recycling

It is Saturday night and I am perched at the island in the kitchen, sipping a Margarita that LSB picked up for me at The Errigle, and doing the Guardian crossword. I’m dressed appropriately for date night, which means I’ve donned my leather skater skirt and I’ve applied blusher as well as a light dusting of powder.  The joy of date night in the HOUSE means that I can wear lipstick, without smearing it all over my mask. I can also pop in my earrings, without the worry that I will trail one out of my earlobe when taking off my mask on the way in to a restaurant. Masks are a f**king menace aren’t they, aside from the fact that one might just save one’s life: which  should, I suppose negate any aggravations about aesthetics. I’m also wearing my slippers, and don’t have to wear tights. I hate tights; scratchy annoying things that they are. What’s the point in slathering on my Tropic leg shimmer, only to hide them behind a pair of Sainbury’s opaques?

The other good thing about date night in your house is that you can sit, while your husband makes you an aubergine curry, and read the Guardian Weekend Magazine. Over the last lockdown, I felt myself grow more and more Guardian as the weeks went on. I identified with just about everything Hannah Jane Parkinson wrote. The week, she documented how, in a fever of  spring cleaning, she took a tooth pick to the scum between the tiles in her shower. The day before, I had been caught wielding a cocktail stick, prising crumbs and grime that had lodged around my recycling bin. She felt a huge sense of achievement, and I concurred heartily, having felt a similar surge of pride myself, at the sight of my pristine bin. In the column the following Saturday, she mentioned the unexpected joy of a finding  a slab of sponge cake on her doorstep from a kindly neighbour.  I was only after whipping one up and sandwiching it with cream and jam, and was thinking I might deliver a piece to my mate Maggie who always gives our dog treats. Hannah Jane likes people who demonstrate their love through the medium of baked goods, and who couldn’t concur ? Friends who show their love by handing you a Tupperware bowl of roasted vegetable risotto should be forever cherished. We could be great mates, Hannah Jane and me. We share a love of unusual words (we agree that petrichor is one of the best ever); we are delighted with ourselves when we manage to run a measly 5K without having heart failure, and we are both stricken with similar bouts of apocalyptic dread. All these endear her to me immensely.

Another journalist of whom I am fond, is Hadley Freeman, and she grabbed my attention in her article this week which was about her fear of eggs, which borders on the pathological. LSB has a similar phobia, and like Freeman, has been known to leave the room, when the children start bashing the top of their boiled eggs with a spoon. It’s most irksome. There’s me, stumbling across something that the children will actually eat, and the second they crack open the shell, off he f**ks up the stairs, with a face on him like a truculent toddler.

So far so good, until I read about  Tim Dowling, who admitted that he’d been off the booze for 3 weeks. Three fecking weeks! Well, I was raging: I selfishly want everyone to be in the downward slide into semi-alcoholism as me: solidarity is what I’m after from my print companions, not declarations that they’ve all gone sensible. Still, he admitted that he still feels rubbish and irate, hence is none the better for his abstinence.

This morning alas, as I woke at 5am, feeling as though someone was trying to open up my skull from the inside using a crowbar, I concluded that Dowling perhaps has a point. Date night is all well and good, but in the pub you would limit yourself to one tequila based cocktail and not feel that you had to finish the can which contained four servings. Damn it Tim, but I may have to jump on that wagon with you.

The phone went at ten past three yesterday afternoon. It was The Mothership, in puerile form altogether.  

THE MOTHERSHIP:  Helen, I’ve just watched that video you put up; the one about recycling. 

ME;  Oh good, do you approve? 

THE MOTHERSHIP:  Well, there was some useful information apart from washing all those catfood  packets.  People have to go to their work you know.  No wonder you don’t get much done of a day.  Contact the manufacturers and tell them they should have tins as another option. 

Not that I ever liked tins. I threw out more food than the cat ate because it went off.  But, would  you believe, your Dad stands and cuts those sachets open with scissors, kept for the purpose; he says there’s a lot left inside and it’s a terrible waste. 

Anyway I digress.  What I have to say is, if you must continue with these videos then you need  to improve your presentation. I know you’re an amateur, but is there any need to make it so obvious? 

