Catherine Rose

I don't drive in my town - I have to drive to get out of it, as the bus service is very poor. So I know my town very well as a walker. But my main walking is taking the dog rounds the fields by the river, walking with friends. It's a way of keeping yourself close to nature and the weather, watching the rise and fall of the river levels, experiencing the quality of the ground beneath your feet (wet or dry), seeing the wildlife come and go, picking up nuts and picking fruit, but also doing quite a lot of litter-picking, especially in the summer.

I'm not in North America. however I think one aspect of eating a lot of meat is that it's seen as macho. Some men don't like other men to be vegetarian or vegan, or even to choose a diet that is lower in meat. 

In my own home, my husband doesn't consider dinner to be dinner unless it has meat or fish in it (though he will happily eat vegetarian meals for other mealtimes). I think that's a hangover from his childhood in wartime and post-war Britain when meat was scarce. It's certainly not him being macho, which I'm happy to say is something he doesn't do.

I wonder whether I'm doing this right, as in a zero-waste meal I think I include putting stalks etc into the compost.

I wish I could do more on this. I have solar panels and I use solar-powering lights for some of the time, and I have a solar cooker which i use when it's sunny. I'd love our local community to get together to create community energy, e.g. by turbines on the weir in our river, and solar panels on housing. I suppose I should start it up myself!

I actually didn't pay anyone for my vegan meal today. It consisted of nuts which I gathered from a local walnut tree and a copse of hazel that my neighbour lets me forage, and an apple that a fellow allotment-holder gave me yesterday. So my grocer and farmer were mother nature and two good friends! But I agree that good diet must promote health.