Mucus Not Maypoles... Naturally Healing A Sinus Infection At Beltane!

Happy Beltane!

Well, the Beltane sun has been shining radiantly today and I've managed to soak up a little of it in my quest to recover from a horrible sinus infection. As I didn't feel up for dancing around maypoles, going for long walks gathering blossoms or making love in the morning dew, I've decided to write this blog post as my way of celebration!

Beltane is about celebration of life, fertility and abundance, of the Earth and all who live from her, the definite Spring and the promise ahead of Summer returning...

Having this illness has propelled me into deep gratitude for the abundance of the Earth, in the healing foods and herbs which are getting me well again. In particular with treating a sinus infection, I've been really stoking the Beltane fires with the heat of garlic, onion, horseradish, cayenne...

And the process of getting well has a lot of fertility going on within it. The synthesis of nutrients and phytochemicals and my own biochemical responses is a real love story creating a healthy living being (me) which can then go forth and multiply my abundant desires and birth all the things in the world I want to! Well, that's the plan J

Warning: Talking of 'abundance', this post will contain the word MUCUS quite a lot of times and possibly even descriptions.

I'm writing a post about this partly because it took a lot of commitment and perseverance and if I ever get sinusitis again, I can come right back here to save myself the work of figuring out what I need! I'm not writing it as a guide for anyone else but if it does help anyone who is looking for a way of avoiding antibiotics for ridding themselves of a severe sinus infection, then that's great!

Of course anyone with a serious health problem should seek the advice of a professional medical practitioner (there are lots of good herbalists around, or even a GP). Sometimes infections can develop a serious complication which needs urgent immediate attention, so it's always worth checking it out with someone if you have any concerns. And as always, do your own research!

Pharmaceutical antibiotics certainly have their place and there's no doubt they can save lives when the time is right and necessary. But their overuse is seriously damaging peoples' health and increasing the resistance  of harmful bacteria to the medicine. We can choose to take back more control of our health and find alternatives which can do a much a more effective and healthy job of supporting our recovery, with none of the damaging side-effects. 

So far the food and herbs are proving effective but I'm also happy to have that prescription on the wall if I need it too. This is, after all, a blog post written from within the process.

Background All my family went down with a really nasty flu-type illness while we were on holiday. It manifested differently for all of us but we all agreed it was horrible and powerful and not your usual run-of-the-mill bug. I managed to get through the holiday drinking licorice tea, Echinacea tincture, elderberry syrup and nettle soup but also did a fair amount of wandering round windy high hills and old cold houses and after my return it seemed to hang on as a sore throat and general tired feeling. The sore throat made it painful to swallow, and there was the feeling of pressure in my head and the sensation of mucus going down the back of my throat a lot of the time. I realised I had blocked sinuses although I could still breathe normally.

YIKES! Mucus oodling out of eye! I was watching Doctor Who on Sunday night with sudden difficulty as my left eye started hurting as if it had eyelashes or something in it, but there were none. Then my vision went quite cloudy and I looked in the mirror to see creamy mucus across the iris and oodling out of the corner of the eye. That was when I realised that my blocked sinuses had got a bit more serious and infected. I wiped it, took some golden seal tincture and went to bed. I didn't have a great night as my head, eye and throat were aching a lot.

Prescription for antibiotics In the morning I woke to find my eye sealed closed and very swollen, as if I'd been punched very hard and it had all puffed up. I got it open by soaking the mucus seal off with a wet tissue, but couldn't open it fully as it was so uncomfortable. I presumed that the eyelid was puffed out as it had so much mucus pooled beneath it but felt a bit unsure about how safe it would be to try and massage it out. I decided to go along to see what the GP would say about it, so that I could make more of an informed decision. The GP said it was a nasty infection and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. (Meanwhile, my mum had spoken to her GP about her constant cough and flu symptoms and had been advised to take paracetamol every four hours and drink lucozade.)

