Category: drlunners

Featured

The Devaluation of Doctors

On By doctorlunnersIn Doctors, drlunners, GP, Healthcare, NHSLeave a comment

I was reading our kids Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs yesterday. A classic that as an adult you realise is creepy-as. We get to the bit where Snow White (bless her cotton socks for tucking into the obvs poisoned apple) is laying there in her glass coffin and prince Charmsville comes along, instantly falling in love with a corpse. If you’re able to move past the necrophilia, here comes the real shocker. The story reads that it is when they are carrying her back to his pad (?!) when someone trips and the coffin accidentally gets tossed about, thereby dislodging the piece of stuck apple in her throat that’s been causing all the problems. There is no corpse kissing in the original Brothers Grimm version of the tale – that was Disney trying to sex it up. And like a fool I never questioned the saviour prince kiss. A kiss that is replicated across the Disney franchise and tells impressionable little girls they need a knight in shining armour. For anyone who’s interested, the original story also has wicked stepmother dancing in shoes of hot coals until she dies at the joyous wedding event of Snowy and Charmsville. You’ll be pleased to know they missed out that delightful detail in the version we have. Not that she didn’t deserve some comeuppance, but I’d rather my 4-year-old didn’t feel mummy endorses torturing until death as a legit punishment option even for her cruel misdemeanours. Overall feeling on the original story? Gives with one hand, takes with the other. 

This all got me thinking about how easily we can get sucked in to believing nonsense by people clever enough to sell it to us in the right way. It’s how advertising gets us all. On a darker and sombre note, it’s how some of the worst atrocities in our history have been supported by thousands – if not millions – of people. Right now, there are many, many Russians who believe that bombing the Ukraine is justified because Putin and his cronies’ have careful state-controlled propaganda telling them so. 

I want to discuss with you how I believe Tory-driven propaganda, supported by the media (such as our NHS friend the Daily Mail, or what I shall henceforth refer to as DF, Daily Fail), continues to churn out misinformation about Doctors and our NHS. This torrent of negative tripe leaves the public confused, and the medical profession feeling demoralised and devalued. I am a GP so it is maybe easier for me to see the impact on my profession, but equally I do not think it’s far-fetched to say the abuse is commonly directed towards GPs in particular. It’s more common to find a money-grabbing GP headline than that scoundrel oncologist, you know? 

Karen (sorry to anyone lovely called Karen or any other name referred to in this blog in a less than shining light, I’m just picking names for story-telling purposes)

Last summer I saw Karen in clinic for an ongoing cough. Nothing unusual there, until we get to the end of the consult, and she pipes up with ‘so when are you going to start seeing patients in surgery again?’ I look up in bewilderment at the patient sat in front of me clutching the prescription evidence of being with me in this very room with her. I give Karen the benefit of the doubt and take a scroll though her records over the past year, checking to see if she’d come in since we’d open up our doors to any appointment type – could there have been a chance she’d missed the free-for-all booking memo? No. Karen had been in to see a healthcare professional in person on an almost monthly basis for various ailments over the last year. So, I say to Karen in the most kind and un-enraged tone I can muster ‘patients have been able to book in person reviews for over a year now, and I see you’ve been in a few times. Can I ask why you think you feel you can’t see us at the surgery here?’ 

Karen goes on to explain that ‘it’s what you read about in the news’, referring to the most recent unhelpful headline churned out by the DF. We conclude the consultation, and I somehow manage a forced smile to the departing comment of ‘don’t work too hard!’ Well Karen, I have another 20 patient contacts on my list for the morning on top of the 30 I’ve already dealt with, so it’s unlikely that I’ll get the chance to piss anytime soon, but thanks for the well-wishing, I will bid you adieu until the next time we no doubt see you in this building, you know, face to face. Please save some of your unhelpful banter for that trip. 

Karen obviously had no idea how terribly demoralising that consultation was, and I’m sure she would probably be sad to know how incredibly frustrating her comments were. As crazy as they sound from someone sat directly in front of me, I feel like her slightly misplaced beliefs are quite commonplace. Let’s consider some other common DF-type gems that crop up, shall we?