ME: (I’ll be honest with you folks. It stung.)  Deep sigh. Can you pin-point exactly what was wrong? (I mean why? Why in the name of God would I ask that?)  

THE MOTHERSHIP: Where do I start? Well first, the sound wasn’t great and near the end I could hardly make out what you were on about.  Did you not do that exercise* I showed you? 

ME: Deep sigh.

THE MOTHERSHIP: And then there was the sloppy English. It won’t do Helen, it won’t do at all. 

ME: Oh God.  

THE MOTHERSHIP: You were dropping your ‘ing’ endings all over the place and it doesn’t  sound well coming from an English teacher, of all people. You actually said ‘boggin’ and some other unpalatable terms  that I won’t go into now; very uncouth they were.  Who wants to listen to that sort of thing? 

The woman can suck the oxygen from a room in 9 seconds flat.  

THE MOTHERSHIP: And then! And then at the very end, when I thought you were finally wrapping up, you said ‘Stinkin’.  

ME: Did I?  

THE MOTHERSHIP: You did. You said Stevey wouldn’t use a pot of toothpaste instead of a plastic tube of Colgate because it was ‘stinkin’. Most uncouth. I can say, hand on heart, that I have never actually used it.  

(This is true. The Mothership has let me get away with saying FOR F**K’S SAKE in her earshot but I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘stinkin’ without getting berated for it. In fairness, I don’t employ it often.)  

THE MOTHERSHIP: And one more thing.  I mean that about complaining to Sheba or Gourmet, and I’d be asking them to start using the tins again. Because Cleo** is fussy too, she’s off the Sheba now and she wouldn’t look near Felix, but I think the Gourmet is very overpriced and she’ll only eat the Poultry selection, never the Ocean range, and that’s what Asda keep sending me. They just replace items if they don’t have them in stock, and they don’t even ask you. It was the same with my tonic water. I didn’t want the ordinary one, I wanted Slim-Line but they sent the other and your father has to watch his blood sugar.  

ME: You were saying?  

THE MOTHERSHIP: Yes, get on the phone or e-mail, I don’t suppose it matters, and tell them that yes, the plastic is bad for the environment or whatever, and bring back the tins. Far easier to wash. I agree.  

Finally!! The woman actually agreed on something!  

Off she went- rant over.

And, I’m raging to have to admit it, but she did, of course have a point. Several, in fact.  

Truth is, I was so mortified about doing the bloody video in the first place that I couldn’t bear to watch it again. But I did last night, and I didn’t even have a drink to soften the blow. Flip me but didn’t I go on and on? Far too long. I bored myself, so she was spot on there.  

Secondly, once I wrote a post about the children reading Enid Blyton and I mentioned the ‘paucity of adjectives’ in ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ (and, let’s be honest, every other piece in her oeuvre). Turns out I don’t have a leg to stand on as I must have said the words ‘brilliant’ and ‘fabulous’ a total of nine times each. The shame. 

So I’ll perhaps do another video in 2021 when I’ve got over this bollocking. Have a lovely Monday everyone.

*The Mothership has a range of vocal exercises she used when teaching children how to extend their vocal range for the class choir. There’s a lot of humming involved- the trick being that your ‘lips have to tingle’ as you do them. Otherwise, there’s no point. Apparently.

**Cleo is the small black bolshy cat we once left in Bangor while we went on our holidays in 2010. She’s still there, living it up by the seafront, giving orders. Savage wee beast too.

