MAKE A ONE MINUTE FILM

Wecan is a climate campaign group I am involved in and this is me a couple of years ago when we campaigned at Heathrow airport. The founder members were eight women, including me, who were all part of a reading group and  wanted to do something about stopping the proposed third runway. We all have children and are worried about their future on this planet. There is a one minute film competition that launched last year with the help of Wecan, and is launching again this year. Its called One Minute To Save The World.  I helped judge entries for the final short list last year, and the films were  brilliant, some simple, some weird, funny - anyone can enter, you don't have to be film maker.We had entries from children and primary schools, from amateurs and professionals.  Have a look at the website below.

Make a 1minute film on climate change and you could win £5000, laptops, Flipcams and the SONYNEXVG10 HD camcorder.  Winning films will be screened in front of world leaders at COP16 in Mexico and be part of an on-line campaign going out to millions of viewers, they will also go to International Film Festivals in 2011. 1 Minute To Save The World is an international competition, open to all ages and free to enter. Judges include award wining film director and climate activist Shekhar Kaphur, Passion Pictures, Ben Kott (Google Europe Environmental Operations) and the UK Copenhagen 4 (youth climate change activists). Competition deadline is 17th December (12th November for under 18 age group).

In partnership with Unicef, Passion Pictures, United Nations Development Program, APE (Artist Project Earth) and Sony.

http://www.1minutetosavetheworld.com

 

Marriage

Tuesdays are the days that my Times column - Marriage -  comes out in the Body and Soul Section. Today it's about how my husband bought me a bicycle on ebay - two years after he promised me one for my birthday. I wrote that I was suspicious of his motives, just to spice things up, but actually I was thrilled and have bicycled every day to school and back feeling smug and happy not to have to walk down the busy Uxbridge Road, or use the car which is so wasteful.

We went to a preview of a animated children's film called Despicable Me which was utterly brilliant. It's all about an "evil" Russian villain who wants to steal the moon, but his terrible ways are tempered when he adopts some children from a children's home. The special 3d effects are superb, there is a scene where they all dip and dive in a rollercoaster and we were all squealing in terror and delight. The movie opens on October 15th.

Diet and Detox

I came home heavy from the holidays and bloated and huge. Too much fish and chips, soda bread and wine. But wow it was fun. Then a week later I went to Italy for three days for a friend's special birthday. Eleven girls and three men and I have never weighed so much. Or eaten so much. So when a special offer for a  detox diet landed in my email box, I paid. The food for four days arrived in a cardboard box. Cinammon and blueberry flaxseed with soya milk and grapefruit for breakfast day 1, followed by mediterranean lentil stew and vegetarian burgers for lunch. It seemed easy. But by day three I had a killer headache (probably from not drinking caffeine) and on day four when there was just soup for dinner, I was cheating. A Godiva chocolate here and another one there. A tiny bit of cheese on an oatcake here and another there. Life is too short to spend it hungry. Although I am now back to the weight I was before the summer. I'd like to loose another 10lbs but it seems like too much hard work and I read a report in the newspaper yesterday which said that scientists have now discovered it's easier to loose weight by diet than exercise, and you'd have to exercise as much as an olympic athlete to really see the benefits. Anyone have any ideas? 

Reasons to Be Cheerful (Part I)

We are back from three blissful weeks in West Ireland. When I thought about returning to London, it was with dread. I wasn’t looking forward to the pollution, the dirt and the noise. However it was time. I’d got fat and lazy in Ireland, just lounging around, reading (I recommend Sofia Tolstoy's Diaries) eating, and jumping into the freezing Atlantic sea for a few freezing seconds.

Reasons to Be Cheerful: 

My Cat: – She’s fatter too, but paradoxically refused to eat while we were away, even though I’d arranged for someone to feed her. She’s an old slapper and was probably being fed somewhere else.

Friends:  Loved going around to see old friends last night and finding out they are expecting a baby.

My desk:   I find it hard to concentrate anywhere else but at my own desk. I feel like a character out of Rear Window   I can see all the neighbours coming and going as I try to concentrate on my writing. It’s like watching a very slow soap opera. It’s very different to seeing the giant hare and the odd seagull out of the window from the house in Ireland.

