I watched an interesting documentary recently about a family involved in an eco home project. In order to speed things on a bit when their home was inaccessible because of road conditions, they USED A HELICOPTER TO FLY IN BUILDING MATERIALS.

Did these people genuinely believe that their efforts could in any way be labelled ‘sustainable’ when, surrounded by forest, they airlifted wood in to build their home? What did they think this would do to their carbon footprint?

In a similar vein – I listened to a radio program this morning about sustainable travel – in which they skirted round the fundamental problem – if you are travelling by plane, it’s not a sustainable holiday. The man interviewed, who runs a sustainable travel website, recommended that we travel less frequently by plane, and, I quote “we should all start taking less frequent, longer holidays, like we used to” – like who used to? the landed gentry?

And if another person tells me that “using a dish washer actually uses less water than washing by hand” – I will scream (at the sheer horror that so many otherwise intelligent people can be so easily ‘greenwashed’). Do the maths. Do you really use a bath full of water to wash up a cup? What research did the marketing department of said dish washer manufacturer base their claims on? (update: the comparison was with people who wash dishes under a running tap). Why would you accept this without question – unless you were looking for a convenient excuse not to modify your lifestyle in the face of global warming.

We’re going to hell in a hand-card, and it’s our own stupidity wheeling us along.

This morning I was thinking about chimneys. A strange thing to wake up wondering about but bear with me. We had our chimneys swept by Vaclav Havel on Thursday (namesake of the first president of the post-communist Czech Republic). It was all very high tech – surprisingly – we had been expecting Dick Van Dyke I suppose. The 21 century equivalent brings with him a camera and lights in order to film the chimney lining to check that it’s safe.
After our chimney fire two weeks ago, I cleaned the sand out of the chimney (filled to extinguish the blaze). With the sand came out big clumps of carbon, solid like soft charcoal. When I had looked into the burning chimney, the walls glowed like a furnace – it was this charcoal like lining which was burning.
Carbon sequestration has been happening in our chimneys for the last 20 years (Vaclav Havel said they had not been cleaned for a considerable length of time.) Currently the science exists to take the harmful carbon out of the pollution from coal burning power stations. The problem has been the cost of including such technology – and seeing as global warming has until recently been intangible – then there is no direct financial benefit to energy companies to include the technology.
Though there is a logical argument for us burning wood as a source of heat – it is a renewable source of energy as the wood is taken from a sustainable source – I wonder how far down the line is development of domestic sequestration.

On Sunday we learnt an important lesson – why chimneys should be regularly cleaned.  The lesson was, of course, too late – as we had by then already set our house on fire. To our rescue came Chynov fire brigade. With great efficiency they poured sand down our chimney and put out the blaze. When the police arrived, I told the officer that the firemen were on the roof, putting songs in the chimney (Pisek/Pisen). My Czech is not good.
This is the second time I have been rescued by Czechs filling something up with sand.

When he was a child, my grandfather watched as Exeter was set ablaze during the second world war. As he watched it burn, a bomb fell a few feet away from him. He felt the ground heave up… but the bomb did not detonate.  When the bomb disposal officer arrived, my grandfather followed him to the crater where there lay a 1100 pound bomb ‘as big as a dinner table’. When they opened it they discovered a note written in pencil saying ‘to the people of England from the people of Czechoslovakia, this bomb will not explode’. The bomb had been filled with sand.

When we got married in Prague (31st May 2005, Old Town Hall), I tried to tell the story about the bomb to the official conducting the service…  a strange feeling – if it had not been for the bravery of unknown saboteurs…

So… we’re just sitting down after the fire crew have left.

To dry the plaster going on in the new kitchen/dining room we lit the old boiler fire.  A while later the chimney set light.

Ironically, sweeping the chimneys was something that I had asked our previous builder to arrange for us before we came out to visit Novy Mlyn before we lived over here. It didn’t happen. I didn’t think about it… one of those someday soon jobs.

So, when I went up to the attic to see what was going on there were flames coming out of the access hatch. Mike et al put out the old boiler fire & Zdenek called the fire service, then we used wet blankets to block up all the access points we could find for air to get into the chimney.

When the fire service arrived they carried sand up onto the roof and threw it down the chimney. It did cross my mind that we could walk away from the house at that point. Leave Novy Mlyn and the problems there contained and simply walk away into the forest – it was strangely calming. The fire is now out, but the fire inspector said that the chimneys hadn’t been cleaned for many, many years. We need to get them all swept and inspected before we can light the fires again.  There is a risk of reignition over the next two or three days because of the heat still in the chimney.

Our gorgeous cat, George, has gone missing.  He ran away while we were away in the UK. We are all very sad. Pavouk, in particular, is pining. We are devastated at the loss of such a fine character.

So that our lives are not completely dominated by computer work (such as our project for language learners), all four of us normally go for a walk together in the forest every evening. Once, while out walking, both cats decided to explore the hunter’s cabin (essentially a shed on long sticks with a window). I was lucky to get a picture of George actually looking out of the window of the cabin. What a fine hunter he is. 

I have put up posters in the local villages, but people don’t seem to care very much about cats here. Our last builder expressed surprise when we told him we planned to bring our cats over from the UK – “Why don’t you just get them put down and get new ones here”. The single most unappealing Czech habit I have come across is that if a cat is run down on the road, nobody will stop to remove the body.

I really, really hope that George found new owners, and more than that, I hope he will find his way home some time. But the snow will be here soon – he’s running out of time.

Life isn’t the same with just the three of us.