Dorset resident and ‘Gaia theory’ scientist James Lovelock took a bit of flak for some of his comments in a recent article in the Guardian. Interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead, he had dramatically shifted his position on climate change since their last meeting in 2008. She described him as a ‘mischievous provocateur’, and from the comments and articles posted on various specialist websites and press, after the article’s publication, it looks like he certainly provoked debate—especially when he declared that robots will have taken over the world by the end of the century. But according to neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, the professor may have a point. In a recent TED Talk, Harris suggested that humans are suffering from a failure to recognise the danger posed by our unstoppable march toward more and more powerful computers. His concern is that ‘the gains we make in artificial intelligence could ultimately destroy us.’ These gains, such as learning how to combat Alzheimer’s and cancer; invent sustainable economic systems and develop climate science will ensure that we develop more and more processing power to the point that computers—that already process much faster than we can—will eventually learn to make themselves even more intelligent. The final scenario is that we will somehow have developed what Harris refers to as ‘some sort of God’. According to James Lovelock, this new God, (or Gods), may be so intelligent that it, (or they), won’t be able to talk to us and may view us a little like we view trees at the moment: not in a ‘lungs of the earth’ way, but as ancient organisms that can’t understand us. Aitkenhead suggested that in that case perhaps the robots might like to hug us. But just in case we miss a vital step in the process of creating this new God, (or Gods), Ryan Abbott, Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey’s School of Law has just proposed that non-humans should be allowed to be named as inventors on patents. He suggests that because computers will be doing all the inventing ‘it is critical that we extend the laws around inventorship to include computers.’ Seriously?
November in the Garden
Since getting a dog who turned out to be completely gun-shy, petrified by any sort of explosion, November is the month heralded by a period of great wailing and gnashing of teeth—his and mine!
I’m sure, when I was a kid, people were considerate enough to keep their fireworks to the weekend, or weeknight, on which the 5th actually falls. Now the uncontained pyrotechnics and accompanying sound aggression start many days before Mr. Fawkes should be commemorated, continuing well after his treacherous anniversary has passed.
This has nothing to do with gardening—except perhaps to use the celebrations as cover for a really huge, neighbour unfriendly, bonfire or, more peaceably, as a timely reminder to plant your tulip bulbs.
In almost three decades of paid-for gardening I’ve never found a tulip that is as reliably perennial as the more ‘woodland’ and ‘damp meadow’ derived spring bulbs; daffodils, snowdrops, squills (Scilla) and the like. The big, predominantly red or yellow, ‘Darwin Hybrid’ tulips do tend to last for many years, in situations where they get at least some sunshine, but these bruisers are not really ‘the best the tulip world has to offer’.
The ‘species’ tulips are much finer, ‘choice’ is the hort snob term, but, coming from native habitats where they survive in poor soils and baking summer heat, they are seldom able to put up long-term with our cooler, wetter, conditions. The many tulip varieties developed by man, over hundreds of years, will have a genetic make-up so convoluted that it’s difficult to say how they will perform in your particular garden soil after their initial flowering.
I like to plant them in pots and containers where, at least for the first spring, they guarantee to put on a good show. After that I feed them well, while in leaf, and deadhead after petal drop to prevent strength sapping seed production. This way they often provide a good second, occasionally third, year of reliable flowering before succumbing to our less than baking summers and the inevitable build up of pests and/or diseases. If they were still producing flowers, from healthy bulbs, when tipped out of the container then I replant them into a border (they don’t establish in turf) where it’s a bonus if they defy the odds to bloom again there.
When working for a London landscaping firm, straight after I completed my degree in Horticulture, I remember early morning runs to ‘Nine Elms’, the ‘New Covent Garden’ market, to buy wholesale bulbs and winter bedding. When it came to tulips we tended to stick to lily-flowered varieties which combined elegance with sturdiness and came in a good range of colours. They were guaranteed to bloom even after emerging through containers stuffed full of winter pansies, trailing ivies, Bellis perennis and at least two other types of spring bulbs. Of course they only ever stayed put until the summer bedding replaced them in late spring. Everything was treated as ‘disposable’—such is life in the bustling Metropolis.
