided to look for other organisations that might be organising stewards (they do this to raise funds for their own charity - the stewards work for 8 hours and the payment for the work goes to the charity). I couldn't find this but did find out about the Workers Beer Company (coincidentally I was sent an email by the Stop Climate Chaos coalition who wanted bar workers to work six hour shifts in exchange for free entry to the festival and a couple of free drinks. Again, the money you earn for working the bar is given to the charity - your wage is the festival ticket. There were no places left for Glastonbury but we did get places at a festival called London Feis in June. There are many bands on at the festival that I want to see and, if we work well, we should find it easier to get to our choice of festival in future years.