Choices  So, antibiotics or was there another option? I pinned the prescription up on the noticeboard in case at some point I felt it was time to go down that route, and decided to go all out for the natural healing approach. This meant taking time to pay attention to myself and prepare my own treatment. I've got some training and knowledge of natural healing and the use of herbs and nutrition so I needed to pull out from this everything that would help this infection in my head from getting more serious.

Information The following foods and herbs etc. are what I used to bring down the inflammation, reduce the infection and boost my immune system so that within two days I felt I was well on the road to recovery without the need to use antibiotics. This information is not meant in any way as a prescription for anyone else. I'm sharing it because it's what helped me and it may be helpful to others who are searching for ways to avoid antibiotics. Most of the foods and herbs I included are specifically helpful for fighting sinus infections and infections in general.

Fresh fruit  I had a bowl of fruit and natural live soya yoghurt for breakfast (mango, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, grated ginger, grapes, soaked goji berries, cinnamon)...

Salads  I had a big plate of salad for lunch (grated beetroot, green leaves such as rocket, lettuce, dandelion, spinach, chopped up pineapple, tomato, cucumber, celery...) Horseradish & onion concentrate and apple cider vinegar dribbled over the top.

Raw Garlic I had a few raw cloves a day chopped finely into my salad or soup. Update: I also put a garlic poultice on the soles of my feet for a couple of hours at night which helped. I found instructions for this here:
http://www.herbs-hands-healing.co.uk/Ailmentsnew/lung.html

Juices / Smoothies  I had a few different juices and smoothies throughout the day. Here are some that I used.

1) Carrot, apple, lemon and ginger juice with superfood (a mix with spirulina) -  Daily breakfast juice.

2) Wheatgrass, celery, spinach, kale, apple, ginger juice - lunchtime juice, before salad.

3) Beetroot, ginger, sage, cucumber, kale, dandelion leaf, spinach, parsley, orange, apple juice - mid-afternoon

4) Orange, lemon, cucumber, carrot, apple juice, fresh ginger (snack time)

5) Turmeric Smoothie (about 1 tsp turmeric), lemon juice (1 lemon), ginger, banana (half a banana), then add water until tastes right - late morning or afternoon. (Update: I made this later using pineapple (about 1-2 inch slice) and I really preferred the taste as well as getting the anti-inflammatory properties of the pineapple)

Nettle & sinus superfood soup - I had this for dinner a couple of times - onion, leek, garlic, cabbage, kale, potato, nettles, parsley, sage, celery.

Herbal tinctures  My primary tincture is Goldenseal, a powerful herb which works on bacteria and viruses (1tsp 5x daily) - This is a much higher dose than you would find on the bottle but I checked with a herbalist that I could increase to this amount, eyebright (1tsp 3x daily and 3x daily as eyewash), echinacea & thyme, mullein & eucalyptus.

Herbal teas  chamomile, immune blend (see Herbs Hands Healing link below), sage, licorice, fenugreek seed decoction (simmer 1 tsp fenugreek seeds in a cup of water until half the water has evaporated).

Steam inhalations - I did this about three times a day with essential oils chosen from tea tree, eucalyptus, lavender and thyme.

Sinus flush  I'd read all about the neti pot for pouring salted water up one nostril, around the sinuses and out of the other nostril, to help flush out the nastiness. The neti pot looked like a little teapot and as we couldn't find one in the shops I tried something I found in the garden...

But I had concerns about the effectiveness of this, so I got this which seemed to do the job.
I boiled and cooled the water, added the saline solution and also added a teaspoon of colloidal silver for it's anti-microbial properties.

Throat spray  My throat was sore most of the time, so I used sprays of elderberry and also colloidal silver.

Probiotics I had this in live soya yoghurt and also took acidophilus capsules 3 x daily. I'm going to try emptying a capsule and adding it to the sinus flush water too.

Vit C & Zinc Lozenge I got my Vit C mostly from my fruit juices (especially the orange, lemon, grapefruit & ginger one) but it may help to take an additional Vit C supplement. My throat remained sore and painful to swallow for a long time and sucking a zinc lozenge at night(when it was worse) helped along with the herbal tictures. 

