I forget to say! Remember last week when we said goodbye to Uncle Andy, and he put something into my coat pocket? I didn't want to look with mum and greg there and when I got home the email from lucy1965 got me too excited and I forgot about it. Then a comment from inky_jewel reminded me. I rushed to my coat pocket to find a note from Uncle Andy, and wrapped up inside of it, 6 £50 notes! To me that's an absolute fortune - as much as I'd make in a few months saturday work! The note read:

'Mia,

Here's something to keep you going. Don't worry too much - the oil company is paying for it! Buy something nice but don't spend too much of it - you could be very glad of it over the next few months.

Good luck with school. Keep working. Hopefully when I see you next the farm will be starting to produce some food!

If you ever need me, I'll be here.
Lots of love

Uncle Andy'

It took a little bit of willpower but I only ended up spending ten pounds of it. With Mum and Greg both working from home the computer's been in use most of the time so the time to post these messages has been few and far between. I decided I'd go and get something to write in during the day that I could then copy up. I came up with this:



It's a leather bound, acid-free paper Moleskin, like the one Hemingway used to use! It opens up to have a surprising number of pages, which I've been writing my journal entries in when we've run out of power rations!



Later in the week, I got to finally meet lucy1965! she sent a message saying she'd landed in Cardiff and we arranged somewhere to meet for lunch. I knew mum wouldn't understand, so I slipped out and told her I was going to Lindsey's.

I wandered down to the juice bar on Cotham Hill, which despite being a tiny place was still going strong through the crisis. All that local organic produce is good for business.

"Mia!" A lady with greying brown hair worn up in hairsticks came over to me as soon as I entered. She smiled and her face dimpled. She hugged me with a warmth that seemed like I'd known her forever.

"Hi!" she said, after we'd ordered and sat to wait for our drinks. "The train was a nightmare, it's nice to sit down. So how are you? Did your dad wind up in New Zealand?"

"He left last week," I said. "He rang to say he'd got there ok - obviously whatever strings Emma - that's his new wife - pulled, they worked, they're into the country. I'm just glad I'm not there. I couldn't leave Bristol."

Our drinks arrived - A pot of tea between us and two rich juices, mostly of locally harvested berries. Lucy sipped at hers and her eyes sparkled.

"Mmm!" She said. "Someone's doing something right around here! How do you think things are going in Bristol? I know what the papers say; I want to hear what you think."

"It's ok," I swung my legs subconsciously, enjoying the taste of blackberries and raspberries. "I mean, we don't seem to be struggling like some people are saying. There's nothing here too bad - lots of crime in St Paul's, lots of homeless people. But all the poor people has its upsides - there's hardly anyone out drinking the night away anymore, so there's far less fights! The police keep saying a lot of the time they have less to deal with - even if it's more serious when something happens."

Our food was brought over by the student serving behind the counter, who was dressed in a lovely pastel coloured skirt and a massive smile that made me jealous. I had lovely hot quesadillas and Lucy had a quinoa and courgette salad. It was, needless to say, gorgeous.

I hummed along to the jack johnson tune playing in the background. Lucy noticed.

"What bands are you listening to?" She asked. "I ask not for me, for I am approaching senility, but David and Emily aren't familiar with the music here."

"Same as everywhere I guess," I said. "A lot of American stuff though - a lot of the British bands these days sound like Rolling Stones clones. The cheap internet downloads means you can listen to pretty much anything, but there's hardly any foreign bands on tour in the Uk anymore."

"So any names I should be dropping?"

"A lot of angry stuff," I admitted, "Punk like Anti-flag, Greenday, The Hold Steady, Biffy Clyro... but then once I've got my anger out things like Iron and Wine, Sigur Ros, Appleseed Cast, Explosions In The Sky... pretty ambient stuff. There's British ones too - Radiohead, Mogwai, Oceansize... After all that revolutionary music I need something to cool me down!"

"Radiohead, Greenday and Sigur Ros I recognize -- I don't know if you're familiar with Christopher O'Riley's transcriptions of Radiohead for classical solo piano? Remind me with an e-mail and I'll send you a .zip file with a copy; you might find some of it interesting -- but the rest I don't know."

"Sounds good!" I said. I was surprised to see her actually write some of the names down - I hope it goes down well with her kids or there'll be hell to pay! She looked at my steaming cup of Earl Gray and the other people in the cafe drinking hot drinks.

"How the hell is England still getting tea?"

I laughed and sipped at the magical green stuff. "I don't know, I guess our need is great enough! It's not as if it goes off - they probably just ship on massive slow boats from India."

"True," she said. "We've been having trouble holding onto coffee but that stuff goes off much quicker -- some of my friends have had a very difficult time coming off their morning mocha fix. NOT pleasant to watch!"

