My Carbon Footprint: Oat baths and make-up for badgers

If “try not to scratch” comes out of my mouth one more time, I’m going to explode, let alone the seven-year-old clenching her teeth in a bid to resist the urge to sink her nails into her own skin in search of the briefest respite.

Like every other household in the UK containing a primary-aged small, it seems, chicken pox has arrived.

A quick check in with the oracle – the WhatsApp mums’ group (and I’m afraid it sadly still is the mums and carers – precious few of the blokes get involved in ours) – has come up with a blinder of a natural remedy though – the oat bath.

It’s not an instant cure, but two or three cups of normal, everyday oats in a warm bath certainly seems to take the edge off. Or there’s the oats in muslin option, a bit like a teabag, that can be dabbed on the spots to assist with the soothe.

Who would have thought oats would offer a cheap, natural and surprisingly effective treatment for the pox? And what other effective, cheap or free treatments have fallen by the wayside as we move away from our millenia-old relationship with an understanding of the natural world?

It got me thinking.

Ours is a zero-waste household – one that avoids single-use plastic in every possible circumstance. Which can, five years in, still be pretty tricky.

But it’s not a mediaeval one. We decided a long time ago that medical requirements were exempt, and blister pack or not (you can recycle them at Superdrug now), we have the full complement of modern medicines in the house – not least because of the other half’s slightly dramatic health history. The small patient to my right is certainly dosed up on Calpol at the moment.

I can definitely feel a dive into the world of the natural remedy coming on though.

It might be an age thing. I reckon I’m going to be one of those middle-aged, linen-wearing women with dangly silver earrings and a year-round tan any day now. The ones that in a distant century would have been called elders, healers or maybe witches. I’m up for a bit of that.

Also, there seems to be vodka involved in a remarkably large number of these recipes, so I’m definitely sold.

First on the list is rosehip syrup. Mostly because I enthusiastically collected a cardboard box full of the alluring little jewels last autumn, but haven’t touched them since.

Part of the problem is that I’m still not at all sure what I’m looking at. Which could be a bit fatal.

Something deep in the reptilian part of my brain is already sending out warning signals, or maybe I watched Snow White too often as a kid, but I’m not about to eat a red thing I can’t identify. That’s a natural warning sign isn’t it?

Or is that only those mushrooms with white dots on them frequented by fairies? Or maybe Pacific sea snakes? Though that could be yellow and black now I’m thinking about it.

I’ve clearly got a lot to learn. Best to stick to the more straightforward stuff. Like olive oil for moisturiser. Hell, if it’s good enough for ancient Roman aristocrats and gladiators, it’s good enough for me.

Way cheaper, no chemical nasties or palm oil, sourced from the same continent that I live on, and I can refill the glass bottle. I’m going to count that as a win.

(A word of warning, though. Look for olive oil whose label confirms that it is harvested only by mechanical means – or handpicked if you’re feeling flush. The rest are harvested in such a way that millions of roosting songbirds are killed in the process every year. Look it up, the whole thing is horrendous.)

Now then, make-up. That’s not gone so well. The pricey zero-waste stuff I enthusiastically purchased a couple of years ago was shipped from… Australia. And anyway, the youngest couldn’t resist the little aluminium pots and used it all for finger painting before I could get anywhere close. I still haven’t forgiven him.

DIY mascara is a fun one too – concocted, badly in my case, from charcoal and coconut oil and painstakingly levered into an old mascara tube left me looking like a badger. Plus coconuts aren’t a common crop in the West Country.

Meanwhile, cocoa powder bronzer, blusher, contour thingy, or whatever that stuff’s called by the current generation, makes me look like a sunburnt clown. Until it rains. And then I look like I have my daughter’s chicken pox in reverse.

I’ll, er, keep trying…

‘Going Zero: One Family’s Journey to Zero Waste and a Greener Lifestyle’, by Kate Hughes, is out now