So I headed to this wonderful slow food market today. I've been before but not been able to afford anything other than to stare longingly at a lot of it. Today, however, was different. Because it's all local food, to help encourage British producers, the ration system is different - there's still restrictions but everything's moved down one notch - meaning locally produced meat is less restricted than the crappy stuff in the supermarket, even though it's so much more yummy!

There was only one ration card machine at the market - the way it worked was that everyone had to put their card in before they entered the market. The person at the entrance would swipe the card and give you vouchers for how many ration credits you had left. You could then wander round the market and get what you wanted, handing any left over vouchers back when you left to be put back on your card. A security guard watched the whole thing - not an uncommon sight these days but only a slight dampener on what was a lovely market.



When we got to the featuring many great locally grown and predominately organic produce like this vegetable stall:



and this bread stall:



as well as some fantastic meat, fish and produce like cheese, chutney and even spices! Mum bought us organic pies for lunch with one of our treat rations - I had one with chicken and chorizo in a spicy tomato sauce and I don't think I understand the word 'pie' could be such an amazing thing until I tasted it! We also picked up lots of vegetables for the week, bread and a little meat - it's still expensive but when the rations only allow you to buy three meat items a week suddenly it's easier to spend a little more on each one. I guess those health mags that said we should cut down on our meat eating are getting their desire!

You know another thing that's great about this new ration system? The market stalls were all cleared up, out of produce by the end of the day when we went past again. when everyone's allowed a certain amount, maybe there'll be less food wasted 'in case' people want to buy it. Maybe empty shelves will become a good thing rather than a bad one - a sign that the right amoutn of food was available and eaten, rather than a failure of the Just In Time Mentality my teachers taught us in geography.



the market was popular and as news of the new ration-system in place grows I expect more people will be coming here - especially as due to it being local food the new food mile taxes don't apply.

Once we got home mum sat me down and said;

"Mia, you've got to think about what A levels you'll be taking."

I was a little stunned by this. I'd kind of assumed the schools weren't around because of the crisis, or that mum would want me helping around the house. She shook her head.

"You're going to study," she said firmly, "and you're going to do something useful. College starts on monday. You better have a look on their website and decide what you want to do."

So now I have 4 days to choose my subjects! Eek! Still, although I know it's work I'm secretly quite glad - I didn't want my life to be a housewife or without education. It feels good to know that even after the crisis, I may be able to learn enough to make a major difference, somehow.


Oh yeah! On my way home I saw this on the window of an unnamed holiday shop:



The text says:

'Say NO to holiday tax

Gordon Brown is increasing the price of your holiday. Come inside and sign our petition against Holiday Tax now.'

*sigh* Some people just don't know what's good for them, do they? There's been similar uproar from some quarters about the new rationing system. And you know the funny thing? It's always from the small minority profiting from the way it was before. The minority of rich companies and individuals who don't want equality. Well, they can all go to hell.

-Mia



[author's note - week 17. The food market in the picture is held every Wednesday in Bristol's Corn Street, attracting a lot of growers and producers from the surrounding area. In addition to the weekly one, there's a larger market in the same place on the first Sunday of the month - this is the official 'Slow Food' one - and another on Whiteladies Road the first Friday of the month. The poster in the holiday shop is also real, just going to show just how blind some people are about the greater good.

A quick aside to say that due to the author's third year Phyics exams occurring four time over the next two weeks, posts to this journal may unfortunately be more sporadic or shorter than they have been. I'm going to try and post every day still but there may be some interruptions. Just thought I better say something in case anyone got worried about Mia's silence! Also, many thanks for some of the lovely comments and links by other diarists. It's nice to know you're enjoying what I'm doing in this blog. Shoutouts to lucy_1965 whose comments inspired this post and Deliberately for running an excellent slow food blog and was kind enough to post a comment to this blog - hope you like this entry too!

