I have just been inspired by Leo Hickman’s book, A Life Stripped Bare^[1] and I am motivated to do an ethical audit of my own world. I don’t know whether this will be an opportunity for great smugness, or the cause of further fretting about the daily damage I do to the planet. Probably both.

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1. bad that I keep typing “a life-striped bear” – what could such a creature be? [↩]

Earlier this week, (actually, it might have been yesterday), Graybo insisted that Pete and I both wrote a post about whether or not to have another baby. So we decided to perform a stunt.

Next week, from Monday to Friday, we will each write a post on the same topic, and we will publish them simultaneously without knowing what the other has written.

All we ask of you is that you provide the subject matter. Oh, and it would be nice if you would read the posts as well, but that’s not obligatory. So please help us to come up with some topics where our differing points of view might be of interest: a bigger challenge than you might think…

I would like to be a more ethical shopper. The Guardian gave Morrisons a pretty low rating for their greenness last year, pointing out that they do offer the best array of seasonal vegetables, but didn’t shine much in any other area. They have obviously pulled their socks up a little bit since then; I notice that a lot of their own-brand items have messages on their packaging saying this packaging isn’t recyclable, but because we care, we’re working on it. Make of that what you will. Their website doesn’t contain much easy-to-find information about any sort of ethics policy, but there is a little bit of blurb about responsible local sourcing, which is of course a very good thing.

Waitrose, on the other hand, got the top rating in The Guardian, proving that ethics are a middle class luxury. I can’t afford them all the time, so I pick up my shopping sometimes from Morrisons, and sometimes from Waitrose. They are equidistant from my home, in opposite directions, so it depends whether I fancy a walk into town or not, as well.

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I would hardly call it a hiatus, and I’m not desperate or concerned enough to bore you with the reasons why I don’t write much these days. Any working mothers who are also training to be breastfeeding counsellors and volunteering for various other NCT roles as well as trying to get the occasional wink of sleep will understand that I own the blog, it doesn’t own me.

I do have a long list of things to write about. Most of them will be irrelevant by the time I get round to them. Here’s my list; you can choose which one I should prioritise, if you like:

• The Eden Project (over a month since I was there)
• Clan of the Cave Bear (over a month since I read it)
• Safe Deliveries (nearly a month since I paid for this and wondered whether it was really such a good gift)
• Bernard walking (a relatively recent development)
• Having another baby (or not)
• Mothers’ Rights around the world (something I mean to write for our ditchwater-dull work blog)