Summer’s Fall

After the long wait of winter and the trials of spring, worrying about when to sow seeds or put out that delicate ornamental around the fickle weather, summer is hopefully a relatively peaceful time in the garden. With a bit of luck, the planning over winter and busy spring preparation has led to abundantly blooming flowers and vegetables growing vigorously ready for autumn harvest.

A spot of weeding, fertilising and watering to help plants, indoor or outdoor, through any summer heat generally keeps things ticking over as you can enjoy the fruits of your labour, sometimes quite literally! Some summer pruning is also advisable; cutting back fresh summer growth can mean for bigger yields from fruit trees and bushes, mean for better displays from ornamentals and keep them from taking over the whole garden.

All good must things must unfortunately come to an end though and whilst autumn can be a beautiful time of year, with deciduous trees turning gold and orange and lots of tasty crops such as potatoes being ready for harvest, there is some more work required to put the garden back to bed for winter. As well as some further pruning to keep plants in check, it’s a good time to add a layer of mulch, dead organic matter, as a top dressing to the soil. This can be applied generally as a feed to soil and specifically around plants that will be spending the winter outside such as kale, in addition to trees and shrubs.

For those who like to live dangerously, you can take a gamble and try sowing some veggies such as broad beans to over winter and grow on in the spring. It is prudent to cover any such seedlings or other tender plants with fleece to protect against frost, and for any very tender plants, to bring them safely indoors by October.

Not all gardeners have gardens of course and for those of us with houseplants much less maintenance is required as the seasons change but a light pruning back of any vigorous houseplants and moving any sun loving plants into a south facing window to make the most of the shorter days definitely helps many plants along.

There are also fun gifts from nature that we can all enjoy in the autumn wherever we live, as many plants offer their bounty in the form of autumn fruit. Brambles abound with juicy blackberries that make for a delicious crumble and rowan berries can make for an excellent tart addition to many a meal.

In the next post we will look at what to do in the garden as autumn turns to winter, we harvest the last of the tasty morsels and put the garden to bed for the season. Until then, as always, happy gardening!

Mayday mayday

As we clear the fickle weather of early spring and enter the more consistent, if damp, weather of May gardening can pick up a gear. Whilst the risk of frost is fading into the rear-view mirror as May is often a rather soggy month fresh perils await!

 

Slugs love the cool, damp conditions and the temperatures can still drop to the relatively chilly side so it’s best to still keep any delicate, or delicious, plants well protected.lugs love the cool, damp conditions and the temperatures can still drop to the relatively chilly side so it’s best to still keep any delicate, or delicious, plants well protected. 

 

The more robust ornamental plants such as daffodils will have already braved the cold in April and put on a beautiful display. As these plants go to seed it is the perfect time to dead-head them and tidy up outdoor beds. Weeds are quick off the mark and will be growing vigorously at this time of year so a sunny day in May is the ideal time to keep them in check.

If you are growing vegetables, hardier crops such as brassicas and beetroot will be fine if they have already been seed sown and if not, its not too late to do so in May. Just make sure to keep the weeds under control and protect the seedlings with some fleece or mesh if possible to keep pigeons at bay. Root vegetables like potatoes can also be planted and if already in the ground and sprouting, earth up around the leaves to keep the tubers safely out of harms way of cooler temperatures. May is also the time to start off more delicate vegetable crops indoors such as runner or French beans and summer or winter squash. Once these have grown to 15cm or so in height it is best to ‘harden them off’, leaving them outside during the day for a couple of days, whilst still bringing them in at night, to get them acclimatised to outside conditions before planting them out permanently outside. If this is too much faff, fear not, waiting until June to plant them outside should substantially reduce any risk of cold shock for these plants.

For those living in apartments though there is of course less worry about plants getting too chilly, this can be the perfect time to be moving your sun loving house plants such as aloe vera moved to spots that get the most light as the days get longer, or tucking away any delicate shade loving ones such as ferns. You can also grow some tasty edibles such as herbs or chillis, or for the adventurous, why not try a bush variety of French beans. As this species is self-fertile and does not need pollinators they will merrily fruit away in your window whether or not you happen to have a handy house bee on hand.​​​​​​​

In the next post we will look at what to do in the garden in the height of summer and we start to reward the fruits of our labours, in the form of tasty crops sown in spring and enjoying ornamental plants in full summer splendour. Until then, as always, happy gardening!

Mind the (Hungry) Gap

(March-April)

The rustlings of spring are on the horizon and as the days get longer the temptation to get planting is growing. At the same time, we must be cautious for there are two gaps to navigate.

On the one hand we can have a gap in wintery conditions with a ‘false spring’, where it warms up nicely, the crocuses come out and it looks as if spring is right around the corner, then it snows and kills your seedlings!

