Environmental Impact for the Cappuccino Generation

Here's a dilemma. We were given a second-hand Tassimo 'hot beverage system' by some well-meaning but misguided relatives. If you're not a member of the Tassimoscenti, the idea of this beast is that you keep a selection of Tassimo capsules to hand. When you stick a capsule in the machine it reads the barcode to determine what to do with it and then Fssssh skblorp blup blup blup it processes the thing in the best way to make your chosen beverage. It's all highly flash. There are loads of different capsules available, from a Jacobs Latte Macchiato to a Suchard Hot Chocolate.

The trouble starts with the price of course, but it doesn't end there. Compared with the simple mechanics of my old cafetiere (a hybrid of two broken ones, dating back to about 1990) there's a lot to go wrong. There's a power-guzzling standby. And then, of course, there is the minor detail that the beverage components are packaged into plastic capsules (weighing as much as the ingredients themselves) and an outer box. You can recycle the plastic if you're prepared to risk your fingers cutting the damned thing in half and rinse it out, but you see what I'm getting at.

This is not a gift for an environmentalist. In any case, environmentalists are too struck dumb with carbon-guilt about having shipped the coffee in the first place to enjoy the drink. The question is, what do I do with the thing? Being second-hand there's no retailer to return it to. Do I pass it on to someone else, by whatever method, to remove the need for another one of these things to be manufactured? Or do I kill and lovingly recycle it so that there is one less of the plastic-guzzling bastards around?

Hmm, too much of a poser for this time in the afternoon. In lieu of reasoned debate, ladies and gentlemen (and Norm) I give you: sheet mulching. It's time to tame the wilderness beyond the polytunnel, permaculture-style; whack flat, newspaper, compost, straw - and in a few weeks, potatoes.

Push the Button

Well, thank god for that. I've been nosing a plot concept for a fiction project around for a while now, like a small child negotiating having to eat a brussel sprout. It's technically tricky, but if it works it'll be a real treat to write. And then along comes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I think Fuck! Is that my novel?

Thankfully, no it's not. I've read the plot synopsis and it has nothing whatsoever in common with my idea - a blessed relief after the tunnel gutter fiasco, let me tell you. Onward, then.

Anyway, thanks to intensive research by the Scissor Sisters, it's long been scientifically accepted that There ain't no tits on the radio (oh no). But in a shocking development, they're about to be proved wrong. Stay tuned.

The Magic Ingredient

So. Spring is just around the corner (all evidence to the contrary) and I've just taken delivery of a truckload of compost which is currently hiding under a tarpaulin on the driveway, awaiting my pleasure. Compost isn't cheap to buy in, largely because of haulage charges, but I've got no choice this year; I have an area of about 20' (7m) square to bring into cultivation in a hurry and various patches of ground where I'm still trying to build up fertility. Then there's the regular stuff – the raised and flat vegetable beds, and the polytunnel. But herein lies the problem of no-dig gardening; the Hollow Garden itself only produces enough compost to cap the rasied beds. If I'm going to be able to practice no-dig sustainably, I need to take a serious look at how I make compost.

There are two sorts of composting people, apparently; utility composters like myself who make compost as a way of recycling kitchen and garden waste, and fertility composters who see compost as an end rather than a means. Gardeners who are lucky enough to live very close to a ready source of organic material (spent hops and coffee ground are favourite old chestnuts from permaculture books) can compost these, but there are no obvious green waste-producing businesses around here so I'm going to have to get creative.

Growing green manures will only take me so far. We already compost every scrap of kitchen and garden waste, except the woody stuff (which goes into the dead hedge) and weedy material. Weedy stuff needs hot composting, and up to now I've not been running a hot heap. This has to change, as my next obvious source of organic material is the abundant supply of chocolate-covered sludge formed by the action of traffic on the edges of the shared roadway that links the Hollow Garden with the rest of the world. Made up of leaf fall and weedy growth, it's lovely stuff - but full of viable seeds.

A regular hot heap is, I'm afraid, not for me. Ingredients have to be collected in piles and kept dryish until they are mixed, and the heap mixed several times to keep the heat up for as long as possible. In my heap things arrive as and when, and mixing largely happens to other people - but there is another way to end up with a hot heap, and that's to add fresh manure balanced with untreated sawdust (next to free from a nearby sawmill). And the handiest source around is...

Well, have a look at this book and you'll see what I mean. A little unplumbing and a modicum of carpentry, and we should be in business; that's my target for 2009!

Not That Sort of Role-Playing

I've been role-playing this weekend. Nothing sordid, you understand, more the sort of beardy-weirdy stuff and nonsense that looks utterly mad to outsiders, but nevertheless keeps five hundred grown adults busy for five days. Straight.

The formula is this: arrive and sign up for games, in groups of around six; get a swift pint of beer in; play for three stretches a day, separated by an hour for beer'n'burgers, with each four-hour stretch broken only by one or two five minute breaks for beer'n'bladders. You get the picture.

Gamers (best known through the popular medium of Dungeons & Dragons) are sometimes sneered at by people who just can't get their head around the concept, but the gamers themselves enjoy a titter at a very special subgroup - the LARPers. That's Live-Action Role Play, by the way, and is the sort that involves costumes and makeup and latex swords. This particular form of play attracts the less self-conscious gamer, but the laughs are generated by how very seriously a few of them take it... and to see what I mean, watch this skit from Reno 911 and bear in mind that although it's staged they're not exaggerating by much. Enjoy.

http://www.videosift.com/video/DD-player-with-boots-of-escaping-vs-Reno-911-cops-part-2