‘GPs are lazy, and they work part time.’ 

Ok, let’s consider the above Karen scenario. The British Medical Association (BMA) recommends that the maximum number of patient contacts for a GP a day should be 26. The number of direct contacts I had in just that morning was at least 50. That means that in a regular day in General Practice now on average we are probably dealing with 3-4 times the BMA safe workload advises. That is before you add in every indirect patient contact, every result and prescription request you have come through. It is relentless. There are no easy or even easier days in General Practice anymore. Every time I walk through the front door of work, I know there’s a chance at some point I will be so exhausted that I may well make a mistake. After a 11-hour day (a day where I’m supposed to work 8 hours), I then have to wade through the paperwork generated. So, when Rishi says I’m having a ‘morning off’ what I’m actually doing is sorting out all the work I should have had time to do the previous day. Because I want to be able to write a decent referral onto the orthopaedic team, and not just trot out a ‘Hi, please see this leg, many thanks.’ I also really need to start chipping away at some of those targets we have as GPs, ensure all the coding is in correct order, or we quite literally do not get paid (if you believe GPs mostly get paid for seeing you with a cough and cold, you’d be sadly mistaken). Oh, and yes, it would also be nice to see my children from time to time. Does that make me lazy? Maybe it does, but if that’s the case I sure as hell don’t want to know what it is to work hard. 

To get to this point in my career, I have had to excel at school, get into medical school, fund a 5-year degree that left me with consequent debt extraordinaire, and survive through the sheer hell of junior doctor years. On my first day as a junior doctor covering surgery, I worked a 13-hour day where I didn’t eat, sit down or go to the toilet. I had a drink because some kind nurses thought they should probably look after another rough-looking junior doctor. That night I slept badly, partly worrying if some of the life-changing decisions I made were right, partly from leg and feet cramps from presumably not having had anything but water all day. The next day I get up and do it all over again. 

And what was I paid for that first junior doctor job? A little over £21,000 (2011). Currently junior doctors are being paid an average of £14 an hour. We’ve all read stories similar to mine above, but there are those that still chose to believe Tory and DF bashing that those doctors, and in particular GPs, are all lazy and entitled and don’t deserve to be paid any more money. For anyone who went into GP as a partner 20-30 years ago, life was a lot peachier. But the reality now is many practices are going under and handing back their contracts because they simply cannot stay afloat.  Not long ago I read a DF article about how GPs were all money-grabbing because we were paid to deliver the vaccines. So, it’s now not even good enough that at the time GPs were instrumental in delivering one of the only UK COVID success stories, putting ourselves at personal risk and giving up days of our life to deliver a service that created enormous additional workload. The DF believes we should have done it all for free? But I’m sure they also said we need to have a clap for our efforts, so that’s all ok then – we won’t be able to afford tea, but we will get by with that warm fuzzy feeling of a group clap. 

‘Doctors are arrogant’

I think this feeling needs to be aired as a slightly separate issue. There are some that treat me differently after finding out I’m a doctor. Not that I announce the fact freely – we all know some who take the news as a free ticket to use you as their personal physician. What I’m talking about is the almost extension of the inferior-complex date syndrome – where boys/men feel their self-esteem ebb away on finding out you’re a medic (disclosure that I’ve not experienced this, but I hear it’s a thing). It’s like as a doctor some believe you must know everything and be able to interpret the innermost secrets of your liver from just looking at you and are therefore some kind of intellectual threat. I mean huge spoiler, we don’t know everything, and I need an extensive history, examination and probably bloods and ultrasound before I can tell you much about your liver. 

I have no doubt other professions feel this too, but the problem is with being a public funded service is that those complex feelings of self-driven insecurity are exploited by the powers that be. It makes doctors, especially GPs, easy targets to portray as the arrogant band of millionaires that need taking down a peg or two. I absolutely believe that my job is important, that I deserve to be treated with respect, and that my work should be appropriately valued. But that is true of anyone who puts in a hard day’s work (including historically undervalued and unpaid childcare, but that is a story for a different day). If I ever gave the impression that I believe I was better than anyone I would be mortified, and I know the vast majority of doctors feel the same (save one neurosurgeon I once had the pleasure of assisting in theatre, he was the very advert for arrogance, but he was also short so there was also some short man syndrome going on there). The truth is we live in an economy that judges our work value by way of renumeration. We need to ask ourselves if it is arrogant of junior doctors to want to be paid more than £14 for what they do. Honestly, I think it’s crazy that is even debated. 

