The holiday has come and gone so rapidly it felt like it was some sort of futuristic time warp. It’s back to school already and I’m feeling less recharged than I’d hoped. A week in and the excitement of the start of term is already fading and the summer, the coolest in the UK for the past 15 years, is a distant memory.
[At this point, although I may be teaching granny to suck eggs, it is worth a short interlude to explain that one cooler summer solely for the UK does not mean climate change is not real. In historical and geographical contexts, it still fits within the wider pattern of warming caused by climate change and global temperatures for the summer of 2024 were the hottest ever recorded.]
Anyway, the start of the working week involved two days of INSET with hours of meetings on safeguarding, the new intake, pupil behaviour and zones of regulation, SEN support, duty rotas, quality assurance, homework expectations, staff dress-code and departmental meetings. My bum is still numb and there was not one mention of climate or sustainability. Give me strength.
Ring my bell
Anyone who spends time in school learns to live by the bell. There are a few schools I know that don’t have bells but, without regular reminders of the time, they tend to turn to chaos as, if one class is late to leave, the next is standing out in the corridor. My own school has an ear-piercing bell that causes most of the staff my age to jump out of our wrinkled skins and causes many auditory-sensitive students to wear ear defenders in the corridor.
I think the bells will be one aspect I’ll miss most about school life when I finally depart the classroom, they mete out the day like a metronome, informing the school community that it’s the start of the day, breaktime, lunchtime, time for lessons, time for a PPA (aka ‘free periods’ which are rarer than hen’s teeth) or home time (when we’re literally saved by the bell). For both teachers and pupils, the hour-long lessons can flash by in the wink of the eye or drag so slowly they make a snail seem speedy.
The funny thing about INSET is that the bells still sound but they have no other effect than to make you jump up wide awake ready for action only to be reminded that you’re supposed to be making notes on the length of the school skirt or accepted sock colour so that you can assess the appearance of your new class when they arrive back. At least we got served free lunches for both days and Mrs A, our catering manager made a tangy tomato and basil soup and a delicious carrot and coriander soup to keep us going through the afternoon session. She’s just souper and can ring my (dinner) bell any time.
Thyme
Hubster suggests I ‘potter on’ compared to his purposefully driven approach to deliver tangible progress on the smallholding. Today I have ‘pottered on’ to create 12 servings of ratatouille & 16 portions of roasted squash for the freezer, prepped 4 meals of pesto sauce using our own basil, harvested and dried thyme and oregano for the year. I also washed a load of clothes and put it out on the line to dry, made dinner, dropped the offspring down into town for drinks and, dull as dishwater, completed my tax return. I’m tempted to hang Hubster out on the line, potter on indeed!
Dried and frozen herbs bring the sunshine of summer back into my cooking through the dark days of winter. We add herbs to almost every meal we eat, those little green leaves can transform a bland dish into a fragrant culinary masterpiece. If we could travel back in time to ancient civilizations, we would see that herbs have been used for embalming, medicines and cooking throughout human history.
We have thyme, sage, oregano, and rosemary in the herb garden but also have peppermint (perfect for a cooling mojito) and spearmint in pots, with basil and coriander in the greenhouse and parsley and lovage in the hugel bed.
Growing your own herbs reduces the need for shop-bought ones, which often come with a hefty carbon impact due to transportation and packaging. Plus, herbs can improve soil health and attract beneficial insects to your garden – our oregano is in full flower at the moment and is laden with red and white-tailed bumblebees. Herbs are a win-win for people and nature and are very easy to grow. Thyme is on our side whereas time seems to be against us.
Three score years and 10
After the larva stage, female mayflies (Ephemeroptera) usually live less than five minutes, while males can live a whopping two days; the sole purpose of an adult mayfly is to reproduce. Other animals have similar lifespans, Luna moths (actias Luna) live on average for just one week and fruit flies (drosophila melanogaster) live for about 10 to 14 days.
Human lifespans can vary greatly. According to Our World in Data, in 2021, the global average life expectancy was just over 70 years or three score years and 10. This is pretty astonishing considering that two hundred years ago, it was less than half. Even in 1800, no region of the world had a life expectancy higher than 40 years. In 2021 the average life expectancy in the UK reached a peak of 81.7 years (83.5 for women and 79.9 for men) but, even before the toll of the pandemic, it looked as if it was starting to plateau.
Although many organisations from Cambridge University to the Office of National Statistics are predicting the average age of death will continue to increase slightly, I’m really not sure they are taking into consideration some impacts of the climate and ecological crises ranging from food insecurity to microplastics in our brains. Now that I’ve reached two score years and ten, I’m not even sure I even want to live to four score years and ten but maybe I’ll change my mind as the years tick by.
Hourglass
Humans have lived on Earth for about 250,000 years, which is only 0.007% of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. If Earth’s history were represented by a 24-hour clock, modern humans have been on the planet for about 3 seconds. Human populations have only thrived during a very small window of Earth’s history when the climate was relatively stable. The release of emissions from burning fossil fuel and changes in land use since the industrial revolution have changed all that in the relative blink of an eye.
Our understanding of climate change isn’t recent. A seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect back in 1896. One hundred and twenty-eight years later and the effects are being felt around the globe. What would Arrhenius say if he travelled back to the future? I’d hate to think it was ‘I told you so’.
Running out of time
Scientists and the UN now suggest we are running out of time to keep global heating below 2oC of warming. The sand is falling through the hourglass, but everyone seems so intent on wishing their lives away for the next holiday or the distant opportunity to retire that we really don’t seem to be taking much notice.
Over the background noise of the school day are the climate alarm bells ringing in my ears. With my backache from lugging 10kg of books around making me hunch over I chuckle nervously about ‘the bells, the bells’ with Hubster but he recently corrected me as, in the original text by Victor Hugo, Quasimodo never actually said that infamous line. How utterly disappointing.
Note to self: Remember to take in a tape measure on Monday. I’m sure Pupil A’s skirt is several centimetres too short, which doesn’t cause me personal grief, but I could get in trouble with the HT if a pupil in class is not following the rules. I also need to record the girth of the pumpkins and the height of the tallest sunflowers in the school garden. In many ways Autumn is still a glorious time of the year and only 8 weeks until half term, not that I’m counting obvs!