With the UK’s temperate, oceanic climate and high latitude, this feature of warmer, longer days, punctuated by surprise frosts and snows also leads to the Hungry Gap; a period in spring where there is little or no fresh produce available. Whilst potentially inconvenient in the modern day if shops run short of supplies, this was of course a much more serious problem in the past. Whilst the risk of starvation is thankfully now not something we need worry about too much in the UK there are still some handy tricks and tips to ensure we can still get some tasty fresh spring veggies and to make sure our lovely ornamental plants survive:

• Sowing seed for any frost sensitive ornamental plants or garden vegetable crops such as beetroot safely indoors is advised before mid-April. Once all risk of frost is passed you will be rewarded with healthy young plants that will have a head start on those sown outside whilst avoiding the loss of plants from over eager outside early planting.

• Sprouted seedlings of seeds, often described as ‘microgreens’, can be a fun, affordable way of producing some tasty greens for the kitchen. A range of plants can be used for this such as alfalfa or chickpeas. One tried and tested plant that is often overlooked are peas – dried peas purchased from the shop can be soaked overnight and then lain on damp kitchen roll in a tray or sown in a shallow tray of compost. Within a couple of weeks they will have produced a small forest of bean shoots which can then be harvested with a pair of scissors for fresh spring veggies.

• For the adventurous spring has also traditionally been a time for foraging for wild greens, most commonly nettles, wild garlic and dandelions. Relevant precautions should of course be taken to ensure you are certain of a plant’s species before consumption and harvesting any away from where any animals may be using plants for the bathroom. With that in mind, a fun failsafe plant to try harvesting in the spring is the humble stinging nettle. Whilst this may sound an odd choice, given that it has the word ‘stinging’ in its name it is a surprisingly delicious, and incredibly nutritious food. The key with nettles is to harvest the top 20cm or so of nettles in the spring when they have safely outgrown the height where any canines may make use of them. Wearing gloves is of course recommended, but with a pair of gloves, a bag and a pair of scissors you can harvest a feast! Once you get them home, if you dice them and cook them up you can make a delicious soup or even nettle pesto!
  

In the next post we’ll be looking at ideas for getting your beds and pots prepared for the coming growing season and other handy hints for verdant flower beds and bumper crops, in the meantime, happy gardening!

A Snow Garden?

(Jan-Feb) 

As we are still in the depths of winter the land is sleeping and spring feels a long way off, but it’s always nice to plan on what we might get growing in the months ahead. With gardening it's always best to think before you sow, making the middle of winter the ideal time to think what gardening project you might like to embark upon for the year. Whether you are a seasoned allotmenteer or a newbie apartment dweller with a free windowsill who just wants to try growing a cactus there is a plant for everyone.

As we wait for the long nights of winter to shorten there are some good principles to bear in mind with planning your project:

• Something that is not designed to be sustainable is almost certain to be unsustainable. It’s always tempting to want to go from nought to sixty and create a mini-farm or house jungle (I have done this enough times). Start small and build your way up, that way it stays manageable and most importantly, fun!

• If you are planning to grow food crops, it’s best to aim for some combination of the below:
  
  

1. Grow things you know you like and in quantities you know you can use; a large cabbage patch may look fantastic but if you aren’t a sauerkraut fan you may end up with more than you can manage. 
   
   
2. If you are looking to save money growing crops, those that are most expensive in the shops will help maximise your returns. If you have a small space this could be a nice windowsill herb garden or if you have a balcony or garden some salad crops and soft fruit. If you have a slightly larger space and you want to really cut down on the shopping bills you can also go for some staple crops that have high yields which in itself can save money by quantity. Homegrown tomatoes, for example, are hard to beat and if you can grow a few vines you can save a fortune!​
   
   

• If you are growing ornamentals, try not to be too optimistic with the Scottish climate:

 

1. Some remarkably exotic plants can be grown on a sunny window indoors but there are limits on what can live on the diffuse sunlight at our high latitude, even with our long summer days. A plant such as Aloe Vera will grow splendidly but many plants from equatorial regions may struggle.
   
   
2. Outdoor growing of course merits even greater caution for growing ornamentals. Some plants can be put out for the summer and overwintered indoors and others are hardy year-round, but always have a wee chat with the folks at your local garden centre when buying plants to double-check.

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In the next post we’ll be looking at ideas for getting your seedlings started and other fun tips for the spring and I hope you have fun with horticultural scheming in the meantime!

Adventures in Experimental Horticulture

Following on from my last piece about how far we may go in space, one thing that is key for any long term space mission is being able to grow your own food ‘in situ’ as to ship in food in any serious quantities would be cost prohibitive. In a more holistic sense what will be pivotal for any long term space exploration is what is called ‘bioregenerative life support’; essentially taking an ecosystem with you so that you are able to recycle your air, water and waste whilst producing required food in a closed loop system.

Some fascinating research is going on into real world applications of such technology and may one day provide the basis for humanity to live in locations across our solar system. Whilst this is of course all very interesting it is rather esoteric. However, It does bring to mind some rather more pressing, down to earth issues, namely that the systems our civilisation has built for the provision of our daily bread are somewhat odds with maintaining our planet’s bioregenerative life support system.

