A Camping We Will Go

This weekend my eldest went off on his first cub camp. Made me very nostalgic about when I went camping as a Girl Guide... I remember collecting wood for the fire and scrubbing cold porridge out of big pans (there's no way I'd have agreed to do that at home!).

Someone always seemed to trip over one of the guyropes. This weekend I noticed some of the newer tents had fluorescent guyropes... what a good idea...they're much easier to see in daytime and especially as it starts to get dark... so no more excuses for tripping over them!

Talking of being seen, all the cubs went off on a nighthike on Friday and were well kitted out with their BrightKidz fluorescent, reflective waistcoats - custom made in green with dark green edging and their scout group logo printed on. Afterwards they had fun with torches by shining on each other's reflective bands when they played 'wide games'.

Supernanny Uses Shiny Feet Stickers to Get Toddlers Walking to School

On TV the other week Jo Frost (aka Supernanny) was trying to get a toddler to walk to school with his sisters and mum without the young boy having a strop.

To get him interested in the journey Supernanny produced some ' happy feet stickers'.... which I immediately recognised as the Shiny Feet stickers which we sell. They had drawn a simple map of the landmarks they'd see on the way to school and each time he spotted one he was allowed to put a sticker on the map. it was a brilliant way to get him to concentrate on the walk and made life so much easier for his mum and sisters.

We love your idea Jo!

Fluorescent Fleece Beanie Caps

Last week our first stock of our new fluorescent Beanie Caps arrived. According to my dear colleagues I'm not cool enough to model them!!! Blooming cheek!!! Anyway they're only £4.30 each at the moment (get a bit of a discount if you're a school or local authority). Yellow fluorescent items are always popular but I prefer these in orange.

New Catalogue Now Available

Remember I said we'd been working hard on the new catalogue? Well they've been delivered and we've got thousands of them. So if you want one or some please let us know. Tel: 01536 454994 (UK). Lots of interesting info on how to be bright plus loads of new products.

Saying My Bit - Institute of Road Safety Officers Conference 2006

In July I was invited to speak at the Institute of Road Safety Officers’ Conference. It sounded a bit daunting when I was first invited because I had never spoken at a national conference before.The theme of the conference was how road safety should be taught within the school curriculum.

The talk I gave was about linking road safety education with sustainable transport initiatives. In non-jargon speak, that was about making kids safer on the road and getting them to walk.

I think in the past some road safety tactics have been a bit scaremongering, the “one false move and you’re dead” approach to teaching children about being safe on the streets isn’t really going to help them in the long term. It makes parents scared to let their little darlings out, therefore they go everywhere by car, therefore don’t get used to walking along the road, and don’t get any road-sense whatsoever whilst cluttering up the streets with cars, making it more hazardous for all the children.

Personally I think the best way to make children safe near traffic is to get them used to walking, and get them used to dealing with traffic and understanding it, and being able to react to it.

If parents are to be persuaded to let their children walk, then they need to feel that their children are safer so we need to do everything we can to make the children safer but without restricting them and stopping them from walking. So that’s why I think pedestrian conspicuity is so important for children.

Anyway, the audience, who were mostly road safety officers, were interested in the way we’ve been promoting child conspicuity through projects with schools, mini workshops, the information we’ve supplied on our website and, most of all, through our product development....... and I think they quite liked having a real mum there who's got a bee in her bonnet (hmmm...high vis bonnets...hmmm...maybe good for 'Victorian Day' at school).

By Car Is Not The Only Way - Work Travel Plans

A couple of years ago I went to a conference on sustainable transport. As I arrived I saw a guy who had come by train and bike asking a conference site manager where he could put his bike, and then having a bit of a dispute over the fact that there were no bike storage facilities. Slightly ironic I think.

Anyway, that incident did inspire me when I was writing our own location details on how to find us on our website recently.

Why assume that everyone is going to come by car? They are more likely to come by car if you assume that they will come by car. If you give them directions on how to reach you by walking, bus, bike or train or any other ways, then they are more likely to use those ways, because they might not have thought of using those ways until you suggested it.

So, for our location directions we give info on how to get to us by bus, train, bike and train, and finally, at the bottom, how to reach us by car with a mention of car-sharing if you can.

Nowadays many organisations (like us) have a work travel plan which gives ideas of how to reduce the amount of car travel by employees and visitors. There are lots of things that organisations can do to reduce car travel, and it doesn’t even have to cost them anything. Having directions on an organisation’s website which don’t make the assumption that everyone will come by car is a really good way to increase our culture of sustainable travel and even help the organisation financially by reducing demand for car parking spaces.

Some people might say what is the point in putting information about where our bike storage facilities are or how to get from the local station to our offices by bike or whether the local train line will accept bikes on its route. They might think
no one cycles anywa so the info is pointless, but you have to look at it the other way. If people see the information, they might think, oh yes, I'll cycle instead, so then more people start to cycle or walk or take the train instead of all turning up in their droves to fill up the car park.

Down on the Beach

Had a weekend at Hunstanton with the kids. It was brilliant. We had really gorgeous weather and we all had a really great time. The kids all wore their fluorescent high-viz sun hats and when they were down on the beach, and we were sitting and watching them, we could see just how effective the fluorescent orange in particular was in showing up against the blue sea. Everyone assumes that yellow is the most conspicuous and visible colour but really it depends on the background. If you think about it, anyone who works on the lifeboats tends to wear a fluorescent orange life jacket. Well, why is that? The sea is blue, unless it is really bad weather, and orange is a contrasting colour to blue. So, a sunny day on the beach, the best colour to make the children more conspicuous in the crowd is fluorescent orange.

