Hi, my name’s Brigit and it’s been nearly 18 months since I first came up with the idea of setting up a charity to try and help people find information about how to make their lives greener. Since then I’ve been plunged into a world of policies, flow charts, websites, accounting systems, legal documents and databases…and all that was just to get the charity registered!

Since we bought and started converting our first double-decker eco-bus (that’s the vehicle we’re going to use to get the information out to as many people as possible), I’ve had to get my head around the differences between alternating currents and direct currents, bio-diesel and waste vegetable oil fuels, and pure sine wave versus ‘other’ sine wave inverters.

I’ve gained a degree of understanding of why we need to use deep cell batteries and charge controllers and have discovered that having a ‘Gardner’ engine on our bus means it will probably keep going forever. Thank goodness there were also some simpler decisions to be made – about lighting, flooring, seat covering, doors and paint…OK, none of them straightforward, but at least I had a basic understanding of what a floor was before I had to find something to cover it!

As I write this, the bus is not quite finished. We still need to buy solar panels (for our solar-powered cinema) as well as a couple of laptops and a DVD player. We also need to think of a way to recycle an old sail as an awning, and our project manager, Andy, is working on a creative way to attach it to the side of the bus.

We’ve now  finished painting the outside of the bus, had the flooring fitted, built most of the interior units (all out of beautiful, locally sourced Herefordshire wood) and are about to attach a small wind turbine.

It’s all looking really amazing and I can’t wait to get it completed, but even though we've tried to use recycled materials wherever possible, the costs have mounted up so I’ve had to put things in ice for a while whilst I try and raise the funds to complete the refit.

Please check out the How You Can Help page if you’d like to help!

I now hope to have the bus fully equipped for its scheduled tour by spring 2009. I’d originally planned to have it completed in time to go on the road this autumn, but I underestimated just how big a job it would be to raise the funds to get it all going from scratch.

In retrospect, I actually underestimated just about everything to do with this project…including the kind of support I’d get!

When I first mentioned the idea to friends and to forum members on the ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ website, I hoped some of them would help, but I really wasn’t prepared for the truly amazing and enthusiastic energy that came back to me, so this is as good a time as any to say to anyone who's been involved in any way with this project...

‘THANK YOU, I couldn’t have done it without you!!!!’

I’ve never written a blog before and there’s so much to catch up on that it’s difficult to keep the word count down so I’ll stop for today before this first entry turns into an essay! I hope you’ll bear with me whilst I get into the swing of things, and I promise that in future my entries will be a LOT shorter!

Thank you for reading this far…