What this means in practical terms of course is not that all over the world plants will stop growing all of a sudden but that land degradation from unsustainable agricultural practices combined with increasingly extreme weather caused by rapid anthropogenic climate change will greatly reduce yields of key crops in the world’s breadbaskets. Add on top of that just in time supply chains and foreseeable economic turmoil and you have great potential for disruption to food supplies.

Whilst one answer to this may be to apply the techniques we are perfecting for those space faring settlements to create self-contained mini ecosystems in greenhouses this is not something that most people have the resources for or that is likely to be something that could be scaled up to provide large numbers of people with food.

Large scale agriculture, depending on certain cash crops in a few key regions for the majority of global calories is incredibly vulnerable to disruption and decentralising and diversifying food systems is the most straightforward way to achieve this. A range of techniques with great potential have been put forward to improve on industrial agriculture such as agroecological farming methods, permaculture and wider organic farming. Another piece in this puzzle is promoting small scale, local food production of the backyard ‘Dig for Victory’ vegetable gardening we saw during the Second World War. Needless to say such gardens also helped keep starvation at bay during the collapse of the USSR.

Unless you have at least ¼ of an acre it is sadly not really feasible to grow most of your own food year round, even in the tropics, but you can grow decent amounts of healthy food even with relatively limited space. With all this in mind over the past few years I have been experimenting with all sorts of different horticultural methods to see what is most effective in terms of sustainability, cost, yield and labour requirements.

I have tried growing a range of different crops using a variety of methods such as double digging and ‘no-dig’ beds, using raised beds and traditional garden beds, single crops and polycultures, using artificial fertiliser and making my own compost and fertiliser.

I have also tried a range of slightly more unconventional farming activities; I have reared quail for their eggs, kept fish, grown mushrooms and tried my hand at both hydroponics and aquaponics, I have even grown spirulina algae to assess the premise and whether it might be a useful and/or feasible system for home production.

From all of this experimentation, alongside study, I have come to some very useful conclusions, as well as having one heck of a lot of fun! So without further ado, let me have saved you some experimenting and provide some findings to make your life easier;

What may be best to avoid

•  Most grain crops are not feasible/not worth the effort for backyard horticulture
  
  
•  Unless you have dedicated space and resources livestock of any kind will yield insufficient return to be worth the investment and time required.
  
  
• Fruit crops are a pleasant distraction but do not provide serious food production, if treated as a supplemental extra, put in corners in place of ornamental shrubs though, combined with some wild foraging are an excellent resource for some lovely home made desserts and wines.
  
  
• Various esoteric activities like growing algae, growing mushrooms, aquaculture, aquaponics or hydroponics or growing plants under LEDs are all worthy hobbies but do not produce serious amounts of food and/or value if wanting  to ever sell anything - with the exceptions of rearing poultry for meat/eggs or carp for meat, IF you pretty much have a small holding.
  
  
•  Many typical allotment annual crops are well worth the effort for domestic production but a number of them are often too temperamental or low yielding to be worth the effort in most instances; namely a lot of root crops such as carrots, parsnips, swede and delicate bulbs or edible flowers like onions or  broccoli & cauliflower.
  
  
• Some perennials such as globe artichokes or asparagus are also too low yielding to provide a great deal of physical produce or sustenance.  All fine in their context of course but large scale production is best for a lot of these, beyond them being edible ornamentals.
  

• Full polyculture mixes such as food forests are lovely, but they take several years to establish and the yields are relatively low unless you have a lot of space for specific purposes such as nut tree farming, not the most efficient set up  for small scale horticulture.

 

What is most likely to be worth your time

• Making your own compost and fertiliser is easy to do and cheap, well worth it, though will need to be supplementary to soil already present or compost you purchase to fill raised beds or pots.
  
  
• Raised beds or pots are very efficient especially if you are limited on space and can lead to less weeding; I have found no-dig raised beds to be both the easiest and most productive method, with a fresh layer of compost /mulch every season, If you can combine this with a polytunnel, all the better!

• Greenhouses/polytunnels are excellent if you can access them as a resource, polytunnels in particular are great for covering a large area affordably. 
  

• For the humble backyard gardener, coldframes and row covers also offer wonderful smaller scale solutions. The trusty window sill is of course also perfectly fine for sprouting seedlings! 
  
  
• If you are fortunate enough to have decent sized windows, you can also get some indoor beans going for example, or a fine mini-herb garden even in the smallest window. In this context I would advise LED grow lights as a sound investment if you want a year round herb garden, though not scalable for any large scale food production, for some nice chives in January they are well worth it!
  
  
• Covered growing set ups such as polytunnels are particularly relevant in the context of climate change as they provide you with a nice stable growing environment and not only extend the growing season, but also provide you with a stable growing environment. Particularly useful if the rapidly changing climate decides that regular seasons are no longer a thing!
  
  
•  For me personally, leaving the area surrounding your plots semi-wild and/or with perennial fruit bushes and the like for maximum ecological diversity is also to be recommended. A pond, however small, is also invaluable. This draws in birds to come to drink, and handily eat some plant eating insects whilst they are at it. Abundant foliage and a good range of flowers of course also encourage and helps preserve our invaluable pollinators.

