THE GREEN IMPRINT

There is something about working in the garden when there is a break in touring that makes a great contrast with working as a guide. In guiding, particularly on extended touring, your carbon footprint (the amount of global warming per day, week, etc) is huge. You are on the move in carbon dioxide emitting vehicles - planes, buses, boats - and you are always staying in different places, using bars of soap and towels once or twice before they are discarded or recycled, sleeping in hotels where lights are left on all night in the corridors. I doubt many hotels have proper recycling and, even if you leave a note for the chambermaid, saying that you wil reuse your towel on the rare occasions you have a two night stopover, they almost invariably replace it with a clean one.
Talking of cleanliness, touring in hot weather makes you take showers more often (twice a day usually) and in cold weather baths (once day but with a shower at the other end of the day) than at home, when I shower once a day and have a bath once in a blue moon as an indulgence.
Having a week off between extended tours, I kept my alarm on for six (it is usually seven at home) and have just come out from a vigorous two hour gardening session feeling self-righteous as I get some exercise, tidy up my anarchic and overgrown patch and prepare to recycle all the garden compost, having done the same with the household rubbish.
Now it is time to recycle some of my earnings - to the Inland Revenue. Tax return time...