''seriously," I said, leaning forward across the table, "how is it in the US? We’ve been getting such mixed reports.''

"Remember, love, we're talking about a very large country, and the situation varies state to state: it's rather like saying 'How is it in Africa?'" She stopped smiling then. "Overall? The worst of the violence is past. People are starting to come out of the shock and realizing that they have a LOT of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. An inherent suspicion of the Federal government is a deep-seated part of the American psyche -- there are enough people left who remember the Japanese-American internment camps that only the very desperate have gone to the FEMA settlements -- and so no one's expecting anyone from Washington to step in and straighten things out.

“Unfortunately that means a lot of duplication of effort, all around the country, and if the winter's bad --" She stopped and sipped at her tea. "A lot more people are going to die before things stabilize. Spring's going to be hard: we're only a handful of generations removed from farming, most of us, but that's time enough for a lot to be lost. The whole culture's changed in only 50 years, and parts of it are going to have to change back much more quickly."

'Do you already have a house lined up? Do you have a garden?'

"Oh, Mia, I'm sorry -- that was terribly gloomy of me!” She smiled. “Yes, I do have a house lined up, though it isn't finished: there's some trouble with the filters on the rainwater tanks and the clay plaster on the walls can't be finished until the masonry stove is run through its test firing, so we won't be moving in there for at least another three weeks. Bryan and Jayne have a MIL apartment as an extension on their house, and they've asked us to stay with them: it's just up the hill from the clinic, and after the initial team meeting Scott will be working from home.

"And there is a garden: the enclosures for the houses and the lot have been designed as hedgerows -- though they're still very small. Because the property was originally a car lot, the rest has been designed for raised beds until a soil amelioration team can come out and have a proper look, and see if we can clean it up with cover crops or if topsoil would have to be replaced. I mean to start some things in the sunspace as soon as we're settled; I had to leave my garden behind, but now I have a new space to play with, and a lot more vegetables will grow here without having to be nursed along!"

"Speaking of vegetables --" here she grinned at me. "How's the cooking going?"

"Not too bad," I felt a little embarrassed. "I cooked a paella yesterday - we used our rations on prawns - a bit naught but it tasted so damn good... There's been some good lessons on cooking in school lately."

"And school's going ok?" She took another sip of juice. "Do you feel like you know what you want to study?"

"I don't know..." I shrugged. ''what do you think I should study?''

"You know I'm likely to plug the biological sciences!" she laughed. "I don't think you have to throw over any established ambitions and take up agriculture just yet: there's always going to be a need for doctors and engineers and plumbers --"

"And midwives?"

"And midwives, unless the people screaming for zero population growth are determined to till with their Zimmer frames! I don't think there's going to be as much use for degrees in media studies or MBAs, but the world hasn't shrunk as much as a lot of people would like to think. There's still room for a great many sorts of jobs; what's happening now is that they're being revalued in light of energy becoming expensive again.

"Whatever you choose to study, history should be on the list -- remember what I said about 'duplication of effort', and pointing out to you and inky_jewel that there were already programmes in place to help all of you learn how to garden? We don't have time to keep reinventing the wheel: being able to make connections and get information to people who need it is going to be a matter of life and death for some time to come; that sort of synthesis needs to be encouraged, and history is very good at teaching you to connect disparate events."

‘‘How do you think this'll all end up? Are you feeling good about this new life?''

"You know, it's funny, but I am. I'm moving to a house that's half the size of the one I left, we’re earning between the two of us about what Scott used to make on his own -- but we both have work we love, our son is married and happy and they both have work they love, all of us can eat and stay warm and even have some time to goof around, and most of our friends aren't on the other side of the ocean from us any more.

"We really didn't fit our neighbourhood, before; now when things go wrong we won't be forced to deal with them on our own. I know that the attitudes towards privacy here have meant that someone could go 20 years without speaking more than a handful of words to their next-door neighbours, but people are going to have to rely on the ones around them to get them through, again -- and while sometimes that's intrusive and claustrophobic and just damned annoying, it's not an entirely evil situation."

Her phone buzzed after a little while longer. She got it out of her dark green satchel at her feet and looked at the screen.

"I've got to go," she said, "Scott's finished with his friend and we really need to get back on the train!"

"Ok," I said, finishing the last of my drink. "Well it was really nice to meet you!"

"Me too," she said. She gave me a warm hug. "You take care of yourself Mia."

We left the cafe and she went one way down the street, me the other. We stopped and waved at each other a couple of times, then she disappeared out of sight.

And that was that; a fleeting meeting with someone I had only known as a page on the internet, an email buddy, there for a lunchtime with me. Another person starting a new life in the vastly different world without oil.

[author note: week 29. Many thanks to lucy1965 for collaborating on today's post.