 

Will we leave the sun behind?

The denizens of the sun’s bosom swing hot and fast around their Goddess.

Mercury, a hardboiled egg of iron, lifeless as can be.

Venus, an angry earth, a little too much celestial love 

Has burnt her up into a fiery storm.

Mars feels his mother’s chill and scorn.

In between lies our home, a delicate, beautiful orb.

No perfect creation, 

Just the right mix of this and that for complicated things to happen.

A warm sloshing bath of rock and sea awash with the most complex chemistry,

Some of which can even see!

Some of these eyes look deep into the deepest dark,

Searching for meaning’s heart,

For the signature of a great mind’s work.

What can we see out in the deep, deep, dark?

A trillion lights beyond our grasp.

A billion, billion beaming orbs of light.

Swirling majesties, galaxies of great might.

Arcs of pure light, a million constellations to light up the night.

What though is in our grasp?
Out there in the deep deep dark, waiting for that human spark.

One of the main narratives of our age is that we are destined for the stars, to reach out and grasp the infinite, ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’. The main current focus of our efforts is to explore and possibly colonise Mars. It is a very long way to Mars, a trip of several months spent in what is effectively a large baked bean tin living at constant risk of radiation poisoning before you even try to land on another planet. This is at the limits of current human technology but seems like a feasible possibility.

Whether or not we will ever travel much further than Mars though is another matter. Space generally, even just our own solar system, is far larger than much science fiction would have you believe. Even if people are able to colonise nearby rocky worlds, the outer solar system is as vast as it is icy, where even giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn slip in the void. As distant as these planets are though, the distances to other stars are staggering. For example, ff the entire solar system were modelled on the scale of a football pitch our nearest neighbouring star, Alpha Centauri, would be approximately 5,000 km away!

It seems most likely that faster than light travel will remain the stuff of science fiction and the sheer distances involved travelling between one star and another make it unlikely any civilisation would actually last long enough to travel such vast distances. It would therefore appear unlikely that humanity will leave the sun behind any time soon. This does raise another question, even if other stars are outside of our reach, what is within our grasp?

We will be looking at this in the next post..

Image credited to wikipedia

Is the King Dead or Does He Surf?

This is my second piece in a short series, following on from the last post 'Waves';

A famous phrase is, 'The King is Dead, long live the King', announcing the passing of a monarch and the succession to the throne of another. The phrase implies that an individual ruler is of course mortal but that the institution they represent is intended to long outlast them, they are merely the current representative of a monarchy. That such institutions often last significant periods of time is an interesting fact. The British monarchy, for example, has endured for centuries through great social tumult.

It may also be the case that even if a regime is deposed a similar social set up can re-form in its place:

I recently watched ‘The Death of Stalin’ by Armando Iannucci. It was a rather refreshing mix of ‘In the Thick of It’ style satire and quite poignant observations on power and the tragicomic history of Russia. Its release coincides with the centenary of the Russian revolution. A strikingly important event in world history. Even Marx himself observed that the Russians always seemed to go for the most extreme available doctrine. There are always contingencies in such matters though, had the Mensheviks not walked out during the October Revolution history may have turned out differently.

The U.S.S.R. of course came apart at the seams in 1989, a lumbering behemoth that finally ran out of steam and, groaning, crashed to the earth like some titanic tree. An autocratic empire that long ago had lost the plot of its original goals, staggered into senility and eventually collapsed. Taken in isolation, this empire would be an interesting historical artefact. However, when situated in the wider arc of Russian history it appears less unique. The initial revolution was a rebellion against an autocratic and unaccountable Tsar, who presided over a sclerotic and discontented empire. That Lenin’s dream metastasised into something comparable and has again been replaced by an authoritarian government is as interesting as it is tragic.

Reflecting on some of the themes in my last post, Waves, I am not one well qualified enough to pronounces that this is or is not due to some innate or inevitable cycle in Russian history. It may be more a series of waves of populism that fell on the same shores producing similar results. The likelihood of other European nations squabbling like cats in a sack on a regular basis also unfortunately appears to be just as high. I hold out some hope that this may not be the case and I am certainly no historical determinist. The role of non-violent resistance as pioneered by Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others is a powerful example of the ability of groups of concerned individuals to change the world. Indeed, to quote Margaret Mead, it is the only thing that ever does!

The interplay between the great trends of history, the agency of groups and individuals and the myriad other factors which affects how societies change over time are most likely impossible to disentangle. What can be said with some degree of certainty is that some things appear more likely than others and some trends look likely to crash onto shores as large waves. I have noted before and it has been cogently argued elsewhere that the United States may be in a similar position to the U.S.S.R. in the late 1980s, except with an Orangutan at the helm, rather than the relatively dignified figure of Mikhail Gorbachev. We shall have to see whether this comes to pass along with whether European nations re-commence with arguing or if the hydra of authoritarianism snakes out more widely into the world than at present. 