Are you ready everyone for this morning’s tirade? Because, this week, (although we’re only mid way through) I am at the end, the very end, of my tether. I am demented, driven daft and distracted (all at the one time) by the state of my f**king house. Even worse- a lot of it is my own fault. I wanted a dog. And, it turns out, there’s rather a lot of work involved. Animals it seems, attract other animals. Would you believe it another cat has rocked up at our back door, ambling in out of the brambles out of the back. The children thought that Bramble would be a suitable name for him, but given his rotundity have christened him ‘Fat Bramble’. With his vocal range and girth he’s like the feline equivalent of Pavarotti. He is a beautiful tabby and white puss with a temperament to match, unlike our dour and truculent Izzy, who’s only pleasant when you’re dishing out her Sheba. Problem is he has wreaked havoc since he arrived. The aforesaid Izzy took immediate umbrage, blamed the dog for this outrageous intrusion and decided to go for the poor greyhound. The dog ran off in terror and took a massive dump in the living room. All this before 8am. It wasn’t the best start to the day. My house is in a big enough state of chassis without these shenanigans.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a little video about my endeavors to recycle because I was going at it great guns. I had a system and it appeared to be working because I had actually just managed to off-load a lot of stuff for TerraCycle. But people, it seems that I am being thwarted at every turn. The dog.The f**king dog. She’s a sight hound and can sniff out anything food related in a matter of seconds. However she likes to wait until we are out and then she goes on the hunt. We left some sourdough on the counter and went upstairs. When we came back down that was gone. As we had run out of green compost bags I had also scraped some peelings and leftovers into a foil container. It was on the floor, licked clean. Then the blighter headed into the front bedroom where I am storing all my recycling. She found the bag of cat pouches which I had painstakingly washed and ripped a load of them to shreds- the floor was dotted with fragments of foil, catching the light. And no matter how fastidious one tries to be while cleaning, there was a distinct aroma of Sheba ‘Prime Cuts’ and ‘Fine Flakes in Jelly’ lingering in the air. That’s the last time I’ll be doing that.

The truth is, I could actually spend my entire life cleaning the house and sorting the recycling and it still wouldn’t be done. On Monday night we went down the Ormeau to Shed (Eat Out to Help Out oh yes, please I am in) and you’d be entitled to think ‘check her out, having her dinner in a restaurant of a Monday evening’ but the truth is, I instigated the meal by saying to LSB: ‘If I have to look at the f**king state of this shit show a second longer lives are going to be lost.’ ‘Let’s book a table,’ he replied. Few things cheer me more than a glass of Shed’s cracker of a Prosecco. 

Other people get a skip. They get a skip, and they f**k everything into it and take back control of their lives. I can’t do this. No, instead I go around to their skip and start hauling out stuff that they’ve chucked into it. I can’t help myself. I can’t bear the thought of adding more to land fill, so round I go, lifting out plastic sea-shell shaped sandpits and elderly storage units and chipped plant pots. ‘I will put this on Freecycle,’ I say, giving myself a self-righteous pat on the back. Indeed I intend to, but it doesn’t happen.

So yesterday I took action. ‘Feck this feeling miserable business,’ I thought. We had a new chest of drawers and a Billy Bookcase arriving from Action Cancer on the Ormeau so this spurred me into action. I popped some clothes belonging to LSB on a Facebook Zero Waste site and they are being collected tomorrow. I popped an ad on Gum Tree for a dog bed I thought we might use but never did. I sorted out some of my recycling, asking my children to help.

I felt a bit better.

To sum up, if you want an easy life, don’t get pets, unless you really like the smell of Dettol. Have no principles at all. F**k everything straight in the bin and to hell with the oceans.

I considered this, briefly, Then I thought, wouldn’t it be awful? I wouldn’t be here now, tapping away on my laptop in bed with a greyhound lying alongside, keeping my right leg warm. Life wouldn’t have the same richness if I could make the coffee in the morning without my cat shouting at me. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without a sense of revulsion if I wasn’t obsessed with recycling. I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t policing what everyone was putting in their bins.  It would be a half-ass life really, and who wants that? And if anyone wants to claim Fat Bramble that would be great. (Or if not, offer a cantankerous tortoiseshell a home so peace could resume here. I think that would be a fair exchange. )

(This is Tilly, hugging her trauma blanket after Izzy went for her). 

Last week I made a little video about recycling. I hate videos. I seize up inside my voice sounds strangulated and nasal. I watched LSB attempting to edit this one and he kept pressing the pause button and I looked as though I was having a stroke.

However, I thought about writing it all down instead and that was for too much work so I’m firing it up anyway. I will then will get back to my Saturday evening of lying on my sofa with the greyhound in front of the fire, (EVEN THOUGH IT IS AUGUST). FFS.

So here’s 7 minutes of your Saturday that you’ll never get back, but you may learn a wee bit about washing out crisp packets and cat food sachets.