The moleskine is mine - if you look carefully you can read a paragraph from my novel, Iridescence and Light! I bought it from this site. It used to be that Moleskines were hugely popular - writers like Hemingway did all their work in them. The company went bust in the eighties but recently an Italian firm started making them again using the traditional acid-free paper and quality leather and traditional methods. It's the kind of small scale operation that produces lovely items worthy of my purchase.]

I received a pleasant email earlier in the week from lucy1965, one of the other netizens! She's been trying to get over to the UK for months now and with all the problems with immigration, it's only now she's coming, to be an EMT midwife in South Buckinghamshire. Lucy's been one of the people in this crisis that's been most supportive (I've also had wonderful correspondence with Sam the prudent RVer and megiddo_tell, jimboboz, lead_tag, gracemominnh, gerben1974 and a few other great people).

She emailed to say that she was flying into Cardiff and would be stopping off in Bristol on her way to her new home! She asked if I wanted to meet for some lunch and of course I said yes, so we're going to be meeting next week!

Another person is making a change this week too. Similar to what rdy2rte is saying here, Uncle Andy's getting excited about the farm he bought off dad. He's setting off today, taking a bus into the heart of Wales with a couple of bags to start a new life.

I asked Andy why he was taking so little things - his phone and the solar charger Greg gave him, his laptop and another solar charger (although greg made him pay for this one - it's about £2000 pounds worth of panels), some clothes, a toothbrush, straight razor and about ten books.

"What else do I need?" he said. "The farm'll have food and enough power to to eat and keep the lights working. Apart from an internet connection and some heating for when it really gets cold, that's all I want."

I envy him. He looks happier than he's been since he came back. The stuff that happened in Saudi really screwed around with him but it looks like now he's going to go off, set up a homestead and make things alright again. In his head more than anything else.

"I could come with you," I said, when he was at the bus station. He shook his head. He pressed his hand into my coat pocket.

"Stay and study," he said. "Learn something that'll work in this new world. Come visit me in the holidays, and in the summer. Until then, I wanna see you learning something useful, ok?"

"Ok Uncle Andy," I said, and we all stood back as he threw his bag into the luggage compartment under the bus and jumped onboard.The bus was packed, as they all are these days. Used to be you could get the 'megabus' for a pound if you booked early enough. Now it's more like 20-30. Andy waved as the bus struggled up the hill and quickly out of sight. I wondered when I'd see him next. We started the wander home, feeling the one person less than before.


It's December and it's cold. The old georgian (and earlier) tall terraced houses are pretty here in Bristol, but they aren't warm.

School's much better though. The stress that had been growing amongst us with all the tests and mounds of homework has gone away - we've still got exams but thanks to the changes the local council has made, there's a lot more time to just explore - a lot of kids haven't got as much internet access so there's a couple of hours a week structured browsing - heavily monitored for naughty stuff! I've spent a fair amount of time just learning about the crisis and the things we can do to stay afloat - making clothes, cooking, growing! I've got lots of plans for the allotment next year. Things are looking up.


[Author's note: week 28.

As Mia's journal went on, Uncle Andy has become just as important a protagonist in my eyes, mainly because as an adult he's far more linked into the effects and changes of the world. Being on a terrorist-attacked tanker in the middle east doesn't hurt either, mind.

A couple of journals picking up on the political theme lately. Participating in wwo is no good unless we actually let our representatives know what problems may face us and that we as citizens want them to address them. Grassroots activism on this issue is important. My prize of a mix cd to anyone that contacts their representative and asks them about Peak Oil still stands - megiddo_tell comes closest so far - he sent an email to his Senator, Carl Levin! No idea if you want the cd but let me know the response!

French blogger and expert on energy and economics 'Jerome A Paris' has a great diary today on the way economics and the idea that 'greed is good' has shaped our world today, far too much. Daily Kos is a good port of call if you want to start getting involved with politics at a grassroots level. I'd suggest a corresponding right-wing site to go with this left-leaning one but as much of the world's problems have come from the right wing arm of US politics I don't think it would be appropriate.

His call to contact our representatives is a good one that I echo. Although wwo has been a great experience and told some amazing stories, there hasn't been enough coverage of the governmental handling of the crisis to really get a good picture on what's happening in the US on a broad scale. I tried to implement UK policies in Mia's story I thought would happen and effect her but I'd be even more fascinated to see what real politicians respond. I'm planning to email my MP Stephen Williams once my exams finish on thursday.]

Yesterday, we reached a population milestone. More people now live in Urban areas than in Rural, according to research by North Carolina State University.

The government announced big plans today. The river Severn is being dammed! the Severn is about 10-20 miles from Bristol and apparently has the second biggest tides in the world. There's been plans for a barrage for years, Andy was telling me, they've just been constantly overruled by the environmental concerns. I guess the crisis has changed that.