One of the major features of the oscillation of social waves is that those at the top of a social system are very good at preserving their status, even if the system superficially changes; kings, or more accurately, monarchies clearly know how to surf the social waves. What is unique about the present day and modern information technology is that the majority of us, not just a tiny minority, can have some understanding of the nature of some of these waves. We should of course use these insights to do what we can to hold the powerful to account & avoid some of the worse political possibilities and at the very least we can also learn to surf.

Image credited to wikipedia

Waves

I recently read a book called 'At the Existentialist Cafe' by Sarah Bakewell which I highly recommend, one of the best books I have read in years. It is an exquisite overview of an intellectual movement giving both a biographical narrative of the main thinkers and the development of the main ideas. I have tried to infuse some of the main themes into my daily life and writing; I try at least once a week to take a step back from daily life's chatter, find a nice cafe and stop and see what is in front of me. To write about what I am surrounded by and in the process of observing, reflect.

Today, the clouds are whipping overhead as I sit outside a Swedish cafe at the head of the Union Canal in Edinburgh. I can see water glistening in the early evening light. Plants flow in the wind, people bustle, children chatter, pigeons coo and here I sit and write. As I sit in the evening light and drink my coffee I don't want to get comfortable, I want to get raw and thoughtful.

I look over my scrawled notes from my last cafe outing, I had managed to get out of bed early and get to an open day of the Edinburgh University Anatomy Museum. It was one of those easy to miss one off outings that left me with some lasting impressions. The waves on the water on the canal reminded me of other, much more important waves.

The museum display was a glorious pokey mix of comparative anatomy, the story of how the study of anatomy has developed at the University of Edinburgh and wider social and medical history. It showed a grappling for greater understanding amongst all of the all too human dramas, misunderstandings and skulduggery of the 19th century. From executing people with mental health problems and then dissecting them to going round the world and shooting whatever rare exotic wildlife took an explorer's fancy and pickling it. There were death masks and skeletons of famous people, some good like Robert Owen and some infamous like Burke & Hare. There were also the cadavers of various beasts and fowl including those of human ancestors and our various primate cousins.

I was struck by how much we have learned, amongst all the curios was an urge for greater understanding, our understanding of phenomena rolling in like waves, one crashing in over the next. One such early medical example of which was the discipline of phrenology; it was an honest first attempt to understand human personality without ascribing the cause to supernatural causes. As knowledge developed of the nature of the human body and mind the lack of evidence for its assertions became clear and it was superseded and denounced as pseudoscience.

The development and change in the nature of institutions and the material conditions in which people live has been as profound as the advances in the nature of our understanding of biology. Edinburgh University started off as an institution that received patronage and validation from royalty and aristocracy, it of course in turn helped to preserve the status of such institutions with its prestige as a centre of learning but it has become so much more than that, a worldwide research institute, which, like so many other universities, has greatly added to our understanding of the world.

One of the most beautiful descriptions in 'At the Existentialist Cafe' was that of consciousness as being like a furl in a rug, a fold in reality. We have a much more accurate understanding of the details of how the systems of life operate but we still have many unanswered questions about the nature of life and consciousness. There is something transcendentally beautiful about the reality of being in the world, that we are, and then we are not.

Human skulls were laid out in cabinets in the exhibits, from otherworldly foetal skulls to the wizened fragile face of old age. I got a palpable sense of the sheer suffering and hardship of the lives of our ancestors, from the skull of a 14 year old boy who had been executed to stooped little skeletons of adults aged before their time. There was also a memorial book dedicated to all those who had donated their bodies to anatomy which I found truly moving. A humanistic show of thanks to the gift of others to enable the greater understanding of all.

I subscribe to the worthy goals of humanism to improve human knowledge and well-being though I think people make an unfortunate intellectual error when they assume progress is some sort of natural law, an inevitable, unstoppable wave. History may well have its own cycles and waves that may mean much of what we have discovered over the past few centuries goes the way of the Library of Alexandria, licked clean of memory by flames.

This is, however, not to denigrate or dismiss the valiant efforts or suffering of our ancestors making it possible for us to live our modern lives of comparative luxury, quite the opposite. Life is a wave that can roll slowly up the beach and dissipate its energy or hit a rock almost immediately but what I am most moved by is that there are waves at all. Coming from an existentialist perspective has helped me to appreciate each day, to learn, live, love and be kind. I will do my little bit to try and make the world a better place, and if that is only for its own sake, all the better.

Notes on Sartorial Elegance

Sartorial
Definition of sartorial in English:
Relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress: sartorial elegance

We have worn clothes for tens of thousands of years. Outside of a few very benign climates humans must wear some clothes for basic practical purposes such as keeping ourselves warm or cool. It seems unlikely though that wearing clothes was ever merely a practical endeavour. For example, in various traditional societies at tropical latitudes where people wear little or no clothing due to the climate they still adorn themselves with paint and ornaments laden with meaning. There are a vast range of cultural ideas about dress with a variety of fashions and norms between cultures and within societies with clothes ascribed on lines of gender, ethnicity, religion, social standing and a whole range of other factors.

