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?]

After weeks of what feels like limbo, we started to see some positive change in bristol this week. Some of PM Brown's headline policies from his confirmation speech startled to trickle in.

After a long time without post coming through the door - even the spam has stopped - it was a surprise to hear the door ring. I went downstairs to answer it, expecting it to be a schoolfriend or something. The postman and a policeman stood there, a large wheeled container on the steps between them and an envelope in the postman's hand. They looked a bit perplexed to see a 16 year old girl open the door to Greg's house.

"Ummm...." the postman said. "Is Mr Grossman in?"

"Yeah," I said, stepping back to call up the stairs. "Greg! There's some people here to see you."

The Policeman stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder.

"You don't live here, do you?" He said, looking down at the clipbord in hand. "We only show Mr Grossman here."

"We moved here from next door last week," I said with a shrug. "Me and my mum and my brother."

His eyebrows shot up.

"Well," he said with a smile, "I'm glad we caught you. This is a very important delivery. What's your names?"

"David, Mia and Alexandra Payton," I said promptly. The postman opened the container and sorted through a huge pile of hundreds of envelopes then pulled out one identical to the one for Greg.

"You better get them down here too."

As if on queue, Mum and Greg appeared behind me. They immediately shooed me back indoors, which made me a bit grumpy. These guys weren't exactly scary! Mum put her hands on her hips and eyed up the two men with her best haughty look.

"Yes?"

"Your new ration swipe cards," the postman said, handing Greg one envelope and mum three. The policeman stuck out one of those electronic touchpad things that UPS delivery men use and got my mum and Greg to sign for the packages. Then they started to leave.

"Wait!" Mum said. "How does this work? What do we do with them?"

The policeman rolled his eyes and continued pushing the cart to the next set of houses. The postman shrugged helplessly.

"sorry ma'am," he said, "we've got a thousand more houses to do today. All the info should be in your packs, or on the BBC."

Mum and Greg came back inside as the delivery skipped our old house and moved to the buildings beyond.

The packages were flung on the table and Greg went back to work. Mum was going to as well until I convinced her to open the envelopes.

Inside each envelope, along with a load of introductory papers and advice, were basically credit/ID cards, with our names and the pictures we'd sent in months ago when the initiative had first been setup.

"Bloody Labour," Greg said from the other room. "They've been trying to put these bloody ID cards on us for years. It'll turn into 1984 before too long, you mark my words."

"Without any electricity?" I said, picking up my new post-peak ID. "How will they power the CCTV cameras?"

Greg snorted as he usually did when someone caught out his rants and turned back to his computer. Mum smiled and ruffled my hair. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason she's with Greg is for his house and money. She's as annoyed by him as me sometimes.

so this means my post last week about lack of food isn't going to be as terrible as I thought. Possibly. The pack said that we're allowed basic carbs (bread, pasta, rice) and oil, normal vegetables and a few other things as much as we want (although if we appear to be stockpiling the card will record it and stop our purchase!), plus a certain number of 'restricted items' like coffee, chocolate, exotic fruit, meat and the like. The packet and the news channels seem very keen to stress that they worked this project out with a lot of important dieticians and chefs like Jamie Oliver to work out a ration system that should make us healthier eaters! It's still got people well pissed off though, as soon as she'd finished going through the pack mum ran off to complain about it over the phone with her friend Jo.

There's also a note to say that energy rationing will become even more organised under this system - they've basically taken the Craggers manifesto and made it into law!

Mum says we'll go shopping with our cards soon. I'm excited and a little bit scared to see how everyone's going to react to it all. The news keeps talking about how under Winston Churchill when we were fighting the Nazi's in World War II we as a nation rationed and survived. It's all very patriotic, they tell us. Home grown stuff like my rocket is not rationed so mum's pretty pleased at me for planting it! I'll let you know how the shopping goes. In the meantime I'm going to read up on what I'm allowed to buy with my new ration card!

[author note: week 14.

Many thanks to wwo_baltpiker for the reminder and information about British rationing in WWII, which became the inspiration for today's post.

I'm constantly fluctuating between two approaches when I'm writing Mia's story. I start thinking the crisis is going to be too severe and that UK society will break down, as is happening in a lot fo the US stories. Then I get some comment or link from someone, or read some news article or site about British organisation and local efforts and I change my mind and start thinking maybe we can make the Make the transition. I think Britain, as a much smaller country with cities far closer together than the US (Bath is only ten miles from Bristol, Newport 30, Cardiff 50, my hometown Swansea plus London, Exeter and Birmingham around 100 miles away and Manchester around 150. i can get on a train and be in five different cities in an hour or two.

Add that to the near total lack of guns, which I think is a major cause of social unrest (ie it makes social unrest far more likely to end in serious injuries and deaths) plus the lack of state-based government and the lack of... George Bush in power, makes me hopeful that the UK would survive this crisis for longer, if not necessarily forever. I'll have to see how severe the oil prices and world situation gets but at present I'm actually quite optimistic about some of the things I've found out about my country. As an author obviously the hyperbole situation of complete collapse makes for a more dynamic story but at the moment, I'm not seeing that as a likely scenario. If oil prices double, maybe.

In the meantime, here's a link to something we can do in the UK in the real world to help both peak oil and global warming: Liberal Democrat plans for green taxes. Meanwhile, the US government continues to behave idiotically about the whole thing.]