Chicks on film

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 10, and Nell, 7, like travelling around Britain on public transport (don’t laugh). We spent three happy months exploring during summer of 2007 but now we’re home, you can still join us for the occasional sightseeing - plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

This pic ought to be of Pete and Xuesong Yu during a break in filming a three minute short for you tube. Instead it's just piles of Pete's new book at Waterstones. Xuesong (aka Emily) is from Beijing. She’s also one of my communications students, and currently on a placement at Friends of the Earth, but she kindly offered to help do a bit of filming. The camera was borrowed too.

The film of Pete reading from There’s A Hippo In My Cistern – with background noise of our hens cheaping – is on you tube here. It's already had 81 people watching it (amazing!). But as it stars fowl, foxes and flapping dressing gowns – and is very funny - maybe you should too. Let us know what you think.

Hippo in the picture

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

This pic is of Nell and Lola over-excitedly finding a model toilet at Camden Green Fair covered in tips to fill it with a Hippo. It says: "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." It also says that a Hippo can save 5,000 litres of water per person each year.

I love this pic because it reveals Nell's true feelings about our rarely flush policy.

There's a Hippo launch party

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

Brilliant party at Islington's Green Living Centre (easy to reach by bus, tube, foot and bike - all very low carbon methods of getting around). This entry is just to show-off the party cake.

Three for two moment

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

There’s A Hippo In My Cistern (Collins) is on the three for two table at Waterstones. We got so over-excited that I took a photo. At a more recent book reading in Wanstead, at the lovely Newham Library, Pete read a section from the Clucking Hell chapter to non-stop laughter from the audience. I hope he gets a chance to do more of these readings.

Hippo at the printers

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

This is the face of a man (left) who's finally sent his corrected book proofs of There's a Hippo in my Cistern: one man's misadventures on the eco-frontline off to the printer. Now there's the long wait until 2 June 2008 when it comes out. I reckon he's done a Feverpitch for the eco generation. If Pete's funny book gets a lot of readers then Pete May could do more for climate change than most of us ever can.

Here's a summary of the book (lifted from the back cover):

WHY IS THERE A HIPPO IN PETE MAY'S CISTERN, YOU MIGHT ASK.

Back in the nineties, Pete May was busy watching football and drinking beer. He was quite happy surrounding himself with countless pizza boxes, beer cans and other environmentally unfriendly consumer stuff. Then along came Nicola - an environmental activist intent on saving rainforests. Pete, surprised to find himself drawn to someone so far removed from his planet-killing laddish lifestyle, began to wonder whether two people so different could really fall for each other?

Would Pete ever change his ways and sign up to the green lifestyle of composting loos, chicken rearing, energy saving and general self-sufficiency? Would he ever get to grips with devices called Hippos that he found himself dunking in his cistern to save water when flushing?

This is the charming and funny true-life tale of one man's struggle to grapple with the good life. GO GREEN and get the girl.