Finland

Plastic-free living has been going reasonably well, but I'm just about to run out of shampoo and conditioner so it may soon become trickier.

Also, I'm worried my yoghurt culture may be dying (it was runnier than usual this time) and THEN I DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET ANY MORE. Unless I cheat slightly by borrowing a bit of yoghurt from someone else (packaged in plastic) to start it off again.

I had a very tedious hour yesterday morning when I nipped into town to buy a pint of milk to make yoghurt. We've cancelled the milkman as we're going away. There's one shop I know of in Lancaster that does milk in glass bottles - Single Step, where I can also get loose couscous, chickpeas, nuts, dried fruit, rice, yeast etc - but it turned out not to open until 9.30am, and I was in a rush. I therefore trailed round many other shops in the forlorn hope that one would do milk. At about the seventh shop, standing in front of the plastic bottles of milk, buying one pint and telling no one began to seem like a serious option. Eventually I decided I'd be too annoyed with myself for giving in so easily, and lurked outside Single Step until it opened.

As the title of this post suggests, I'm going to Finland tomorrow for nine days. Two problems sprang up whilst packing:

1. Suncream. I managed to find some old stuff so I don't have to worry about it for this trip, but I have no idea what one would do otherwise, apart from staying out of the sun and wearing a hat.

2. Insect repellant. Apparently there's lots of mosquitos and these ticks that can cause paralysis., and you're recommended to use a spray with 25-50% DEET. I can't find any in my house. I also find that biting insects love me and that in addition to this bites tend to swell up to ten times the size of my own head (this may be an exaggeration). Even citronella comes in glass bottles with plastic caps. There are some citronella candles in a draw downstairs. Would rubbing them all over my body have any effect?

It will also be interesting to see how difficult it is to avoid plastic when out of your normal routine, travelling about and being hosted by people. I'm taking a water bottle and sandwich container with me, but everything on a plane comes in ridiculous amounts of packaging (it's probably rather dubious to be flying anywhere whilst giving up plastic for largely environmental reasons as well). And anyway, the bottle and container are of course made of plastic. I believe you can get metal water bottles with rubber stoppers somewhere; I must look into it.

And in other news, it seems cans and tins almost always have plastic in them, which I hadn't fully taken in. This is VERY IRRITATING. What about tinned tomatoes and sweetcorn? More importantly, what about beer? I can do without the tinned food, though it is rather sad about sweetcorn, but what about beer? I would make my own, but I don't have a (plastic) bucket to brew it in. Aargh!