An odd couple take the lead

The way we currently live our lives, the way we get about, the things we spend our money on, the way we manage our garden, the food we eat, so many of these things exhibit how our behaviour differs from the way other people live their lives. We are, of course, in retirement so this of itself frees us from many of the constraints that working life imposes. A day that is governed by a particular routine in order to meet the requirements of an employer is something we left behind years ago and looking back now it seems that for us our transition away from some of those routines occurred gradually rather than in one go. Nevertheless the overall effect today is that we have become rather odd, so it would seem. Some of these oddities have been recounted here already - having an electric car and keeping it in a garage, riding around on electric folding bikes, maintaining a wild looking garden - but it seems that there are other ways too in which we don't follow the herd, things that it might not occur to us that we do differently until something brings it to our attention.

A news item that recently caught our eye highlighted the build up of rubbish somewhere when the refuse bins were not collected on time. One such bin, so it was reported, was for food waste, clearly something that would create problems if it were left lying around. Family dramas on TV frequently show food being left uneaten when a distraction occurs during meal times and we see the remains being scooped up and thrown into a waste bin. But we throw away almost no cooked food. Unlike as shown in TV dramas we try to eat only what we need and if this leaves cooked food remaining then this is stored away to be re-heated the next day. Waste arising prior to cooking - potato peelings, apple cores, etc. - find their way to a garden compost bin along with cut grass, unwanted plants (weeds), and even cardboard egg boxes. The compost bin has its own lifecycle (as well as providing a home for slow-worms) and the contents eventually become a source of nutrients for the garden. We choose to live this way because it seems to make sense but if those TV dramas in any way represent the real world then this makes us rather odd.

The way we do our shopping is governed, to a large extent, by the shops we have available in our small village. These are small and have only limited choice on their shelves but they are within easy walking distance so this is how we choose to visit them. We trundle a shopping trolley down the hill to our nearest food shop then once loaded we pull it back up again, the exercise being quite a welcome part of our day. The downside to shopping locally is the lack of choice, something that hits home when we do occasionally visit a large city supermarket and stand open-mouthed staring at the choices on the shelves in front of us. Driving to one of these places routinely is what many people do and since big supermarkets have large car parks then this is convenient. In fact these places are laid out in such a way that accessing them without a car is quite difficult. Public transport links are often missing and walking or cycling there can actually seem quite hazardous.

Something else that is often missing from supermarket car parks is a charging point for an electric vehicle, largely because these places were built before EVs became widespread. Charging an EV takes longer than refueling an ICE car so it would seem to make sense to park up and recharge your car whilst you go off shopping. Many would consider this line of thought quite strange, something which highlights the negative attitude towards EVs that we have encountered since we ventured down that road. The explanation for this is nothing to do with the car itself but instead it lies in the belief that a car without an 'engine' under the bonnet is missing something, a vital component that for generations has been admired and fiddled with by so many. Whilst it is accepted that things like windows and windscreen wipers have electric motors there are still many out there who cannot deal with the absence of a large chunk of metal that has pistons flying up and down inside it because it carries with it a status that is simply not present in an EV. Owners like us of such new fangled things are looked upon as being rather odd.

A neighbour of ours willingly churns out all the negatives regarding both electric cars and bikes and he sent us this picture in a message. Clearly he thinks that coal is the primary fuel used to generate our electric supply here in the UK. Not only is this wrong for Britain as a whole (where wind, solar and gas generate most) but when we look at Scotland on its own it is wind and hydro that produce by far the majority of the electricity and indeed there is a surplus which is exported into England. The last coal fired power station (Ratcliffe-on-Soar) ceased operating on 30th September 2024 and in 2025 the UK recorded its first calendar year with no coal power since electricity production began. Our neighbour's misconception is perhaps a symptom of the way the world we live in is changing in ways he finds difficult to come to terms with.

So if the way we live is regarded as odd, perhaps in many respects we are leading the way forward into a different world. Taking cars as an example we see the whole world changing course with EV sales overtaking petrol and diesel in many countries today, a change that has occurred over the last ten years.

Alongside this many cities are cleaning up, spending vast amounts of money on improving their cycling infrastructure whilst reducing the space for cars in general, and the popularity of electric bikes in recent years seems to have gone hand in hand with this. London is just one example of this as is shown in the graphic here which illustrates how nitrogen dioxide, produced primarily by high temperature fuel combustion, has declined. One might think that such a dramatic and beneficial change would be widely talked about and admired but clearly our neighbour never got the memo.