‘Sickly immigrants cause NHS bills’

This enrages me. The belief that immigration is to blame for the demand placed on the NHS. If it wasn’t for all these people the NHS would be fine, right? Brexit has given racism a very sad green light. It’s that feeling that as a group we voted for the belief that letting all these pesky immigrants into our pure England and dishing out lots of cash to a bunch of foreigners at the EU (for all those much needed and collectively beneficial causes) were key reasons why our NHS was going down the plug hole. Good on us, we’ve got back our sovereignty, saved our economy and the NHS and put two fingers up to the big man. 

How’s that all going now then? Oh yes, there is if anything less money for the NHS because that Brexit bus promise was a lie. And we are desperately needing qualified healthcare professionals to come work in the UK from abroad – something that many of them, very understandably, stopped doing when the over 65 population decided to screw us all over with votes to leave one of the best things that’s ever happened to the UK. So now we are having to fork out more money to entice qualified professionals over. And partly because we no longer have access to the markets in the same way, we have to pay through the tooth for medicines, and end up with a lot of shortages. There are many studies that show the burden on the NHS from immigrants is no greater than those UK-born, and indeed some clearly show usage is less amongst our immigrant population. Overall EU immigrants have a net positive economic contribution to the UK economy. But Boris and his club of COVID jingle minglers, together with the DF, told us that Brexit would be better for the NHS. And it still makes me quite genuinely sad that too many believed them. 

There are three main reasons why the NHS is struggling with demand: an ageing population, the rise of long-term health conditions and ever-increasing expectations. Unfortunately blaming the EU and throwing shade on doctors is a lot easier than actually dealing with these problems. It’s much easier than dealing with the catastrophe of social care and our broken society. It’s much easier and sexier than funding delivery of proper preventative medicine in primary care – something that would truly bring down the rates of life-limiting, money-draining long term health conditions like Diabetes, heart problems and strokes. And I believe it’s right that everyone should have an expectation to receive good quality health care, but throwing blame at doctors is easier and wins more votes than dealing with the epidemic of Karens demanding that they be seen for their fungal nail infection within the next 2 weeks. Expecting good quality healthcare is one thing, being an entitled Karen threatening to complain if she doesn’t get her nail lacquer is another. 

Before the inception of the NHS many people with any serious health condition had to choose between death or poverty. Analysts think that there was some kind of nostalgia element to the Brexit vote – a yearning for a ‘better time’ before joining the EU. I totally get that many of us hold a candle for our formative years, but the thing is, Mavis, times were not better. Back in the day treatments were very limited, and really nasty stuff like Polio signed a death warrant for many.  And yes, for the good of the planet we need to think long and hard right now about how many more people we want to add to it as a whole. But did you know every single person living in England is descended from immigrants? The first to call themselves English were likely descended from Northern Europeans. So, what are we saying, we only don’t like the types of immigrants who look and sound a bit different? Oh no, because we are also ok with the doctors and nurses who may look and sound different, we need them. I mean, not fully ok, because Mavis still thinks it’s almost a compliment to come out with ‘well, he was Indian…but he was lovely.’ 

Do I support the health care sector strikes? Concluding thoughts

Yes, I absolutely support them. If nothing changes Doctors will not hang around to be devalued. They will continue to leave. Doctors will find other jobs where they can earn lots of money and aren’t an unrelenting target of government and media-driven judgement and abuse. Or they will go to another country where conditions and pay are much better.  And then we all really will be quite screwed. But maybe it will be ok because we will be regressing to the ‘good old days’ where we all have to shell out for any healthcare. I know Karen was probably just a bit confused about the mismatch between what she’s read and her actual experience. But I think we can all help by opening our eyes to what is happening. I’m hopeful the tides will turn, and the outlook may become more positive when the Tories are inevitability booted out. Let’s hope all the junior doctors are still around when that time comes. 

