20th Donation

The NHS have recently updated their blood donation website.

For some reason some of the earlier donation records are no longer shown, but the site does show the date that I first joined (7th October 2006) and records my total number of donations.

The records also show my brief attendances at the platelet donation centre in Bristol.  I'd like to have another go at platelet donation, but the centres are quite a long distance away and therefore it's not ideal for frequent donations every couple of weeks.

On 1st August 2014 I'll reach my 20th blood donation.

What's my target for total number of donations? Let's just say that I have a number in mind and I haven't hit it yet.

FELA

Helen and I have been volunteer litter pickers since early February.  We're registered as Frog End Litter Action (FELA) at litteraction.org.uk

We generally go out litter picking on Sunday mornings. There's always plenty to do.  As of today we've just reached 20.5 bin sacks (rubbish and recycling) and contributed 15 hours and 30 minutes of community service.

So much to say

Some time ago, Helen asked me to write a blog on Buddhism. I've been unsure where to start because it's a large topic.  These days I feel comfortable declaring that I am Buddhist,  I certainly spend more time practicing Buddhism than anyone I know who subscribes to a theistic religion spends pursuing their beliefs.

I don't know when I finally became Buddhist, but for quite some time I have been following the five precepts:

1. Refrain from harming living creatures
2. Refrain from taking that which is not freely given (stealing)
3. Refrain from sexual misconduct
4. Refrain from speaking mistruths
5. Refrain from taking intoxicants

I've experienced that following the precepts leads to a clearer mind and reduces mental suffering. My early experimentations with being a vegan stemmed from the first precept (although I have many other reasons for being a vegan), and the move from occasionally drinking alcohol to completely abstaining also emerged from following the precepts.

Although I feel that my following of the precepts in general is going well,  I find the fourth precept to be the most difficult, and I doubt a day goes by when I don't break it.  It is sometimes written:

4. Refrain from lying, harsh speech, idle speech and slander

I believe that the best route to achieving the fourth precept is through cultivating Loving Kindness (mettā)

Not just a diet

I've been on a strict vegan diet for two months now. I've got past the stage of wanting dairy and it's actually starting to disgust me, just as meat and fish already do.

There's a lot more to being vegan than giving up dairy and eggs and we're slowly turning our household vegan. We've got rid of most of our leather goods, but Ian will need some new work shoes and I'll need a new jacket before it will all be gone. It'll take us a while to use up all the cleaning products and toiletries that contain animal-derived ingredients or that were made by companies that test on animals, but we hopefully won't be buying any more in the future.

I've been doing some research on toiletries recently and have been surprised to find that a few companies that I thought were vegan (Avon, The Body Shop, Clinique, Liz Earle, Lush etc) have a "cruelty-free" policy of no animal testing, but still use animal-derived products. Luckily I've been moving towards using more natural products for cleaning (both ourselves and the home). I love the idea of not using anything on your skin / hair that you wouldn't be willing to eat, but I'm not sure if I'll ever quite get there.

I'm thinking of trying soap nuts for washing our clothes. Has anyone tried them?

Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life

For his birthday, Ian received a book on handwriting by Vimala Rodgers. While he was busy travelling and reading his other birthday books I pinched it from him and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has introduced me to both graphology and graphotherapy. It's also inspired me to change the way that I write. I've never really liked my handwriting (the writing of my parent's generation is so much prettier), but have been too lazy to change it in the past.

The book asks the reader to write a page of text on unlined paper and then you get to analyse what your writing says about your character and how you might want to make changes in the way that you write which in turn should slowly begin to allow you to change the way you think (and therefore act). For example, the left hand side of the page corresponds to the past and the right hand side the future, so if you're the kind of person who lives in the past you probably don't leave much space on the left hand side. If you're always dreaming about the future rather than living for today then you probably write very close to the right-hand side of the page. The distance you leave at the top of a page corresponds to your feelings on authority - the less space the less you tolerate authority figures. Apparently Julius Caesar never left any space at the top of each page - go figure! Lots of other things reflect your character - the slope of your letters, the slope of each line of writing, spacing between words etc etc.

The second part of the book discusses the letters of our alphabet and how they relate to the way that we think. Some letters are associated with our ability to communicate, others relate to how we analyse things, others to creativity and how we express ourselves etc etc. It teaches an 'ideal' alphabet, which is supposed to aid the reader in getting over various problems, so at the ripe old age of 33 I have begun relearning to write. Oddly enough it's the 'easy' changes that are the most difficult to make. For example it suggest that one should write an o in a clockwise direction (thus ending towards the right which is supposed to be more positive than pointing backwards to the left). It's so easy to do a clockwise o, but I've found that I often accidentally revert to the anti-clockwise o when I'm not thinking about my writing. The capital H she suggests seemed odd to me, but having been doing some family history research today I just found the same H written on the 1881 census. They knew what they were doing back then!

Frog and Toad

After several weeks of terrible weather Spring seems to be arriving in Exeter. The only insects I've seen so far have been a few caterpillars and a red admiral butterfly, but the amphibians are out in large numbers. As usual we've had around 50 to 100 frogs in the larger of our two ponds. We've also been lucky to see some toads on our daily walks, although we've yet to have one at Frog End. Toads have a lot of trouble on roads at this time of year when they migrate to ponds to spawn. There are volunteer toad patrols across the country to help carry them across safely, but our local toads don't appear to be crossing any of the main roads.

Tonight I spotted a newt with a (presumably) broken leg on the opposite side of the road from our house. It's now safely in the mud by our pond and seems to be much more responsive than it was on the pavement.

Frog End frogs (is it just me or is the last one smiling?):

I visited our newts down at the pond yesterday evening - they come to the surface more at night. They're still hard to photograph because they're underwater and swim quite fast, but at least you can see that it's a newt:

Common toad on Hart's Lane:

The wombles of Exeter

I have always been concerned about man's impact on the environment and to an extent it has determined my career and interests, but I openly admit that I have not done as much as I would like for our local environment.

A couple of weeks ago I watched a video. It was simply a link from someone's facebook page or twitter account. I can't even remember whose. It made me cry. Not just a little tear in the corner of my eye, but properly cry. It also made me want to do something. I asked Ian to watch it last week and he instantly felt the same way.

Most days in the winter we go for a 45 minute walk. Usually we follow the same route, leaving the city of Exeter via a walk along the railway line, going through the village of Pinhoe and returning via the leafy Hart's Lane (which no longer has deer, but still has plenty of other wildlife including mice, rabbits, foxes, owls, toads, crickets, butterflies and dragonflies). In the summer we may do up to three walks in one day, depending on the weather and how busy we are with other things. This video has prompted us to join Litter Action. We have bought a litter picker and as soon as the weather has improved a little we shall begin taking it (and several bags) on our walks with us. We shall start by clearing Hart's Lane and then will probably move on to the area by the railway line (which being like most such areas could take some time to clear).

Speaking of the weather, in case you're wondering if we're flooded, the answer is no. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that we haven't suffered any damage. Nine weeks of rain and storms culminated in an horrific storm last Tuesday night. We woke up to find that most of the fence between us and one of our neighbours had disintegrated, there was a lake on the field just behind our back fence and, most disturbingly, water had come through the wall into the study. We now have a huge damp patch right above my desk. I can only assume that a combination of the gutter not being able to cope with all the rain and possibly problems with our pointing? are to blame. We're going to get the gutters cleaned asap, but will have to seek advice as to whether we need any other work done on the outside.