Drinking water  I tried drinking 2 litres of pure water daily but probably managed somewhere between 1 and 1 1/2.

Hot/cold compresses on sinus area I didn't get round to doing this much, but it helps with circulation in the sinus area.

Rest  This is the hard bit - stopping all the busyness and stresses, sleeping in bed, sitting in the garden in the sun, looking at the blossom (noticing Stu could do with new socks! - It's good to have things which keep us grounded!).

 
I get my Superfood and herbal tinctures mostly from a company called Herbs Hands Healing. I'm happy to give them a plug here because I trust their integrity and the quality of their products. They're also very helpful when you ring them up to ask advice. Here's a link to their website:

 http://www.herbs-hands-healing.co.uk/

 

Here are a couple of other links that may be useful:

http://agriculturesociety.com/alternative-medicine-and-treatment/how-i-cured-a-raging-sinus-infection-naturally-with-no-drugs/

http://juicerecipes.com/health-conditions/juicing-for-sinus-congestion/

And for all those people who are disappointed that I didn't include lots of MUCUS photo's - I know a certain 8 year old who might be... here's a picture for you...

 

 



Haha... only joking, that's the surface of my beetroot and green leaf juice!

Remembering The Things That Matter. Rest In Peace Bill

In the first early hour of this morning, our friend Bill died.

I got to know Bill through my son who met him in the park a couple of years ago and they became good friends. They'd meet up every morning for 'dog club' which was a meeting of local dog walkers who had become friends. In the past few months Bill was able to make the journey less and less to the park because of illness and so we occasionally visited him round his house or in hospital. He didn't have any family but he had some good friends who loved him a lot.

Bill's death has hit me unexpectedly hard, not only because he has gone, and left a sad hole in our community. Not only because of the very special friendship he shared with my son that has come to an end. It has hit me hard mostly because it has come as a painful wake-up call to how I've let the daily activities and distractions of life obscure what matters most. I can't believe that I needed to learn this lesson yet again, I thought I'd been there and really got an awareness of this by now.

But the last month Bill has been in hospital and we've been wrapped up in our own lives and just not got round to visiting and keeping in touch as we could have done. We've visited once in that time. A couple of weeks ago, Bill phoned and until this weekend we've still been saying to each other "We must phone Bill..." We'll never know what he was wanting to say to us. I know he would have been hoping for a visit from my son because this always made him so happy. What hurts so bitterly is that we withheld this from him and my son (unintentionally by our lack of awareness), and the opportunities we've missed (for no good reason) to bring support and comfort to someone we cared about in the final weeks of his life. We could have done so much more and we would have wanted to. We could have picked up the phone.

In the last two weeks, how long have I spent on Facebook, rearranging clutter in the house, exchanging complaints about the weather, looking for wardrobes, worrying about things that didn't lead to anything, doing stuff that could wait...? How long did I spend being still, remembering and being attentive to what matters most? The awful way I'm feeling now is the answer to this.

We visited Bill on Easter day in the evening after a neighbour had called to say he was very ill. When we got there he was already unconscious and he never regained consciousness. They say that hearing is the last to go. I hope he could hear my son saying hello and telling him a joke out of the new copy of The Red Crow he'd brought him. My son never got to shock him with his new haircut or share chocolate fingers with him but I hope he knew we were there.

I think it was Nelson Mandela who said the saddest two words in the language are "too late". I most definitely agree. I don't ever want to have to learn this again.

It helps to have a dog to walk at times like this. Walking through the woods, trees don't care for judgements and regrets. "I'm so, so sorry" is just a variation on the breeze to them. They don't get embarrassed by grief or try to argue away guilt. They just give it permission to be felt. It might be a cliché but the sun this morning turned my tears into prisms full of rainbows. So when it really was hurting a lot, I was suddenly looking at it through beauty.

I have realised this:

All that matters at the end is forgiveness, gratitude and love.

