Magnus on January 15th, 2012
People have been predicting peak oil for years and it's been denied for as many years by the oil industry and most Governments.  This link shows that the International Energy Agency has finally taken a position and stated that it has already happened - in 2006!  Bizarre, I mean why aren't we already feeling rising fuel prices on a monthly basis already?



Anyway, this is a good introduction piece to the whole peak oil issue for anyone new to the theory.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/Articles/International_Energy_Agency_Reports_Peak_Oil_Happened_in_2006/
Magnus on January 14th, 2012

Our biogas digester coming along...
For more photos click
The time has come to install our septic tank.  We’ve lived the past 6 months with an outdoorcompost toilet and a drain from the shower that goes into the gardenssomewhere, but a proper house with flushing loos needs a tank to deal with allthat waste. 

What happens to our waste? Sewage – it’s so out of sight as to be out ofmind.  It’s only when you are building ahouse, or working with people displaced by war or disaster that you have todeal with it. 

Howthis post is going to work (it’s way longer than planned, but hey)

First off I’m going to describe the standard sewerage disposal andtreatment systems that we would be expected to use around here, then explainwhat we are doing and why.  So bear withme.  I want to take you on a short journey,the story of poo.  I think it’s worthtalking about because we all have to deal with it, wherever people live, andit’s the cause of countless deaths in poorer countries, billions are investedto deal with it in richer nations, it pollutes our rivers and causes so manyproblems – and despite all this it can be an incredible resource – for energyproduction, soil enhancement and reforestation.  

Then I’m going to talk about biogas and show a few examples.  Then talk about the plan and biogas septic tankwe’re building outside our house in Portugal. 

If you can’t face all this text and reading you can just skip to theslideshow which is
here (all photos and few wordsJ).

Conventionalsewerage treatment

The world over, we treat sewage as a public health hazard, and go toenormous lengths to get rid of it. In richer countries massive seweragenetworks are laid, linking each house to a treatment centre, that then deposits“treated” remains into the sea, or rivers. This systems works, but it costs fortunes to install and assumes afairly well organised and properly funded agency to maintain it all. 

This is not the case in most of the world, where people have to dealwith it in other ways, which usually means open sewers, or houses depositingtheir waste into their backyard, or into open drains running through thecommunity.  Pretty gross and aundoubtedly a source of water-borne diseases.

We live in a village of about 400 houses where there is no seweragesystem, so each house has their own septic tank. These usually consists of ahole in the ground about 3 to 4m deep into which a column of concrete rings areset, with a little gap between each one. When the sewage enters the solids sitat the bottom and the fluids seep away through the gaps between these pipes(which are usually around 1m diameter by the way).  So basically these are soak away pits,probably polluting the local ground-water with faecal chloroforms (somethingyou really want to avoid unless you fancy a bit of dysentery or cholera).  It’s not an issue here in Portugal as peopledon’t drink groundwater – it mostly comes from piped networks, is treated withchlorine which kills these bugs and anyway, the earth and rock probably filterout most of these bad guys before they get to the water table. Probably… Theproblem is in places with a shallow water table, but that’s another story.

Most septic tanks have two chambers divided by a wall; as the solidsbreak down (micro-bacteria work their magic on the “solids”) they loose massand rise to the surface (think of the scum and dirty floaties you see inminging beaches when you’re trying to catch a wave).  Anyway, these bits float to the second tankwhere an overflow takes away supposedly “clean” water. It’s not really clean, butit’s cleaner than when it went it.  Thiswaste or overflow water can be directed through a reed bed or an area filledwith plants to absorb the water and the nutrients that remain in it.  Yes – there ARE nutrients.  Something we generally tend to ignore.  But most systems just redirect this wastewater back into a passing river or whatever. When the solids build up too much (after a few years) a tractor come to“de-sludge” the tank, which it then deposits on nearby fields to fertilise theplace.  Gross? Not really, there’s mightynutrients in there, just like putting cow manure on the fields, but we’regetting to that…

The problemof methane production

As you probably know, sewage stinks, but that’s mostly the acids fromurine making the smell – not the methane, which is an odourless gas.  All animal dung, including ours, producemethane as it breaks down – which happens when billions of bacteria feed on thestuff and it is they that produce the methane, not our poo.  All living things give off gas: plants giveout oxygen, humans breath out carbon dioxide. These mega-bugs give off methane(and a bit of carbon dioxide too). 

