Quick - hide the bottled water

It is a bit like hiding the pork sausages if you invite your Jewish friends over. We all want to be sensitive to our friends' world-outlook and belief systems. For example, we have good friends who are Jehovah Witnesses and they never mention their religion when we go for tea. Any attempt at proselytising would make it the last tea we ever have there. We all like our friends to be easy-going and, well... Like US.

Then I have the opposite issue when our very-non-green friends come over. One politely asked about the wood pellet boiler so I showed it to her and described how it worked. She looked and me blankly and said "So this is your ecological thing then" and she dismissed it with a wave of the hand. I had to laugh. Her manner suggested that I was insane and driven insane by too much Guardian reading. Seems I can't win. I have to wonder exactly which sub-segment of society I live in. I neither fit the model of a greenie nor do I qualify as a modern careless consumer. Welcome to the in-between. Welcome to a life in Transition.

I was reminded of this dilemma the other day when I got trapped on the phone for 45 minutes by a solar power evangelist. Boy could this guy talk! There was nothing he didn't know about setting up solar buying clubs and he was keen to get me on board. I was less sanguine as I had spent a chunk of my life living in the strange universe known as High Wycombe. We might use solar energy but we sure as hell are not going to talk to anyone about it lest we get perceived as being a bit of a nutter and lose all our friends. How sad is that? But this guy didn't care if he lost friends. Or even if he made enemies.

Apart from boring me, and reminding me of why I avoid hanging out with renewable energy extremists, he did say one thing that made me chuckle. He said "You know the problem with the greens? They only know how to form committees and talk about problems." Agreed. In fact he actually wrote "Fewer meetings and more solar converts". Yes, he actually used the word "converts". Now if he had switched the word "solar" for "scientologist" most of us would probably have slammed the phone down and deleted his E:Mails.

So what makes some people so unreasonably enthusiastic and un-self-conscious about the eco-crusade? I do my own crusading too but I leave it to a certain time and place where people invite themselves in for a chat. Check out www.superhome59.info. Why would I wish to bore a complete stranger? Why would I assume that everyone must be interested in the same thing as me?

I prefer a lot less waffle and a lot more doing. Maybe that is why I will not be the Chairman of this Transition Town into a fourth year. The implication of being "Chairman" is that I have to chair meetings. And that has got so old. I am tired of preaching to the converted and being treated like some kind of eco-nut by everyone outside the meeting room. The good Transition work will continue. But it will be WORK not waffle. We are not here to embarrass anyone nor judge for them for their current life choices. The point of Transition is to help people change their community, change their economy and change their lives. We are here to deliver future-proof durable neighbourhoods. That change comes about through lots of small steps that doesn't judge where people are, but tells them where they are going.

I am not an eco-evangelist looking for converts. It is important but each must discover the rationale in their own fashion. I dream of a day when I can leave my bottled water out on display and show friends my wood pellet boiler without being judged as belonging to some kind of stereotype. I am me.

This is Transition.

Deal with it.

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