Pem was once a musician. If pressed, he'll go all dewy-eyed and recount tales of playing guitar to one man and a dog down the local bars. Pem howled the blues, the dog howled, the man turned his back and ordered another beer.
He hasn't really grown up. But he now puts pen to paper as well as finger to fret.
When he wasn't growing up, first that occurred just outside London, before moving to Devon at the age of seven. He's aware that last bit rhymes.
He has Welsh roots and is a descendant of the artist Augustus John - which is quite easy to achieve when you learn the man sired over a hundred kids. Pem has only the one child. Abigail. He's very proud of her. More so than he could ever express in words or through music. He just is.
In alphabetical order - of importance to Pem: Curb Your Enthusiasm, environmental issues, family, Family Guy, friends, (not Friends - he finds that offensive), Lightnin' Hopkins, Motorhead, Son House, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The White Stripes, Tottenham Hotspur.
Hard to imagine that at exactly this time last year, I drove off with the family to the neighbouring county for an Easter break and coincided our holiday with an absolute blinder of a heatwave.
The normally pallid writer who blinks mole-like in the daylight returned a week later a bronzed sex god.
My sincere thanks to a good source at Stumble Upon for this. Hilarious.
Only yesterday, I was talking to a member of the Green Options editorial team about the delights of tea – and we agreed, that Early Grey must rank as one of nature’s finest hot beverages for an afternoon’s pick-me-up.
The British Empire
Oh yes, think 4pm, the duchess summoning Jeeves to bring the best china, hallowed guests gather on the front lawn, croquet temporarily suspended as we congregate to imbibe.
So imagine my delight when I came across the following:
Remember CFCs? They had the power to flavour teenage armpits and work wonders on refrigeration.
There’s two things I remember from when I was growing up. Well, not two things literally. That would suggest a woebegone adolescence. No, two things of environmental importance.
At 15, Chernobyl. A complete nuclear meltdown causing Europeans to duck for cover to avoid the prevailing winds.
Yeah, so plants are safer now, aren’t they? Well, look, personally, when you play with atoms, I still think of Hiroshima and Chernobyl, once smiling communities now nothing but cancerous shells of their former selves. Higher safety standards lead to greater complacency. No-one reading this can guarantee that another nuclear disaster won’t happen, so please, let’s leave that one alone. I’ve heard it all before.
(I don’t like things that glow in the dark really. I have innate misgivings.)
And as well as Chernobyl, we had an enormous hole in the ozone layer recognised for the first time.
In what can only be described as a bizarre twist of fate – and you couldn’t make this up – Gordon Brown has resigned as prime minister of Great Britain.
Events unfolded when an unusually powerful gust of wind swept along the Thames, picking up debris and in so doing, blew a hole in the face of Big Ben.
The ensuing gale caused the iconic bell to monstrously chime in the wind – a knell that shuddered and brought the capital to a standstill - the normally ignorant Londoners actually pausing from earning obscene amounts of money and contemplating their existence.
But it was a wake-up call for more than Joe Public. Realising the enormity of events, our prime minister called an emergency press conference.
The normally stoic Scot, tears visibly welling, announced he was leaving office, citing the weather as, and I quote “the wind of change.”
Amy Winehouse
If you appreciate irony, as I’m sure you do, then you’ll understand there’s something quite beautiful about the fact that Amy Winehouse will shortly be securing a $700,000 deal to sing at the opening of a nightclub in Rotterdam, Holland.
Irony, yes, because the club will be powered by widdle and Amy’s career is going down the pan due to a vicious circle of relapses. (Rehab? No thanks.)
Of course, one of the reasons that the UK’s public transport grid is in disarray is because the ministers are clueless….
This clip is from the much-missed comedy show Big Train but I thought it rather apposite. Enjoy.
The wind howls, the setting some kind of Arctic wind tunnel. Sure, there’s a waiting room over there, but it’s deserted. And no wonder. The strip lighting such an intense hue that it dazzles – a fluorescent goldfish bowl that makes the squall preferable.
There’s only a few people here. A mum yells at her kids, then tells her friend about her recent sex life, the wind carrying her conquests to the damp corners of the platform and anyone unfortunate enough to have hearing as functional as her genitals.
To use the bus is not a green option, it’s the last ditch attempt of the stranded.
Today, UK news described plastic flower pots as “the gardeners’ equivalent of the plastic bag.”
And with this born in mind, a UK garden center has launched ‘Plan Apple.’
It is now offering its customers a recycling facility for the millions of plastic plant pots which are discarded by gardeners throughout the year.
Image courtesy of Flickr
Greenpeace recently released their quarterly guide entitled The Guide to Greener Electronics.
What’s the guide all about? In Greenpeace’s words:
“The Greener Electronics Guide is our way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to get rid of harmful chemicals in their products. We want to see an end to the stories of unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets created by society’s gizmo-loving ways.”
Nintendo came bottom of the league with no public policy on toxics elimination or recycling. And although the guide describes the behaviour of electronics giants regarding toxic waste, energy usage is not taken into account – something I want to discuss here.
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