You know the incredible thing? This one barrage, ten miles long, could power as much as one TENTH (although more likely around 6%) of all of Britain's power supplies, as much as three nuclear power stations. There's also plans to build smaller lagoons around Wales... The government have been touting how this is such a major step - where before they would say 'it's environmentally friendly' now the buzzword is 'self-generation'. It's been a big part of the white paper brought out, that we need to get rid of all these things we're importing from around the world.

It's still going to take as long as 20 years before the whole thing is done, though (even if it could last as long as 200 years). I hope we can wait that long...

-Mia

[author's note: week 25. Another short one - these exams are killing me. This was meant to go out yesterday but livejournal's being weird.

The 10% quote is true, by the way. There's that much power in the oceans. the Severn has a tidal change of 14m, more than anywhere except one place in South America. Actually what causes it is rotation of the earth.

With the rationing of energy in wwo it will probably end up being more than 10% too. As I researched this today I found out that my hometown of Swansea in Wales is producing a mini tidal lagoon over the next few years that could potentially power a large part of the city.

two very good op-eds in the British papers today. One by Tony Blair in the Times on energy futures and the other by Al Gore in the guardian about how misguided the policies of the Bush administration have been. I wish gore had been made president in 2000. There's little doubt the world would be a better place than under the current president. I hope he runs in 2008. ]

The cinema was back open this week and doing good business - with all the power restrictions, a lot of people are thinking twice about turning on their TVs. Plus the cinemas dropped their prices a ton during the crisis, meaning you can go for £2 and the place is almost always packed. We saw the harry potter film that was supposed to be out in the summer - it was surprisingly fun, even if the moments in the real world were sad.

On my way back from the cinema with Uncle Andy, we were approached by a man that asked us for the time.

"Sure," Andy said, taking it all in stride, "It's 9.15."

"Where you guys been then," the man asked. "I'm Delroy, by the way."

He shook our hands. It felt rude to say no.

"the cinema," we said. It was odd to be approached in the street but the guy was strangely disarming and I didn't feel too unsafe with Uncle Andy there.

"it's nice that we can still go to the cinema after all that's happened," the man said. "It's like they're trying to keep us happy."

"Who's they?" I asked.

"Well, you know," he said, his eyes focusing on something that wasn't there. "This world is an amazing thing. You know, science tells us that energy is in everything, and that we're aware, right?"

"Yeah..."

"So if we're made of energy and aware, and you know there are particles where if you separate them, no matter how far apart, they know what the other ones doing? There's this quantum field yeah? and that means that everything's connected, everything's aware. You get me?"

"I understand the words you're saying..." Andy said with a half-grin on his face. "I just don't understand what you're suggesting it all means. I mean, how does all this come together?"

The man looked insulted, as if somehow we were supposed to follow this stream of consciousness speech perfectly. I hung back and let Andy deal with it.

"It means that if everything's connected, the whole world and energy, yeah?" Delroy continued. "That means that there must be something more, right? That it all means something, that it's all part of a higher force."

Oh god, I though, religion. Andy smiled. he seemed to be enjoying this.

"So you're saying this is all for a reason?"

"Yeah man, definitely," Delroy said. "I mean - look at all the CCTVs and the shrinking computers whilst they grow in power. Biotech and genetics? They're controlling us man. They could have done something about this crisis, they've known for a long time it's coming. They just wanted to take away some of our rights and possessions -we were getting too much freedom and the had to stop it."

"So all this was planned?" Andy was struggling to avoid laughing.

"All of the leaders of the countries and companies are in on this," Delroy told us, whispering like it was some deadly secret, eyes serious and preaching. "They want us for our money and our work but they want to control us."

"Nice talking to you Delroy," Andy said, pulling on my arm. "We got to go now."

"Don't forget what I said!" Delroy called after us. "We're all connected! This isn't random - there's something going on bigger than us we've got to wake up to!"

We wandered home, not quite sure what to make of the experience.

I understand how Delroy feels - wouldn't it put us out of responsibility if this was one big conspiracy to destroy and control the world as we know it? If we know there was some vast secret group scheming so much that nothing we did mattered? It's both orwellian-style scary and strangely attractive. Why attractive? Because if some group is controlling our destiny we have no responsibility and so can put away our guilt over what's happened and not feel bad about looking out only for ourselves and no one else - it was the evil overlord's fault!

If the companies knew that the oil was running out, and so did the governments and they conspired to organise the crisis, to take away our rights, then we could give in to the despair - because if we're being controlled that much, there's no hope of individuality surviving - we're pawns in this massive game.

But that's not what's going on. I don't believe it. I don't believe the people in charge, even the bad ones, are perfect or evil enough to plot such a massive scheme - it's silly. While some of the bad stuff has come from oil people and politicians looking to profit or being greedy, it's not part of some vast worldwide conspiracy. It's simply a lot of greedy people ignoring the consequences to get rich in the short term. And these CEOs and stockbrokers and oil executives are the ones to have lost the most in the crisis.