 

What hurts most is having missed opportunities for kindness, for communication, for giving and receiving love.

 

It may not be true for everyone but these two sentences hold true for all the losses I have experienced and grieve for. 

 

Dear Bill, thank you. May you journey well and in peace.

 

 

Quick, Don't Blink! A Spring Day!

It's been feeling so much like Winter again recently that when I saw the sun outside this morning there was a sense of urgency to get out in it as quickly as possible, in case it decided to snow or do something really grim again before I could get my boots on. So I hurried my son off the computer, got the dog lead and camera and we were OUT!

Probably the most beautiful place really nearby is the coast walk alongside Milton Common. Last time we came here my son got stuck in the mud and it led to a 999 call and a chat with the coastguard. It had all ended happily (eventually!) without the need for anyone to come out but it did mean losing his boot out there in the mud somewhere. The tide was out this morning and it looked so tempting to just go out and see if we could find it but NO WAY am I going to let those deceptive mudflats trick us again!

I played with my camera and took some pics using minimal colour which perhaps ironically undermined the warm Spring light and bright colours of the day! What was I thinking of? That could be snow and ice on the path! But in another way they emphasise certain details which I like such as the blue sky, the yellow lichen or daffodils, my son and the texture of wood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my favourite wrecked boat - every time I see it, I see a big whale tail and then a whale skeleton below. It begs to be sketched or photographed.

There were long deep shadows and my son never misses an opportunity to give me bunny ears, though they came out really tiny. After all these shots of grey my son began objecting and implored that we give the day back its full vibrant colours of life. So here we are again with Pip and the daffodils, saying YES, IT'S SPRING! We don't care that the weather forecast for the rest of the week is heavy rain, today the sun was beautiful and we embraced it. 

Four Years On ~ Computers, Beaches And Bumholes

  

February is full of mixed feelings. The weather can feel like we're still in the middle of Winter and yet there are the first signs of Spring appearing. Snowdrops, hyacinth and narcissi are blooming in my garden. There is the lightness of the very early Spring sun as well as the feeling that we're moving towards warmer, longer days and Summer!

But February also brings the sadness of being the month my brother died. On entering February it can feel like a bit of a countdown towards the 19th/20th where thoughts of what was happening this time four years ago bring increased anxiety and keep me awake at night. Because there can be no hiding or turning away, I decide to rise to meet it each year with some kind of creative process. Something practical and engaging. Some form of an offering, which in the making, helps me feel closer to my brother at that time when I think he probably felt intensely alone. I see it as a piece of magic, to imagine that I am throwing my attention back through the years to wrap it around him during those dark days, that dark night, to surround him in lightness, warmth and love, for then and for now.

This February, I had a go at using movie/photo editing software for the first time. I got quite hooked! Entering the software to work on this project felt a bit like entering a sacred space. It was interesting as I usually find computers and screens generally to be a bit of an antithesis of the sacred, an invasion of my internal and external space. Give me an old tree in the woods anyday for my temple. But I suddenly found myself tapping away late at night and in the very small hours of the morning. My brother spent much of his time in the 'temple' of the computer screen, so this was probably quite fitting.

The visit to his old house for the photo was quite a big deal for me as I have managed to avoid going down his road ever since the house sold over 3 years ago. I still can't really get my head round the fact that if I ring the bell, I won't see his shape through the glass, coming along the hall to open the door. I don't think I'll ever fully understand that. For some things the brain just will not compute. At those times what are our choices? Shut down, hibernate or switch user? That's the challenge I suppose, to remain entirely ourselves, power on, ready to open to a fresh new page.

The visit to the beach for this project was  part of the same afternoon 'ritual', a ritual in which a pathway can be mapped out through the sometimes overwhelming chaos of grief.  A candle, the shingle, the waves, the sea gulls, they can all be anchors to this moment now and they can also all be a bridge to then. Paul, this is for you... we miss you so much.