A normal Diet: In Ireland I ate vast quantities of soda bread with smoked salmon, cheese, and homemade jam. We had real foodie guests and they wouldn’t stop thinking about food and cooking food. I put on at least two kilos.  It really was time to get home.

The Park Club  Even though we went for hearty walks (we even climbed Diamond Mountain in Connemara) and swam in the freezing sea, I didn’t really exercise. I missed my health club with it’s huge outdoor swimming pool and every class imaginable. It’s good to be back.

The Street Party: We were just back in time for our second street party. We had one last year. It’s easy to arrange -  you just have to do a collection for charity and the council will shut the street down for the day. It’s really good fun and the children loved having the road shut so they could bicycle up and down, play ping-pong in the road and rush into each other’s houses. Shame it can’t be more like that all year round. We all ate together and I met a man of 83 who’s been living in the street since the Blitz! He said in the old days, when he was a child, they had two street parties a year – one at Christmas. When I looked shocked and wondered about eating in the cold, he said they didn’t notice things like that, they were just so pleased to escape the tedium of work.

Back to School

Back to school and to reality. Here I am again, sitting at my desk looking out at my street. I have loved the summer holidays, the hightlight being watching the dolphins swimming near the horseshoe shaped beach in Connemara, in the West of Ireland. It was lovely to be able to read, walk barefoot and pick blackberries and apples from the garden and make crumble with organic spelt flour (makes you feel less bloated than normal flour) and dig for mussels on the shore at low tide.

My 6 year old daughter Belle had long sun-bleached hair, uncombed for the last three weeks, and knotted, but she had it chopped off yesterday, in time for school, and immediately looked more grownup and less carefree. For the first time ever, I was weirdly efficient and bought school uniform, including winter trousers and thick tights at the beginning of the summer, but had a mad rush to buy school shoes yesterday. School uniform seems to run out by the September and last winter I couldn't for love or money find winter tights in the right size for my daughter.

These are the changes I would like from supermarket school uniforms:

More choice of narrow-fit/slimline trousers for skinny boys like my son and with standardized waist adjusters and offered in different lengths.

Warmer school trousers for the really cold part of winter

Warmer school shirts, made of viyella. (Perhaps they exist?)

School schools for girls with rubber on the toes.

If you haven't yet bought all the uniform you need, you can use Vouchercodes for free delivery on school uniforms from Marks and Spencer  and also log on for a sale of kids clothes   http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/debenhams.com 

Thank you

There are times when I want to shout thank you, thank you thank you. My daughter and I set out today in the pouring rain to the Coronet Cinema in Notting hill. We wanted to see Toy Story and today seemed good as it was raining and Tuesdays are half price. I walked, she scootered, and finally we took a 94 bus. We queued at the ticket office, got to the front and with a sickening sense of horror, I realized I had left both my cards at home.  And I had no cash. I feared the worst. A disappointing journey home, no Toy Story, a rainy disastrous day, nothing day. Except.... the lovely lady behind the counter said I could just go in and "if I was honest" and I could pay later. Bless her.  I just spoke to her paid and she said thank you! I told her she had made my day. 

Stuart the Gardening Angel

After sticking the gardening widget in my last post and moaning and complaining about my overgrown jungle,(patio)  I went to the ice cream cafe where all the St Stephens parents go after school for endless ice cream treats(in my day you had an ice cream twice a summer). We were sitting having tea  when I met a man called Stuart, nanny and gardener and hired him on the spot. Not to nanny my children, I'm well past those kind of days.  I know I could have done it myself, but it had got to the point where it would have taken me several days and just looking at it overwhelmed me.

He actually turned up, hours before guests were arriving for a barbeque and sat down for a half an hour to tell us about his career as a nursery nurse. It was turning into a tea date and the guests were arriving soon, so I showed him the jungle, and he didn't bat an eyelid, even though there were no gardening gloves and the barest of tools.  I didn't have to pay him £10,000 (the price quoted as a minimum by a garden designer I read about) actually a tiny tiny miniscule fraction of that for two hours of weeding and plucking and clamping and cutting. The garden is transformed - well manicured, hemmed in, edited.  He's coming back for more. Funny isn't it, when you set you heart on doing something or changing something it all seems to fall into place.