In the morning, L and I looked around a 'superhome' – one that's been retrofitted with things like external insulation to make it greener.
It was near an open Age Concern shop that had a 'two DVDs for £1' offer (and a lot to chose from) so eight are going to be reused rather than going into land fill.
Then there was a choice: the Nottingham Green Festival in the very green Arboretum Park or the Mela at the (free for the day) Nottingham Castle. We went for the latter, partly because the weather was lovely.
By the time we got there, we were quite hungry. Hmm, that's interesting, there are at least a dozen stalls or stands selling food and they're all 100% vegan. The nearest you could find non-vegan cheese was a note on the organic veg delivery scheme stall that they also did local cheese. Oh and, shhhh, meat. That can't be a coincidence…
… and looking, reveals that, no, it's not. The new bunch that's organising it decided that the event should be '100% Vegan' and so stall holders were told not 'bring items that contain meat, dairy, honey, eggs fish or animal bi-products'. That's actually a tighter definition than the Vegan Society use: as a vegan friend likes to point out, you can have a job experimenting on live rabbits and hunt foxes while wearing leather and still be a member provided you don't eat animal products.*
Hmmm, a group deciding that 'green = vegan' reminds me of the way that lots of city Prides think that 'LGBT = gay, gay, gay, with a small bit of lesbian and trans'.**
As you'd expect from an event that evolved from the Nottingham Peace Festival, there was also an ethical policy: no product from any company that is subject to a consumer boycott for violating human or animal rights was allowed, for example. So what on earth were the rape apologists of the Socialist Workers Party doing with a stall there?*** There's a boycott of them that goes way beyond the usual struggles between different Trot groups. And the pair of them on the stall were ignoring the rule that said they must not 'accost visitors with leaflets' in a stark contrast to all the others.
After this, we did some shopping and went home via a new(ish) ice cream place we'd noticed signs to but never actually been to. Expecting something like the excellent Newfields Dairy parlour, it turned out to be more like a shed on the edge of the farm. We've seen those before – there's one near Honiton that does really good ice cream – but this one turned out to be a self-service ice cream / milk / cake shed! The 'fill your own carton or bottle' milk machine is particularly neat.
I've also given the lawn probably its last mow of the year. All in all, a good day.
* Probably not a very popular one, but…
** Speaking of misleading, I'm currently watching an NFL game on US TV, and a mobile phone company has just promised '20Gb of unlimited data'. Erm…
Another game, another relevant coincidence: Green Day's American Idiot is recalled by having George W Bush help with the coin toss and give a video message.
*** Another thought was that with Labour and about six Trot groups having stalls vs just the Green Party, it was more a Red Festival than a Green one…