Whilst that means there's no easy guilt-remover, it does mean that we as normal people have the power to do what the greedy rich people did not do: make a change. We should have done it earlier, before it was too late. We shouldn't have let those in power take too much when they didn't deserve it. They didn't do it because they were part of an evil masterplan. they did it because they could. They did it because we gave them the opportunity. In future, we need to not let them have the chance to ruin everything.

There's no great conspiracy. If you were in their position, you might get greedy too, if there weren't enough safeguards to stop you overstepping your boundaries. There's no great conspiracy but there's a lot we can do to prevent those people from grabbing too much for themselves from us.

-Mia




[author's note: week 23

another action item from Daily Kos about US food, for those interested in making a positive impact now: As featured in this diary the USDA are trying to legislate to water down Organic standards in America - meaning you wouldn't have to use organic intestines in sausages, or organic hops in beer. This is basically a way for organic food to be pretty much wiped out as a class of foods. There's some talk of it being prompted by the drugs agencies because they make money from unhealthy people but take that with a pinch of salt and read Mia's story for today on conspiracies! whatever the reasoning behind this, any of you guys in the states that care about food production would be well advised to sign the petition and try and stop this legislation.

The Delroy character actually exists, under a different name, in Bristol. I've talked to him a few times whilst coming home from my girlfriend's or a bar. He's very friendly and interesting, even if what he's saying doesn't quite add up.He's basically a preacher for David Icke, as weird as that sounds. It's strange, a little disturbing but mostly fascinatingly odd.

The people-powered motif is an important one, one that can help us try and avert this kind of crisis in the real world. Accountability from the voting public is probably the most important thing we can do to stop it. In recent times politics has been pushed to one side by many people as 'not my business'. This has allowed those who would take advantage of it to gain much more strength. We can't let that continue. As the people of the world, we need to hold the greedy people accountable and keep them in check otherwise the real crisis could end up worse.]

Well, things in school don't look like they'll ever get back to this kind of stress. Our local exam board has scrapped the AS levels that were introduced for 17 year olds a few years ago. Someone came into class and told us they'd rather us spend a year learning productive real world activities than have another year of stressful examinations.

I've been more and more perplexed by the news from English Villager these last few weeks - I've been seeing such a different world to him. Whilst here in Bristol we are safe, it seems there's a few pockets where panic is the rule. The government is proclaiming that things are back under order but it seems some of the army have 'misinterpreted' their role in all this - to make some profit? It turns out that English villager believes these army officers may have gone rogue! How exotic! sounds like something out of an action movie but according to him that's how it is there.

He sent some relatives in a convoy to Bristol, apparently, counting on the stability here. I think those relatives got a big shock when they arrived, seeing how the crisis has calmed these last few weeks. Mum said it's more like the recession of the eighties now - lots of people are out of jobs and unhappy but the violence has gone to much lower levels - it's still much higher than in the past but it's back to being crime rather than disorder - localised rather than everywhere.

I haven't seen them yet. It's a big city and a few cars is going to get lost in the midst of it all. I hope they made it here ok, and that english villager gets out of there too. When I told Uncle Andy about it he said it sounded like an episode of the Twilight Zone...

It's nice to see someone from Manchester posting. I hadn't heard much from there and from Birmingham, but if he's doing ok then hopefully things are evening out. Certainly the overwhelming majority of people seem to be ok now - we're adjusting, we're poorer but we've survived...

Transition Towns are running daily meetings, coordinating with central government. Uncle Andy's been so hyperactive since he confessed what happened in the middle east and hes been helping that a lot. More and more places are having cheap old radiators put on their roofs to heat water - and Greg's out all day and night fitting solar panels. The downs, which used to be a common land, are rapidly being dug up and the grass replaced by allotments, which have been assigned to the people signing up - first come first served, and heavily policed! We managed to snag a plot within walking distance of the house. Andy immediately went to fence our portion off - It's too late in the year to do much with it but come spring we're already planning what that little eighth of an acre will do for us.

It's getting colder. Lots of wool being imported from Wales and sold in rations, for people to make their own jumpers. There's even a lunchtime class for it in college. We probably won't be able to get gas for the boiler, what with Russia playing up about it. Greg said his company will get us a good solar water heater but that we wouldn't be able to power the radiators with it. I hope this summer isn't too cold, or we're going to be very very ill

Other than that, things aren't looking too bad!

-Mia

[author note: week 22. Again, not as in depth as I wanted due to too much revision. Expect similar tomorrow but after that I'm hoping to explore a few things before the project ends next week.]

