The Ethics Trading Competition ends tomorrow at midnight.
You know you should…..
You could win 10 Homeopathy remedies - either a basic set or tailored to your needs. You could win soap nuts to try out - you know you need to try them right? You could win a beautiful wooden teddy bear jigsaw for your kids. (links to the companies generously donating these prizes are on the Comps page.)
Best of all you’ll be helping the British Lung Foundation.
My Mum has Emphysema. It sucks big time.
I’m sure we all have our favourite "causes" and I’m sure you all do what you can. Well, as a small business owner, this is something I can do, so I am blatantly using my blogs, website and any other avenue I can to try to help my parents in their fund raising efforts. Usually this will be simply a few bits for sale. But this time we’re going just a bit further. My Dad is doing a sponsored abseil and I’m running a competition to help raise money to add into that pot.
I hate seeing my family being ill and doing something helps us all feel just a little bit better about it. Hopefully we can make a difference to some lives too. We’re hoping to fund or part fund a Breathe Easy nurse - a bit like Macmillan but trained to deal with chronic lung conditions.
Want to win some Homeopathic remedies? Fancy trying soap nuts? Got kids who like lovely wooden jigsaws? All prizes have been donated by small businesses known to me.
Then enter the Competition here. Answer a couple of questions, drop me an email - with a donation for the British Lung Foundation (Which I’ll pass on to my Mum and Dad for the South Wales Breathe Easy groups) and your name will go in the virtual hat.
Good Luck and thank you!
I hate the commercialism. I hate it at Valentines day, Christmas, Easter, I just hate it.
What Mother’s Day needs is a re-launch without its commercial sponsors, say some. Professor Ralph Fevre says …….. He suggests making it a weekday public holiday.
I love my home made cards. My kids made about 3 each. But why are the big supermarkets more than doubling the price of flowers and plants, just because they have a bit of pink plastic round them and a tag that says "Happy Mothers Day"?
Anna Jarvis was the ninth of eleven children and made it her lifes work to create Mothers Day after her own mother died. Her idea was that motherhood should be celebrated, families should be together for the day. Eventually Woodrow Wilson declared a day dedicated to Mothers as the second sunday in May (in the US - UK traditions date bate to pre-christian times) Within a few years of it’s beginnings in 1914, commercialism had taken over.
Along with her sister Ellsinore, Anna spent the entire family inheritance on trying to undo the damage done to Mother’s Day. One of her protests even got her arrested for disturbing the peace. She died in 1948, in poverty and without success.
So, today I called my Mum, we sent home made cards and I’m spending the day quietly with my kids, celebrating my own Motherhood. I hope all Mothers reading here have a great day, you deserve it!
It’s a month on. I drove past yesterday. Well, I stopped actually. I have a thing about pulling out in front of a hearse. I won’t. I’d rather stop all the traffic and let the whole cortege out in front of me. So I did.
They were indicating to pull out as I drew alongside. The coffin lonely in the back. A flower arrangement sitting on top. Lilies. Clean and cream. The shiny black limo sitting behind. A short column of cars stacked behind.
So I stopped, put my car in neutral, switched on the hazards and let them all go. We sat quietly, my kids and I, as they drove slowly away. Then I carried on with my day. (bloke sat behind me wasn’t happy but I really don’t care.)
Was it her in the coffin? I have no idea. Could be coincedence, but I don’t believe in coincedence as a rule.
| Your Personality is Somewhat Rare (ENFP) |
 Your personality type is enthusiastic, giving, cautious, and loyal.
Only about 8% of all people have your personality, including 9% of all women and 6% of all men |
Help build a brighter future for children
As part of its First Mile programme, Openreach is challenging the nation to build a mile of words and unlock a £50,000 donation to I CAN, the charity that helps children communicate.
Submit your favourite word now and then spread the word to your family and friends!
The challenge is to make the Wall of Words 1 mile long by the end of March 2007 - that’s a target of 50,000 words. When we achieve it, every word will turn to gold (or a £1 coin at least) and the £50,000 donation will be unlocked.
In November last year, and the year before, I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. It’s a lot of words. As I write this, they need 9,700 or so. We’ve got to the end of the month, 25 days - that’s 388 words a day.
Add your word, help them make it to 50,000. Mine is "paradigm" after the post a little while ago on here. I’d love to know what your word is!
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeeee,
Happy Birthday to me.
If you come to my funeral - Don’t forget your wellies….
Not even death lets you off the hook on global warming and climate change. The debate will still be valid as your nearest and dearest plan how to dispose of your earthly remains. A carbon neutral death?
The demand for "natural burials" has been growing and the Natural Death Centre, an organisation which claims to help improve the quality of dying, is predicting an increase from 6.5% to 12% of all burials in the UK by 2010.
Burial plots are expensive and becoming rare in some areas. In Southgate a burial plot can fetch £3,000. Scary amounts of money! Then there’s the ecological impact of burying the dead. A body, fully clothed, in hardwood (probably not sustainable), buried in the ground. With a nice tidy lawn over the top. Cremation anyone?
The side effect [of increasing numbers of cremations] has been an increase in damaging mercury emissions in the air from crematoria caused by the melting of dental fillings.
Some crematoria have installed filters to prevent this. But aren’t they sterile, unfriendly places? Yes, I know, it’s a funeral. It’s not meant to be a happy place. But isn’t a funeral just another Rite of Passage in our journey through life? Can we not celebrate the life lived rather than the ending if it?
I don’t want sterile and unfriendly. I have an image of people standing on the grass, chatting away, sharing their memories. Yes some tears shed but laughter too, and plenty of hugs. Then a few years later those same people can come see me still and sit in the shade of the tree planted there, smell the spring flowers and hear the gentle buzz of honey bees.
Ray Ward seems to share this image.
His plan is eventually to turn Herongate Woods back into a natural woodland. And with that in mind, he insists bodies are buried at a depth of 4′6" - too shallow, he says, for another coffin to be loaded on top.
By planting trees and encouraging native bulbs, he hopes Herongate will look indistinguishable from any normal wood.
Herongate sounds wonderful. But wellies may be needed, depending on the weather.
Death is hard for those who grieve. Society doesn’t really allow time for the process to take place. Grief is different for each of us and we each work through it at our own pace. Perhaps a gentler, friendlier, more celebratory funeral would work for some of us. It would for me.
Bring your wellies …..