Every septic tank leaks methane: it’s lighter than air and seeps outthrough soil nice and easy. We don’t know it’s happening because it has no smell.  I guess if you were to look at a communitythrough a gas-sensitive lens (like thermal imaging but for methane) you wouldsee plumes of the stuff heading sky-wards, from every backyard, or sewagetreatment plants – at least from those that don’t burn the stuff to cook or tomake electricity.

But you’ve probably heard that methane is a fairly potent green-housegas; apparently it’s 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.  Climate scientists are worried about meltingpermafrost releasing billions of tonnes of methane which will furtheraccelerate global warming.  Well, nowthere’s 7 billion of us folk on-planet now, how much do we contribute every dayor year through our septic tanks?

I looked into this and read a recent study that found that septic tanksprovide around 100 kgs of CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere perperson, per year.  Arguably this isnegligible, but given there’s so many of us it adds up: let’s take a populationof 10m people (that of Portugal, or about 5% of Pakistan).  Using this study we can estimate that thismany people produce around 1m tonnes of CO2 (equivalent) per year,equal to about 100,000 Hummers (fuel-hungry American SUVs).  

Checking against a list of countries’ emissions it’s fairly shocking tolearn that this is equivalent to the annual emissions of the Maldives, orSwaziland (or twice that of Liberia). And that’s only from the methane emissions of 10m people’s poo. Take apopulation of 1bn (India’s way past this point already) emissions from septictanks rise to 100m tonnes of COequivalent per year, roughly equal to theannual emissions of Belgium or Iraq. 

Does this mean that all our sewage waste is a major greenhouse gas? Itlooks like it, but I’d need to do more research to pin down these numbers.  Has anyone else looked into this? If thesenumbers are right surely people would be applying for carbon credits (i.e.cash) to not emit this methane.  (Iwonder if we could use these figures to raise carbon financing to build biogassystems in Pakistan, where I work half of the time helping rebuild afterfloods).  Anyway, back to the case athand – biogas and our place.


Biogas – areally cool and viable alternative?

Studying at the CAT a few years ago I came across biogas production, afairly straightforward system whereby the sewage tank (or septic tank) is airtight(so no liquids or gas escape).  A smallpipe is embedded into the top of the tank, which is round and dome shaped, sothere are no corners where pressure can cause ruptures.  The gas in this case is a methane – carbondioxide blend and is flammable: it burns! In smaller systems it’s used forcooking, in large, city-size plants there’s so much more gas it’s used togenerate electricity via a gas turbine. I’ve heard that you can even connect this gas to the intake of a petrolgenerator to make it run, or compress it and make transport gas.  Or generate hot water for heating, showers orwhatever. 

My friend Sarah Kent did loads of research (and her thesis!) on biogasand told me about places in Nepal where for generations people had cut treesfor firewood till the place was completely denuded. Unable to survive there anymore people were starting to migrate to urban slums.  So they introduced biogas plants, initiallyworking just on animal manure.  Theseprovided enough gas for cooking; combined with reforestation they have beenable to deal with the problem in some communities.

Then I met David Fulford, of Kingdom Bioenergy, a former renewable energiesprofessor at Reading (UK) and for many years the biogas consultant for AshdenAwards. He worked in Nepal for years, introducing biogas design – and now thereare over 900,000 of small family or community sized plants working there.

I asked if he had a design we could use for human waste – in fact can itwork on our sewage? Given that most of the plants I’d seen worked with animalmanure only.  He saw no reason whynot.  But why not add in food waste, hesuggested.. And he then pointed me towards this amazing video of a system usedin India that works entirely on food waste.

To combine both human and food waste, David suggested we buy aninsinkerator (a kind of blender that fits below sinks, like in those Americanhorror movies).  This would have to beplumbed into the tank, so thought about well in advance.  David kindly agreed to help us by designing abasic plant (and has since been really helpful on many fronts!).

David also put me in touch with Govinda Devkota, a Nepalese biogasspecialist who has built thousands of these plants.  Govinda sent some great technical guidancematerial which has helped.  (He’savailable for consultancies worldwide by the way!). 

On-sitefertiliser too!
One of the best “outputs” from a biogas plant is the slurry – which is“delivered” above ground by this system for use as fertiliser and is apparentlyan incredibly good source of nutrients for trees or gardens.  Our land has fairly acidic, sandy soil, quitelow in nutrients so we could really use this. So could most of the planet as 80% of our agricultural land is noweffectively denuded by years of intensive chemical agriculture. 