Also, a little appeal unrelated to WWO. In 2003 and 2004 I was privileged enough to attend the fantastic Alpha workshop in Pittsburgh, PA. It runs every July providing superb teaching for young writers of science fiction, horror and fantasy. I would not be the writer I am today without their help and the scholarships I received to travel over to the USA to study. This year they are struggling to provide enough funds for similar scholarships for promising young writers (14-19 year olds, mostly from the USA but also in the past from the UK, Korea and New Zealand.).This is a very different topic to WWO, I know but if anyone is interested in helping you can do so at this link. Thanks.]

after weeks of silence, a ring from dad. and an announcement that he's thinking of leaving the country.

"Hey Mia," he said as I answered.

"Dad!"

"Just thought I'd check in and see how you all were after this bloody fascist attack on our liberties," he said, cheerfully.

"What?"

"These ID cards," he said. "Me and Emma have half a mind to send them back. We were thinking about selling up and going to New Zealand. Brown's not going to force this on me."

It won't happen, of course. With the money he'd get from selling the farm he'd barely get anything when he got to New Zealand. This is just dad's usual rebellion against the status quo. As much as I love him he's got a near-suicidal bent for defying what people tell him what to do. This reaction to the ID and ration cards is no different.

we've had some similar incidents to English Village about the migrant workers - a lot of the eastern european people who had been taking a lot of the marginal part time and bulk work - work that I always tried to apply on my summer's out of school - have lost their jobs and are frequent sights on the streets. Large numbers being rounded up and put on trains to help them back to Poland, etc. I don't mind them leaving - it might even mean I can work! - but the sight of them all being marched off to Temple Meads station is a little too 'Children of Men' for me...

#

So we went to the shops and used our ration cards for the first time. it was a bit of a shock to see all these lines of people queueing (like it has been for weeks) but with plenty of stock still on the shelves. A number of security officers watched the line for trouble and there was more than a few complaints at the till when the staff asked people to put things back.

One lady got very irate. She had a load of ready meals - which count as luxury items under the new system because they have so many ingredients to keep track of - and a bawling kid in her buggy.

"I just don't have time for anything else," she shouted, pushing the ready meals back into the cashier's hands. "I need these foods!"

A burly security guard that hadn't been working there before and looked like a boxer came over and took a deep long look at her.

"Ma'am," he said slowly and deeply, "I'm going to have to ask you to pick something else."

"But how am I going to feed my family?" She looked terrified. "I can't cook!"

There were a couple of chuckles from the queue that this was all the fuss was about. The security guard shrugged and led her back into the grocery aisle.

"Well," he said to her, winking to me as he came past, "I suggest you learn."

The shopping itself was pretty dull. All the stuff that we can have a lot of - potatoes, flour, milk, british style vegetables, rice and pasta, a few other things, they're in one aisle. In another is the restricted stuff like meat, eggs, fish, sauces, more exotic fruit and veg. Then towards the back, like the naughty kid at school, is all the stuff we used to rely on: ice cream, ready meals, frozen meat, crisps, chocolate... a lot of people are getting really annoyed that that stuff is the most restricted of all. A couple of kids had to be pulled screaming away from the snacks aisles by their parents.

The front rack by the tills was full of free recipe books, which we were encouraged to pick up and pick out ingredients for our shop.

We went round and mum let us have one restricted item. I know it's not very guilty treat material but I picked an avocado. I'm going to miss eating them.

When it came to the till, mum gave over our three cards, which the cashier swiped like they were just normal credit cards. We came under our allowance, so mum paid and we could leave, our first post-ration shop successful!

"that was so cheap," mum said, disbelieveing. "I paid three times that last week. I guess this government price freezing is actually working, huh? Now, who fancies casserole tonight?"

We groaned but inwardly I was quite looking forward to learning how to cook with mum.


#

Another strange event this week, that made me really happy: a lot of the cd shops closed down. Why does that make me happy? well, the reason they did it.

The government's new rationing laws come down heavily on non-essential physical products like cds. However, online downloads are completely unaffected. Within a week of the rationing beginning, all the record comapnies had stopped selling cds and the price of an itunes download had halved. A load of bands started their own websites selling their own mp3s - they can make much more money that way even though some bands are only charging 30p per song. I used a little bit of my pocket money to go and buy 4 albums for a tenner! i tell you what, if nothing else, this crisis has killed the ridiculous prices of media. right now I'm listening to my ultra-cheap, ultra amazing Hold Steady album knowing that not only did it cost less for me to buy it, they got 100% of the 30p rather than 2% of the 80p we used to pay. Go post oil music!

