Green grannies: they run in the family

The yUKe is seeing an outbreak of "Green Grannies," septuagenarian ambassadors for the environment and sustainability.

This is nothing particularly new. All my grandparents were one or the other kind of traditional home grown British greens, from the grandad who was a Kinder Trespasser, to the grandma who could knit a sweater in a week and who survived WWII by eating home-grown veggies and rabbits trapped off the moors. I suspect most Britons my age had grandparents who lived through the austerity of the 1920s to the 1950s and had lots of thrifty, handy skills.

Young Americans raised on Jon Stewart and SNL will however find the style of Barbara Warmsley, Oxfam's new green grannie, to be ludicrous and one step away from satire.

It doesn't help that she's almost my namesake. Warmsley and Womersley are considered diferrent spellings of the same British surname. We probably share a great-great-great something granparent somewhere down the line.

Oh well. No press is bad press. Enjoy.