So insummary:
  • Biogas septic tanks (digesters) deal with the problem of pollution to rivers or ground water;
  • They provide a form of energy that would deal with environmental problems locally while reducing global emission increases from human-based methane production.
  • This energy can be used to provide free, smokeless gas for cooking – freeing people up in so many countries from the horror of fire-smoke, which WHO reports kills over 2m people per year.
  • The odourless liquid effluent that biogas tanks deliver could solve the massive food crisis affecting millions in poorer countries – by providing safe and highly effective fertiliser to increase soil fertility, which people can then use to grow more food at home and improve nutrition. 

How ourbiogas system should work

First off, here’s a picture of the plan David kindly drew up forus. 

The design we're using to build our biogas digester. Source - David Fulford, Kingdom Bioenergy


So far this is what I’ve learned:

-         When the sewage in the tank rises to the top of the“digester pit” (see plan) it reaches the bottom of the dome “roof”. At thatpoint all the gas will be collected in the “gas dome”.  As the gas pressure builds up here it will“push down” on the liquid in the tank forcing it to “displace” into the slurryreservoir, (to the right of the plan).  This body of water in the slurry reservoir will then push down on thegas, providing it with about one bar of pressure – forcing it along the pipeand to the place of end use (a biogas cooking ring for example).  As the gas is used up, pressure drops and theliquids will slowly return to finding their level again, until gas builds upagain.  Get it?

-         When the quantity of liquids in the tank increases,the slurry reservoir will fill up quicker and eventually reach the top, wherethere is an outlet.  Here we will connecta pipe and allow it to drain into a small holding tank we’re going to build,where we’ll install a submersible sewage pump. When this holding tank is nearing full the pump to engage and push thewaste material uphill, some 30m away to a bit of land we have where we’ll buildyet another tank, where we will add sawdust to help the slurry become moresolid and manageable for transporting around. David told me about some women in India who added worms, which reallyimproved this process making it even better and more compost-like, which theywere then able to sell as a great fertiliser. 

-         The temperature in the tank should remain fairly warmto keep the multitudes of friendly bugs happy. This is around 30 degreesC.  Very warm in other words. True, butthey do generate their own heat as they work away in their anaerobic(oxygen-free) environment down there. The problem might be the cold earth in which they are surrounded.  So we might try and insulate the tank, on topat least.  We also plan to put in aheating coil connected to our hot water cylinder so if we every have any“spare” heat we can share a bit of it with our billion-bug generator mates.  I’ve included an electric wire so we can puta thermostat in there too, to keep an eye on temperatures. I’m told that theearth around here stays at around 17 degrees C, so we’ll see how theycope. 

-         We shouldn’t put in too much water into the tank, buttoo little isn’t good either.  The amountyou get from a low-flush toilet is, David thinks, probably fine.  When we wash food waste down the special sinkwe can do so with warm water, and so decrease the cold shock factor for ourlittle buddies. 

-         We’ll need a dedicated sink for the food waste cuttingthing – we shouldn’t flush all our washing up water down there, obviously.  So we’ve found a space near the kitchen wherewe can have a special sink, but even then I think we should install a two-wayvalve outside, which we will have to turn manually every time we want to directwaste to the tank.  That way we can stilluse the sink to wash veg or boots or whatever, and direct that water to thegarden or elsewhere.  Complicated? Notreally, just another thing to do and it’s not as if we don’t have enough ofthose!

OK that’s all for now folks. I’ll try and keep posting updates as thingsprogress. 
Wendy on January 12th, 2012

With all the clearing work we’ve been doing in the woods, there’s now a need to get all the firewood-to-be under cover to season well before use. The log store we’ve been constructing next to the main building at last has its roof – a patio area – complete. We just need to relocate the things presently occupying it – like the washing machine – which, as is the way of these things, ideally requires completion of another couple of stages in the project beforehand.

Log store patio roof under construction

Log store patio roof under construction – membrane goes down on screeded roof

Log store patio roof under construction

Schist slabs being laid

Log store patio roof under construction

Log store roof complete and low walls for seating under construction – there will eventually be a fire pit in the centre of the patio

This store will provide about 12 cubic metres of firewood storage space plus room for a workbench and tools. The wood stored here will be used primarily for the rocket stoves in the kitchen and bathhouse/greenhouse, so another storage area is needed for wood for stoves in the upstairs rooms. This dovetails nicely with the final stage of groundwork and construction needed to keep the main building dry and to provide space for a toilet, a connecting corridor between the upstairs rooms and hanging space for outdoor clothing and footwear.