If you are interested in recycling such items then here’s a few contacts for you. These are the guys in East Belfast;

This is the FB page for Kicks Count;

And finally this is The Painting Mum who is an all-round brilliant reuse and recycler of just about everything.

*LSB is the husband (Long Suffering Bastard) for the uninitiated.

It’s bad to whinge, isn’t it? I mean am I a bad person? We are living up here on the hill, we can walk our dog in the meadow and we have the shops beside us where all the staff are lovely and kind and most people, (apart from one prick my husband encountered on Friday,) adhere to the social distancing rules and don’t ram their trollies up your arse while you’re checking the dates on your M&S rotisserie style chicken.

But it’s me, and I am prone to a good old moan so off I’ll go, and don’t go judging me. I’m just f**ked off at this stage. Earlier I reached over LSB for my coffee and he said ‘Ouch! You just after knee-ing me there!’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’ ‘Or DID you? said the Older Child, her eyebrow raised knowingly. ‘I think perhaps you did.’

Perceptive wee article she is too because it wasn’t long after he’d cleaned the living room and said, ‘Now I don’t want to blow my own trumpet (well you may as well as I won’t be blowing it for you) but haven’t I done a great job in there? You may want to take a look.’

What is it with men? Every flipping day I do the dishes and the laundry and hang it out and take it in and cook the dinners and I don’t go around saying: ‘Oh, wasn’t that a great load of whites I just flung on there at 30 degrees?’ or ‘Check out these pots? Aren’t they positively gleaming after that good scrub with my responsibly sourced bamboo scrubber?’

I’ve started now, so I might as well tell you what else is annoying me.

I’m pissed off with people making sourdough and posting it on social media because its’s just rude when they can’t have me round and pour me a glass of Valpolicella Ripasso and serve it up to me with a hunk of manchego and homemade chilli jam. (Yes Louise, I’m talking about you, so I am.)

I’m fed up with the Zoom and Whatsapp calls that falter when the connection’s bad and you spend half your time saying ‘Oh No! You first! No, you go on sure! You first! Didn’t quite catch that!’ Then you get chatting about something interesting and in wanders the dog. ‘Oh and here’s the dog! Isn’t she lovely!’ ‘Oooh yes!’ ‘And here’s my child! And there’s your child!’ ‘Hello, Hello!’ Cue inane waving, when frankly, lovely as your children and your friend’s children may be, you want to have a proper, no holds-barred chat that is MOST definitely not for the tender age of the under eights.

I’m also fed up meeting people in the street or over the wall and saying a million time to the kids ‘2 metres! 2 metres! Keep well back there!’ which makes any class of normal conversation impossible.

I’m narked, that instead of sitting across from my mates, all tarted up and having a grand catch up over coconut margaritas in La Taqueria, that we are waving at each other across the street, wearing jogging bottoms and clutching small plastic bags of recently excreted shit, still warm from dog’s large intestines.

I’m agitated because I naively thought, that through all of this that I might get my house in order and do a spot of decluttering, but no, sure there’s no charity shops or recycling centres open so we’re still wading through mounds of shite and sure, by way of getting a dog we just brought at whole lot more truck in.

There’s no end to dog paraphernalia, I’m finding. Rugs and coats and leads and toys and food and treats. If you land yourself with a greyhound, you should know that they are prone to a chill, so we had to get a wee coat for Tilly. We ordered her pyjamas too, much to the Small Child’s delight, but they haven’t arrived yet, much to everyone’s disappointment.

And I’m really quite distraught, that Normal People is over on BBC 3. It was so heartrendingly, beautifully shot and so true- there’s a scene with Connell in episode 10 and if he doesn’t get Oscar nominated it’ll be a crime against acting. I enjoyed the book but I didn’t LOVE it- I got frustrated with the characters, I kept thinking, just fecking GET TOGETHER and be done with it. But in the series the fragility of the pair of them was so much more apparent and convincing to me. One could see how easy it was to be misunderstood, vulnerable and insecure as a young adult, perhaps with a distorted perception of self.  I worry that with all the media hype surrounding the sex scenes (and perhaps I’m underestimating teenagers here) that the point may be a bit lost on them- but to me it summed up so much of what it is to be young and confused; feeling lost and listless at university, especially as an arts student. Navigating new friendships and articulating what it was you wanted when you didn’t know yourself: that was hard, wasn’t it? (I feel, for the benefit of The Mothership here that I have to add that there was never anything in the way of bondage in my student romances, least she splutters out her tea and scalds herself.)

