I don't know if anyone is listening... I have some very personal, and timely stories to tell; perspectives to give. Songwriting is my vehicle of choice, through popular music, I can slip the message in, hopefully people will enjoy the music first, and one day find themselves listening to the words, if only a percentage of people go on to ponder about the content, and ask their own questions, I may have made a difference. The only barrier, really, is getting the songs out there and I really need your help!!! I have kids of my own, and I am fearful for the future in so many ways. I am passionate about the environment, sustainability, nutrition, health, equality, and am desperately trying to improve things with the best tool I have to hand; songwriting, and on the back of it, raise some very important debates. All I need now is for people to listen, and take me seriously :O) With climate change in the news I would LOVE to say a few things about that. You might not know; Scientists are agreed that global warming will present us with a number of very serious challenges, and that any more than two degrees warming would be very bad news. Here are the statistics that make me want to write songs and shake everyone out of their stupor and DO something about it; For only a 60% chance of limiting global warming to two degrees, we have to reduce our emissions by 50, yes 50% in the next 10 years. There is already 2% chance that this wont be possible. There was an experiment where a man was sent into a room that started to fill with smoke, no-one else seemed to be worried (they were actors) so the man did nothing. I have an overwhelming feeling that this is what has been going on, and is what we need to change - the 'powers that be' seem incapable of doing anything, for fear of making themselves unpopular with the electorate, so we all have to individually take action. This is a message I desperately need/want/have to send. Do you begin to understand my motivation? I just need a platform to bring attention to this and other urgent issues - and I still have such a long way to go... will you help me? Please 'like', 'share' and tell people about this album, help me get the words out there, and heard. FREE RADICALS 7th July, a special date, a lucky number... but now the 10th anniversary of the bombings. 07/07/2005 on a school day trip with my daughter to the British Museum near where the bus was bombed - at best a day out ruined, could have been much, much worse. From the flyover where the coach came to a halt in traffic we could see the stretchers being carried out from the tube station. We all made it home safely, unlike so many others. Songwriting has always been a necessary vent for me, but now I at last have some decent recordings... And a need to share some important messages... We worry about the localisation of youngsters. Young people don't always listen to sense, but they do listen to music, In memory of those who didn't make it home, of David Haines, Alan Henning, Charlie Hebdo, Tunisian holiday makers, Pakistani schoolchildren, Rachel Whitear, Leah Betts, Anna Wood and in the spirit of Malala Yousafzai, please help me get these messages out there... FROM THE TRICKLE COMES A WAVE Written following the 2011 Tsunami/Earthquake in Japan, when the immediate wreckage of lives, homes, and livelihoods seemed overshadowed by the universal panic about the waves of financial uncertainty and radiation that threatened to follow; seemed to mirror so many issues in our lives, not least the inevitable rise in sea levels and the fragility of the pampered lives we cling to. WINDING SPIRAL DOWN Inspired by that awful picture, bravely shared by her parents of Rachel Whitear found dead face down on her bedroom floor after an overdose. GIFTHORSES Hope in the face of adversity. DEAR JIHADI JOHN Dear John, and all you would-be Jihadists. I don't think for a minute that any decent Moslem would condone the atrocities we keep seeing, I ran out of verses trying to keep up, and now Tunisia - please, NO MORE. This is what you risk becoming - a monster - a child corrupting, murdering, father stealing monster. Innocents should never have to suffer. Who or whatever you think you are fighting against does not represent the majority, AND NEITHER DO YOU. I belong to no camp whatsoever, well maybe Mother Earth, the Laws of Nature, and I am a woman. Does that make me a lesser person than you? No, not by a long shot. I don't particularly like my government, but all this senseless killing is SO wrong on so many levels. I'll try to change things for the better, by song if I have to. I believe in the good in people's hearts that exists despite religion,even Jihadi John, had a heart once. MOCKINGJAY Written with my daughter's help after we read all three books together in quick succession; well done Suzanne Collins, we loved them! - Gotta love the films too!! - After all, there are worse games to play... FOOD: Its the difference between the health, physique and vitality we are entitled to, and the battery-fed equivalent product of the food industry's twisted imagination that we have all been turning into. Utmost respect for Jamie's food revolution. Needed doing. Had our own