About Us
Call us monkey and feathers. We’re a couple of average boomers living an outer suburb of Melbourne. We have a son who’s 22 and a daughter who’s 20 and we’re presently in the happy position of watching our children stretch their wings and leave us to our nest.
As parents we’ve tried to teach our kids a set of ethics that will give them the same kind of smooth ride as we’ve had through life. Trouble is, there’s a whole lot more going on these days than just remembering to say “thank you” when people hold the door open for you and remembering to put the bins out on a Thursday. All those terribly scary things that were about to destroy life as we knew it back in the seventies – and then went away – have returned. With a vengance. Global warming, pollution, oil shortage, energy crisis, floods, fire, famine, drought – I won’t labour the point (more than I just did). Ignoring them did not make them go away.
Now we are in our 50s and grey and wise. Yeah. Right.
Now we are looking at the world our children are about to inherit. Now we are looking at what our future grandchildren will be born into. Now we are suddenly realising that we’re not going to live forever and what the hell have we been doing for the past 30 years?
The answer to the last question is, of course, not nearly enough. Hardly anything.
Not nothing. No, I have been using cloth bags at the supermarket since the 80s. I’ve been obsessed with compost heaps since I was a kid. We keep our own chooks for eggs. This one is called Boris.
this one is called Boris
But I still drive to the supermarket to get food that’s been shipped from who-knows-where and drenched in chemicals that do who-knows-what and there’s always too much packaging. Our compost heap moulders away, doing nothing much at all, and the hens, despite being a source of delight and very happy birds, have made no real contribution to world hunger or any other thing.
So this is us. Trying to get out act together. Thinking about how the hell we can make a difference because we should. Because we owe it to ourselves and our kids and our unborn grandkids. Because, having lived for more than 50 years the kind of existence so opulent that it’s probably unimaginable to the vast majority of people who live on this planet, with all the food and hot showers and education anyone would ever want or need, we owe it back.
And if you’re sitting in your house, reading this on your computer, or sneaking a bit of a surf at work with a nice hot cuppa on your desk
then so do you.