Of those lily-flowered, old dependables, I still regularly plant ‘West Point’, a good yellow, and the ultimate ‘goes with anything’, white flowered, ‘White Triumphator’. I think I first developed a soft spot for the more outlandish ‘Parrot’ forms with the deepest purple ‘Black Parrot’. It’s almost a cliché for being partnered with various types of allium at the ‘Chelsea Flower Show’ each year. Of course, for shows like ‘Chelsea’, the landscaper will have pots and pots of tulips, held back by cooling or brought forward in glasshouses, to ensure they exactly coincide with the similarly manipulated alliums. In your garden it’s often best to pair tulips with traditional bedding, wallflowers are the classic foil, which flower over a long enough period, in the spring, to guarantee that the tulips will at some point synchronise perfectly.
On the subject of ‘Parrot Tulips’, I came across ‘Blumex’ when I was checking that the previously named varieties were still listed in current catalogues. It promises really interestingly formed petals shot through with a rainbow of deep orange, burgundy, chartreuse flairs and the odd yellow highlight. I’ve missed it for this year but it’s certainly one that I’ll be ordering next autumn. For now I must get on with all the other things that need to be done this month.
Essential jobs for now include moving less than hardy, potted, plants under cover or, at least, right up against a south facing wall of the house. Even in the balmy ‘Marshwood Vale’ it would be foolhardy to expect borderline hardy plants to survive the winter in a really exposed spot. Fully tender plants will need to be in a greenhouse with some form of supplementary heating readied against the risk of sub-zero temperatures. If you haven’t done it already, thoroughly spruce up your chosen ‘under cover’ area, cleaning the glass to allow in maximum winter light.
I reserve the ‘under bench’ area of the greenhouse for old wine boxes that house the dahlias and cannas which need to be dug up from the borders this month. I don’t necessary wait for a frost to blacken the foliage, the traditional signal to lift dahlias, as this might never happen in a very mild year and cannas at least are best lifted before being damaged by frost. Whatever their state, both get all their stems and foliage chopped off so only the tubers / rhizomes are stored in the old wine boxes.
I let the dahlias dry out first, inverted to drain the hollow stem bases of moisture, but the cannas are best boxed up still encased in a little damp soil then further covered by a layer of multipurpose compost. Dahlias seem to survive best if made completely dormant by drying out, whereas cannas definitely grow bigger and better, the following year, if kept at a gentle tick-over. From experience dahlias are borderline hardy, in the southwest, but cannas definitely need to be frost-free all winter and are severely held back if allowed to dry out during storage.
You can start planting bare-root plants this month although, in tune with the slowness of the season, there’s no rush with this. Do it when the weather conditions are favourable and you’re in the mood. To make a proper job of planting takes time, especially if tree stakes, rabbit protection and mulching provisions are involved. Remember that old adage about spending as much money on the hole as you did on the plant. That’s as good a thought as any to leave you pondering on!
Vegetables in November
With glyphosate turning up in our bread, 95% of neonicotenoids leaching into watercourses and field margins, and an average of 20 sprayings of dessert apples each year, should we look at how we garden, and buy our food?
There is always pressure for good looking and cheap food. Ultimately this pressure comes from the consumer, which is you and me.
Recent research at Sussex University found that only 4% of neonicotinoid are used by their target plant. 1% is blown away as dust and 95% washes into field margins and watercourses. Sussex have also found that they harm bees, bumble bees, butterflies and birds. Sprays used by many gardeners such as ‘Ultimate Bug Killer’ contain neonicotinoids.
So for those of us who grow vegetables it seems sensible to try and use no chemicals. Using artificial fertiliser may not do much harm in itself. But the unnaturally fast plant growth that follows leads to thin plant walls prone to easy attack by insects and fungi. You then have to spray them with systemic insecticides and fungicides such as organophosphates.
It makes sense, and should be much cheaper, not to motion better for the health of ourselves and our children, to try and use natural means to make our crops grow well. Keeping your soil rich in organic matter and sowing healthy seed at the right time of the year is all you need to do.