So the next project is to construct a lean-to roof, along with natural drainage, along the back of the building. A lean-to roof with a difference. We plan to take it right out to meet the slope behind the building, varying the pitch as necessary, and cladding it (after waterproofing) with straw and a light covering of topsoil as a growing medium. It will be left to seed naturally with the pioneer plant species – mostly carqueja (Genista tridentata), wild lavender (Lavandula stoechas) and various heathers – that thrive in the thin dry soil on the slope above it, eventually resulting in a roof that’s almost indistinguishable from the surrounding hillside. So really neither a turf roof nor a green roof, but a living, growing roof nonetheless. Minus brambles and pine seedlings though …

Back of the house

Slope behind the house cleared of mato and brambles

Back of the house

View from the other side

Two days ago, the first day of January’s waning moon, we cut some poles from the few eucalyptus trees we have growing in the woods. Apparently if eucalyptus is cut during January’s waning moon, it has much less tendency to split and twist as it dries. Although most of the eucalyptus grown in Portugal goes to make toilet paper, it can make an incredibly strong building timber if it’s seasoned carefully and kept away from any source of wetness. It’s also naturally resistant to the indigenous wood-boring insect population, so this is what we’re using for the framework for the back roof. We’ll be using the poles in the round, as we have elsewhere in this project.

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut and stripped of bark

7m eucalyptus poles for the main beams, stripped of bark

To minimise the chances of the poles splitting at the ends – the end grain dries fastest – we’ll be painting the ends with diluted PVA to slow the drying process. (A handy tip thanks to Jonny from Quinta das Abelhas, the newest member of our now 4-strong part-time construction team.) As it happens, the ‘ecological’ wood preservative we used for the main roof timbers contains PVA, so is ideal for the purpose. The time of year is also on our side as we have another 3-4 months or so of slow drying in cooler temperatures and moister atmosphere before the summer heat hits us.

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut and stripped of bark

All the poles stripped

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut and stripped of bark

Wood for a roof, and all harvested from our own woods!

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut and stripped of bark

Burning the bark

Once the roof is completed, I’m intending to insulate the back wall of the house externally. The building gets no sun at this time of year so we have no possibility of utilising passive solar gain. In some ways, this actually makes designing for the extremes of temperature here much simpler. The rear walls contain by far the greatest proportion of total wall area in each upstairs room, roughly equal to all the other walls combined. External insulation allows their thermal mass, together with the dividing wall between the upstairs rooms, to be used for heat storage in winter, conserving the heat we generate from the woodstoves for as long as possible. This will significantly improve winter comfort levels and energy use in the building and, with internal insulation on the remaining outside walls, prevent walls at ambient temperature from sucking all the heat out of the room. Anyone who’s lived in an old stone house without adequate insulation will know this only too well …

In summer it works the opposite way round, keeping the building much cooler, especially with the benefit of the solid rock back walls and floors on the ground floor.

I’ve looked at various natural insulation materials and focused on ‘slip-chip‘, or wood-chip light clay. It’s a flexible material with good insulation properties and a wide range of possible ways of using it. We’ll need to experiment to find the best application method – either plastering it directly into and onto the stonework or pouring into reed mat forms fixed to roof timber supports – but the raw materials can be sourced very locally and very cheaply, if not for free. A final coating of lime plaster will provide a breathable finish, and a more durable and harder one than clay plaster (which will be used internally) in an area of heavy traffic where the walls are much more likely to be frequently knocked and scraped. A smooth white-painted wall will also enhance natural light levels in the corridor, which will be lit in daytime by 2 litre clear plastic soda/water bottles filled with water fitted into the roof.

Being out of sight under the turf roof, the insulated and plastered wall won’t detract from the external appearance of the building’s traditional schist stonework either.

Well … that’s the theory anyway. No doubt I’ll stumble on many things I haven’t thought about yet along the way …

Earth Monki on January 10th, 2012
A couple of new friends ...

Chema, the lion ....