LSB said he was bereft when it was over, (‘Normal People’ that is, not his time at Queen’s after which ended he felt nowt but relief) and I feel the same- I haven’t seen anything that has affected me quite so much in a while. There was just such incredible tenderness in it, and at the moment, when everything is so emotionally charged-it had me in bits.

So there you are- just something else to be raging about. And it’s Sunday night, so another week of home-schooling and cramming in your own work and housework and feeling rubbish at every last bit of it. At least the dog is happy, even without her wee pyjamas, so that’s something.

So folks, I tried. Down I went to clap and cheer on the Ormeau Road, and try as I might to ignore the mini mountains of plastic bottles strewn along the route, but I couldn’t.

I do love the marathon ever so much. My pal Alison was doing the full thing and is a bit of a pro now it must be said. She stopped though, to give her child a hug, and  the tears were tripping me. I’m utterly emotionally incontinent these days, and marathons evoke strong feelings. I was equally excited to see my friend Brenda, who decided to run her first marathon before turning 40. This is the sort of notion I would bandy about, when 3 glasses of Malbec in at a party. I would never, follow through upon it though. ‘People who’ve had broken backs shouldn’t even COUNTENANCE such a thing,’ says the Mothership. What she really means though, is that she doesn’t want to be minding my children while I lie, prone, on the sofa, for three weeks afterwards.

In the event, I didn’t see Brenda. I didn’t see Brenda because while she ran past, I was pestering a poor girl at a Cancer Focus stall to give me a black bin bag to facilitate mass bottle collection. Brenda saw my children, standing at the side of the road scavenging for bottles. By now, they had entered into the activity with vigour. ‘Where’s your mum?’ she called. ‘She’s recycling!’ replied the Small Child.*

We scooped up over 100 bottles. I scrounged more bags from the kind lady at the stall, then when the arse feel out of one, went into Graffiti where Stephanie gave me a more robust bin liner. LSB joined us after his leg of the relay and was promptly handed a heavy, leaking bag of bottles. ‘Thanks,’ he mumbled. He was slightly more enthusiastic than usual because River Rock are offering 10p for the Running Club with every label collected.

River Rock, as far as I’m concerned, can take their 10 pence and shove it up their grossly inflated arses. While they claim to be supporting local groups with their measly offering, they are doing disservice to the planet as a whole. They know it, we know it, David Attenborough knows it, and still they insist on providing single use plastics, in their thousands. Since they sponsor the event, they perpetuate this notion that runners NEED plastic bottles at 6 miles along the route. Most of the bottles we collected were at least three quarters full. I’m not taking anything away from the relay runners, but most of these guys aren’t doing more than 6.8 miles (6.8 in Leg A) and can surely manage to go for more than 5km without a drink. Churches were also out in force with refreshments, as were individuals and pop up gazebos from charity groups.

In London this year, while there was still some reliance on water bottles, they also handed out edible seaweed pouches of water along the route. These are an infinitely better option for the environment. Belfast, you need to catch up. Yes, River Rock are the sponsors,  but maybe they could take their profits and direct them in to developing eco-friendly options. We’d all be grateful.

Wd came home and operation ‘make a fish to make a point’ began. Water was decanted into 2-litre milk containers, which will has already been used to flush the toilets. We cut off the labels and now a big bag of bottles is waiting to go to the dump. The children have taken some to make ‘jet packs’. In the meantime, should anyone find a purpose for over 100 small bottles do get in touch.

*Before some jobsworth contacts social services, I was a mere few feet away, but rummaging in a box, hence momentarily obscured.

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Right, fess up everyone. Who’s been watching Marie Kondo Tidies Up on Netflix? I’ll admit, I’ve found it hard to resist, but I’ve limited myself to two and a half episodes. I don’t have time to WATCH people tidy, I just need to get on it. I fear it might be a bit like cookery programmes-  thinking yes, I’ll DEFINITELY make that, but I don’t, since everyone likes my Chinese Beef in Ginger so why would I risking something different? I tend to salivate more over the glorious décor than the recipes anyway. I felt so CHEATED when I learnt that Nigella Lawson wasn’t creating her shredded lamb and pomegranate salad in her West London Pad, but in a set at Elstree studios in Hertfordshire.