There are quite a few gardeners who say they garden for wildlife, but who also use liberal if not excessive quantities of slug pellets. No matter what the manufacturers say, we know someone whose dog died when it found a cache of slug pellets. These pellets are seriously harmful to more than just slugs: many grubs and beetles are killed, and some of them might otherwise be eating slug eggs. These dead animals are then eaten by frogs and birds, and so the poison works its way up the food chain.
While ranting about chemicals, a persistent herbicide made by Dow called aminopyralid has been turning up in many bagged composts this year. Many people think the abnormal or stunted plant they have grown is their own fault. But not your vegetable correspondent! He has received £40 in compensation for mutilated crops of beans, sweet peas and tomatoes.
So please, everybody, think about how you garden and how you buy your food. And why do chemists not like nitrates? Because they are more expensive than day rates.
What to sow this month
Garlic cloves, overwintering onions and Aquadulce broad beans can be sown early in the month for harvesting next June/July. Best establishment comes if you keep the birds off with netting or fleece.
Running Wild
To research his new book Being a Beast, Charles Foster tried to perceive the wild as it is perceived by animals. James Crowden, who talks to him at this year’s Bridport Literary Festival, looks forward to a better understanding of life on four legs.
Dorset is no stranger to Beasts both real and imaginary. Do you remember the Beast of Broadwindsor? or was it Beaminster Tunnel? These stories are fuel enough for our imaginations, though sightings often have to be taken with a pinch of salt. What it shows is that our capacity to believe in beasts is enormous and that beasts are usually black and sinister which adds to the mythical dimension, and says more about our powers of perception and credulity than basic biological facts and the process of evolution. Medieval bestiaries are also a common source of myth and misinformation. So to return in modern times to five common beasts with an altered but very alert and curious state of mind is intriguing.
Charles Foster who is appearing at the Electric Palace in Bridport as part of the Bridport Literary festival is no beast, though he is, I fully admit, a bit eccentric. I have known Charles a good number of years and first met him in a pub in Somerset whilst discussing the merits of local cider and the virtues of camels. Charles lectures in medical ethics at Oxford University and is a fine upstanding fellow of Green Templeton College. Part barrister, part vet, part Oxford don, he has gone, not just native, but very wild, mostly in the Westcountry, living like a beast. Sometimes with his family and six children who are as he says ‘his greatest tutors’.
Charles’s latest book, Being a Beast is brilliant, witty and earthy but has alas nothing to do with black panthers or Conan Doyle’s vivid imagination. It has more to do with badgers, otters, foxes, red deer and swifts, as well as animal perception and neuroscience. Charles Foster has a deep and infectious desire, rather like Darwin, to understand the environment in which we live and to this purpose he has spent many years exploring the intimate world of sound, smell, taste and touch from which humans are normally excluded by trying to live as close to the ground or water or sky as he can. He lived, rootled and ate by night and slept by day. True Oxford don material you might say or Rogue Male?
But to Charles’s credit this is no publicity stunt, though films are in the offing. Foster gives us a new, radical type of nature writing—seeking to perceive the wild as it is perceived by animals, rather than merely describing the writer’s own incurable human reconstruction of the wild. This is no PhD but a remarkable diary of events where he tries very hard indeed to get under the skin of the beast and ends up thinking like a badger, thinking like an otter, thinking like a red deer, thinking like an urban fox, thinking like a swift. So he has lived in a hole in a Welsh wood to study badgers; tried to catch fish with his teeth in Exmoor rivers to study otters; lived like an urban fox, eating low grade pizza out of bin bags in London’s East End; been hunted by bloodhounds across the Quantocks to find out what it feels like to be a red deer and has obsessively followed migrating swifts from outside his study window in Oxford all the way to Africa. A high flyer you might say.
Foster uses his sense of smell, taste and hearing much more than we normally do. He even had an interesting interchange with a policemen when he was caught sleeping under a city bush in broad daylight and said that he was ‘trying to be a fox…’ The constabulary were not amused and thought he was ‘barking’.