health journey, utterly dependent on the right foods being eaten. They have said that you're more likely to get cancer if you are obese - but they can't see that obesity is an early but clear indicator that there is something wrong with the food you are eating, and that food is really the precursor for most health problems - if we accept that bad food and lifestyle choices are a cancer risk - is it such a leap to suggest that a good diet can reverse the damage? Yet even top private hospitals under the supervision of top oncologists, are still serving their sickest patients cups of milky tea with a custard cream on the side. A cocktail of fresh juices might be more effective than the cocktail of drugs we are expected to endure. (see Gerson Therapy) but who would invest in finding out? There is no money in it; no product, no profit to be made, so no money to prove or disprove either way. Same with 'Phage Therapy' therefore the money is firmly backing the profit making interventions, and everyone that makes a 'miraculous' recovery through diet gets regarded as a freak. Sadly cancer is just the tip of the iceberg... the crowning glory of our general lack of interest in our own well-being, and our overwhelming need to place it in the hands of a 'professional' who will massage the symptoms with drugs without ever addressing the underlying cause. The problem is that every other illness or tiny irritation we address along that long and tortuous route towards cancer gets treated the same way... compounding our general decline. And once you become that ill, your immunity so low, you become utterly dependent on the drugs and antibiotics to keep you alive, but that's not 'living', and the only way back from there, is to trust in your body's own ability to heal... which requires the correct nutrition... Those of us who have already found cures for our ailments through diet are not being taken seriously enough by science and the health profession - there is so much speculation around the human biome at present yet everyone fails to see the connection between which bacteria can survive in what sort of environment and what they (we) need to live on. All the health diets basically avoid processed foods, sugars, gluten and dairy, and insist on masses of veg. So many 'incurable' inflammatory or auto immune conditions are related to diet; - your diet controls the conditions in your gut - and ultimately the survivability of the bacteria that we NEED. ANTIBIOTICS - we take them at our peril - seriously, you have to be dying before it's worth taking that risk. Although Dame Sally Davies predicts that antibiotic resistance will be a calamity of biblical proportions... antibiotics themselves are already a calamity of biblical proportions, with untold cost to the NHS. No-one takes on board how much harm antibiotics themselves are doing by destroying wholesale the bacteria that make up 90% of our cells - science is only just starting to learn about our symbiotic relationship with them, and how ill LACKING them IS making us. Antibiotics v The Human Biome, Soil health, all comes into it. Hoping to popularise the message through song in desperation!! Any help or support gratefully appreciated. READ ON; For only a 60% chance of keeping global warming below two degrees we have to reduce emissions by 50% in the next 10 years. The United Nations FAO says the soil has only 60 years more productivity in it. I am now really wishing I hadn't seen the movie 'Interstellar'.... The soil has an ecosystem all of its own and messing with it has serious consequences - SHORTENING THE LONG TERM FERTILITY OF THE SOIL - so when they say it's to feed the masses - even if this WAS true now, IT WILL NOT BE IN THE FUTURE. As well as destroying the natural balance of the soil, and run-off affecting our water, the production of commercial 'fertilizer' is an incredibly energy intensive process, with green house gas as a by-product, and as such it's continued usage should be questioned for that reason alone. NONE of it is sustainable. And it all ultimately benefits the money makers more than the people who are most likely to suffer from food shortages. (With questionable ethics connected to profits and encouraging dependence on agrochemical use.) Our government invests £450 squillion on agriculture, but only one university offers a degree in soil science - so who is running the show - the chemists?? And whose interests do they serve?? We have been led to believe that organic farming is incapable of feeding the masses, when the opposite could very well be true. I am remembering a fantastic radio 4 programme on an organic sugar farmer that against all opposition was proving large scale organic effectiveness - once the soil had been allowed time to recover, and the natural defence systems were back in place. The other thing is; our own health is undeniably linked to the food we eat, and I mean quality, not quantity; if the soil lacks micronutrients and a healthy wad of good bacteria, our own gut ecosystems suffer, and we are already reaping the consequences of this with untold cost to the NHS. (With questionable ethics connected to profits and encouraging dependence on pharmaceutical use.)