LIVING BY THE THERESA MANNION DOCTRINE AND AVOIDING UNNECESSARY JOURNEYS COULD BE THE FIRST STEP ON MY WAY TO CARBON NEUTRALITY
THE People’s Bakery Rathkeale (PBR) and the PBR bread vans were part of the moving landscape of my boyhood.
They travelled the roads of west Limerick loaded with pan loaves, cottage loaves, sliced pans, buns and sweet cakes. The company was at its height in the late 60s during With online shopping on the rise, perhaps the local towns could capitalise on the delivery opportunities offered by the war on climate change.
And what about the revival of the travelling shop? In my youth, the mobile shop was a feature of rural life. I remember a lovely gentleman in a brown shop coat arriving at our gate every Thursday afternoon.
The doors in his light green Commer van slid open to reveal neat shelves packed with everything from bullseyes to tins of peas and tins of beans, and pan loaves fresh from PBR, the People’s Bakery Rathkeale ( see below).
To us children, the van was Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory on wheels and the genial travelling shopkeeper, who always had one of his sweets in his mouth, had the dream job. He certainly spared my mother numerous trips to town or to the village for ‘the few bits’ and spared the planet from a dose of carbon.
In terms of my own little climate change campaign, I have no intention of investing in a travelling shop anytime soon — I’ll leave that to someone who can count.
However, I intend to become my own worst climate change inquisitor, constantly asking myself whether emitting this bit of carbon is absolutely necessary and is there a way to avoid it. the Cultural Revolution in China and every self-respecting revolutionary in the world had a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book.
I was becoming quite politically aware and knew from the newspapers that in Communist China, everything was recognised as belonging to the people. You had the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Liberation Army, and all this led me to wonder if the People’s Bakery Rathkeale was not only in league with Mao, but a fully-fledged branch of the Cultural Revolutionary Committee.
Amazing, the workings of the young mind.