Laura to the rescue!

Yesterday, I resolved to get back to my promise to be more useful. Life took over a little at the weekend. But now I have my superhero outfit on again and I am totally on it. So here were my missions for the day.

Shop for something green – try the environmentally friendly option of something you usually buy.
(The Difference A Day Makes by Karen M. Jones)

Use organic toiletries
(Going Green by Simon Gear)

Thankfully, they’re pretty similar and I needed to go shopping anyway, unless I wanted to feed Danda some quince jam and eggs for dinner.

Off I went, to my favourite Waitrose, and crossed my fingers that they wouldn’t let me down. And it went well, everyone. It went well. Check it out.

This one isn’t too much of a revolution in my home, actually. When I took it to the bathroom, I almost laughed because the pack of toilet tissue that is currently sitting there is the exact same one! I’m not a stranger to being environmentally aware so I must have, on a subconscious level, whilst mindlessly pottering about shopping, grabbed it because I saw it was recycled paper.

The next thing was conditioner, which I’ve needed for ages. I keep forgetting what it is I need and when I get to the shop, I pick up a shampoo, guessing it must be that. So I have about five shampoos and almost no conditioner. Yesterday, I finally remembered to get the right thing and looked for something organic, on the advice of Simon Gear. I found one called Avalon Organics, which I’ve used before, and then another one with a foreign sounding name and a useful list on the side. If the list is to be believed, it lacks all the usual crap that makes toiletries so bad for the environment. It was pricey (almost a third of the cost of my entire shopping!) but it’s one of those things I don’t buy often and what’s the point of having money, if you’re not prepared to try and do something useful with it.

Next I went to buy a card in a different shop and saw a chance to be environmentally friendly again.

Now, Danda is a man who drinks a lot of coffee. And a lot of tea. Every day. All day. A lot of liquids. Very often. And he buys them at local coffee shops. All those paper coffee cups add up. More often than not, he brings them home and recycles them but it would be better to avoid using the paper cups altogether. So I saw this flask in the shop and got it straight away, knowing that Danda would be filled with glee at the prospect of joining me on my world-saving mission. Upon returning home, I presented him with this beautiful ceramic flask, a potential revolution in his coffee-drinking world. Excitement and apprehension flitted across his face…

“Don’t you like it? Should I have got a different colour?”

“No, I love it. I just know I’ll break it. I’ll try not to. But I’m clumsy. We both know this is true.”

I had to admit that it is perhaps true. I mean, I haven’t even told you all the story yet of him making dinner on Thursday and managing to somehow throw my entire plate of food across the kitchen floor. We crossed our fingers and decided to give it a good go. So far, he has had it one day. Let’s see how long he can keep it.

And lastly, a follow up from my second day of world-saving…

This lovely renewable energy company sent along some info and contracts and will get started imminently. Excited!

A letter to the world

Dear World,

How are you? What’s that? A bit messy and need some work doing? Ah. Ok. Yes. I did promise I’d help with that, didn’t I? And I did, World. I did. On Day 1, I donned my best dirty Crocs, grabbed a bag and walked around collecting rubbish. I then divided this rubbish into different recycling bins and even recycled the bag itself. On Day 2, I changed my energy supplier to a local renewable energy company. And World, I would like you to know that it was my close friend’s birthday and I sent him an electronic birthday card instead of a paper one, to save your trees.

You see, World, I had had an idea. I would do at least one good thing every day to look after you, to make life a little easier for you, to ensure your health for future generations. I was excited about looking after you. I guess it’s that maternal instinct in me. I like looking after people and things. I also like playing the SuperWoman role when I first get an idea in my head. I will do and be everyone’s hero. I will single handedly cure all of your ills. I will be the answer to every problem. It doesn’t take me long, World, before I realise that I am not capable of this. But I still think I can, every time a new idea comes along.

So Day 1 and 2 came and went, World. I had picked up litter and I had not sacrificed your trees for a birthday card. Then Day 3 came. Let me describe Day 3.

Wake up late. Meet a friend for lunch. Go a friend’s birthday party.

Day 4 looked like this. Wake up early. Work. Go for lunch with a friend. Have friends over for dinner.

Day 5 was as follows. Wake up. Go to work. All day. Come home. Eat. Watch The Tourist. Marvel at the twist at the end and wonder how much weight Johnny Depp had to put on for the film. Go to bed.