I digress.  For the uninitiated, Kondo has taken herself off to America, land of excess, to bring her tidy tips to those who’ve accumulated a lifetime’s worth of shite. In she swoops, like an elfin Fairy Godmother, to help them rediscover who they ‘really are’, through binning  their stuff. There are many cringe-worthy bits: the worst of which being the ‘group prayer,’ where they kneel and honour THE HOUSE to give thanks for its presence in their lives and apologise for not recognising its worth. I don’t know why I’m surprised; this is a woman who feels it’s shameful to pair socks. (I may have expressed my annoyance about this before.)

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, here’s a bit of Kondo rumination on the appropriate treatment of hosiery:

Socks and Stockings
Some people think it doesn’t really matter if they wear socks with holes in them or tights that are pilled, but this is like declaring ‘today doesn’t really matter’. Your feet bear your weight and help you live your life, and it is your socks that cradle those feet. The socks you wear at home are particularly important because they are the contact point between you and your house, so choose ones that will make the time you spend there even more enjoyable.

Balling your socks and stockings, or tying them into knots, is cruel. Please put an end to this practice today.

See? Told you she was barking. The other irritating bit is when someone, often Kondo herself, falls over a pile of tat, to much hilarity. ‘Babe, we just have too much stuff!’ exclaimed one particularly irksome woman, after taking a tumble. I could just imagine the director staging the whole thing to inject some liveliness into proceedings, since Kondo has all the personality of one of those socks she’s so keen in folding.

The format is thus: in she trots, with lots of insincere ‘semi-hugging’, and cuddling of any infants who happen to be knocking about. (‘I’m the nice lady who’s going to put all your toys in the bin and teach you a new game called ‘organising’.) She then tries not to look absolutely appalled by the clip of the place.

I urge you to watch Episode Two, which features a deranged  American-Japanese couple.  God love them. They didn’t need Kondo, they needed a lifetime of therapy and an in-house Relate Counsellor. A more beleaguered looking husband you’d be hard pressed to find. The wife, who created the biggest mountain of clothing that Kondo had ever clapped eyes on, actually admitted that she shopped when he pissed her off so she could ‘hit him where it hurt.’ Fuck me.

Now that I’ve got thinking about what annoys me I can’t stop. I was apoplectic when I saw about 15 bags of clothes  deemed ‘trash’ while another pile was destined for ‘good will’. Seriously? Up rocked the dumpster truck and off it went for landfill.  And what had Kondo got to say about that? Feck all, so long as it was out of the way.

Happily, I think we’re doing better here in Ireland.  When I dropped off very raggedy clothes into the Barnardo’s bins at Ormeau Recycling Centre, three of them were overflowing, which was heartening.

Thus to conclude, while I find her sanctimonious and irritating in the extreme, I concede that Kondo has a point. If we can move away from the mindset that stuff equals happiness, and make more conscious decisions about our purchases, we’ll be more content. I get it. Just don’t expect to me posting drawer-fuls of tee-shirts standing to attention. I’ve already got a lot of hobbies already, and folding ain’t going to become another one.

Folks, it’s Recycling Week in the UK., and here’s a fun fact for you: Belfast actually STARTED this initiative in 2003 and then it went nationwide. How amazing, and a big shout out for our city being ahead of the curve. But, last week at Belfast half-marathon, we weren’t exactly covering ourselves in glory when it came to saving the earth. It was a fecking travesty. There were bottles EVERYWHERE: many of which were almost full. There were overflowing bins with all manner of garbage, so I doubt whether every last bottle made its way to a recycling centre. I grabbed a few and took them home and the wee ones and I watered the plants with them. I did the same after the marathon last year. Many of the bottles I rescued were the new mini versions supplied by River Rock especially for the occasion. They had been handed out at 5km intervals along the way so every thirsty runner could have a drink. The fact that so many of these contained all but a few sips suggested that the runners had plenty more than they needed.