Foster reckons that we are all ‘disastrously and boringly locked into vision—and hence abstraction—as a result of our bipedal ancestry,’ which means the evolutionary process where we started to walk upright on two legs instead of four. A technique used to see over the long grass of the savannah and hunt for game, a million or so years ago which increased our reliance on vision and has denied us many other ways of interpreting the world. Reliance on television, which is, by the way, banned in his own Oxford home, only adds to this demise. As all soldiers know you learn to use your ears at night on patrol and slowly hone in your night vision. Sniff the air and remain alert.
Charles Foster has just been awarded a curious but very prestigious honour at a ceremony held at Harvard University—joint first prize in Biology for his book ‘Being a Beast’ at the 2016 Ig Nobel prize: a kind of humorous yet deadly serious version of the real Nobel prizes. The prizes have been awarded since 1991, with the stated aim to “honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”. Charles shares this with the Alpine Goatman Tom Thwaites.
Ollie Seyfried
Just married this summer, Ollie Seyfried runs Cott Farm Furniture, part of Cott Farm, East Chinnock, which has been a family business since 1973. Working on the chicken farm, producing free range eggs along with a farm shop that his parents set up, Ollie branched out into furniture in 2000. Starting off with some pieces from a local furniture importer, the stock sold so he bought some more, and more, and more, growing to the large showroom and e-commerce website available today.
A self-confessed perfectionist when it comes to carpentry, Ollie is self-taught. Filling the space he has with free-standing domestic furniture there is also the odd quirky vase or painting to come across. Full of bits and bobs, standard furniture and bespoke pieces the showroom is bursting at the seams with interesting finds. The on-site farm shop also provides opportunity for a piece of cake and cup of tea for any customer flagging with the choice available.
Also on offer is the barn Ollie and Becca got married in. Working day and night to get it finished, Ollie’s prize collection of enduro mortorbikes (off-road racing motorcycle), campervans and tractor were de-camped in order to provide a stunning venue for the couple. However, so successful was the transformation, the barn is now available for other couples to hire for their special day, as well as any other use it can be adapted for.
Spare time isn’t something Ollie has much of as he’s either in the workshop, showroom or out making deliveries in a converted VW camper. When he does grab some time for himself he can be found tinkering on one of his beloved campers, biking through the muddy lanes in winter or renovating his house. Relaxing at home he loves spending time with Becca, often as her sous-chef, preparing a spicy curry they both enjoy eating.
Up Front 10/16
The Woodland Trust recently announced the shortlist of trees chosen to compete for the UK’s Tree of the Year competition. This year’s entries include the original Bramley apple tree from Southwell in Nottinghamshire, a Mulberry bush in west Yorkshire that is said to have been the inspiration for the nursery rhyme ‘Here we go round the Mulberry Bush’ and a tree in Brighton which caused the local council to redraw road plans after campaigners called for it not to be felled. The Tree of the Year competition was open to entries from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a panel of experts in each country considered nearly 200 public nominations. Ten trees were chosen from England and six from each of the other countries. Ancient trees are often seen as symbols of strength, longevity and even wisdom and this year’s list also offers symbolism: the Wesley Beeches in Northern Ireland are said to be the result of John Wesley twisting two beech saplings together to symbolise the connection between the Anglican Church and the new Methodist movement, whilst a serene looking copper beech tree in a school playground in Scotland is said to bring calm to the children. The list also has local interest with the inclusion of King John’s oak, from Shute Park in East Devon. According to the Umborne Community website, the oak has a girth of over 10 metres and is more than 800 years old. It is said that King John, who died exactly 800 years ago in October 1216, planted the original acorn whilst out hunting in the park. His holdings included the manor of Axminster. The public is now invited to vote for their favourite tree in each region before October 10th and each winning tree will get a grant of £1,000, with any tree reaching over 1,000 votes receiving a grant of £500. King John’s oak deserves a bit of support, so visit the woodlandtrust.org.uk website to cast your vote. As an added bonus, the winning trees will also be put forward to the European Tree of the Year competition in early 2017. Past winners since 2011 were Romania, Hungary (twice), Bulgaria, Estonia and this year Hungary won again. Let’s hope we can rely on lots of European votes for a British winner next year.