And you don’t need a knight in shining armour girls, but you do deserve one. They thankfully don’t come in the form of necrophilia or puckering up for a smooch though. I think they come more in the form of the guy willing to get up night after night to look after your newborn (shout out to my hubby there!). 

Really interested in your comments and discussion on this one all!

What makes you happy?

On By doctorlunnersIn coping, Depression, Doctors, drlunners, eco-friendly, GP, Healthcare, mentalhealthLeave a comment

On this gloriously miserable Friday morning, as the sky insists it still has some water left to dump on us, hundreds of people in the UK are in the throes of a flooding disaster, and the world is poised on the brink of a likely viral pandemic, I’ve been thinking about what actually makes us happy. To be clear, people wading through water in their lounge and Coronavirus do not make me happy, but it all does make me think about appreciating life, and how we all spend far too much time not really living our lives.

I don’t mean this to be some deep dive into the meaning of life – when I start thinking about that I get palpitations thinking about the vastness of the universe and what the chuff went on with the big bang (or big bangs, plural?!Oh no), and come to the conclusion that’s probably what most people do and it’s best to skip to the conclusion of 42. What I’m getting at is, given that we are all milling around for x number of years on this tremendous planet, what makes that milling a good mill. When we are 100 (let’s think positive eh?), what will make us look back and think ‘that was a good innings’?

Materialism

Yesterday I spotted a daily fail article on fast fashion mountains – huge swathes of clothes people had thrown out. I can’t pretend that I keep pace with the changing seasons of fashion, but that’s mostly because I can’t understand why anyone would want to. I obviously need to buy clothes, and it’s not that I don’t want to look nice, or that I don’t enjoy the odd designer treat, I just don’t care that mustard is en trend this autumn. I rarely enjoy clothes shopping. And I think herein lies something to ponder. While I could sit on my judgmental laurels and point fingers and those serial fast fashion offenders, is that actually fair? I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to judge anyone as a rule (but let’s be honest, we’ve all done it at some point), but just because I don’t really care about Gucci, is it right to start hating on the person who does?

So there’s the obvious environmental aspect to this – we should all try to avoid buying single or short life anything, and try wherever possible to get quality and organic (lots of companies advertising this now). But there’s the other aspect to this that is why is keeping up with fashion so important to someone? I’m sure there are people who truly love it, and it is to those few people I would argue let them have their joy without judgement. But I have no doubt the vast majority become a ball of trend because that is what the pressure of our society has made them.

Consumerism can be damaging

The more I think about it, the more it enrages me that we grow up believing that we must have *insert whatever possession* to not just be happy, but to even be able to function on the same playing field as we think the next person does. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements of things that promise to make our lives easier, better, more streamlined. And what makes it hard is that occasionally one of these things may actually just do that. But mostly? Mostly it’s just crap. Crap to make someone money. And we want to believe that the perfume, the deodorant, the dress, the hair straightener, is going to make us irresistible to the opposite sex. And they all may do, but I think we all know that no one ever loved anyone because their hair was shiny. I totally get that we all like to look nice (my view is on a basic level that can make us feel good) and that we all have a strong preference for our other halves to not actually follow through on the I’d-marry-you-in-a-bin-liner on our wedding day, but I think we all have a regular tendency to take it all too far. And it’s detrimental to our health and our happiness.

Happiness

This brings me onto happiness. To look back at a good innings, surely this means that you’ve had a fulfilling, happy life. At face value this seems easy enough to understand. But is it? I think happiness is another term that can be misunderstood a little. To be happy does not mean that you are happy the entire time, and that any lapse in happiness means you have failed to attain happy. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I genuinely think we have become wired to think that to be happy means we have to have that warm fuzzy post-comfort-food-infront-of-fire feeling all the time (note to self, I want comfort food and fire). No one is that happy always, because it’s impossible. To be happy we are almost certainly have to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, and difficult at times. Graduating from medical school was one of the happiest days of my life, but I couldn’t have done it without painfully memorising many biological pathway whose names now escape me and I’m sure most doctors.