You see, World? I had resolved to do something good every day for you. And then life got in the way. But I did do small things for you, World. I turned off the tap when brushing my teeth instead of letting it run like I usually do. I used only public transport to go around seeing my many friends (I’ve got loads! Honest). For dinner, I had food that would have otherwise been thrown away. I didn’t fill the kettle with water to boil it. I only put in as much as I needed. So although Day 3, 4 and 5 rolled by in a haze of work and friends and hardly any sleep, I did a little for you, World. I did a little.

Day 6 is a new day though, World. Out will come the book of tips and out will come my lycra superhero outfit (otherwise known as my dirty purple Crocs). I will do better. There is always room for improvement, after all.

Actually, on that note, you could do with being sunnier in England, World. I’m not criticising. I’m just… You know…. I’m just saying…. You could work on that.

Thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Laura SuperWoman Maisey

Danda and the birthday card

Yesterday was Danda’s friend’s birthday. I know this friend pretty well too so proposed dinner made by Yours Truly then set off into town to get a little card and a little something else from Danda and I.

I didn’t forward plan anything or scout around online to get ideas. I just figured something would catch my eye. I went into a card shop first and I looked.

I looked at all the pretty pinky red cards with owls and hummingbirds and cakes on them. I saw cards which looked like they had been stitched together. I saw cards with golden looped writing and sincere messages of birthday wishes and many happy returns. I saw fun cards with bubble writing and ages written on them. I saw cards with old photos and funny quotes on them.

And none of them were right. None of them quite suited a slightly older gentleman with an interest in World War II and programmes about true crime, who enjoys his own company and has a silly little dog that was kind of forced on him but who he’s actually quite fond of.

I saw billions of cards for women. Quite a lot for children. And a fair amount for people who think quotes on old black and white photos are funny. But not that many for men like my friend.

Eventually I tracked down two which I thought might fit the bill. One was a humorous card about the internet, prompted by my friend’s total impatience with anything computery.

The other was a green coloured one which looked like an old poster from the war and it had something about football on it, about how shouting loudly at your TV set helps them win. I didn’t know which to get and in my indecision, I got both.
I thankfully had a much easier time with the present and just got him a DVD set of stuff about the war.

I was still fretting about the cards and called Danda for his opinion. He said the football one would be best. I said I’d show him it before writing it.

When I saw Danda later, he was watching a programme called Minder, a classic from years ago, apparently.

“Danda,” I said. “Look at the card. It is just on the table there. I had such a hard time choosing it. I was in the shop for a long time and it is very important to me that you tell me if the card is ok.”

“Yep, I’ll look in a minute. I’m just watching Minder. It’s my favourite.”

“But Danda, we should write the card soon, before our friend arrives.”

“Yeh…. What you said….”

“Danda, something tells me you’re not really listening.”

“Mmmm.”

I got the card off the table and showed it to him. He looked at it briefly.

Silence.

“Do you think it’s ok, Danda?” I asked.

“Pardon?”

“Do you think the card’s ok? Is there anything about the card you’d like to say? I had such trouble finding a suitable one.”

Danda looks. He looks and he tilts his head slightly and he squints his eyes a little and finally he opens his mouth to give me his verdict.

“It’s a bit green.”

Listening to children talk

Yaya: “Are you five?”
Friend: “No. I’m just four.”
Yaya: “I’M FOUR!”
Friend: “I’ll be five soon.”
Yaya: “O… I won’t be five soon. I’m a little bit littler than you.”
Friend: “Yeh, I’m the biggest.”
Yaya: “BUT! But when I’m five, I’ll be REALLY big!”
Friend: “You can come to my party. It will be at my house. You can come.”
Yaya: “I had a party when I was four. It was at my house. We had cake in the garden.”
Friend: “Look at my picture. It’s of you. Laura, I did a picture of Yaya.”
Me: “Oo, very nice.”
Yaya: “Mine’s green. Cause you know what? Green’s my favourite colour.”
Friend: “And that’s the hair.”
Silence while they colour in.
Friend: “Ok! Let’s play babies! I’m the Mummy and you’re the Daddy.”
Yaya: “Yeh. The mummies are in charge, aren’t they?”
*sounds of me snickering in the corner*
Friend: “Come on. Let’s take our baby out for a walk.”
Yaya: “Let’s play hide and seek! I’ll count. Four. Six. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve!”
*a little look behind the door reveals Friend*
Yaya: “I’m going to colour in now. I need the green pen. Look! Look at my picture.”
Friend: “I’ve got a book about princesses. I’ll get it.”
Yaya: “I’m wearing a Buzz Lightyear t-shirt.”