I find what people say with what they wear or don’t wear and how it can be used to inform or subvert social norms fascinating; a great deal can be inferred about the ideals and social roles of groups within a society from their attire. The oscillation of social norms in a society are reflected in the clothes that people wear from men in Britain wearing striking heels, wigs and powder in the 18th century to tops and tails in the 19th and busty free dresses for ladies to 15 petticoats and bonnets. These differences reflected changes in the social zeitgeist from the relatively laissez-faire 18th century giving way to the prudish and conservative Victorian era. I am of course providing a generalised example here which erases the vital issue of class. The majority of the population wore much more practical clothes than this example and slaved away making some of the more impractical ones for the people at the top of the social pecking order.

People at the bottom of the heap in a hierarchical society are understandably often rather displeased with the unfairness of their situation and come up with a range of ways to subvert, contest and reform or overthrow the current social order. Part of this rebellion can be through the wearing of clothes deemed unsuitable for a specific group of people. For women to wear trousers in 19th Century Britain and America, for example, was scandalous but the bravery of those first to do so was part of the battle for equality for women that continuous to this day.

I find the potential for personal and group self expression through personal aesthetics something powerful and hopeful. Individual and collective emancipation can partly be achieved by developing one’s own particular sense of self through self expression, part of which is what you wear. With this in mind I am attempting to develop my own take on ‘sartorial elegance’.

There are a number of factors to be considered in such an endeavour: Different styles of clothing fit people with different body types and that adds to the individuality and autonomy that developing a personal aesthetic can provide. What cultural influences and styles someone wishes to draw on is also obviously a matter of individual taste, though preferably avoiding appropriating the clothing of other groups of people in colonial fashion, no kimonos or feather head dresses please!

There are also some general principles of good design which might be helpful in deciding what works with what. The design rules below that I find a useful guide are oddly enough originally from a talk about the design of flags. They can be applied to design in general though and I’ve found them rather useful in selecting attire:

• Keep it simple – think of something that could be drawn from memory
• Use meaningful symbolism – be discerning in what influences you draw on
• Use 2 to 3 basic colours - from the standard colour set; red, white, blue, green, yellow and black
• No lettering or seals – generally avoid writing on garments, especially writing you can't see unless it forms a pattern
• Be distinctive – be unique or relate what you wear to distinctive themes in fashion

My sartorial preferences:

There are a number of themes which inform my aesthetic preferences. Some are personal and arbitrary, some more ideological. For example, I am both a feminist and take very much a socially liberal, laissez faire approach to how other people want to go about their business, (within fairly obvious moral parameters).  I object to the fashion industry’s objectification of women’s bodies to sell items by drawing on people’s insecurities but if a lady wants to wear stilettos and fishnets to express her sense of femininity all strength to her!

I’m not one to impose my sensibilities on others beyond putting my views into the arena of public discourse with a pen. Aside from some types of dress that make me feel uneasy due to my own sensibilities such as military style clothes. I have preferences which are very much a matter of individual taste but which I think have a lot going for them. 

Design:

• I very much like clothes which are practical, where functionality and elegance can be weaved together. There are obvious reasonable exceptions to such whims such as wedding garb, evening wear etc. but as a general guideline I think it holds well.
• As someone with an environmental background, considerations such as sustainability of production (using natural materials where possible), durability of items and whether they are repairable all factor in to what I choose wear. Ethical production of items is also a consideration, something which some larger chains and boutique-type shops have a half decent record for.
• Elegant, practical and repairable clothes work best with simple design such as using buttons over zips, clean flowing lines rather than pleats and frills (if one is being a little 18th century), or in the case of shoes something practical and well rounded wear or some converse if feeling informal, rather than something a little more unusual.

• I apply the same principles to colour and form - outfits can look a bit ‘busy’ if you’ve too many patterns or colours. The same can be said for jewellery, hair etc. 

Style:

• This is of course very much a case of individual taste; the main themes I draw on are Steampunk and Art Deco styles.
• I think the Steampunk aesthetic is marvellous; I love the beauty of 19th century steam technology and the Victorian anarchic aesthetic. It’s kind of a cross between middle class Victorians and pirates! Elegant but not stuffy.
• I also love art deco imagery and patterns with its simple, sharp, clean lines, simplified imagery from nature and repeated patterns and shapes with all kinds of bold, contrasting colours.
• I’m not a fan of Victorain social norms or the excesses of their prudish clothing but frock coats, waistcoasts, boots and flowing shirts are just wonderful! Throw in some the colours and patterns of the art deco era and I’m very happy.
• Full blown Steampunk or Art Deco style garb would be regarded as fancy dress in many social circles but I’m treating it as a personal project to tie in some of their themes into my day to day dress. It fits my ideals of reusability, simplicity and elegance and has a great deal of character - clear, bright patterns on elegant, novel clothes.

A frivolous distraction?

