On this site I’ll be writing less about photography, and more about World issues, justice issues, Church issues and random bits that interest me.The reason for this is simple. We’ve decided to take our business blog more seriously, and my thoughts and comments on photography will be appearing on the Hoskins Gallery blog instead of here.

I’m hoping that this will in turn help me to be more consistent with my blogging, instead of allowing myself to become overwhelmed with ideas to blog about, I’ll be quite clear about where to blog about specific things. Like, I’ve just published a new blog containing some early musings about Humanitarian Photography on our Hoskins Gallery blog and I’ll be doing a wee bit of blogging about the Church of Scotland General Assembly this week (mostly focused on the World Mission Council).

anyhoo, that’s all I’m going to say on the matter just now, here’s to more blogging!

Peace Out

When I have shifts at Cotswolds, I will almost always walk or cycle the 2.2 miles to work – unless the rain is really nasty or I’m doing the Tearfund Rice and Beans challenge! We also, as a couple, make an effort to walk wherever we can – the city centre is a 40 minute walk from our flat, and our nearest supermarket can be reached in less than 5 minutes walking! We don’t often walk to Church – but that is a 4 mile walk uphill at 8am!

I don’t understand people who drive a walkable distance – it costs more; is often far more stressful; doesn’t always save that much time and just isn’t as enjoyable!!! I urge you, encourage you, walk or cycle as much as possible! It’s great fun, helps keep you fit, and can help the environment! Don’t just do it for the weekend – do it for as long as possible!

Do you walk/ cycle?

Peace Out

For me, I’m hoping to use this 5 day challenge to focus on those in the world who don’t have the luxuries we have here in the west – not just those who are starving or have little food. I want to spent time thinking snd praying about the people I met in Israel/ Palestine, in Nepal and in Pakistan. People who I’ve met and who are real to me.

I know that some people don’t agree with or understand why someone would do this challenge, and thats fine. For me, its about empathy; an attempt (however futile) to put myself in the shoes of others. As Linda and Dave did, I’ve had people tell me that attempting this challenge is unnecesary, stupid, pointless….honestly, I don’t care. I’m not doing this for the pleasure of others, to be overly pious, for any reason other than I was asked to do this challenge and I accepted.

I fully expect this week to be hard, to struggle, to have more moments of selfishness than moments of prayerful focus – I don’t usually do well on little food! But then, if it wasn’t a sacrifice, it wouldn’t be a challenge would it!?

To be honest, I’m already struggling – and I’ve only been going for 22 hours! I’m constantly hungry (being tired from the 24 hour event yesterday isn’t helping). I’m not even following the portion sizes to the letter! I’m eating about 2.5 times the amount suggested in the pack – I can’t see me lasting long in a job where I’m standing 8 hours a day on 140 grams of food – a pathetic excuse? Perhaps? But I’m trying to have a sensible approach to the week.

I can feel myself already starting to think more about the food I could be having instead of the people I’m trying to focus my prayers on – I’m working hard to push past that.

My keys to the week? Determination; prayer; sleep; realism.

Why the last one? Because I’m doing this for 5 days, in that time I’ll consume 1.6kg of food. How many families survive on less? Realism, this is a choice for me, forced upon me by no one but myself. For thousands, millions, there is no choice, no other option….

Peace Out

Day 3′s challenge was: Pass it on. Tell a neighbour or friend about the Carbon Fast and suggest one action they could do. Use the postcards in the booklet to help

This kind of went well for me. On one hand its very much my nature to tell people about things like this
anyway – not in an attention seeking manner, just telling them about it. On the other hand, I failed to make an intentional effort to pass on one of the booklet postcards – but I will yet!

I am trying to spread the word through my blog, facebook and twitter, but the personal touch, face-to-face interaction is always better. I’ve spoken at length to a couple of people at work (as well as Hoskins Gallery I work in an outdoor shop) about the challenge – although they didn’t seem to keen on the challenge! To be fair though, being an outdoor shop, a fair few are already quite environmentally conscious.

Did you tell anyone about the challenge yesterday?