…And so on and so forth….

Bird Droppings

It’s over to my guest blogger today for some fascinating facts on this subject:

 

Today I thought I would take a break from the more serious subjects I’ve covered recently. The topic today is bird droppings (or more commonly pooh). Unsightly mess? Spoils public buildings & many other structures – definitely. But how much do you know about it? Will you even carry on reading this because you think it’s boring and uninteresting. Tell you what – I thought that before I started thinking about it. It almost became something “to get excited about” as LLM might say.
I wonder if you’ve ever been hit by bird droppings from the sky as you walked along outside? I have. I was fortunate though, it landed on my shoulder (and therefore thankfully missed my head although it did get some small splashes) and left me with a stained shirt for the rest of the day. Yes, I was on my way to work walking from the train station. Oh well, it gave people in the office a good laugh when I arrived with the mess down the front. (“I see you had some visitors drop in on way to work this morning”, and other such witty remarks.)
So what could be interesting about bird muck? Well, in case you’re struggling, one of our national newspapers came to the rescue recently. It published a survey analysing droppings found on cars in different cities in the UK. It seems to suggest that it’s not just where you park your car that affects whether it gets muck on it but that it is related to the colour of your car. Is there a colour, for instance, which does or doesn’t seem to get hit as much as others? Yes there is but it’s not as simple as that. Before we go any further let’s look at the published table below:

Red – 18 per cent
Blue – 14 per cent
Black – 11 per cent
White – 7 per cent
Grey/Silver- 3 per cent
Green – 1 per cent

This is quite interesting as you can see that nearly 1 in 5 cars that are hit are coloured red. Hmm.. perhaps you won’t buy a red car next time. Before you get too carried away by this revelation just look at those figures again. Now you don’t have to be a maths whizz to see that the figures don’t add up to anywhere near 100%. I make the total 54% (and this is the full table as appeared in the newspaper). (You might have to add 7% if the white/grey means two colours tied on that figure but it doesn’t say.) What happened to the other 46% of the sample? Were they all colours different to the ones specified? If so why not include an “other colours” category? LLM covered “getting excited” about stuff but at this point I was doing “getting angry” (at the quality of this presentation). Why publish such a rubbish table which appears to show only just over half of the number surveyed? Is the paper really that bad at its adding up? (Is this turning into a “Chat 2” blast?)
Ok so let’s look at some more of the detail behind table. They looked at 1,140 cars across five cities: Brighton, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol. Sounds like a fair spread, north, middle & south, but wait a minute, think about this – why no London investigation? (London is noted for its population of pigeons in certain areas so should have been a good area to get a lot of test results.) Seems like a fair number of vehicles but did you know, as of the most recent figures, there are 31 million cars in the UK (and 134 million in the USA). Now take the sample size and divide it by the total number of cars (& times by 100) to get a percentage – any guesses? I’ll tell you it’s 1,140/31,00,000 = 0.00367% – that is 1/272 of 1%! Just take a moment to think about that – not half of 1%, not a quarter of 1%, not even one 100th of 1% or one 200th of 1% but 1/272 of 1%! How small is that? Now come on, since when did a fraction of 1% as small as that represent a big enough sample to make inferences about cars across the whole country. And yet, there in a national newspaper, the survey is given some column inches with no ref to how small the sample is when compared to the total number of cars on the road.
So far, amongst other things, we have: an apparently incomplete table that doesn’t add up to anywhere near 100%; we have a sample size so small that it makes it hard to deduce meaningful data; and we don’t know why the capital of the country has been excluded from the survey.
Steam is (metaphorically) beginning to come out of the ears at this point but bear with me there’s more.