[author note: week 16

I had a very interesting anonymous comment about my belief in yesterday's post that the UK would suffer less in case of civil unrest because of our lack of guns. I'm very interested to see how other people see the issue. I've only seen one gun in my entire life, in the hands of a police officer. I think that although a few of our criminals have access to guns, it's better that no one has any guns and ammo because when things get desperate, guns in people's hands will cause more deaths than they will save. I'm very glad Mia's country isn't in the situation a lot of the US wwo-ers are. However, I think this is an interesting conversation and I would encourage anyone with an opinion on it to post a comment in yesterday's post.

I've been wanting to do that post on music for a couple of days now. I think it's inevitable even without an oil crash that music will go independent online - at the moment music companies and their middlemen are sucking a lot of money out that should go to artists - 50 years ago they were vital but with the internet cutting out so many of their roles I think as soon as a couple of major bands realise how much more money they could make selling their own mp3s on their own websites, we'll soon see a shift to a new world of music. That's my attempt at musicwithoutoil. It's not as down-to-earth as lead_tag's effort but i think that's how things would go. Any comments, do let me know! It's nice to get feedback on what I'm doing, even from those that don't agree with me!

Finally, a little plea along the same lines as wwo_baltpiker's post a few days ago: won't someone cover the US political landscape to all this? I follow a lot of daily kos's coverage of US politics and I think that by now, the Democrat congress and senate must be going crazy trying to get some accountability for the whole crisis! I don't feel as a Uk citizen it's my place to comment on the US side of the story but I feel this is an underdeveloped side of the wwo tale so far. Anyone up for it?]

I've watched in horror at the reports coming in from the world via wwo the last few weeks. The US seems to be falling apart so fast, with all the shootings and riots and blackouts. It's been so much quieter in the UK that I assumed we were ok, that it wasn't as bad. I made a mistake.

Last week I mentioned how Bristol's power is guaranteed by the nuclear power station, for the next year anyway. That's still true and more and more wind turbines are being rushed into service across the severn river in the Welsh hills. Power is still iffy to supply as much as before, but it's not awful.

Over the last few days, however, it's becoming clear what our country's major threat in this crisis is: Food. There's nowhere near enough food on this island to feed everyone. The news keeps talking about how we're a lot more population dense than the US and there's going to have to be a massive rethink if we're to feed the 60 million people that call Great Britain their home.

We can still get food but the stuff being imported is getting more and more expensive. When it was just exotic fruit it wasn't so bad but things like rice and pasta is also mostly imported and more and more gaps are appearing in Tesco's stock. I worry that if the UK collapses, it will be because we ran out of food.

And though Iraq has been such an awful debacle, the oil there could be a great thing in the crisis, right? Wrong. Things like that make me glad that Brown has started removing troops.

Bigger news. due to the US standoff with Iran and the massive amounts of tension in the Gulf, Uncle Andy's not been able to get home again.

We moved out of our old house and into Greg's pretty quickly and mum cancelled our bills and stuff. Greg's house is about the same size as our old one so a lot of stuff is going to end up being freecycled. Mum looks a lot happier - I'm not sure if it's being openly with greg or the lifting of the stress all this money worry's been causing. The bad side is I have to bunk with David now and he's a moody 12 year old that wants to play video games all the time. What with Mum trying to force him to cut down on electricity, he's not happy.

The weird thing is, even though mum's all stressed about conservation and greg works in solar panels, he doesn't seem that bothered about the environment. He leaves everything on. His car is a big fat Saab. He's a tory for crying out loud! I miss my dad. He might be a waster but at least he's honest about it.

Still no word from wwo_mitchtrix. I hope he's ok. The journey from Milton Keynes to Anglesey is a long one and with the roads the way they are... Hope everything's alright.



[author note: wednesday, week 14]