Peace Out

We do have a garden, but we don’t grow anything in it except grass (and weeds!). So we don’t have anything we wish to encourage to grow there. But, we are fortunate here in Aberdeen that our local council help us to recycle food waste. Next to our kitchen sink we have a wee green bin, that comes with biodegradable bags in which to put our food waste. This then goes directly into our brown wheelie bin (same bin as garden waste) to be recycled appropriately by the council. Not a new challenge for me today then, but it did make me wonder what I would do with all the food waste if I didn’t have that bin – and I probably would put it into the general rubbish. for that, I’m glad for the council scheme. I know I wouldn’t recycle anywhere near as much if they didn’t make it so easy! Hopefully, if and when we move house, we will have a similar scheme in our new place – or at the very least I will be more thoughtful about what I do with my waste and why…..

How’s your Carbon Fast going?

Peace Out

My first decision was ‘Which light Bulb?’ it took me a while to work out which light bulb would be the biggest sacrifice for me in the house. (This is probably a boring bit – sorry!). We have this up-lighter in our living room behind our sofa – I always have it turned on when I’m in, well, just because I like that wee bit extra light over the up-lighter, lamp and fairy lights that are already turned on. It’s the closest light to where I usually sit – but I can easily move if I need the light! I’ll find out over the next 40 days if I really need it or not….I’m also trying to take today’s challenge a bit further and be more disciplined with turning lights off when I leave a room – I’m not always great at remembering to do that! So, all in all, today isn’t the most challenging day (sacrificially) to start (it’s nice of Tearfund to ease us into the challenge!). But it’s still a challenging day as far as my usual behaviour goes….

Peace Out

Here’s what Tearfund have to say about it:

The Carbon Fast provides  daily actions and prayers for Lent to help you and your church protect poor people from the changing climate and care for God’s good creation.

This year we’re excited that the Carbon Fast has gone global, with churches in Australia, the Netherlands, Brazil, the United States and many more joining in!

Look out for the weekly actions and reflections, each based on a different theme, to get a flavour of how the Carbon Fast is happening around the world and to help you along too.

Our day-to-day lives may not be impacted severely by the changing climate – yet.

But what about people who struggle to feed their families or find a home that won’t get washed away, or who can’t work because the fields have been destroyed by droughts and storms?

And here in the UK, as many people struggle with heating bills we can see how even predictable weather can push us to the edge.

It’s our job to bring hope.

What cost do our energy-intensive lifestyles have…on us…on poor communities…on God’s creation?

Join us in the Carbon Fast this Lent to respond to this challenge, remembering how God has called us to respect and look after his good creation and to protect poor people who we know are suffering the most.

For more details about this campaign, and other Tearfund campaigns, follow this link: http://www.tearfund.org/en/get_involved/campaign/

Will you join me?

Peace Out!

This challenge has been a CHALLENGE!!! I shall never eat rice in the same way (next time it will be with an Indian I will think of others differently and I hope and pray I will think of my own diet differently. Chris and I have learnt a lot of lessons since starting our business about what we ‘have’. We are so blessed to have a supportive family who have bailed us out when we literally couldn’t afford to eat. Who does that for others that don’t have that support? Or who’s family want to give them everything but can’t? One lot who are part of this are Tearfund. The whole starting point of this challenge began with them and their hard work. They are trying to get people to see for themselves what poverty does to people. What they have to face. Dave and I haven’t even scratched the surface. I encourage you, who feel compelled, to try this challenge. It has changed me and I truly hope it changes you.

When I press the send button on this blog the challenge is off for me on medical advise and I shall celebrate with a muffin! For we are lucky to have them and I would love to give one to everyone else who feels as hungry as me tonight.

Thank you for your support.

Here’s Dave’s last day (by the way I was honest too just we had different things to say)

Day 5, the end is in sight!