I wrote this article last April and sent it off to several local papers. It remained unprinted, and I didn’t receive as much as an acknowledgement from any of them. Many years ago I suffered a horrific accident. These same publications were on the phone, often several times a day, harassing the life out of me and my family. Clearly, where personal trauma is the issue, they’re all over it, but what about planet trauma? All that save the earth shit? They don’t appear to give a hoot.

Here’s the article I wrote and filed away. Should you like to read and share it, I would be most grateful. If you are part of a running club yourself, perhaps you could advocate the use of paper cups and cones throughout the race. And frankly, I’m so pissed off about the bottle situation, deliberately perpetuated by River Rock and therefore by the Coca Cola company, that I’d be tempted to boycott the event altogether until they review their practices.

Article:

I love running, and I love the environment. Unfortunately the two don’t often go hand in hand. My husband and I regularly compete in ten km races around Northern Ireland. This means that we come home with double the bling, the tee-shirts and the goody bags. I’m trying (and failing) to adopt a more minimal approach to life, and as these spoils of races accumulate it not only adds to the clutter in my home, but in my mind as well.

Marathons make me a bit twitchy these days. On our screens we see marine life poisoned by plastics: turtles who have ingested bags and choked and fish with microfibers clogging their intestines. It makes distressing viewing. But when we, the runners, reach the finish-line, we find ourselves in a different type of sea, our feet awash in a tide of plastic bottles. The focus at these runs is often a quick event shut down, so we can’t be sure whether the rubbish is sorted. Often it isn’t, and this needs to be addressed.

So what positive changes can we make? At Berlin marathon, the streets are lined with volunteers, serving water (and oddly, tea) out of paper cups and cones. I suggest we have more water stops with non-plastic receptacles as one solution. In any one city there are numerous running clubs, who could come together to support competitors and organise the provision of water and the clean up afterwards. Often at the marathon the role of volunteers is vague, but a systematic approach with an emphasis on the care of both runners and the environment would make for a better marathon experience all round.

What about the parched runners at the end? Could sponsors use their imaginations and come up with a specific reusable vessel which runners could them keep them as a momento of their day? And again, there is a huge role for volunteers here, collecting litter and separating out what is compostable and recyclable from what isn’t.

Organisers of all running events should also consider the environmental cost of bulk buying tee-shirts. Just because these can be picked up cheaply does not mean that they should be an automatic inclusion of every race pack. Worrying research has come to light recently about the accumulation of plastic in river sediment. A study of over 40 rivers beds in Northern England showed that every river-bed which was tested contained deposits of plastics. Many of these microfibers come from clothes, which are released into the water systems after multiple washings. This is another incentive to discourage the mass production of clothes containing polyester and to return to more sustainable materials.

Recycling plastics is not a feasible solution anymore. We need to look at alternatives, since the broken down micro-plastics are finding their way into waterways and thus our bodies, the long-term effects of which could be dangerous.

Running shouldn’t cost the earth. But the high I get from running with my friends and the camaraderie at races is being steadily eroded by the over-flowing bins and short-sightedness of event organisers. At our local parkrun in Ormeau Park, Belfast, we have introduced reusable cups for tea and coffee afterwards. This has resulted in saving at least 400 polystyrene cups from land-fill in the month since it has been introduced. Small changes make a huge difference, so as runners, let’s ask ourselves what we can all do to make Irish running events more sustainable.

It is 10-58 and the sky is still alight with hues of lemon and blue merging into one from my skylight window. Against this backdrop I draw deep breaths and feel my heart and lungs inflate with gratitude for the week that has been.

It has been a busy one for SWB. Normally I pootle about; write; do some light cleaning (VERY LIGHT, I hear the Mothership say) and then act as a slave to my off-spring from 2pm onwards. But as the term has drawn to a close, social engagements come in droves, and some work has been thrown my way. And then, just as I was starting to exhale, I got a call to ask if I would do a recording for THE TELEVISION. Can I just say, if you ever want to feel over-awed, sit round a table with comedian Colin Murphy, Alan Meban, aka Alan in Belfast, and Gemma-Louise Bond, aka That Belfast Girl, and pretend that you have something to add to the discussion.

