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.]