On first impression it’s enough to put a nesting Robin off its stride for good and liable to bring other garden creepers into disrepute - but it’s just the English celebrating Spring.

The caption to Toby Melville’s picture informs us, “A costumed festival participant marches in the Jack In The Green procession in Hastings in southern England May 5, 2008. The traditional annual May Day festival has origins at least as far back as the 17th century, with hundreds of costume-clad dancers and musicians - many dressed in green foliage - marching through the coastal town and symbolically slaying a giant Jack at the finale.”.

Some are more ‘out’ than others.

Elsewhere other revellers cover themselves in the remains of dead animals and 

there is evidence that it is something to do with fertility;

also that the Kruegers may have English country cousins.

Having grown up in the ‘Green Belt’ around London believing that ‘rural’ meant nothing to do evenings and weekends, I had always considered myself something of a country boy; however I was completely oblivious to any of this organised ritual fertility business. Of course it may just have been that I never got invited but surely all of us look pretty much alike after a couple of coats of green paint. 

As the song has it, “it’s life Jim but not as we know it“.

I wonder if it works with Magnolia emulsion paint?

 
So we got to thinking: Wouldn’t it be nice to convert our workplace to a warm, fuzzy, green operation and help save the globe? If only we had the money for that…
 
Well, it’s 2008 and things have changed. Reuters Pictures Down Under has charged head first into the Green Era, working hard to save the planet and harder to save money!
 
Of course, we did all the usual things like using less paper, not printing emails unless absolutely necessary and increasing our reliance on digital communication because it means less paper, less ink and less time. The office has also removed nearly all rubbish bins, replacing them with a range of recycling boxes for paper, plastic and so on. Reuters also removed the need for bottled water (which accounts for thousands of tons of plastic and greenhouse gases from transportation, production, etc) by installing chilled water filter outlets in the kitchen.

 
However, our biggest change so far has been road transport. In November one of our car leases came due. We dumped our 6 cylinder gas guzzler for a neat hybrid, which by the way has more cargo space than the previous road warrior. It’s pretty zippy, feels like driving a spaceship and since we took delivery in mid November have used a little over 6 tanks of fuel…
 
It’s warm, it’s fuzzy, but it also makes economic sense. Our annual lease is A$1,000/year less than the larger car and our fuel saving is expected to be around A$1,600/year. Oh, and as a sweetener, pretty much the whole of the first year’s fuel is covered by the manufacturer’s gift of $1000 of worth of free petrol. We have two pix cars in Sydney so as the price of fuel keeps heading up we expect to be saving about A$5,500 a year on cars alone. Think of the extra feature jobs you can do with a saving like that!
 
Get out there. Go Green. Save dough and save the planet!