Weekend of Gospel

January 23, 2008 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Music | 2 Comments

This weekend there will be a Gospel Workshop where I live, L’Escala. This will be the third one I’ve been to and I am really looking forward to it. It’s such fun! The course is open to anyone who likes singing, they don’t have to be able to read music, and the teacher, who curiously is called Moses (Moisès in Catalan) helps you to really live the music and the entire experience with all your senses. You come away feeling really moved by the great feelings the singing provokes. Whether or not you are a Christian, the music is spiritually moving, and when you think about the reasons that led to people originally singing these kinds of songs it’s kind of awe-inspiring.

For information about the group he directs take a look here.

The Oxford Murders (Film review)

January 21, 2008 at 6:16 pm | Posted in Film Reviews | 2 Comments

Yesterday I went to see the Oxford Murders directed by the Spanish director, Àlex de la Iglesia and starring John Hurt and Elijah Wood (what eyes!!). I thoroughly enjoyed the film and I didn’t know who had “dun” it until the end. It also had a thought provoking sting in the tale. Is there such a thing as pure truth? Is there such a thing as pure innocence? There were some lovely shots of Oxford too, which made me feel quite nostalgic as an ex-pat!! My rating 7.5/10 Well worth seeing.

New year’s resolutions for 2008

January 21, 2008 at 5:55 pm | Posted in A Better World | Leave a comment

I haven’t posted for quite some time, but I’m back!!! Hopefully with renewed energy. I have decided that 2008 will be the year in which I will make a REAL effort to be more ecological in as many ways as possible. I know that I’m not going to be perfect and that along with my attempts to be more ecological I will be committing many sins, but if my small effort is added to other people’s small efforts we really can make a difference. I have in the past sometimes thought, what’s the point of doing such and such if I’m the only person I know who does so… but there IS a point, every little effort helps, I really believe that!!

So, my mission this year is to stop using plastic bags. I have read that on average we each get through 300 plastic bags a year, that’s almost one a day.. and they are not biodegradable so they just sit there, possibly for ever, in the environment, polluting, filling landfill and killing wildlife.

According to the Whale and Dolphine Conservation Society

“Globally, an estimated one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from entanglement in, or ingestion of plastics.”

We’re responsible for that… 😦

It really isn’t that difficult to get into the habit of keeping a fabric or wicker basket by the front door so you remember it. I’ve ordered some re-usable net bags for putting fruit and veg in at the supermarket to avoid having to put them in plastic bags to be weighed. We’ll see how the local shops accept that ( or not)!

I’ve bought some biodegradable bags for taking out with the dogs too. They mainly do their business in the open land around here so it doesn’t need picking up, but I always like to have a few bags on me just in case they don’t make it to the woods in time! It seems silly to tie up a biological product in plastic poop bags, so I thought it was time to do something about it.

For birthday presents I thought it would be nice to make people patchwork shopping bags to encourage them to give up plastic bags too.

I’m aware that I’m not going to be 100% consistent on my mission, but I reckon that even a 50% improvement  will be far better than nothing!!

More of my ideas to clean up my act a bit will appear soon! Watch this space 🙂

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