Fulfilling is another term I think can be misunderstood. In my humble opinion, fulfilling (and happiness) does not mean running around like a blue arsed fly 24/7 until you have been a successful mother, wife, employee and homemaker. Fulfilling does not mean fill your life literally – productivity and success on their own do not make for a fulfilled or happy life. Fulfilled means living a full life. With that comes the importance of self-care, of taking time for yourself and what you enjoy.

Do what makes you happy

So what does actually make you happy? Is it actually Gucci? (right now imagining many people saying ‘yes, it’s Gucci, give me Gucci’). We all have to tidy the house now and then (note to self, must tidy house, in laws coming this weekend), but can that wait until we’ve taken time to do the things that make us happy? All too often the first thing we give up when we are stressed, everything is too much, is the one thing that keeps us sane. Because it’s usually thing that we need for our own self-care, we classify it as a luxury in our mind, and we worry people may judge us for having the audacity to indulge such frivolities. It is not a luxury, it is the very thing that keeps us going, maybe even the thing that should define us more than anything. We should and need to do that thing on a regular basis. So today do the thing that makes you happy – go for a bike ride, read a book, make a pancake (go on, be a lent rebel), jump in muddy puddles with your children. Make it your priority. I’ll be running around a tennis court with my kids. And then enjoying that comfort food by the fire. Yum.

Saving the planet but losing yourself?

On By doctorlunnersIn climate change, drlunners, eco-friendly, savetheplanet2 Comments

I’ve been a bit quiet over the last couple of months. I mean I’ve been a bit quiet on here – disappointingly for my husband it’s generally difficult for me to be anything other than loud in every day life. My eldest daughter has recently found her chatty voice and my goodness it is like a reflection of myself. I can totally see why I am super annoying/embarrassing sometimes/always.

Anyway, I’ve been a bit quiet. The reason being that December and January are pants. Like proper baggy knickers-on-their-last-legs pants. You have that glimmer of hope in December with Christmas, but then you hit January and you lose all hope that life will ever be the same. We all become hugely melodramatic and start hating on Jeff who somehow wangles two weeks in the sun. And I’m not saying February is much better, but now I’ve seen some daffodils come up and the council have starting mowing the lawns around where we live. So I’ve declared it spring and now I feel much better.

Being Eco

I’ve been wanting to chat about the eco train for all of the above quiet time. What do you think about it all? I’m thinking most normal people would agree we all should do our bit to help the obvious creeping disaster that human driven climate change and generally ridiculousness will bring. It really does get my goat when I am forced into some encounter with a stupid person whose convinced the American orange man is right and ‘climate change isn’t a thing we’ve done.’ They are like the anti-vaxxers, can’t reason with them and it’s just going to cause more stress for you to try. Incase you’re interested in the evidence that human driven climate change is a thing, I think the best reads are from the IPCC – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That and listening to anything David Attenborough says, because he’s a legend and ever since I saw the Orangutang quite rightly going mental at a digger trying to destroy his home, I spend far too much time checking everything I buy has sustainable palm oil.

Which brings me to my blog question: given you aren’t a stupid person/orange president, how do you think we should all go about saving the planet in our day to day lives? Most decisions I make could involve a more eco option. And should I be joining an eco group and going on these protests?

Let’s think about things we could all consider doing. Interested to hear your thoughts on anything obvious missed here.

The more obvious choices

I wanted to quickly throw out the stuff that I feel has been on our radar for a long time. I’m talking about how much we use cars, particularly diesel engines, and making more eco friendly travel choices. What a hugely positive decision to bring forward the diesel and petrol car ban. There is the ongoing dilemma of where we source our energy from. While most of us don’t like the idea of burning our way through fossil fuels, how many of us would be ok with paying a premium to have a renewable energy option from our suppler? We switched recently, and it means making sacrifices elsewhere. Huge disclaimer: I’m in no way a climate change saint. I have a GTI and love it, and probably partly hope that haemorrhaging money to our renewable energy supplier may mean I won’t be condemned to eternal damnation.