 

A few words about Paul's box of angels... I found this when we were sorting out his stuff. I felt like I wanted to contact the maker of them to tell her about Paul's death in case she didn't already know, to thank her for giving him such a beautiful gift, for obviously being someone who had brought some blessings into his life at one time and to offer her the opportunity of taking back her 'angels'. My letter went all the way to an address I found in America and a few months later came back to me unopened. So, I keep them safely with me now, letting their blessings remind me of some of the most important things in life. I hope their creator would be happy with that.

And there's one last thing I want to put out there Paul, if you're somehow picking this up. Your nephew came across something which made him laugh a lot! We really wanted to show you! It's the little things like this which sometimes hit me with your loss the hardest. So here it is - you kept this a bit quiet didn't you, don't worry, your secret's safe with us! Look, it really is you!  xxx




From 'Loads More Lies To Tell Small Kids' by Andy Riley



Imbolc Brigid Poetry Festival 2013

It's the Brigid Poetry Festival time again. Find out more about it and join in yourself by clicking here!

This year my contribution is this poem written by Jehanne Mehta , which I discovered on a Bristol Transition Group website. Although I've never visited Minchinhampton Common, the poem speaks for my feelings about the land in many places I have been.

Having been involved recently with the protests in the Combe Valley, land ownership has been at the forefront of my mind. Who owns it, sells it, buys it (by compulsory purchase if they choose) and all of these so often completely detatched from those who care for it and inhabit it. Whether defined as a Common or as privately owned, I feel in a world where nature is receding so rapidly and great violence is being done to the land and what springs from the land, we have to question more and more the responsibilities of wild land ownership and even question whether anyone can truly claim ownership as opposed to environmental stewardship. I dedicate this offering to Brigid and to the fallen oaks of Combe Haven, who I know belonged only to themselves.

On Minchinhampton Common

I am walking,
walking barefoot on the common,
on this warm green ground,
ground that belongs only to itself,
to the four wise winds,
to the treasures it conceals under its
ancient crinkled gown, cow trodden,
unfurling it all along the changing
seasons of the sun,
in subtlest colours of gold, violet
purple and dark blue,
finely stitched and embroidered with
bramble, briar and hawthorn
and spangled with the dew.

This is common ground,
never ploughed,
never dug, since
long forgotton folk
built round houses,
buried their dead,
threw up bulwarks against
marauders
and watched the stars,
glimpsed through forest
boughs
ages since unseen,
dipping and wheeling
in their round dance
horizon to horizon.
Here I walk on Albion’s ground,
her secret spirit still awake,
in spite of the fog that fetters feeling
and tangles thinking into knots we do not
even notice,
her secret spirit will awake,
still calling through our feet;
and do we hear, do we hear
the quiet insistent voice of the ground,
the common ground that belongs only
to itself?

~ Jehanne Mehta, 2011

The End Of the Beginning

The most important thing to say right now is that there are still people up in the trees at Combe Haven. Yesterday there were no trees cut down despite the eviction beginning in the morning and continuing all day. Last night the news of the actions of East Sussex County Council was shocking and appalling:
 http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/treetop-protesters-lives-endangered-by-sussex-council/

As of 10.30am today the latest news is that the eviction of the camp has started again and work is taking place to get people out of the trees, and the Council is still denying people food and medicine:
http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/day-47-jan-29-decoy-pond-camp-eviction-continues/

Please keep checking the website above or Combe Haven Defenders Facebook and Twitter for updates and get over there to support them if you're able.

My family slid and slopped through the rivers of mud into the camp on Sunday. There was busy activity around the camp all day, not only hosting the visit from the senior delegates from six major environmental groups (RSPB, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, The Wildlife trusts, Campaign for Better Transport and the Campaign to Protect Rural England) but also building defences around the camp and fixing up tree nets, practicing climbing, keeping visitors fed with a seemingly inexhaustible hospitality, etc.

 All this was busily going on around my son who buried his head in a new book for most of the day, but insisted he really liked being there at the camp to do so. Quite a few children visited the camp during the day, including one young boy who brought his own harness and did some impressive climbing up in the oaks.