Back To Blogging:

I’ve had to have a bit of a break from blogging as we’ve been so busy, things have just got really crazy here. We’ve moved offices twice in the last three months, so we are just finally settling down. Just as we get more space, we realise that we need even more! But hopefully that’s it for moves for the rest of this year anyway. I’ve also been working pretty flat out on our new catalogue which is a major task, but at last it is almost done and we are ready to be printing at the end of August, just in time for the new school year.

This year, we’ve decided to put a lot more educational information, facts and figures/ science bits into the catalogue to help people understand better about fluorescent and reflective clothing because we realise that it’s not simple, as a lot of people don’t understand what reflective and fluorescent mean, and when they work, so we are trying to get across the fluorescent-for-day, reflective-for-night message and helping people to understand what that means and what those things look like. Hopefully we have succeeded.

Running Man.
Had a bit of a surprise this evening. I had crashed out on the sofa after a busy day being 'working-mum/ watching-son-play-football-mum/ burning-kid's-tea-and-trying-to-hide-it-with-ketchup-mum' ... and I was reading through the Evening Telegraph (local paper). One of the paper's photographers has his own column 'Running Man' based on the ideas that pop into his head when running.

He was talking about wearing fluorscent, reflective clothing when running in general and about some 'amazing piece of kit'; a fluorescent, red running shirt from...BrightSportz. That's us! (Nearly fell off sofa in surprise or would have done if I hadn't been so flaked out).

Anyway it was a great free plug. So thanks a lot, Michael. Here's a link to his blog with the bit I mentioned.

Victoria Beckham Wears 'High Vis'.
Now I have to admit I've been watching trashy TV (again)... but did you see the 'Full Length and Fabulous' programme about the Beckham's pre-World Cup party?

Victoria Beckham's dress was a really bright, maybe even fluorescent, yellow. She herself mentioned that she could be helping out in the car park as the car park attendents wear 'those luminous jackets'.

Now didn't I tell you it would catch on? I reckon next year fluorecent colours will be stars of the catwalks. Just remember I thought of it first!!!!!

Walk to School Week
Monday 22 May will see the start of UK spring Walk to School week 2006 organised by Living Streets and Travelwise.

This year the theme is 'Join the Adventure' to highlight the fun and adventures children can have by walking to school.

What adventures? I hear you say. As an adult you may think that walking to school is just a trot along the road. It's only when you hear a child's comments such as 'there's a crocodile in that puddle' that you realise what a child's imagination can make of an everyday activity.

Look out in the press for the schools taking part in a giant jigsaw activity to celebrate the week. Also your school may have received the official stickers and charts via your local authority which you can use to encourage more kids to walk (or should I say encourage more parents to let their children walk). Even if you haven't received any special resources your school can take part.... why not use the week as an excuse to launch a Walking Bus or Park & Stride scheme?

'Doctor Who' Promotes Sustainable Travel
Doctor Who is back. Saturday nights weren't the same without him. The programme provides TV with a match for the greatest debate in film, ('Who was your favourite Bond?') - 'Who is your favourite Doctor?'. The doctor you like best is often an indication of your age... so I think I'll go for David Tennant.

He does a lot of running and walking. You rarely see him in a car. (Use of cars on set is usually for smashing things, for example to get into alien-infested locked buildings, which I'm not recommending. Although on that occasion I can appreciate it was the only option available).

We saw a good bit on sustainable transport use on the Victorian one when he jumped on Queen Victoria's horse-drawn carriage (not that he had much choice).

I'm not sure how the tardis is fuelled (and I'm sure Dr Who nerds, I mean experts, will be able to advise me), but it certainly doesn't require a fill up from the local petrol pump. The tardis doesn't appear to have an exhaust and so there are no obvious emissions (that's not to say there aren't any though).

Bearing in mind the distance he travels, I'd say he leaves a pretty clean environmental footprint of his travels.

HSBC Start Up Stars Award
Last year we were shortlisted in the annual HSBC Start Up Stars awards for new businesses in the UK. Lots of businesses enter this prestigious award so we were really pleased to get to that stage. It gave us lots of free publicity, helping to raise awareness of our high vis products, walk-to-school campaign work and Be Bright message.

Entering business competitions is a really good discipline for new businesses as you have to put together so much information. So many of the ideas in your head have to go down on paper and you have to find ways to measure the impact your business has which helps with your own planning, even if you don't win. Many business awards nowadays don't only look at financial success but also at social and environmental impact (luckily for us as we're quite strong on that!).

Anyway we've just sent in our entry for this year. This time it includes our freshly written Environment Policy and Work Travel Plan as well as figures showing more than 600% increase in turnover since last year (yes, we've broken the £100,000 turnover mark) so hopefully we're in with a good chance.... Wish us luck!

Mongolian Feast
Yesterday we went to a Mongolian Feast for the first time. Our host proudly and loudly introduced us to everyone as (Mongolian Feast) virgins. We quickly amended the situation by grabbing a metal bowl, filling it with noodles and matchstick vegestables, slithers of meat and choosing from around 20 spices to sprinkle over. You chuck the whole lot on a vast metal plate which is heated from below and shared by everyone to cook their own feast.

Absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with walking to school or high vis. The only very tenuous link I can make is that the furnace is made out of an old washing machine drum so is a good bit of recycling....which, like walking to school, is good for the environment. (Told you it was tenuous!).