Have you ever heard a combination of words, and thought, that would make a good name for a book, or a film, or maybe a band? Back in the eighties, this thought must have gone through the mind of Peter Webb, my late husband, as this is what he called our band.

The Uncontrollable Variables, from left to right: Peter Webb, Margot McCartney, Richard Holt, Ruth Williams and Gerard Rowan

At the time, and over the years, I have often secretly thought it was a rather unusual choice for a band name. Maybe it’s the reason why we didn’t become famous, or maybe that was because we were ahead of our time. (Allow me a bit of delusional thinking!)

In recent days, or years, I have rethought my response to the name. When I originally asked Peter what it meant, he would say, it’s an economic term. And I would nod, knowingly, not understanding at all. In case it’s new to you, here is the definition:

The variable in an experiment that has the potential to negatively impact the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. “The issue of uncontrolled variables often occurs in relation to problems with correlation and causation. This, therefore that, is not always true.

I’m not sure how Peter would feel about me transposing the name of his band over to the current discussion of climate change and what we oughta do. I hope he is smiling. The band name lives on!

I’m guessing it doesn’t take much thought to realise how I have linked climate change and ‘the uncontrollable variables’.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about what to write after my last blog, 7 months ago.

Since then, we have attended two of the marches organised by the School Strike for Climate group, in March and September. A lot has happened since the original strike in November last year. The numbers of people attending has grown exponentially.

Extinction Rebellion, which only formed at the end of October last year, has grown to be a worldwide movement in less than a year.

Greta Thunberg has become, even more so, the voice of a generation. (She now has 7.3 million followers on Instagram.)

And Ruth Williams? I have pulled back from social media, even though that is the stage on which we are encouraged to perform.

The photo of The Uncontrollable Variables taken at the Clifton Hill Organ Factory in the early eighties, is the only photo we have of the members of the band.

In recent times, I feel that my life is being stolen from me. I’m not sure if it’s big data or the seemingly constant expectation to share one’s life, or an existential fear of whether we can create a future that will rectify Greta’s assertion that:

The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: we will never forgive you.

I’m not ready to join Extinction Rebellion but I am ready to rebel.

My current gospel is ‘Climate: A New Story‘ by Charles Eisenstein. He says many things that are worthy of being included here but it’s probably better if you read the book yourself.

One of the things he says rang true with me even more so today than it had previously:

“If everyone focused their love, care, and commitment on protecting and regenerating their local places, while respecting the local places of others, then a side effect would be the resolution of the climate crisis. If we strove to heal and protect every estuary, every forest, every wetlands, every piece of damaged land, every coral reef, every lake and every mountain, not only would most drilling, fracking, and pipelining have to stop, but the biosphere would become far more resilient too.”

Why today? I went further north, upstream, with Graeme Hamilton, from Darebin Creek Management Committee, as my guide. He showed me river red gums that are between four and eight hundred years old. We visited sections of Darebin Creek that are so unique and so much in need of our love, care and commitment.

My heart was broken and opened at the same time.

And being an Uncontrollable Variable seems to take on more urgency.

Dr Samuel Alexander in his paper, The Rebellion Hypothesis: Crisis, Inaction and the Question of Civil Disobedience’ states:

As the broad ecological crisis intensifies, and collapse situations become more common, challenging and disruptive, I have argued that more and more people will face psychological tipping points and become engaged in collective action. At some point, tolerance of ecocide will become intolerable.”

While Extinction Rebellion stage their events around attracting the attention of the media, you will find me down at the creek. There might not even be one photo taken.

Don’t get me wrong, I encourage their rebellion, and admire their willingness to be arrested and go to jail. Rebel for life! They, and we, are the uncontrollable variables.

This blog originated as a response to having completed a Grad Cert in Sustainability at Swinburne in 2014. Rather than expect you to go back through the archives, I’ll give you the brief summary of the history of this site. I chose the title, ‘a change in time’ as a homage to ‘a stitch in time saves nine’. It occurred to me that a change in time, as in us changing our behaviors, would add up to something of value. I still believe this.

Originally, my dear husband Peter, did not feature in my posts, however as our lives became so closely linked to hospitals and the need and desire to survive them, my posts became inextricably linked to those times and those changes, many of which were to do with our ability to change our attitude, as we weren’t able to change our circumstances.

When Peter died, I didn’t think I would ever be able to continue to write about such seemingly ‘minor things’ as zero waste and climate change, however over the last few days, some little miracles occurred that have lead me back on the path, both literally and metaphorically. Let me start at the beginning.

Last Tuesday, my girlfriend, Susanne, flew over from Adelaide to spend a few days in Melbourne with me. It is the forty year anniversary of our friendship, so a catch up was compulsory.

Our first stopover was a visit to my dermatologist in Moonee Ponds to check on a couple of spots that were a bit suss. We were early so we went for a walk in Queens Park, one of those gardens I have driven past many times and never stopped to visit. We were impressed immediately by the range of trees and shrubs and the iconic water fountain in the middle of the lake.

We noticed a worker raking out mulch around one of the trees. Susanne, in her usual friendly way, greeted him and before long we were chatting like old friends. We soon found out his name is Russell and that he has worked for Moonee Valley City Council for forty years, with most of his time dedicated to this park. I could write an entire blog just about Russell however, for now I will just let you know that, after asking if he knew of any magnificent trees we could visit, he recommended the Ada Tree near Warburton. Based on this advice, we decided to travel there on Thursday.

The following day was my first day back at work after a three year break. Susanne went exploring around the local area, ending up at the vegan bakery in High Street Preston, where a fellow customer sat down and, before long, recommended that we visit the Redwood Forest, also near Warburton. Once again, there is much more to this story but I will cut out entire scenes and let you know that we ended up choosing to visit the Redwood Forest .