As it got dark, some people left, including my family, and those who were staying ate round the fire and discussed what would happen the following day. I headed to my tent for an early night and stood transfixed for a while looking up at the clear sky and the full moon through the branches.

 

 

I didn't get a lot of sleep, partly the cold and partly dreams of falling in mud waking me up with a start and other times thinking I heard people calling only to realise it was owls hooting to each other. People were up early in the morning and preparing their positions. I was still a bit undecided, whether to try and get up a tree or assist with keeping bailiffs out from below. Then someone offered the irresistable opportunity to lock my arm into a block of concrete and Yay! I had a plan. Was I worried? My face does look unintentionally worried sometimes but No! Oh, ok, just a tiny bit...it was a new experience and I'm quite attached to my arm.

Reports of vans arriving confirmed the eviction was going to take place. The defences built up the day before with brambles and wire were helpful in keeping them out for a while, together with some smoke clouding visibility.

Meanwhile at the back of the camp, people were blocking them from coming over the stream, where a couple of metal bridges were brought in. A tractor brought a load of fencing which started going up around the camp.

Some defenders were roughly dragged from the bridge onto the other side of the stream and a man who managed to get back into the camp was arrested and carried off site.

 

 

I loved the radical poetry that was recited loudly for all to here from out of the treetops and the way someone was serenading the camp with CNT anarchist songs. I loved the care and kindness shown by people on the ground (before they got evicted) to ensure those who were locked-on were comfortable as possible and had what they needed. I loved the man who built me a wooden seat and the woman who brought me a jumper to pad it with (sorry I still have this jumper and need to get it back to its owner!). I loved the sense of humour of some of those up there who kept spirits high and even halted the work of the pneumatic drilling on our lock-on for a while. I loved my lock-on colleague who made me laugh quite a lot. I loved the tree I was locked beside and whenever police spoke to me I just focussed all my attention on this and then I couldn't hear or see them anymore...

 

Watching the micro-environment and it's inhabitants going about their daily lives directly in front of my eyes. An ant, a beetle, a tiny spider creeping into a crevice in the bark. The ivy on it's slow climb upwards. I really felt very close to the energy of this tree and felt an immense sadness that within hours or days, all this great body of life and the lives it supports was going to be lost forever, for nothing, for a road that isn't needed, for greedy land-owners like Cambridge University (they're not locals, by the way), for George Osborne's mindless road scheme and for a council which doesn't care about the destruction of the natural environment it is supposed to be responsible for any more than it cares about its residents welfare or for the local land-owners who have had their land forcibly purchased (though apparently still waiting to be fully reimbursed).  

 

 

 

After being carried out of the camp beyond the fencing boundary, we could see everyone who was still up in the trees and on the tripod and knew this was going to certainly go into a second day. Maybe the police and bailiffs would have got more done if they hadn't kept stopping for tea-breaks and to go off and play in their bouncy castle...

 



 Who knows, but everyone who participated in the resistance won the trees another day.

 

 

There's a lot of people, myself included, who have referred to the people living and taking action at Combe Haven as 'heroes', who have said 'well done' and 'brilliant' and 'keep up the good work'. I've said it and had it said to me and I understand this response. It's supportive and is appreciated as such. However, I'm also aware that when we talk like this and use words like 'heroes', we're placing a distance between ourselves and them. As if we're saying that they're doing something we couldn't do. As if we can't all be as strong and remarkable, as brave and committed as these people. I realise we can't all physically get there, we can't all juggle our differing responsibilities to offer the same levels of involvement as everyone else, but most of us can join in practically in some way. Most of us can possibly claim the power to be as heroic as those we congratulate and do something real to make a difference, as well as watching and sharing the updates rolling in on our screens and keeping on sending our important words of support. Our countryside is facing a huge devastating onslaught in the months and years ahead by the £30 billion roadbuilding schemes that are coming. The environmental resistance to this needs to grow to meet it.

