Any Colour You Like

I had one of those mixed organic fruit and vegetable boxes delivered today as part of some general research for my food sustainability uni project. The idea is the company source high quality local british organic seasonal food and deliver to a different area each day of the week. One van covers the whole Bristol area every Wednesday and they claim that the distance the vans travel is a quarter of the distance an equivalent Sainsbury’s delivery van would cover per kilogram of food in order to supply the store network. This coupled with the local sourcing cuts food miles dramatically.

They also shun all of the plastic packaging that is so epidemic in supermarkets these days in favour of a single cardboard box that they collect the next week for reuse, and some paper bags for some items that they will take away and recycle for you. If you order things that require some sort of plastic packaging then they will also take that back for recycling.

The box cost £10.95 for a good variety of fruit and vegetables that will last one person a fair proportion of the week until the next delivery. I weighed everything and then went to Sainsbury’s to compare with the non organic regular range. It turns out you can get the same things loose by weight for a little over £7 from the supermarket so they are charging a 35% premium for the privilege of earthy, non-chemically mutilated food. A fairer test would be a comparison with the taste-the-difference line because dinner tonight was absolutely fantastic. Everything was much crisper than usual and the vegetables smelled really good when cutting them from raw.

So I guess the important thing is to decide how much the knowledge that you are reducing your environmental impact, whilst eating healthily and tastily is worth. I am still undecided but I will get back to you soon with an opinion…

On a related but unrelated note, click here to find out about the Forests Now Declaration so you know what to look out for in the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

Sam and Me

No big results from Sheffield last weekend. It was a very long day leaving at 5am and getting home at 4am, but it was great fun anyway. First and only time I will be on Bristol A-team I think. I also missed my first ever coursework deadline because of practicing for it so I think I will need to work on my time management!

For some reason my espresso shots have all been absolutely amazing ‘god shots’ this week. I don’t think I am doing anything different and I have been using a variety of beans so it isn’t just one spectacular roast. Still, I can’t really complain.

Maybe it goes something like this:

For i=1:1:CourseWorkDone
    Stress++;
    NeededProcrastination++;
    For j=1:1:24
        DesparationFactor = j * (Stress^2+NeededProcrastination^2)^0.5;
        TotalCoffees = TotalCoffees + HaveXCoffees(DesparationFactor);
    End
End
Printf(’TotalCoffees’);

While Total < SafetyMargin
    HaveXCoffees(1)
    TotalCoffees++
End

CoffeeQuality(TotalCoffees);

As far as logic goes this wasn’t very. Ina flew back from Rome to Heathrow Wednesday morning at about 3am and took the national express back to Brizzle. By 3pm we were on the train to Paddington at a cost of about £11 each. We then when to a sushi bar near bond street for some  dinner – it was very good by the way. Next it was the tube to the Brixton Windmill which is a very strange pub/live music venue. There was a complete cross section of people there, from 60yr old motorcyclists to punk rockers to tourists to swish middle aged people… and us of course.

We were there to see the Veils start their tour in support of their upcoming third album. And what an amazing concert it was! We knew it was going to be, but there you go. The audience never got a breather from the intensity, regardless of whether the band were playing emotion-dripping ballads or raging torrents of sound. The new material is going to be classic but definitely a bit weird. It was all quite random really, and the singer even came in his wellington boots.

Finn Andrews of the Veils

And then we had to rush away at the end of the set to get the last National Express home (£16). This involved a somewhat exciting £15 taxi journey though the snowy London back streets and over the speed bumps. When we got close to Bristol we realised it was massively snowing (obviously we were also massively delayed). So we got to trudge through the swirling snow making virgin tracks through the whole of the centre. Outside Lounge people were starting to emerge from their student night and indulging in a massive snowball fight in the middle of Park Street.

Ina's street

Ironically, Ina had bought the tickets for Tuesday nights show which turned out to be canceled due to the weather. She originally hadn’t realised she would still be in Italy so we bought a second set of tickets for Wednesday. All in all the adventure cost about £60 for what was essentially a £5 concert. And I would have paid twice that it was so good!!

Well I won my first tacky plastic trophy yesterday for Latin! Very happy — it has only taken a year and a half of hard work. Wonder how many more years are required to actually come first in something!?

I also thought this photo came out pretty well:

Toria and James