Easter is with us once again – a time of new life and a reminder of the world-changing events that happened a couple of millennia ago. As well as it meaning the end of the plastic fast for us (no, we haven’t gone on a binge yet and yes, we will blog about the final pile), it also meant reflecting on the story of the Passion. So how did we mark it?

On Good Friday we joined with several churches around Lambeth to sing “Amazing Grace” at Waterloo station. The idea was that the drumming and singing would come from nowhere, people would bring a bag of food for the new Waterloo Foodbank and then we would disperse back into the crowd following the singing. It kind of worked, and it was great to sing out about grace (the idea of receiving something that you really don’t deserve…in this case forgiveness for all the times we fall short in life) but there wasn’t much dispersal afterwards and I’m not sure people necessarily got the idea of what a flashmob is…but oh well!

The official video can be found here: oasischurchwaterloo.org/popupchurch.

Following this, we headed to Trafalgar Square where a good friend was one of the actors in The Passion which had performances at 12 and 15:15. We’d underestimated how popular it would be and how large the crowds would be, so didn’t have the best vantage point, but we managed! The play was very moving, with some great acting which brought the whole story to life.

…and then onto today. The resurrection. A service at church filled with chocolate puns, but also the message that Jesus died to take the punishment for our wrongdoings away. I got to play the part of an angel at the tomb, asking the women why they searched for the living amongst the dead…and I even got a mini chocolate egg for my acting!

So Easter is over for another year, but the message remains at the heart of who we are.

We posted a few weeks ago that we had given up buying things in plastic for Lent…or at least that we were trying to. We’ve been saving any plastic packaging that we have used over the time, as it’s virtually impossible to not buy anything in plastic. Also, the aim is more to raise our awareness of how much plastic we get through, than trying to cut it out completely. Here is the pile as of today:

You’ll note that it’s considerably bigger than the pile that we had when we first blogged. So what have been our biggest “failures”?

• Cheese – you’ll note that cheese packets make up a large proportion of the pile. However, we’re also buying Boirsin (wrapped in foil and cardboard) and brie (wrapped in paper)
• Cleaning stuff – our washing up liquid ran out, as did hair conditioner…we had no options but to buy replacements which come in plastic
• Treats – we fancied a takeaway and went for pizza because that comes in cardboard…but the dips don’t! Also when we went to a recent gig (Kill It Kid at the Roundhouse – awesome!) our drinks were served in plastic pint glasses. We’ve also really struggled with chocolate biscuits – in the end we went for club biscuits as they have paper wrappers, but sadly the multipack packaging is plastic
• Fruit and veg – in general we’re doing ok with this, with the main plastic usage being the stickers that come on individual items (such as dudhis), but we did cave when, for the second week in a row, there were no paper bags to put mushrooms in at Sainsburys. At work I’ve been re-using a little plastic pot at the salad bar for several weeks, but it finally got too many cracks in, so I’ve had to get a new one, and the old one has joined the pile

So those are the places where we’ve been unable to avoid plastic usage completely, but there have been changes to lifestyle. We’re now making our own bread the whole time; whilst the packet mix stuff comes entirely in paper, we have yet to get it to rise properly in our breadmaker, so we’re sticking to putting together the recipes ourselves. Coffee is being rationed as any replacement will have to come in some form of plastic, so we’re getting through more tea. We’ve been constantly on UHT milk now for several weeks, and we’ve had very little meat at all (I really miss sausages and mash!). Our herb and spice collection is also looking a little depleted as we can’t replace the jars once empty, due to the plastic lids. Pasta, rice and cous cous sadly only come in plastic (aside from Sainsburys basics lasagne sheets!), so this has possibly been our most radical shift in diet – we now rely more on potatoes as the source of carbs in our meals.

Overall we’re quite glad that we’ve only got 2 weeks to go, but I think that the awareness of our reliance on plastic will remain far beyond Easter.

We’ve just bought a Chinook!

It’s amazing what extra expenses and hassles there are that come with it though…not quite the walk in the park that we were hoping for. For a start the tax is quite expensive, but luckily due to its age we won’t have to worry about it in a couple of years.

If only the cost were the sole thing to cause issues when it came to insurance! It turns out that very few insurers are willing to provide cover for something of that size and age, especially if it’s to be used internationally. Finally we receive a quote from Safeguard which, although quite dear, seemed quite good in that it also included breakdown cover, even outside of the UK. With few other options we went for it…only to read the small print and find out that because the Chinook is over 20 years old, the breakdown cover wasn’t actually included, as the underwriters (the AA) wouldn’t provide cover. A quick call to the AA revealed that they were very happy to cover us and the clause was something added by Safeguard.

So off we went in search of someone who would provide breakdown cover for us, at which point our plans for the trip around Europe in the Chinook were forced to change. You see it turns out that whilst insurance companies may be happy for you to be in Europe for a year, breakdown providers aren’t quite singing from the same hymn sheet. The AA and the RAC are willing to provide cover for periods of 90 days at a time…not quite the 365 days that our trip may take. Britannia go one step better with trips of 180 days at a time. It looks like we’ll have to compromise and have two trips rather than one! We’re not complaining though – we get to break up our trip and see our families for a bonus time in the middle! Good times.

But back to the woes of the purchase of a mode of transport such as the Chinook…! As it was a private sale, we set up a pre-arranged bank transfer during the week to move the money across from our account to the seller’s account yesterday (the date of purchase). In the days of internet banking, you’d think it would be a stress-free affair to move money from one account to another. When we checked our account yesterday morning, the money had left – good news. To cut a long story (involving 4 phone calls to our bank and the seller calling their bank a similar number of times) short (although not cutting a long sentence short by adding in brackets!), the money still hasn’t made it to the seller’s account and our bank “cannot explain where the money is”. We are very blessed in that the seller trusts us and we’re praying that the money is in their account on Monday.

At approximately 4:30pm on 9 March 2013 we became the proud owners of our Chinook…and here she is:

Oh, did we forget to say that she’s a Talbot Express Autotrail Chinook motorhome? Sorry about that. The photo at the top of the page is just a holiday snap from a couple of years ago in the lake district. And the name of our Chinook? “Bertha the Beast”.