 

   

 

I know while I've been focussed on Combe Haven, there's as ever, a whole load of other shit in the world taking place that also requires attention and action. It's up to us to make choices about where we put our energy and do what we feel we can within the web, as it's all connected. Remembering to look after ourselves at the same time! So I'll still be going to work later, taking my son to his guitar class, calling on parents, walking the dog, and because I can't be there today, keep checking and sharing those online news updates. But something I've noticed from participation in direct action camps and actions, not just there at Combe Haven, is that they're places that can not only possibly make change and have a real impact on the world, but they can be really good places to restore my faith in humanity and inspire my spirit with good company and creative visions of what a better world feels like, already here and now, whatever the future holds.  

 

If you haven't signed it, please sign this petition:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_the_site_of_the_Battle_of_Hastings_and_Norman_Invasion_Sites





Combe Haven Calling...

I have to admit it, I hesitated with the decision and had to sleep on it.The urgent call for people to come to the last camp at Combe Haven which they expect to be evicted this coming Monday 28th got an immediate emotional response but not a practical one. This weekend is busy for me. It would be really inconvenient to go this time. It wouldn't only be easy to stay away and hope lots of other people go, but it would probably be sensible. I'm looking forward to a child's birthday party with friends on Sunday. I have an annual visit from an LEA officer on Monday morning to discuss my son's home education. I have paid work Monday evening.

But.

What's happening in the Combe Valley is not sensible, neither is it easy for the people trying to stop it. It's certainly inconvenient to the animals and trees and other inhabitants of the open countryside who stand in it's way.

How will I be able to sit calmly explaining to the woman from the LEA how I'm providing my son with an education, show her his biology book where we've studied photosynthesis and the structure of plants at the very same time that I know in a beautiful part of our countryside, bailiffs and chainsaws are working their hardest to destroy those things, to destroy a vital aspect of this country which I try to teach my son to value, respect and appreciate? Maybe a responsible parent would not be sitting at a table in a meeting which could be postponed and instead be up in the branches of one of those trees or at the very least be on the ground trying to prevent such a crime, to protect those majestic plant structures which perform the life-giving process of photosynthesis, for the generations to come (wildlife generations as well as human)? It's not in the text book I know, but then the most important things rarely are.

Will I enjoy a party, chat, eat cake (amazing as I know it will be!) while a group of dedicated, cold, probably very tired people are urgently calling for help to save their camp, save the last remaining mature oak trees in the area, a call that by next week will most likely be far too late.

How can I go off to work, smile at the customers, earn my money, while not being there to try and stop this country being made another big step poorer. To some people, this may sound overdramatised, like an out of proportion concern, that we're talking about a handful of trees and that given the immense number of problems the world is facing, energy could be better spent elsewhere. I totally agree that the enormity of the issues in crisis which as a global community we are facing can feel overwhelming and that if we look at, for example, rainforest destruction, then these few trees at Combe Haven can seem almost insignificant. But, it is exactly because of both the devastating global and national environmental context we are in, which makes this struggle so vitally important. It's because of the current economic crisis that it's so insane to be resurrecting a roads programme which will divert billions away from the essential services which the infrastructure of our society truly needs. To choose to act locally we can each begin to confront the bigger picture which otherwise can seem unmanageable. To act to save these particular individual trees, to stop this particular road from going ahead, we can help to prevent an avalanche of future environmental destruction across Britain's countryside. I suppose it comes down to what we care about, what we choose to identify with.

If the eviction does not happen after all on Monday will I have cancelled my previous commitments for nothing? No, I don't think so. I obviously want to make the effort for the occasion that would be most effective but each day not evicted is a good thing and while I'm there I can make every second count in giving support to this amazing community. Even if I can't go and live there. Even if I can only give a couple of days.

And next week it may be too late.

So I'm writing this post in haste, knowing that through the writing of it I have come to a decision. Combe Haven has called to me, the oaks, the badgers, that particular little robin, the people. How can I say no?

Urgent Appeal from Combe Haven Defenders