I bet you’re now wondering, ‘What the hell is a redwood forest doing on the outskirts of Warburton?’. My first thought. Once I entered the forest – officially a plantation – I no longer cared how it got there. It’s not often that I feel that sense of awe one felt as a child, but here, in the midst of these 1400 or so trees, one feels both small and infinite. It’s not something that I can easily capture in words.

As we were leaving the forest, a few seconds after we walked out, a branch fell from a tree just a couple of metres from where we were standing. Woah! That was close! There were some other folk nearby so they came over and we marveled at the branch falling and us narrowly escaping being clobbered by it.

I chatted with Michael, a Christian monk, who has a strong association with the trees; he actually takes groups there to meditate. He also organised a group of locals that managed to get National Trust status for the trees so that they can never be cut down. Bless! He was both pleased and saddened about the recent interest in the trees. As more people visit, the roads and tracks are being damaged, and rubbish is being left behind in this once pristine area.

It is a sacred place, without a doubt. I felt a similar feeling to the one expressed by Michael. I wanted to tell everyone I know that they need to experience the strength and silence of these trees, and yet, if too many people visit, the peaceful world of the Sequoia sempervirens will be compromised.

That night, Susanne, my brother Rod, and I attended an event at Preston Town Hall – the council had organised an evening to acknowledge World Environment Day, screening two films on the damage plastic is doing to the oceans and waterways. The film that stood out to me is called Baykeepers, in which we meet the local community who remove rubbish from the beaches so it doesn’t enter Port Phillip Bay.

Neil Blake, one of the team, and founder of the Port Phillip Eco Centre, came along to answer questions after the film. Neil is a great example of how one person can make a huge difference, just in following his own beliefs and acting on them.

After our day amongst the redwood forest, and an evening watching and listening to inspiring people, I could feel a shift in my being. I was back on the horse, and back on the path. And most importantly, back in touch with my desire to do what I can to continue to change my own behavior and maybe even to inspire change in others.

All of the serendipitous encounters that occurred on this day – and there were many – pointed me in the direction of ‘the way back’. I will carry all of those who contributed with me in spirit, including Peter, whom I know would love this story, and would love that I am back on track. Although he may have a go at me for overusing a metaphor!

Today’s date, the 5th of October 2017, stamps this day as being six months since my husband, Peter, passed away.

Last night I watched a film in which the filmmaker used the technique of jumping between the past and the future, with words appearing on the screen declaring it to be ‘three weeks later’, or ‘four years earlier’. I kind of like this method of shortening time. Imagine having to watch every moment of what happened in between. For better or worse, in ‘real life’, we have to pass through every minute, there is no fast-forwarding, no rewinding.

We knew that the disease would eventually overcome Peter’s amazing spirit. Even though we did what we could to prepare ourselves for ‘the inevitable’, we weren’t really prepared. The last blog post I wrote, on the 23rd of March, was only two weeks before Peter’s body succumbed. I still can’t believe our situation changed so quickly.

Peter’s sister, Melissa, was brave enough to ask me if we had had a chance to say goodbye, in that ‘final chance to say goodbye’ kind of way. The truth is, we didn’t. Even though we had had many discussions over the years about that day eventually catching up with us, I think we had become so accustomed to planning for the next day, week, month etc, that the time to say such things came and went. I said to Melissa that in hindsight, I think it would have been too hard to finally admit to each other that ‘this is it’. With a little more hindsight, if I could rewind the days, I would make sure we said those words to each other. I wished I had thanked him for being such an amazing life partner. There are just not enough adjectives to describe who Peter was for me.

So here I am, six months later. You won’t be surprised to know that my saving grace has has been the support and love I have received from friends and family. Particularly family, especially ‘the kids’, as our mother, Edna, calls Louis, Tam, Yoshi and Helena.

 You read about people who lose their life partner, and how they appear to do all kinds of things that seem out of character. Some might choose retail therapy, others, the bottle. I might have done a bit of both, however my big one was to unintentionally take on my fear of flying; a secret I only recently revealed to my inner circle. In the last six months I have flown to Adelaide, Sydney and two trips to Tasmania. (My sister, Jann, and I were meant to fly to Japan on the 23rd of September, but that is a whole other story.) 

I am learning to live with the paradox that ‘life not turning out as one expected’ foists upon you, being forced to face the biggest change that life has expected of me. Peter is pretty much always in my thoughts. We shared so much together. I talk to him sometimes, mainly while driving, because that is where we had many good conversations. Some days I love living in this house, where everything has been touched by one or other of Peter’s creative urges, and sometimes I just want to run away.

Three months ago, I had my haircut. I think it is fairly common for folks to acknowledge a big change in circumstances via a visit to the hairdressers.

The final paragraph.

And so our ‘Ruth and Peter’ film came to an end. It was not the ending we had hoped for. Everyone wants to grow old with the one they love. It is lucky we were more about the journey than the destination. We packed in so much, and I am grateful for those days.

It’s six weeks today since we left home and embarked on our rites of passage into the worlds of hospital wards and hospice life. If you read my previous post, Sustaining one’s spirit in tough times, you will know what led us on this latest journey. My last words on that previous post were, ‘next stop, home’. I am very pleased to announce, that we did make it back home, being discharged from Caritas Christi Hospice, Kew, on Monday the 20th of March. We ended up staying at CCK for just over three weeks, and in that time, with the help of a wide range of people, medical staff and family and friends, we sorted through all that needed to be done, to return to our home.

I have always liked that proverb, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, and I have adapted it to our purposes today, it has taken a village to bring our darling Peter home. This month, our story is mainly told in pictures, I hope you get a sense of just how fortunate we are to live in such a village.