Breaking the Spell of Loneliness
‘Maid in London’ is a website where hotel workers can post their reflections anonymously. Usually immigrants, often with uncertain legal status, vulnerable to blackmail, they work to punishing schedules and send their earnings home. The blog inspired one of the ballads that folk musician Ewan McLennan will sing in Bridport on November 4th as part of Breaking the Spell of Loneliness. In a collaboration with the journalist George Monbiot, McLennan has written and will perform songs on the theme of separation.
In 2014, Monbiot wrote an article about ‘the age of loneliness’ which went viral. Several publishers asked him to expand on the theme and he fell to wondering how he might best do that. ‘I could think of nothing more depressing than sitting in my room for three years, studying loneliness.’ He wanted not just to ‘document the problem, but help to address it.’
The answer he found was music. Together with McLennan, a folk singer he had long admired, he sketched out stories and the first draft of lyrics. Their aim in performing the songs that resulted is to ‘break the spell of loneliness’, to ‘overcome the stifling collective shyness and make friends among the strangers in our midst.’
Our mutual estrangement may take us by surprise. Another song started life with Monbiot fretting in a queue as the elderly woman ahead of him engaged the shopkeeper in discussion. He reflected only later on how poorly the human need to communicate is served by our way of life—and at what cost to us all—star columnists and isolated old people alike. Another lyric came out of a Police officer’s description of a typical night on station duty, offering an unexpected eye-view of those for whom our society has little or no time.
A collection of Monbiot’s articles, How Did We Get into This Mess?, was recently published to acclaim. But he is perhaps best known for his campaigning journalism on the environment. His Feral (2013), about the rewilding movement, has been influential with the public in general and with the National Trust’s management policies in particular.
It will come as no surprise, then, that another song here treats of our increasing alienation from nature as one further ‘degree’ of separation. This in turn gives rise to another division—between the experience of parents and that of today’s children. ‘In one generation,’ he writes, ‘the unaccompanied home range of children in Britain has declined by an average of 90%.’ Conkers lie about uncollected / Even the words have withered now—the reference is to the removal of the word ‘conker’ from the Children’s OED but any parent walking his or her child to school this autumn will know the feeling.
Our isolation in this profound sense, even from nature, is a problem Monbiot traces to the very beginnings of modern western individualism. Thomas Hobbes is best known for his characterisation of human life in its natural state as a ‘war of all against all’. It is from him that we all know that life is ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ These catchphrases from the 1650s have retained their uncanny power.
Monbiot hears them still reverberating as our own ‘ideology of detachment celebrates social collapse with a romantic lexicon of lone rangers, sole traders, self-made men and women.’ But it’s worth reflecting on just how peculiar this ‘lexicon’ is. Hobbes was writing from direct experience of a savage civil war in which many thousands had gone to their deaths for creed or crown or both. He used such strong language as a way of bringing his contemporaries to their senses, of awakening them to some fresh appreciation of where their own interests truly lay.
Yet three centuries and more later, we are still clutching these phrases of his, shorn of any context. Corporate lobby-groups and think tanks do not bother themselves about our true interests. It is profit-margins alone which they have at heart as they promote this vision of our natural state as one of non-stop zero-sum competition. Compassion, we learn young, is disguised self-interest. Gratitude is covert resentment. Solidarity is passé.
Hobbes was not wrong to exalt the idea of individual freedom. It’s an idea from which we have all benefitted. But this reductive psychology is what we have really taken over from him. His theory of human nature was addressed to a very particular time and place. It is our own society which has elevated it into an eternal and universal principle. The claim that we are all of us locked in continual competition is simply not true to anyone’s actual experience.
Monbiot of course is not the first to have noticed this. Noam Chomsky once put it well, in a discussion about how to develop ‘intellectual self-defence’ in a world so heavily influenced by the corporate media. ‘The beauty of our system,’ he said, ‘is that it isolates everybody. Each person sitting alone in front of the TV. It’s very heard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can’t fight the world alone.’
No. But on November 4th you can get out of the house and address all of this, and more, in company and in song, and even, perhaps, in some hopes of beginning to change it.
Breaking the Spell of Loneliness, November 4th 7.30 pm, Bridport Arts Centre, will be a curtain-raiser for the Bridport Literary Festival.