We got a call a few days ago. Uncle Andy, following his injury in the tanker incident all those weeks ago, has finally been allowed to leave the middle east. He arrives today, but in London Heathrow. Greg, who's been stockpiling his maximum diesel allowance each week now that he's making good money off his solar company, agreed that he'd drive us there.

It's the first time I've been in a car in 10 weeks. The car smells musty and the diesel engine takes a few gos to start. There's dead leaves strewn across the wheel arches of most of the cars along our street. After negotiating with a neighbour who's car was blocking our path (he didn't have any fuel, we had to let go of the handbrake and push), we set off.

The motion of the car felt really unnatural after so long away and I soon felt a little sick. I ignored mum and Greg's talking and sat back to look out the window.

Bristol is actually busier than it used to be, in a way. The pavements on either side of the road are packed with people walking to work, to shop and wherever else they go.

"There's still quite a few cars," I said, surprised at the number passing us on the road. Greg shrugged in the driver seat.

"People still need to get places," he said. "It's only £1.60 a litre. It's more expensive than it used to be but it's not so much people who need to travel can't do it."

"So why haven't you been using your car much then?" I asked him. I still hadn't worked him out. Sometime he seemed so Tory, whilst othertimes he was positively liberal in his approach.

"I don't want to waste money," he said. "If I can do it from home, I'd rather not have to spend 40 quid going to work."

"And all that diesel you bought?"

"It doesn't hurt to save it up," he said. "If prices rise again, the money I spent will be tiny. It's an investment."

We fell silent again as a fire engine's sirens shrieked towards us, heading to a stack of smoke rising over St. Paul's. Greg manoeuvred out of the way - avoiding the pedestrians being harder than avoiding the cars.

Another farmer's market was in full swing in Broadmead as we entered the main shopping district. It had grown since I last saw it, and another set of roads had been closed off to accompany the throngs off people queueing for locally made food. Security checkpoints at every entrance to the market were guarded pretty heavily by the blue shirted security forces that the government's been recruiting heavily for - every other advert now is an offer to join up the security forces and bolster the police.

"Brown's determined to legislate this crisis away, isn't he?" Greg muttered. "making all these new jobs in security for all the unemployed to stop the unemployed causing trouble... pretty clever."

He sounded impressed despite himself. Maybe what he's seen on the news about the US has made him appreciate us not being controlled by ultra conservatives. We drove on. The new developments of shops at the rear of Broadmead have stopped, the cranes flopping down sadly. They looked like tired birds. A couple of places the fences had been broken down and graffiti was all over this part of town.

Then on past the Tesco superstore - heavily guarded at the gates - and onto the motorway. There were a few cars but mostly just lorries, trucking down the first two lanes of the road. A fair few of their number seemed to have police escorts who eyed us nervously as we overtook.

A lot of buses too, packed full of people gawping at any cars that passed - a fair few forlorn faces stared out at me, bags all around them as they retreated where they were going. All the signs on the road had new additions at the bottom: Drive slower and save fuel. H. M. Government.

A lot of people seemed to be following the advice. Most of the outer two lanes were going less than 50. Greg shot past a lot of them with a grin on his face.

"Shouldn't you conserve fuel?" I asked, looking at the needle going past 80 on the speedometer.

"I haven't driven in weeks," he replied. "If I'm on the road I might as well enjoy myself. Besides, the faster we go the sooner we'll get to Uncle Andy."

Motorway driving hasn't changed much, despite all that. It's still very dull, with nothing to see but grass embankments and other bored drivers and passengers. A couple of rich boy racers in cars shot past us way too fast but none of the police escorts seemed to care. I think they were just glad to see their product safe to its destination. I plugged my earphones into my solar-charged phone and started listening to music, fading out from the boredom of the M4.

I was jolted out of it an hour later as we pulled off near reading and headed towards the airport. Things were very different here. Reading's always been a massive place for commuters moving into London every day and I've heard on BBC that a ton have lost their jobs. Smoke rose in several places from the city in the distance and placards littered the side of the road, cardboard taped to fences asking for help from passers by and God. As we turned the roundabout towards the airport junction, I saw something I never expect to see.

A checkpoint had been set up leading to the 4 terminals, complete with barbed wire and temporary hut. The shocking thing as we drew up to the barrier were the two gigantic tanks on either side of us, the soldiers watching us approach and join the queue to enter the airport with mistrust. After twenty minutes slow queueing - Greg cursing the wasted fuel every time we moved forward - we reached the barrier and a soldier leaned in to check our faces.

"ID cards and reason for being here," he said to Greg. They were all armed. greg handed over our ration cards, which were swiped and passed back to us.

"We're here to collect a relative," Mum leaned over and said. "He should have arrived a few hours ago."

The soldier eyed us dubiously then waved us through.

"You've all been charged £10 and six ration credits," he said. He put a hand down to stop our protests. "It's to stop people getting in who just want to sneak onto a plane. You're allowed a free meal whilst you're in the terminal, just show them these."

