I've been waiting to write a blog about chocolate for some time now. Wondering Greenwich market the other day I came across a stall selling raw chocolate. It had samples so OF COURSE I had a wee taste. I'd probably say it was on par with the best organic dark chocolate I've ever had. But it was more than my taste buds that got a little insight into the world of raw chocolate that day.

Raw chocolate is differentiated from ‘normal' chocolate because it is made from unroasted cocoa beans and uses minimum fermentation processes. Why make chocolate this way? Well the nutritional properties of cocoa are staggering (literally.... I nearly fell over when I discovered what these little wonder beans are stacked with!).

Cocoa is extremely rich in antioxidants and has the greatest amount of magnesium than any other food source - a mineral that balances the brain's chemistry; one that many of us are deficient in. Cocoa is also high in sulfur which helps strengthen nails and hair, makes skin glow and detoxifies the liver.

But remember we're talking raw chocolate here - not the stuff packed with additives and heavily processed ingredients. It's the raw stuff that has the real beneficial properties.

That's why this chocoholic is off to make her own!

If you'd like to buy not brew your own raw chocolate try Raw Intent.

Modern society today is built on a relentless need to move at great speed - to get a lot of things done fast and efficiently. In the express lane we often have little time to appreciate why exactly we are doing whatever it is that we are doing. We are also all driven in life by different motivations - for some it's raising a healthy family, others it may be the dream to own a fifty-foot yacht or run 100 in less than ten.

But really we all basically strive for the same one thing - to be happy.

There's one movement sweeping up (ironically quite swiftly) those who have had enough of conforming to a hasty world of eternal errands, growing lists and forced anxieties. It's called the slow movement and it's popping up in many varieties.

You may have heard of Slow Food, which celebrates meals prepared at a leisurely pace with a big dollup of love squished in for extra delight; Slow Travel, which is about travelling closer to home, being outdoors, moving at a leisurely pace, consuming less; or Slow Cities (see transition town article), where communities value local, artisan production, low energy consumption and eco-friendly architecture.

The Slow movement draws from the approach that if we continue to run through life at the pace we are, striving for all the things we believe will fulfil every one of our needs and desires, we forget the point. Some of us already have. And boy has it been destructive - leaving a massive dent of a footprint on our earth.

The slow movement is about taking the time to enjoy the simple things in life - those that bring us the most peace. So why not put the alarm on ten minutes earlier and walk the long way to work through the park. Try not to stress about not getting all your tasks done in a day - there'll still be that list there tomorrow. Ever thought of downsizing the house - you could spend less time cleaning and more time enjoying a garden.

There's always a lot to get done, but if we don't stop to smell the roses now when will we? When we're pushing up roses

A good book to check out if you'd like to get off the highway and on to the back streets is Go Slow England by Alastair Sawday.

There's an urban gardening trend emerging up on our roof tops as more of us look for ways to green up our lives in the literal sense not just the energy saving, recycling and chemical free way. Mayor Boris and the chair of London Food Rosie Boycott have announced they want to provide 2,012 new green spots in London by the 2012 Olympic Games for green thumbs to grow more food.

At present it takes some budding veggie growers ten years in waiting to get their gardening shovels into an allotment. The London Development Agency is funding a pilot scheme to find 50 initial spaces which will include places like unused railway yards, canal banks and reservoirs and potential roof gardens.

Roof gardens are a potentially brilliant force to combat climate change. If you imagine how much square space must be up on all the buildings and roofs of London and the amount of potential CO2 the plants could absorb - well, it sure could clean up a sky full of air pollution for a start!

Some of the benefits of having your own roof garden include: if you grow fruit and veggies up there you get to eat them; they improve air quality in cities; they conserve energy by providing extra insulation - in the summer as well winter; they provide sound insulation; improve drainage by soaking up water and preventing waterproof roof coating from cracking when it freezes; roofs last a lot longer with green cover and it provides a home and pollination flora for our dwindling bee colonies in the UK.

If you'd like to find out more on how to green your roof visit livingroofs.org who promote the benefits of planting plants up above and give you tip and strategies on how to do it well.

To get you started try Rocket Gardens organic garden kits.

‘One language dies with its last speaker about every two weeks' according to Resurgence magazine.

If this statement is enough to make you sit up and ask a few questions - like how is this even possible - you're not alone. Paul Rankin was so troubled by the disappearing languages that he started the international non-profit organisation Living Cultural Storybases (LCS) to help keep them alive.

For many cultures much of their traditions and stories are only passed down the line by verbal means. Equipped with technologies of the digital age like handheld cameras, teams from the LCS reach out to indigenous communities and provide them a new means to capture their long told stories and unique expressions of culture.

The LCS projects aim to ‘support living networks of spoken stories and songs for the communities themselves to celebrate, share and re-interpret their cultural knowledge in the changing world.' Tribe's people of Peru and Mali have so far chosen to participate in the project, taking up the opportunity to record their stories as photography exhibits and radio broadcasts.

It's a nice change that technology be used to keep cultural diversity alive rather than amalgamating us together, as globalisation usually nudges us towards.

It seems our tree dwelling feathered friends have taken a giant leap (or flap) forward when it comes to their homes whilst inspiring a bit of social commentary on how the most powerful leaders of the world have impacted their people.

Super Kingdom is an art installation in Kent's Wood, Kent consisting of a series of fully functional birdhouses (or rather bird mansions) based on infamous dictators throughout history and the palaces they built.

This picture here is a bird house mimicking Mussolini's Palazzo della Civilta Italiana.

Created by artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson from London Fieldworks the structures are part of a broader project by the pair who plan to make a film about the different animals that decide to take up resident in the bird houses. This is intended to reflect how urban development across the globe has affected (often displaced) groups of humans and animals alike.

Other birdhouses in the series include an inverted pyramid based on Stalin's supposed gift to Warsaw, Poland as well as communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania.

The real Palazzo della Civilta Italiana.