The Jurassic Coast
This is, of course, the name of a bus which runs around our coastline, roughly from Poole to Exeter. It carries the excellent advertising slogan “One bus—millions of years of history”, which is quite true of our Jurassic Coast. It has an image of a young lad in shorts, wearing an explorer’s hat with two ammonites at his feet. Had he been to Charmouth or Lyme Regis?
Some months ago (I am amazed to find it was nearly 4 years ago !) I wrote about the South Dorset Ridgeway, inspired by a television programme by Tony Robinson, the ridgeway runs along high ground within the Jurassic Coast. This included Maiden Castle near Dorchester and on west to the Bronze Age burials of Poor Lot, near Winterborne Abbas, encompassing thousands of years of history, but in the cliffs of the Jurassic we have evidence of millions of years of history. Recently a good friend gave me a well-thumbed copy of Ancient Trackways of Wessex by H.W. Timperley and Edith Brill which states that the ridgeway here is a continuation of the Great Ridgeway from Wiltshire over the chalk hills to Toller Down above Beaminster and down to the coast. From the early days the ridgeways may have been trade routes and later drove roads taking animals to markets. A fold out map in black and white shows the Great Ridgeway like a large river flowing through the land with tributaries at intervals. Actually it is the reverse, dry high ground which could be walked, away from trees which might hold danger. Timperley describes the South Dorset Ridgeway as a high ridge of chalk falling away steeply on the seaward side, sometimes with an overlay of gravel and sand, supporting gorse and heather in places. At Black Down it is nearly 800 feet above sea level, with evidence of prehistory from at least the Bronze Age, passing the hill-forts of Maiden Castle and Abbotsbury Castle Camp, with round barrows showing that around the Bronze Age the route must have supported a large population. It joins the modern coastal path from west to east.
Several chalk ridges connect the Great Ridgeway to the South Dorset Ridgeway, including south from the Frome river to Dorchester, west of Maiden Castle close to Clandon Barrow crossing the Winterborne near Gould’s Hill and Batcombe Hill, Cerne, Sydling St. Nicholas, Grimstone, Muckleford to Black Down and also a track from Poundbury.
The A35 road from Dorchester to Bridport is in part based on a ridgeway, linking Poundbury Camp to Eggardon Hillfort as used by the Romans. Many tracks join it to the Coastal Ridgeway.
Reverting to the Great Ridgeway as it strides across the south of England it is joined on the chalk downs of Wiltshire by the Harrow Way, or Hard Way which starts at the Kent coast, near Dover. The combined ridgeway passes near Stonehenge, partly becoming the A303, the old coach road from London to Salisbury to pass Stourhead and Alfred’s Tower. This became a cattle droving road in the 18th century. It proceeds to Batcombe, the Cross in Hand, Cadbury Castle, Minterne Magna, Evershot, Toller Down to Beaminster Down thence to Axmouth, Seaton Bay and Beer. So it was a complete route from coast to coast. In more local detail it passes Cromlech Crock Lane (Crimnercrock). Then the Hore Stones, Horn Hill, the banks becoming deeper, Lewesdon Hill, Broadwindsor, Owlers’ Lane (reminding us of smuggling) Birdsmoor Gate (earlier known as Furzemoor Gate), to Marshwood and Lambert’s Castle then onwards to Lyme Regis and Axmouth. There may have been a diversion to Pilsdon Pen, originally an Iron Age settlement and hillfort, preceded by Neolithic flint tools and Bronze Age burial mounds on the way. Louise Hodgson in More Secret Places of West Dorset points out that the Jubilee Trail and Monarch’s Way also converge on Pilsdon Pen. The Blackdown Hill ridge also carries the way for a mile and a half, near Kittwhistle and a small stream called Temple Brook with wild flowers.
From medieval times there have been records of landslips and we know they frequently occur along the Jurassic Coast cliff, so the route to and along the coast has moved inland over time. The South Dorset Ridgeway now forms part of the South West Coast Path National Trail.
Finally this little piece of nonsense from G. K. Chesterton seems apt :
“Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road”.
He did indeed with his feet and those of his cattle!
