A good read
Eek! I’m going to recommend buying something, but it’s a little book and it’s about not letting the consumerism of the ‘christmas’ season take over what Christmas actually is. I expect to have a few more rants on the subject in the next few weeks anyway, but check out this title: Grace and peace, Ed

Advent Conspiracy
Advent Conspiracy is a brilliant name, and a great group of people who are trying to realise the reality of Christmas apart from the mass of consumption that goes with it. Please have a look at their website, watch the video and seriously consider what you do with your money. http://www.adventconspiracy.org/ Grace and peace, Ed

Why
My first challenge was to avoid buying new clothes, and to be honest it’s a fairly easy thing to achieve, at least in the short term. The reasons why are varied, but I’ll try and explain one of them in a bit more depth here. Firstly for me, and I guess more self-righteously and right-on studenty, it’s about the environment in which our clothes are made. I’m assuming that because you’re reading this, you have internet access, and because you have internet access you are aware of the world around you, and will have seen pictures from inside sweatshops and factories in the Far East and Africa, so I’m not going to go into details about child labour and ma

The Agony of Choice
My mother-in-law was on mission trip in Tanzania. The diet there was simple; rice, beans, something called ungalli (which I think is the same as sadza, a kind of porridge made from maize flour) and not a whole lot else. There were no fat kids. Meanwhile, I was at home in Aberdeen. On my 10-minute walk into town there are 4 corner shops, 3 bakeries, 12 takeaways, 2 restaurants, 2 sweet shops… and dozens of muffin-topped teenagers, fat parents and wobbly dogs. I’d love to be able to blame it all on McDonalds (though there isn’t one on my walk into town), but could it be possible that the reason people are fat in this country is because we can’t stop

Day 0 – Not Counting
There comes a time to give up on something. I should know, I’m an expert on giving up having done that pretty much my whole life. As WC Fields said “If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit; there’s no point being a damn fool about it.” But the thing I’m giving up today is pretty small – just the idea of counting days. There’s no real purpose and I suppose the only reason to tag each day is to make it some quixotic crusade that I WILL make it to 500 days. The truth is, my purpose is not to live an ethical life for a year, or spend six months with no carbon emissions, but to live in a way that I would like everyone to live; a life that i