... atleast I try and convince him that he is a lion. He needs all the encouragement he can get. He's getting far too used to warm and cosy livin' when he should be getting out there and exploring the small forests, that will one day be jungle. Truthfully though I do wonder how the natural habitat will be affected by his presence. He's far too thick to even notice mice most of the time, but to give him credit, when he first got here he did spot one quickly and then lost sight of it as it went into the grass. Funnily enough I could see the little mouse. I could see his two eyes looking straight at me saying 'Please don't tell him that you can see me!'. So I didn't.

And Mr Grosshopper, I think he called himself Gary, came by to say hello. An interesting fellow, had much to say. Said he'd earned his stripes ...


He was on his way down to the little creek that has started flowing from a few weeks back (the video is not very good quality me thinks) ...


A foto shows things nicely too ...


This means that there is plenty of water in winter time to fill up quite a few retention spaces.

In the mean time I'm working on the barn yard where I'm building some swales. I'm considering planting some kinds of fruit producing shrubs or bushes there that will work well with the chickens that will be using this as their living space also, perhaps Goji berry? Anyway, this is where I'm at so far ...


You can see how moist the soil is, which is the way it's been since November, which is good, because the summer was DRY. I'll be filling the ditch with clippings and mulch. Those two humps in the middle are boulders :-) It's not that deep the soil, but generally it's very good, and I will be building this up higher with mulches anyway. I'll put follow up photos later in another post regarding this.
Quinta dos Melros on January 10th, 2012




Que mal! O pior que pode fazer para a terra....plantar eucaliptos em monocultura.

The worst thing you could do to the earth....plant eucalyptus trees as a monoculture.
Eco-quinta Nemus on January 9th, 2012
hello!


We are looking for a farm sitter to help us taking care of the farm, animals, plants and more,
We have a room that we rebuilt in an old ruin.It has woodstove, solar pannels and other necessary stuff, and a compost toillet.

We need a person as soon as possible until the summer or more.

We also help with food, monthly (2 food baskets).

We look for someone nice, that will take good care of our animals and plants.

We don´nt leave faraway from the farm, so we will be there lots of times.
Please contact us:


quintanemus@gmail.com



Wendy on January 7th, 2012

Since the beginning of October, we – or, more precisely, Duncan with the occasional help of Wayne – have been working hard in the woods above the terraces. These steep slopes of predominantly Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) have been neglected for a number of years and were overcrowded with self-seeded saplings, wind-blown fallen trees and sparse but flammable understory of Carqueja (Genista tridentata), tree heath (Erica arborea) and bracken (Pteridium aquilinum).

Woodland management

The woods before clearing began

Woodland management

The initial objective has been to remove trees affected by pine wilt nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus). We lost some fine trees to the disease this year, including the 3 below on the edge of the track below the forest.

Maritime pines affected by pine wilt nematode

We’ve also worked to open out the woods, particularly removing crowds of pines from around young indigenous hardwoods like sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa), Portuguese oaks (Quercus faginea) and cork oaks (Quercus suber) which still, amazingly, are managing to germinate in the acidified soil and struggle up through the dense canopy of pines.

Young oak seedlings

I also wanted to make clearings to begin the process of diversification, planting a much wider range of hardwoods and shrubs – some indigenous species and many more edibles ones – which will be able to grow with the benefit of some shelter from the remaining pines, but without overcrowding.

Clearings emerging amongst the pines

Clearings emerging amongst the pines

A cork oak sapling (Quercus suber) sees the light of day again

A cork oak or sobreiro sapling (Quercus suber) sees the light of day again

Thinned pines

The woods after clearing

The last objective was to get ahead of ourselves with firewood harvesting so the wood would have a good couple of years to thoroughly dry before use instead of just a few months. We now have about 3-4 years’ supply cut and awaiting processing. Huge thanks to Duncan for all his hard work.

Thinned pines and stacked firewood

Thinned pines and stacked firewood

psichael on January 7th, 2012

3 month to 1 Year Volunteer at Tribodar

Characteristics of the volunteer:

  • To have experience and passion on garden/permaculture or building

  • Be comunicative/liking to be around people

  • Liking to work 5/6 hours a day

  • Commit for a certain time ( 3 month to 1 Year)

For the volunteer:

  • Sleeping in a caravan

  • The fee with the other volunteers for food covered plus 50 euros month pocket money

  • Please read the rest in our web in the volunteer section

To know more about Tribodar visit www.tribodar.com

If intereted send us an email to: volunteer@tribodar.com with the title – Long term volunteer

and we discuss further details

All the best,

Moabi
www.tribodar.com

 

Magnus on January 6th, 2012

Pete
What a shock to learn of the passing of Pete Bursnall, a great guy I’dbecome friends with over a couple of years, back in ’06 and ’07. We were bothstudents at the CAT in Wales, both in that middle point in life, loads behindus, loads in front; both fanatical about dangerous things in the great outdoors– the difference being that he actually organised his time well so that hecould actually do most of them. He’d already written a guide book tomountain-biking an array of Welsh mountains (which he gave me! Seemingly handbound and printed too).  Then he was offsea-kayaking; I saw a mad picture of him naked on some deserted islandgod-knows where, his sea-vehicle parked up on a rocky beach.  A moment of bliss was that?  