This may all seem very trite and superfluous compared to some of the world’s more pressing problems. On the scale of the individual though I don’t think this is necessarily the case, it needn’t be a matter of conflicting priorities. The chance to express yourself as you see fit through what you wear can be a powerful act. The clothes we tend to wear reflect the society of our time so I say wear the future you want to see. Fashion or modes of dress can be revolutionary, repressive, dull, exciting, exquisitely beautiful or dreadfully mundane. Make yours exactly what you want it to be and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

Image credited to: http://steamfashion.livejournal.com/1163716.html  

Are we the enemies of creation?

Following on from my last blog post I look further here into what the future might look like. I am following the premise that if in one way or another, the world is eventually ecologically devastated and industrial societies do slowly, or rapidly, collapse would a Mad Max like world emerge? What might a future society look like and would it in turn survive very long?

I recently went to see Mad Max: Fury Road. A film in which one of the worst possible futures mentioned in my last article has come to pass. In the wake of nuclear war and environmental degradation civilisation has collapsed and the people who are left have gone, well, rather mad! The straggler society that emerged in Mad Max is a brutal dictatorship where women are treated as chattel and the omnipresence of death is palpable. Hopefully this will not be the future in reality as if so there will be precious few of us to see it and probably even fewer who would want to.

Something else that comes through in the film (without giving away too much of the plot) is that though we might not necessarily be able to do anything about the grand tides of history and the situation we find ourselves in we can do something about the sort of company we choose to keep and how we conduct ourselves.

If in one way or another, the world is eventually ecologically devastated and industrial societies do slowly, or rapidly, collapse would a Mad Max like world emerge? What might a future society look like and would it in turn survive very long?

There is of course no certain answer to this, though it is certainly possible to imagine. The form it takes in Mad Max is ‘the citadel’:

Technologically the society in Mad Max is quite well positioned. The Citadel has cranes and wind turbines (most likely for some electricity generation and for pumping water from deep underground aquifers). The system of cogs and gears that runs the access gate to the fortification is also hand operated. That sort of technology (with a few metallurgy skills) will last! It also has intensive agricultural production in a defensible position elevated out of way of most desert dust storms.

Socially, however, it is a monstrosity. In this regard its long term prospects look far more dubious as it stands. If a society were to emerge from the ruins of an old one as well as a suite of example technologies that might have a chance of lasting into the future there are a number of social factors that need to be present as well; The society has to be able to maintain itself as a culture and want to pass on technological traditions, as well as not destroying itself through infighting, being absorbed or obliterated by their neighbours or by destroying its ecological foundations.

A writer I rather like, Dimitri Orlov, has done some excellent citizen-science style anthropology work looking at the question as to what sort of societies endure. He looked around the world at communities that abide for many generations as their own entities maintaining their own way of life and having healthy offspring who in turn do the same with theirs. These societies varied greatly in the sorts of adversity they faced and in the ways they lived. Orlov came across some general themes about how those communities organised themselves that are some good ground rules if you want to endure as a community. He (as part of a much larger body of work) came up with a list of 13 commandments which I have provided an abbreviated version of below.

The XIII Commandments of Communities That Abide

1.    You Probably Shouldn't come together willy-nilly and form a community out of people that just happen to be hanging around, who don't have to do much of anything to join, and feel free to leave as soon as they get bored or it stops being fun.

2.    You Probably Shouldn't trap people within the community. Membership in the community should to be voluntary. Every member must have an iron-clad guarantee of being able to leave, no questions asked. That said, do everything you can to keep people from leaving because defections are very bad for morale.

3.    You Probably Shouldn't carry on as if the community doesn't matter. The community should see itself as separate and distinct from the surrounding society

4.    You Probably Shouldn't spread out across the landscape. The community should be relatively self-contained. It cannot be virtual or only come together periodically.

5.    You Probably Shouldn't allow creeping privatization. The community should pool and share all property and resources with the exception of personal effects.

6.    You Probably Shouldn't try to figure out what to do on your own. The community should have collective goals and needs that are made explicit.

7.    You Probably Shouldn't let outsiders order you around. It's best if the community itself is the ultimate source of authority for all of its members.

8.    You Probably Shouldn't question the wonderful goodness of your community. Your community should have moral authority and meaning to those within it.

9.    You Probably Shouldn't pretend that your life is more important than the life of your children and grandchildren (or other members' children and grandchildren if you don't have any of your own).

10. You Probably Shouldn’t try to use violence, because it probably won't work.

11. You Probably Shouldn’t let your community get too big. When it has grown beyond 150 adult members, it's time to bud off a colony.

12. You Probably Shouldn't let your community get too rich. Material gratification, luxury and lavish lifestyles re not good for your community.

13. You Probably Shouldn't let your community get too cosy with the neighbours. Always keep in mind what made you form the community in the first place.

    Now this is a very general list – you may, for example, in a Mad Max world not really have any neighbours! I think it does provide a useful template though for the sorts of social set ups that have long term viability. Hierarchical societies can endure for centuries but they are often are not the most pleasant places to live and tend to use resources in a rather extravagant way. In the long run egalitarian societies have a better shelf life as well as tending to be a lot more pleasant to be in. A more cooperative equal society in a Mad Max style world most likely has much better long term prospects.