In a Pickle
With various birthdays and Christmas on the horizon, I have cleared out the larder, sterilised each saucepan, boiled every jam jar, Dettol-ised work tops and removed all traces of dog hair from the kitchen sink—all in preparation for my annual round of Jam and Pickle making. It may be a bit of a nuisance if our kitchen is temporarily converted into a bubbling chemistry lab, but you can save lots of money if you can make your own DIY presents. Also, family and friends will mostly appreciate your gifts of homemade marmalade and stuff more because they’re personal. They would much rather receive something from you—your choice of ingredients made by you and nobody else and not by some anonymous factory in Blackburn using truckloads of canned fruit from Guatemala (best before March 2011) or reconstituted fruit pulp as a by-product from Hinkley Point.
I’m sure uncle Peter and cousin Viv will continue to enjoy my jars of delicious home-made blackberry and mandarin marmalade. At least neither of them complained about last year’s batch which I admit was rather too syrupy and gloopy. Come to think of it, Viv did have a nasty upset tummy for a week in January which might have been connected, but she is so kind and so considerate and never said anything about it so it was probably OK.
My nice neighbours certainly found my preserved medlar jelly useful. I did point out the stuff was a bit on the acidic side, but they must have liked it because they asked for a second jar! Only later did I discover they were using it very effectively as a household rust remover.
Pickling and bottling has always been a west country speciality. Every garden fête, market stall and local farm shop sells rows of cottage cloned marmalades, raspberry jams and honeys all with home designed pretty labels featuring flowers and bees and cute cuddly mammals like voles or badgers. I’m not sure if a picture of Mr Brock increases the sales appeal of my famous Rio Radish Piccalilli. Maybe a dead one by the side of the A35 would be more realistic and would imply a subtle warning as to the extreme heat of its contents?
Many label brand names win awards as romantic film sets or Mills and Boon novels like ‘Dapple Tree Farm Conserve’ or ‘Downton Damson Chutney’. This month’s Sunday evening telly will doubtless now give birth to jars of ‘Victoria Plum Jam’ (the Queen of Sweetness) and ‘Albert’s Pickled Sauerkraut’ (now with no added Melbourne sauce). ‘Poldark’s Preserves’ would leap manfully off the shelves but the label might keep coming off to reveal bare glass.
With so many exotic fruits and fancy foreign vegetables from far flown away places now available in our shops, I anticipate many new flavours. Boring old favourites like pickled onions and walnuts will give way to exciting new ranges of Preserved Kumquats or Pickled Physalis. If you see it in a supermarket and don’t know what to do with it (do you boil it, fry it, bake it, squeeze it or slice it?), just shove it in a jar of pickling vinegar and see what it tastes like after 6 months. Be bold, be brave—you may be lucky. Or not.
Be creative, be imaginative… be a trail-blazing innovator. Did you know that many bugs and insects are incredibly nutritious? For example, mealworms are rich in copper, sodium, potassium, iron and selenium and are comparable to beef in terms of protein content. If you can’t bear the thought of eating them, try pickling them. Much more digestible and—after a few months in a jar—nobody will know what they are anyway. Try experimenting with exciting combinations like ‘Strawberry and Stick Insect Jam’ or ‘Greengage and Grasshopper Jelly’. Human beings are naturally curious and—although you may not fancy putting them in your own mouth—I guarantee you people out there will buy them. You will create a major talking point and be interviewed on local and national radio. Foreign camera crews will beat a news path to your door and (unknown to you) you may become a star on breakfast TV in Bolivia. Sales (like your preserved termites) will go through the roof and your hits on You Tube will exceed fifty million a week. Your Facebook account will become so hot that your local fibre optic cable near Yeovil will melt.
Warning: you may also be arrested for poisoning your customers, so you had better obtain some good commercial insurance. And, if your products do become really successful, Health and Safety will almost certainly close you down. I reckon you’ve got about three months which is just enough time before Christmas. Start now!
The Sea. The Sky. The Wind.
Some years ago a friend said that if you want to walk some coastal path, the bit you have to do is from St Ives to Penzance, round Land’s End. In May 2007 I spent a few days in glorious sunshine walking this magnificent piece of coastline, a sea mist occasionally adding to the magic landscape of quoits, menhirs and ghostly engine houses. In places I waded through wild flowers almost waist high, and cliché though it is, I was blown away. The only disappointment was that I had to stop at night; I just wanted to keep going.