The next bits are what I would call basic. Think about it – we are not told anything about the locations surveyed. Were the car parks on open ground? Were the cars just parked in streets? Were there overhanging branches or even road or rail bridges which often have metal support girders underneath providing many ideal perches for pigeons? (The car park at my own place of work actually has a dual carriageway going over it so has two bridges & therefore lots of girders & therefore lots of pigeons.)
Remember too that the research did not consider the type of birds doing the fouling of the vehicles. (They actually spelt it “fowling” at one point in the article – haha.) Whilst they could not possibly see all the birds doing the deeds it is possible that they surveyed at a place in a city where there is a resident population of a particular type of bird –pigeons, sea-gulls or starlings for example. Btw, did you know that pigeon pooh is more damaging than say seagull pooh? I’m sure you want to know why so I’ll tell you – it’s because pigeons eat seeds and therefore produce grainier pooh and it’s that which causes more blemishes on your car’s paintwork. However what about all those smaller size birds: sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, finches, thrushes etc?
The article also gives you the useful info, from car polish experts Autoglym, that car paint damage is NOT caused by the acid or alkali in the pooh which I always thought – so I did learn something useful from reading it. I won’t bore you with the technical explanation – if you’re really interested you can look it up.
Did you know that insurers estimated that the annual cost of damage to paintwork from bird droppings is about £57 million? Best advice? – just clean it off as soon as possible. Well I’d never have thought of that!
In the car park where I work two people have yellow cars. Why is yellow not in the survey table? Does this mean it’s the safest colour to buy because the survey did not spot one yellow car with bird muck?
Another stat which might have been helpful is the colour distribution of cars on the road. Supposing, for instance, that 18% of all cars on the road are red, it would be no surprise that 18% of the bird muck survey were found to be red cars would it? This again is basic stuff which any normal person would ask. It’s like saying that a survey found that the average age of people going into a particular building was say 68 and you say why so high? Why were there not more younger people going in? Ah well, you see, it’s a day care centre for pensioners. Bigger picture springs to mind here!
It takes about 3 seconds to research colours of cars sold. Here’s the table of colours of cars sold (so not the actual total in the country, but does include yellow) for most of 2010:

1: black Cars sold: 465,249 Percentage share: 24.7
2: silver Cars sold: 402,537 Percentage share: 21.4
3: blue Cars sold: 310,331 Percentage share: 16.5
4: grey Cars sold: 270,863 Percentage share: 14.4
5: red Cars sold: 192,335 Percentage share: 10.2
6: white Cars sold: 188,463 Percentage share: 10
7: green Cars sold: 20,735 Percentage share: 1.1
8: beige Cars sold: 17,237 Percentage share: 0.9
9: yellow Cars sold: 7,621 Percentage share: 0.4
10: brown Cars sold: 6,967 Percentage share: 0.4

These figures do come to 100%. Again simple bit of research – look at the top 3 in the bird dropping sample (red, blue, black) and add up the percentage figures. It comes to 43%. Now look in the table for 2010 sales and add up the percentages for the same 3 colours – it’s 51%. Not that far apart I’d say.

Inference – the more cars there are of a certain colour the more likely they are to get hit! It’s not rocket science but it doesn’t make headlines and you know as well as I do that “headlines” sell papers.
Another newspaper gave the following table apparently for most popular car colours IN THE WORLD! And here it is:
1. Silver – 26 percent
2. Black/Black Effect – 24 percent
3. White/White Pearl and Grey – 16 percent each (tie)
5. Red – 6 percent
6. Blue – 5 percent
7. Brown/Beige – 3 percent
8. Green – 2 percent
9. Yellow/Gold – 1 percent
10. Others – <1 percent
We see that this table also does add up to 100% (you do have to add 16% to the 84% total because two colours were tied in third place).
Black, red, blue comes to 35%. Not that far off 43% really.
Now, apart from the fact that I was “getting angry” about this terribly presented (bird droppings) survey, I was amazed to note what I had come to believe over many years was actually being confirmed. I have on a number of occasions come to my car to find it has droppings on and yet the one next to it has none. When it first happens you don’t notice anything special but when it keeps on happening you begin to wonder: am I parking under a bird’s nest? Is there a tree branch over the parking place? Did I definitely remove the “Pooh here” notice from the roof of my car? Ooh… wait a minute was the notice invisible? – remember “Invisible Art” from 4.7.12. Better check that.

Ok so now you know the facts but will it influence the colour of car you next buy. Will you rush to the research paper and get the info and then decide to buy a GREEN car or even SILVER?
And you thought bird pooh was not that interesting. (Maybe you still do after reading Mr Angry’s rant.) What about readers of this blog sending in the colour of their car and whether it gets “pooped on” on a regular basis.

Last word has to go to the Ornithology experts who were quoted in the article:

“The British Trust for Ornithology is more circumspect on the role of colour in the ‘drop zone’ for birds.

A spokesman said: ‘We do know that birds can be attracted to certain colours during display but droppings on cars are probably more to do with where you park; if you park where birds roost then you are going to get more droppings on your vehicle.’”

Incredible! Would you have thought of that? – and they didn’t even do a survey to back their conclusion up.