Simon Mitchell

An Ezine called Nettle Soup !

Have you heard of a very successful series of books on life improvement, called �Chicken Soup for the Soul� by Jack Canfield? Well, here is an ezine called �Nettle Soup for the Mind� - a positive, stimulating and tonic mixture of green ingredients inspired by of one of nature's most useful plants, the humble and wholly underrated stinging nettle.

Lostwithiel Christmas Pageant

Every year for the past 25 years, the Cornish town of Lostwithiel has hosted what may be the last non-commercial carol singing event in the country, Lostwithiel Christmas Pageant. A turn-out of more than 200 people is not unusual for this event which is quite a substantial amount of people for a small Cornish town.

I love to dance

There is nothing like dancing. I used to freelance my dance then I learned Salsa.

Pink Floyd Tribute

Pink Floyd at Bingley Hall Staffordshire in 1977 was just the best music concert I ever went to. It was Pink Floyd at their �prog. rock� best. Dark Side of the Moon is also my favourite album ever � it has certainly stood the test of time! I know all the words to all the tracks and can sing along to the whole album.

Summer Pudding

Midsummer�s Day. What better time for the archetypal summer treat, home-made Summer Pudding with clotted cream. I salivate just thinking about it.

Dealing with The Rocket Glut � Rocket Pesto

What do you do when your garden is heaving with rocket, just about to flower and bolt into seed? The answer is Rocket Pesto � a way of conserving this lovely taste of summer for six months or so.

The Tastiest Potatoes in the World

It was in April 07 that I read in the Sunday Times about the fantastically tasty potatoes on the Ile de Batz, near Roscoff on the coast of Brittany. The article described how the islanders grow potatoes in seaweed. I have been aware for some time of seaweed as a healthy source of nutrition with important trace elements and had tried to integrate this foodstuff into my diet. I made Irish lava bread, which was not to my taste. I gathered and dried bladderwrack from the beach and crushed it down with a pestle and mortar, putting it in a pepper grinder to sprinkle on my food instead of salt. I still make and enjoy sushi. But growing these potatoes seemed a good idea.

The Cut and Paste Generation

Cutting and pasting essays from the internet is a wholly rational response to an education system that is now an indoctrination system. The word �education� has its origins in the root word �educare� � meaning to �draw out and extend�. Modern education no longer does this. It imposes a curriculum on students that has its basis in making us look economically superior to the Germans. The purposes for modern mainstream education are built around economic objectives and are not about the development of human beings as individuals, their potential, values and identity in a changing world. Real education starts where you are � it is grounded in real, personal and lived experience. Real education gives you the tools to reflect on your own experience and make your own sense of it. It helps you to adapt to a new reality in the face of changing circumstances.

Green hedonism

In reality I view my values as a green person as relatively meaningless in the scheme of things. I know that at a global level for everyone of me, a person who makes careful choices about what they consume and tries to limit consumption, there are probably 100,000 people who don�t, many of them because they are simply unable to have this wealth of choice. I know that even if every person in the UK became carbon neutral overnight, it would take China just 83 days to make up the difference in global pollution terms.

A truth about being Green

When you look around, it seems that �green� is just another colour of consumer capitalism. Often it is the more expensive option in a choice to buy goods. Somewhere along the line corporate consumerism has already hi-jacked many of the real intentions beyond being �green�. Surely recycle, reduce, repair and re-use are the essence of the green message?