Well, it’s nearly over.
Rice and butter beans are cooking on the hob, my last “meal” of the challenge.
Had porridge and rice/red kidney beans today, boring

So what have I learned this week:-
Obviously when I’m hungry, I go into self-preservation mode and can’t think about anyone else!
Eating for enjoyment is much more fun than eating to survive.
I could easily eat half of what I normally eat and be perfectly (more?) healthy.
Hot water doesn’t taste like coffee.

All in all, it’s not had the effect on me that I, or Tearfund, had hoped for but I’ve tried to be honest and not put a spin on it just for print.
Many others will be going through the challenge at the end of the month and I’m sure that we will see a whole spectrum of experiences. I look forward to reading about them, maybe then I’ll be able to look back on this week and empathise with them and the millions of people who live like this every day.
Until then though…………..bring on the cake!!

Dave

I have had a lot of interesting conversations today and I have thought a lot about how we use food to abuse our bodies. Anorexia, bulimia, addition, comfort eating, starvation and the list goes on. Our access to food seems to control us in a way that we end up using food to ‘feed’ our own problems. That may be too much or too little but I have found it interesting that while others starve with no other choice we have an opt in opt out approach to our diets.

So far on this journey I have been pretty consumed by what others think but today I really took time to reflect on how I felt about it. It has been something that (weirdly) I have really enjoyed. It has opened my eyes up to poverty and to far more issues than just  ‘rice and beans’. It hasn’t been about just depriving my food intake but has made me open my eyes to more than that.

I hope for some of you the work of Tearfund has had an impact on you and what they do. My most favourite thing about them is that they equip people to change their own lives not just to give a ‘quick fix’ in times of desperation. I encourage you to read more about them and learn more about what they do and how you could support them at www.tearfund.org.

Here’s Dave’s day:

This afternoon I ended up in Asda for a few thing for work. I was awed by the choice. Just for rice there is a whole aisle! I have never noticed that before. (see facebook photo) I began to notice more:
A child screaming wanting what it wasn’t allowed. A lady looking at several bags of potatoes before making a choice. Another lady picks up a pineapple and goes back for one more. Buy one get one free. Three for Two. A crowd round the reduced section. Even as I get served I asked the guy how his day had been “crazy” he said ” Why I got myself 3 jobs I will never know.” I looked at him and responded “You are lucky then. Some people have none” (Poor man)
What was supposed to be a quick trip to the shops messed with my head.

This 5 days was just meant to be something to do to support Tearfund. It is already, for me, becoming way more than that. By this point you are probably desperate to know more about Tearfund and how you can support them right? Well please go to their website at http://www.tearfund.org/ and ‘See for Yourself’ what they do.

Hungry? Oh yes. I am so thankful for Dave doing this too otherwise I may have not managed But we are two days down. My plan for this evening is to go to sleep as soon as possible to pass the time until breakfast! I will leave you with Dave’s comments….

Day 2 and the novelty’s wearing off quickly!

Spent last evening / night / this morning with a thumping headache. Whether it’s hunger or spreading from the toothache I’ve got I couldn’t be sure but it hurt all the same!

Being basically very lazy, I thought I’d just go to work this morning and sort something out (we have a big canteen).
Breakfast – 1 scoop of porridge into a take-away tub that would hold probably 4 scoops, yummy!
Lunch – had a good scout around but couldn’t find anything that I could call suitably bland and uninteresting, that’ll teach me to be lazy!
Dinner – 60g brown rice (too lazy to soak any beans last night)

Lesson learned today…. be better prepared tomorrow or at least get more porridge and save half for lunchtime! I’ve already got some portions of beans soaking ready for tomorrow, might cook them tonight and take to work in a very small Tupperware container.

Things I’ve noticed today -
Everyone around me seems to be constantly gorging themselves on fruit, crisps, chocolate and cake!
It doesn’t matter how hard I think, I can’t make hot water taste like coffee!
It’s very difficult to think about anything but food when your hungry.
I’m glad I’ve got an office job and I’m not expected to put in a day’s hard manual graft on those portions.
Disappointingly, I’ve not spent much time thinking about starving people around the globe, I’ve been too busy thinking about the starving office worker in Dyce!

Never mind, this time tomorrow we’ll be more than half-way through!