We got four tickets of entry and entered the compound. The army was everywhere. I shrank down in my seat to avoid the stares of the helmeted soldiers looking at us pass. We rose over a crest and into one of the car parks.

"My god," Mum said. Greg slowed down. Nearly all the car park, and the ones we could see beyond it, had been fenced away and within them lay scores of prefabricated buildings. Guards patrolled the gates. Inside, thousands of people in ragged clothes hugged the fence, tramped across the damp asphalt, looking completely miserable.

"What are they all doing there?" I said, horrified. A girl not much older than me stared at our car passing, her eyes wide and desperate.

"Illegal Immigrants," Greg said. "I heard they were shipping them out from here."

He accelerated past the makeshift prisons and into the terminal proper. I stared, not wanting to see what I was seeing. I felt sickened. Not because they looked that mistreated - I could see a table of people being served hot food, and a tv was on in one of the buildings with everyone clustered around it. I was sickened, mainly because I found myself unable to say that they shouldn't be sent home. I was horrified to find that I didn't entirely disagree.

Greg parked and we passed another checkpoint into Heathrow. There were a few businessmen looking harried and queues of poor immigrants being herded into various destination queues, arguing with the officials in many languages. possessions and coats were piled up everywhere around families with tired, forlorn expressions on their faces. There were no normal looking passengers, no one looking excited to be getting on a plane to go spend days in the sun or visiting some foreign city. The scene looked like an airport but different.

Most of the desks were closed and many were staffed by guards rather than chirpy hostesses. We filed past the queues and into the food court. Aside from a handful of cheaper looking restaurants, everything was closed. We sat in a pizza restaurant, jostling to sit down amidst a ton of depressed Africans demanding more food for their rations from a harrassed waitress with greasy hair.

We exchanged our coupons for an order whilst mum called uncle Andy. The pizzas were small and uninviting but the strong flavoured cheese and pepperoni reminded me of cheap fast food that made me part-nostalgic and part-disgusted. I wolfed it down anyway.

Uncle Andy appeared a few minutes later, pulling a airport trolley full of luggage. He'd aged so much. His once-brown hair was greying and burn scars and bandages lined the skin on one side of his neck. One of his eyebrows had a thick gash slowly healing, barely missing his eye. One leg was still bandaged and he limped as he walked. More than that, he just looked completely drained of the enthusiasm and exuberance I associated with my favourite relative.

He saw us and his eyes lit up with that familiar sparkle. Greg came forward and shook his hand and took the trolley, whilst mum leapt on her brother to give him a concerned hug. Then he looked at me and the tiredness lifted off his face.

"Hello kiddo," he said. "Fancy seeing you here."

I launched myself at him and he folded his arms around me in a bear hug. Then he straightened, looking around the restaurant complex at the hordes of hunched-over figures shuffling towards their exit. His eyes took it all in and looked full of many sadnesses. He smiled slightly and looked at us.

"I've had enough of it," he said, watching as the African family got pulled away by one of the guards and a social worker, screaming. "Let's get out of here."

I've never been so glad to leave a place.

-Mia





[Author's note: week 19. A much more prose based entry after yesterdays mega linkage. I wanted to show some more of the UK without getting too histrionic. Uncle Andy's reappearance gave me that opportunity. I don't agree with deportation but it's chillingly realistic. I'm still trying to carve a sense of tense but managed calm in Britain.


A bit disappointed with the last few days of coverage. Things are getting far too dark considering fuel hasn't changed in price much for a long time. It got to $6.50 and stabilised - similar to modern day european prices. Whilst there's definitely going to be chaos as a result (and chaos makes for better reading) I've felt things are getting too dark too quickly lately. It's conceivable that such results could happen, but surely not so fast. I'm going to keep my writing a little bit more slow-paced until I see some major event that could change things in my part of the UK - I certainly haven't seen it yet. There's still plenty of hope that with organisation everyone can come out of this bruised and poorer but with some sense of a normal life. A lot of major companies will crash and burn and a lot of people will go bankrupt. That's not the same as an apocalypse. Even at $6, it's not so expensive that food can't arrive or fuel is prohibitive. If it was over $10, then maybe. At the moment, most of what's causing the problems seems to be panic. We can get through this, as long as we are prepared to adapt.

As I said in some of the comments, I'd love to see what's happening in the US congress and Senate about this crisis. It's looking like shaky ground for Bush even without any oil crisis - with the bunglings in America I'd be amazed if there wasn't a motion to Impeach him by now. Whilst the administration aren't perfect, there's a few senators and congressmen/women who would have tried to pass motions to make this better - and would probably have got fed up of Bush's oil-company-induced vetos. So I'm offering a challenge to American writers of wwo: show me what you're government's doing. Let's see some political reaction to all this.

