communications

Lancaster must be a city – it’s got a cathedral and a market and a city council.  Proof enough!  But of a Saturday we all go "into town” and every seeming stranger that we meet there,  knows someone who knows someone that you know.

Having stumbled bleary-eyed from Euston Station at 6.30am on Wednesday, and on my second coffee of the day (I average 2 a week), I found myself sitting in Market Square, Kingston upon Thames, full of anticipation for my first Transition Research Network (TRN) conference.

It is 9pm. I am typing this on fellow social reporter Jo Homan's laptop at her flat, where we have been staying for this Transition Conference weekend. Charlotte is preparing some pasta and Jo is about to return from forest gardening in Devon.

Before, you could go to the local paper to find out about how the frijoles were doing, the jitomates, what was going on in the town market. It was first and foremost about Querétaro, reflecting the place, the people. Now you have to search hard to find anything relevant to the city.

Since I started blogging for Transition on This Low Carbon Life when it began in October 2009, and on the Social Reporting project since last September, I've written posts on everything from connecting

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star

(William Stafford)

My mother was thrilled when she received her free bus pass. Now she could travel anywhere in the world for nothing. Her world was just a small part of Staffordshire! Most of the time, she was at home living a very low energy lifestyle, not trying to save the world, but to survive on a widow’s pension. She mended holes in socks and sheets but had never heard of holes in the ozone layer.

There was silence. You could have heard a pin drop.

And then a sound, kind of like a pin dropping. There it is again. And again, many times in rapid succession. Then silence. Nothing.