Alan is a blogger, a social commentator and a damn fine chair at Slugger O’Toole events. He’s politically astute, seemingly unflappable and  trains people in how to manage social media.

Gemma Louise is 26 and blogs about fashion, food and lifestyle. Her website is polished and she has thousands of followers, with girls anxious to emulate her style and make-up. She works in PR which shows in her easy manner and confidence on camera; or maybe she’s just a natural. Whatever it is, the girl’s got sass, and I like her. She would be fun on a night out, and indeed I hear that she is.

Being filmed for the telly is nerve-wracking, regardless of how lovely your director and fellow panellists may be. It didn’t help that it was the hottest day of the year. The sweat ran in steady rivulets down my back, and every time I shifted in my seat I was sure I heard a squelch. Prior to filming, I’d eaten a filet of salmon a day past its use-by date. Nerves, heat and potentially dodgy fish do not make for comfortable guts, and mine aren’t well-behaved at the best of times. ‘Please God,’ I prayed, ‘don’t let me have to run, microphone trailing, for a dose of the skits.’

So there I was, willing my innards to play ball, when the chat started.

‘Helen what do you do blog about then?’ asked Conor.

‘Well, myself mainly, and my life, and any significant events that happen, in my life, to me. So basically, my blog is about me. And sustainability. I love a bit of recycling.’

‘So, you’re a narcissist then Helen?’

‘Ahh no. It’s just that I’ve no interest in anything else, for example popular culture, or make-up or any of that malarky. No, I write about me, and how writing has been a most cathartic for me, in helping me work out who I am, and what I do and how I tick.’

‘Hmmmm,’ says everyone round the table.

‘Upon reflection, Colin, you may be correct. I’m narcissism personified.’

‘So it would seem Helen.’

I felt like a right turnip.

But what could I say? My blog is more a less a journal about my life, and it has helped me figure out a few deep truths. By blogging regularly, I force myself to create more content, and hopefully develop my style.

However, I’m 39 and I’m late to this game. There is a whole technical vocabulary out there of which I’m unaware, and as we talk about the impact of laying our lives out for scrutiny and the digital footprint we’ll leave behind, I do wonder what I’m playing at. I’m not very circumspect; I don’t have a filter and maybe I need to cultivate one. Gemma Louise has pluck and nonchalance and seems to ‘get’ how these things work. But the conversation makes me question myself. What DO I want to achieve? What am I trying to sell? Me? My lifestyle? And have I become one of those ‘fake people’ who ‘curates’ a life on-line that bears little resemblance to reality?

So, when in doubt, I turn to the Stoics. I find them a helpful bunch. And last night when I came in, my husband, although the poor fecker was trying to sleep, handed me his copy of ‘The Daily Stoic.’ Read May 2^nd he mumbled. And what words of wisdom there were within.

‘First tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, then do what you have to do,’ said Epictetus. In order to do this we need to: ‘spend some time- real, uninterrupted time, thinking about what’s important to you, what your priorities are.’

What good advice. The truth is, I’ve been ‘test-driving’ a new life for a while and I’ve been avoiding doing some serious thinking about what I really want to achieve.

So what do I want? Well wouldn’t it just be delightful if a nice publisher came along and read my blog and said, ‘Isn’t this just great? I’ll just collate that neatly for you, sort an agent and we’ll have a lovely book, ‘Ruminations from a Sour Wee Bastard’, ready to hit the shelves by December 1^st for the Christmas rush. How does that sound Helen?’

‘That’ll do well thanks,’ I would reply. ‘Now where’s the Bollinger?’

Since I don’t live in a fairy-tale world, I may have to get off my rear end and make this happen. Blogging has been a wonderful medium for making me write and overcome my inhibitions. It has also opened up opportunities for me. I never thought the phone would ring and someone would ask ME to go on the telly and ask my opinion. And feck me, as I have discovered, television, is scary. Those people who make it look easy, well I applaud them.

So tonight, instead of feeling rubbish because I’m knackered and frankly feel a bit intimidated by the big world out there, I’m going to feel grateful for the opportunities that my new life has afforded me.

Life is by turns funny and absurd and mercurial, but since I’ve decided to throw my road map out the window, I better learn to enjoy it, and learn along the way. Thanks for joining me on the ride everyone: it means a lot.