Moving on from afterlife contemplation, reducing paper usage is another known eco biggy. These days we have the choice of using technology for eco friendlier options here. Back in the day, you had to have a paper ticket entry to the cinema, now the cool kids swan on through cinema control effortlessly flaunting the QR code on their iphone. And don’t be sitting there thinking you’re totally onboard with the new age techno, I know you too have no idea what QR stands for.

Reduce single use

We are surrounded by single use things, and stuff we don’t even think about. I think most people would agree it was a good move having shops move away from plastic bags – and now I think about it, isn’t it pretty outrageous we lived quite happily for so long with this being the norm?! I think a couple of great examples of our tendency towards huge single use plastic crap comes from Christmas and Birthdays.

Christmas

Christmas. How much single use stuff do we all happily invest in year after year? Buying multiple presents, because Bertie may be offended if you dare turn up with one. My beef with present and card buying is buying them both just for the sake of it. I personally love getting a card when I know the sender has bought it because they know I’ll love it, it’s funny or it has some meaningful message written in it. But why do we bother spending the time, effort, energy and resources on a card of generic genericness, and write ‘to you, from me’ in it? And equally, but in my opinion worse, do the same for presents? I’ve become a huge fan of buying experiences for people. One of my best friends announced we are going to do a girly spa day this year as our Christmas presents for each other – who doesn’t win from that plan? Well, my husband doesn’t because he has to look after the kids. But otherwise, great. Then there’s buying second hand. There are some super deals I’ve got from facebook marketplace from clothes to dolls houses. Why do we feel like we have to give something to someone in ridiculous packaging for it to be worth anything or to show someone we care? We shouldn’t. And if the recipient of said pressie only values packaged gifts, I suggest maybe re-evaluating your relationship with them. No-one likes a spoilt little Bertie. It goes without saying that with gifts comes wrapping paper. If we need to wrap, it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to get the stuff that can at least be recycled.

Then there’s the Christmas tree. I’m not sure it’s a smashing idea to be getting the cut-your-own Christmas tree. You’re cutting down a tree, and then shipping it off with the garden waste after a month. Surely it’s better for the environment getting a plastic tree you bring out every year? The last few years we’ve tried to get onboard with a local rent-a-tree scheme. From an eco perspective this has obvious upsides to the cut-me-down, just don’t let any small people become attached to the tree you get every year. Ours took a turn for the worst so Chris-the-Christmas-tree looked suspiciously different in height, width and species last Christmas.

Then there’s the crackers (argh, so much plastic tat), the throwaway polyester Christmas jumpers, the mountain of wasted food. The list is really pretty long and depressing for waste at Christmas. I’m not being captain Scrooge, I just think we all need to consider not being so ridiculous. The plastic 5cm ruler in the cracker doesn’t make Christmas, it’s family and friend time that does. It’s so cheesy I’m cringing writing it, but I honestly think we lose sight of that so often. I would genuinely much rather someone make the effort to see me, buy me a coffee and talk to me than send me a generic card with generic present. Also, I like karaoke. Bonus points if we go sing instead of coffee.

Birthday parties

My daughter turned 2 a couple of weeks ago (poor little tyke has January birthday, Mummy will forever feel bad), and we had a party with over 30 kids. Yes, it was impressively awful at some points BUT the sum total of rubbish thrown away was one dustbin liner. I hired out a local ‘party pack’ for £10 – someone had put together all the crockery and table linen you could want (found on facebook, lots of places have someone going them now). I bought a personalised fabric birthday banner from one of those online fancy places – we can hopefully use it for many years to come, or until someone vomits on it. I didn’t do party bags because, let’s be honest, you only shove any rubbish you can find at short notice in them, and I would have had to re-mortgage our house to fund the lovely eco friendly ones. And I encouraged everyone not to buy her presents. Please don’t be thinking she went without, even before the party she’d been overwhelmed with family presents, to the point that her cousin helped herself to the opening of many. I found one today she is still yet to open, how is that possible.