Since then, at first in rather random sections, then restarting at the official beginning, Minehead, and continuing the route to Poole, I have walked the whole path of 630 miles in excursions lasting from a day to 6 days as time allowed, met by family and friends with tea and cake at the end on June 19th. Occasionally with friends or family, but mostly alone, there hasn’t been a single part that I haven’t enjoyed. There is wild and rugged, the power of the sea awesome in its unceasing assault on the coast. There are empty, quiet stretches, when the thought arises that a badly twisted ankle and no phone signal would be a lonely wait for help. Estuaries have to be negotiated, sometimes a long walk with not much apparent progress, but wading birds and boat skeletons in the mud to appreciate. There is busy and urban, chic waterfront eateries contrasting with the colourful bustle of a thankfully still functioning fishing industry. And if some bits are flat, much of it is anything but flat. It has been calculated that the walker who completes the SWCP will have climbed the equivalent of sea level to the summit of Everest nearly 4 times. No one should underestimate the challenges, because in places they are tough, and one would be well advised to know your limits before taking on too much.
With the sea generally on my right, my senses were constantly alert to seabirds, seals, a basking shark, and the ever changing light and colours. Camera and binoculars should really have been supplemented by a sound recorder to catch wind, waves and kids on beaches. Cold sea water on hot tired feet was exquisite; pints of Proper Job and cream teas were guilt free. I took many photographs, which will be made into a photobook as a visual record, but in my mind’s eye it was as if a kind of panorama of some of my favourite things – birds, wildflowers, the art-forms of geology, and of course the sea in all its glory – rolled by in slow motion as I plodded along.
There were many surprises, some of the most memorable being other walkers who humbled me with their determination. One young woman, picking her way very slowly down a steep, stony slope with the aid of two sticks, explained how she was intending to complete the path one day to raise funds for the hospital ward that enabled her to walk again after a bad car crash. A young man told me, when I asked about his Cancer Research T-shirt, that he had a brain tumour but would hopefully live long enough to finish. A couple, probably my age but not nearly as lucky as me in weight and fitness, were grinding their way red-faced up one of the interminable climbs near Morwenstow. I was concerned for their hearts, but met them in the pub later. They’d been “on the path” for 20 years, and nearly finished. Everyone says hello as you pass.
Living in Dorset the SWCP is of course fairly accessible, and Devon and Cornwall have long been holiday destinations for me, from boyhood to present day. So it’s been interesting to see the changes over the years: the ubiquity of surfing and accompanying café culture, restaurants run by hipsters, art galleries for all tastes, all blending happily alongside the bucket and spade trade that was always there, although how local people can afford a place to live among the grand design development that has mushroomed in the towns and villages is a mystery. However, despite the remorseless efforts of the sea, the splendour of the cliffs is timeless and deserted coves are still there if you know where to look.
I’ve learned a lot about bunions and blisters, Tubigrip bandages and dodgy knees, and that whoever said there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing, was right. The B&B’s I’ve stayed in have been without exception hospitable; trains and buses, taxis (only twice) and family and friends giving me lifts have made the logistics of linear walking trips possible. How lucky I am.
This is a well organised National Trail. The South West Coast Path Association coordinates the huge funding necessary to keep it all maintained, signed, and safe. Membership is a mere £20 which entitles a guide book every year, a must with section descriptions, information on tides, public transport, B&B’s and campsites close to the path, and there’s a brilliant website. Planning a walk is necessary and part of the fun. However it’s useful to assume that there will not be a phone signal, so phoning ahead to make arrangements en route doesn’t often work, and if alone, make sure someone knows where you are that day. I became reacquainted with a public phone box to book a taxi when faced with an estuary and no ferry, but it was a good place to get out of the pouring rain.
Walking is highly rated for the benefits it brings to both body and mind. Good thinking time, people say. For me, it’s been more a question of good not thinking time, the challenges and rewards being purely physical. To anyone considering walking the SWCP I’d say don’t hesitate. On the walk you never know what’s round the next corner; the same applies to life. There’s nothing to lose.