Such a society would not come about by itself though. Human beings can live in socially constructive, ecologically benign ways but we are not inherently predisposed to doing so. It may be that the rise and fall of civilisations is something outside the agency of individual people or political movements but you have to fight if you want to make your society a better place. This can mean hand grenades and armoured cars but it doesn’t have to if you’re not in quite as dire as a situation as Furiosa Imperator.

I titled this piece ‘Are We the Enemies of Creation?’ as there is a tendency amongst many people in the green movement (myself in the past included) to think that the human race is like some sort of virus that is inherently destructive. This obviously can be the case, and anyone sitting in a Mad Max world watching howling dust storms rip across the earth might quite reasonably think so! It is not necessarily so though and certainly not inherent to how human beings are. It has a great deal to do with the nature of the society in which people live:

For most of human existence we have lived in small egalitarian social groups as hunter-gatherer’s having a relatively limited impact on the environment around us (though we did manage to eat our way through various ice age species like woolly mammoths, they must have tasted great!). It is only relatively recently, in the past 10,000 years or so since the dawn of agriculture that hierarchical societies with a much greater ecological impact have developed.

Hierarchical societies depend upon a flow of resources from the periphery to the centre in order to function. The development of agriculture has been linked to the development of the first hierarchical societies with the first usable surpluses in the form of agricultural produce such as grain as the first means via which social complexity could build and one group of people could gain leverage over another. As societies have become more socially and technologically complex this trend has extended dramatically; from the ownership and use of people to physically taking other people’s land empires have been able to expand and develop.

The level of socio-economic complexity a society can sustain depends on the net energy surplus available to it, on a solar budget the most complex society that you’d be likely to see is something like ancient Rome. The discovery of fossil fuels completely changed the rules of the game in this regard. Humans discovered half a billion years of fossilised sunlight energy and we have since burned through it in a few very brief centuries and it has given us staggering amounts of energy surplus to play with. The result of this has been to have an orgy of consumption and resource over extraction and completely knock the biosphere of the planet out of kilter.

The description I give above should be taken more as an allegory rather than as a literal historical narrative as to the development of civilisation (as it is obviously much more complex than this).

A great deal of social good has come out of industrialism, billions of people have been pulled out of poverty, great social transformation has enabled a much greater level of social diversity and fluidity in societies and the average lifespan has increased dramatically. The idea of development (as long as its on people’s own terms) is a worthy and noble endeavour. I am no primitivist who wants to go and live in a cave!

The main problem is that our current way of doing things cannot continue forever and the longer that it does the worse the end outcome. Plenty of good work is being done promoting low carbon electricity generation etc. but at present this will still not be enough to alter the major trends of increasing pollution which will trash the planet.

One thing that is evident in Mad Max is that almost everyone is sick, the effects of widespread radiological poisoning are everywhere and people's ability to have healthy offspring is majorly in doubt. There is a certain amount of truth to the line ‘you are what you eat’. If everything you’re eating is radioactive the answer tends to be dead fairly quickly. Hopefully we won’t ever have to deal with the radioactive fallout from a nuclear war but there are still plenty of toxins which are now alarmingly prevalent in the biosphere that could lead to similar results.

  

Fortunately, you can avoid most of it if you eat a mainly plant based diet where you know where the inputs come from. In other words, food you’ve grown yourself in soil you know is at least reasonably clean. Which brings me round to answering my initial questions that if our civilisation collapsed what a future society might look like and might it look like Mad Max?

Any future society that has a suite of sustainable technologies and has a social makeup that means it has a chance of lasting more than five minutes will of course need food.

There is one type of practice which can be adopted universally and which at the moment can help make the world a better place and in future may well be essential to just sheer survival, Permaculture. It is an integrated design philosophy (the name derived from ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’) centred around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems to create sustainable systems that provide for people’s own needs and to recycle their waste. It can integrate housing, sanitation and social organisation as well as food production, into its makeup and has three main principles:

·    Care for the earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply. This is the first principle, because without a healthy earth, humans cannot flourish.

·    Care for the people: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence.

·    Return of surplus: Reinvesting surpluses back into the system to provide for the first two ethics. This includes returning waste back into the system to recycle into usefulness.

It bypasses the resource depletion aspect of industrial agriculture which is dependent on fossil fuels by aiming to generate a net energy surplus in food production and reinvesting the rest. Such a philosophy and design principle can be used in conjunction with the societal 13 commandments for a thoroughly sustainable society.  It gives a possible glimpse of a future society that definitely has a future.

  

You don’t necessarily have to be able to fight like Furiosa to fight for a better society. To quote the co-founder of Permaculture Bill Mollison on teaching Permaculture “I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.”

We are only the enemies of creation if we destroy; hopefully we will never have to find out what a future society trying to avoid Mad Max is like but it can’t harm to pick up a trowel and join the fight!