Other single use stuff

I’m trying to move away from buying any plastic water bottles (what a scam in the first place, well done capitalism), and using reusable coffee/tea cups. I’ve invested in some silicon based washing up brushes – there are lots available if you google that, they’re great and easy to shove in a dishwasher cycle to clean. I’m looking into getting onboard the beeswax wrap for food, having previously invested in stretchy lids – they’re great but found they can’t cover everything. I’ve invested in bamboo reusable make up pads (not that I now have time to don such luxuries), reusable sanitary wear (yes, I said it boys), and am currently dabbling in using shampoo soap bars. The dabbling soap bar usage and the stretchy lid dilemma bring me to an important point – things aren’t as easy as they seem sometimes. The limited stretchy lid use means I still have to use clingfilm, and the last load of soap bars I had came wrapped in plastic.

Shopping

The plastic wrapped soap bar moment brings me to chats on our general shopping. As I tuck into a croissant that I almost certainly shouldn’t be eating, I am reminded that this joy is not only bad for my mum tum, but also comes with an almost bewildering amount of packaging. For my sanity I’m trying to organise my main shop by click and collect at our local Tescos, but this is coming at an obvious downside that I have no option to use more eco friendly packing options. The single garlic clove comes in a plastic bag. If I was to do an in-store shop, I try where possible to get unpackaged stuff, and to take my own bags to anything loose.

And this is where my eco thoughts start tipping over into stress. I genuinely want to try my hardest for the planet, but I also need to get food in for my children and be sane enough to live. If I forget my bottle at the gym, is it ok for me to buy a plastic bottle so I am able to quench my thirst during fitness yoga? Or should I suck up that no bottle means no water, almost certain distress for most of the class, followed by oasis-in-dessert crawl to water supply at the end? How far should we all go down the eco train without losing ourselves in it? Or is it right that an eco-life should be the very focus of all our lives now? I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I do know how stressful modern life is, and to live a as eco as I’d like to would take more time and effort. I would love to source all the fruit and veg I could from my local farm shop, but the truth is I don’t do that every week because I prioritise some other chore (or, heaven forbid, a break).

There is also that obvious mine field of what we should be buying. The mass production of clothing is a huge environmental burden. Our fast fashion culture swallows more water than most of us can imagine. So obvious answer here is to buy quality that will last longer. But what about washing clothes? I’ve recently started to throw away the occasional heavily soiled toddler clothing because I figure it would take more resources to clean it than to buy another pair of trousers. Is that right? Thinking back to the orangutang, is it right that we buy sustainable palm oil or should we boycott it? Would it be replaced with something far worse if we tried to boycott it? We know all of the cows everywhere is bad for the environment, so everyone goes vegan and starts being hippy with their avocados, soy and almond milk (me included) – all of which are also bad for the environment. Do we have to live in a mud hut, wear one piece of organic clothing our entire life, eat the occasional fly that comes by and ease off on the kid production to call ourselves a true eco warrior?

I’m being facetious. My point is once again a little cringe – I believe that if most people made an effort within their means to make eco friendly choices, big impacts would follow. I don’t personally believe that getting on-top of a train at Canning Town is how to win the fight against climate change. I get there are people who are really quite miffed at state of affairs, but stopping Dave getting to work is just annoying. I believe that if most people prioritised more eco friendly choices in their lives, then politicians would be forced to make it big policy, energy companies would be forced to offer renewable options as standard and producers would be forced to offer sustainable options. But there is no incentive for the big people to make changes whilst we all are happy with not accepting responsibility for our every day decisions.

Little people, big changes

I passionately believe it is the little man or woman who can make the tide turn on this. It has already started happening. But how many more years are our kids going to have to hear the statistic ‘we lose a football pitch of rainforest every minute’? It’s not solely the guy in digger’s fault for taking away the Orangutan’s home, he may only be doing what he can to provide for his family because me sitting in my first world sofa would like that particular sliced wholemeal bread wrapped up nicely with a use by date of next week please.

So let’s all try to make better choices. Talk about all of this more. Share ideas. It’s good for the environment and I think good for the soul – how many eco friendly choices are also good for our health aswell? That’s not a coincidence. There’s no need to go full on no-cow if that’s not what you want, you don’t need to lose yourself and become a scrambled mess of climate guilt. Just a need for awareness, shift in priorities, balance and sensible decisions.