UPDATE:here's a great example.]

It's becoming horrible obvious to me that America is not in a good state. Here in Britain things are grim but we're holding it together. The new taxes, ration system and immigration laws are harsh, there's been protests but there's nowhere near the level of chaos and violence I've been seeing reported all across America (muggings here in Columbus, armies gathering bases in Maine, the conspiracy-filled bombing in LA, riots in Seattle.)

Some people like rdy2rte and drewkitty are reporting more positive things (drew, I'm amazed at your bravery) but generally I feel totally overwhelmed by the level of chaos we're seeing on the BBC news - and that's from the areas they've got reports from. It's like will without oil is saying: Whilst Brown's new government here quickly made some hard decisions to keep us afloat, the US government still seems to be suffering from the same problems it was before any of this began; corruption, indecision and lobbyist-induced bending of the facts...

It reminds me of this DailyKos post before the crisis, talking about the horrible problems with American democracy in the 00s. The quote that stood out was:

'Seven years ago a Turkish friend of mine said that America would have a civil war within 20 years. I was shocked that she would say this. I tried to convince her that the checks and balances built into our system would prevent that from happening.I could not have been more wrong. Now, it scares me to think how close we came or are to that. Even though it feels like the tide is changing, we're not out of the woods yet.We are in Constitutional Crisis now; the Constitutional Confrontation is yet to come.'

it seems the writer's Turkish friend may have been right - talks of civil war aren't as crazy now, nearly 5 months on from the first oil price increases. With people talking about the alberta oil field conflict and even talks of a potential new COUNTRY called Cascadia, things are getting really weird. It's all muddled what we receive over here but in class a lot of people were talking.

"Have you heard about Cascadia?" one of my new classmates in biology said, "I hear they're trying to break away from the US or something?"

"Don't be silly," another one replied " the government's just going to do what they did in LA and drop another bomb on anyone that gets out of line..."

The conspiracy theories are endless. I was just happy to be back at college (I chose to do Biology, chemistry and *shudder* maths - me and greg sat down and worked out which would be the best for any kind of career. Of course, now I'm back in school looking to learn after all this news and all anyone can talk about is the crisis...

things here are much likeEnglish village has been talking about - lots and lots of police, some dodgy people lurking. Some people are very unhappy - One of the tescos near us has been bought out by its local managers and is now a 'Bristol groceries' Shop. Other big companies like Mcdonalds and HMV are floundering - McDonalds closed weeks ago with various notices about lack of ingredients, whereas most of the music shops are slowly disappearing with the new music downloading system. A lot of people are saying that Movies and Tv might head the same way but it hasn't happened in a big way yet, not like with mp3s. David's beaming all the time because he can download games for much cheaper than they used to be - although I'll bet it's mostly old or simple games they're releasing, I can't see many massive budgets around at the moment.

Greg is also a happy man. Since we moved in with him his alternative power gadget company has been raking in cash - some people are profiting from the crisis. He's actually got a big raise - practically unheard of in this day and age! The company's trying to setup more local co-opted manufacturers as mass producing in china doesn't look so hot anymore. Greg's been assigned a task to find a few handymen in the South West that can build some of these gadgets to distribute locally. He celebrated by spending a fortune on a side of beef - using up most of our restricted item rations in the process. It tasted gorgeous after so many days without meat.

[author note - week 18. That DailyKos post is actually from today. It's worth looking at. There are some very troubling matters in US politics at the moment that might not even need an oil crisis to start a major breakdown.]

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?]

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.]

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]

Mum came to me with the conversation I knew was coming but dreaded all the same.

"Sit down, pet." I did, after looking desperately around for escape routes. Mum smiled nervously and perched next to me.

"You may have noticed," she said, looking anywhere but at me. "That me and Greg have been very close lately."

"Mum," I said, trying to squirm away.

"You need to hear this," she said. "Now, I know it's sudden but it's getting very difficult to pay all the bills and Greg's been very kind enough to offer us a place next door."

My jaw dropped. "You mean move in with... him?"

"Now Mia, he's a very nice man, you'll see. It'll be a bit more of a squeeze but we'll be using much less money and energy."

"No," I said, standing up to get away from her "I don't want a new dad! I like my real dad!"

"He's not replacing your father," mum said.

"Yes he is!" I was screaming by now. "You want to take Dad out of my life."

"Mia!" Mum was shouting now too. She never shouts, and it quietened me. Her eyes were fierce. "I wouldn't do this unless I absolutely had to." she pointed to the electricity bill on the wall. "We're running out of money. If I pay that bill and the rent this month, we'll have no money for food. I like Greg but the most important thing is that he has a lot of things that can save our family. He has his own power, and you've seen how many solar gadgets his work has given him."

I thought back to the solar radio he gave me for my birthday, and the phone charger I've been using so much.