For a while we seemed to be comparing injuries. He broke his collar-boneor something falling out of his paraglider (or flying into a rock I think itwas). I failed to notice a massive hole in the ground while careering down ahillside on a mountainboard, breaking my elbow and wrecking my wrist. He thensprained something serious mountainbiking on the ice while I snapped a littlebone in my foot in a pathetically small skatepark in Spain. 

Enough of this he stuff; this letter’s to you Pete, wherever youare.  In fact what’s this you posted onfacebook to say you’re “I've gone flying.... Catch you later x” ? When exactly did you get tofit in that last post? Positive till the end. In fact it was your positive energy that always got me there inWales.  Always so much to do, to debateand to fix, always an inspiration.  Youtold me about blogging and persuaded me to get one going, which I did.  In fact truth is I’ve been slacking for thepast, er, year or two, but now I’ll definately put more up there again, as youwould have harassed me to.  I rememberyou telling me how you would put the kids to bed and type up your days post,while they lulled to sleep at your tapping. How you’d started kick-boxing at your kid’s club. Nice one. Again, I’mgoing to take up on that with my kids too. See: you’re still inspiring ushere.  In fact they say someone’s notreally gone while their memory remains from those left behind.   

Talking of memory, Monica and I decided to dedicate this years’ treeplanting to you. Couldn’t decide which one, so we just went for all of them ona certain terrace, right behind our little bothy we live in for now, on our spit of land inPortugal.  So here’s what you get: aredcurrant, two raspberries, a blueberry and a lemon tree.  Nikita (now 16 with hands like iron, tallerthan me, quite a craftsman and builder and a flow-master on deep fresh snow.You’d like him). Anyway, he suggested we look at what’s happened to the oldpart of the compost loo, now 3 and a half years old.  We bust open the wee door Paulo built intothe bottom and behold – compost of joy! No smell either.  Bizarre, impossible you might say, amazing weall said.  Anyway, you’ll be thrilled (orhorrified) to learn that this power-mix went in with your berries to give thema good head start in life.  Good bit o’muclh on top and I’ll keep watering them for a few days as we seem to beexperiencing a bizarrely late Indian summer over here. 

Yer lemon tree.

Pete's berry terrace

the two raspberries
Thinking of my family I ache when I think of yours, the enormousemptiness that you must have left behind. Words can’t express the pain and torturethat they must be experiencing.

As Simon rightly said today, it reminds us of our mortality, the passingof a friend. So true; soon enough we’ll all be there with you. Will weremember? Will we think and feel anything? Nikita and I were just talking about this the other night: what part ofus stays on? Can we bring our memories with us? How painful will that be? Do weparticipate in some future part of the universe somewhere? Too many questionsand unknowns; shouldn’t dwell on it I reckon, just get on with life and makethe most of it we can.  Every day, everyhour (Nikita says we only have 600,000 hours more or less in life). Given thatwe sleep through half of those, that leaves about 300,000 hours. Jeez.. whatpercentage of mine have I burned already? How many have I wasted watching somerubbish on telly or sitting around late at night wasting time… What reallymatters? Family, friends, adventure, adrenaline, Fun (of course), love (wellthat kind of comes with the former 5), making a difference on our time here forthose less fortunate. I think this is a major one, given that this “here” we’velanded on is both a heaven and a hell for people, and the vast majority of ourearthling cousins seem to have such a hard time of it.  The energy we generate from the 5things-that-matter should, I think, be used to power ourselves forward to makelife a little better out there (or a little less crap, whichever way you seeit). 

So this is my own humble send-off to you Pete – in reflection of youramazing life I prepare (in advance) a multi-berry blast to power you on yourway – red, blue, yellow, pink and green – all the colours of the fruits fromyour new berry terrace.  I hope you enjoythem somewhere, somehow…