Summer 2014: My To Do List

In my experience, the longer the holiday stretches, the easier it is to fritter it away.  So, when faced with 5 1/2 weeks this summer, I thought I'd best draw up a list of things I would like to have achieved by the end of them.  Maybe I should have added 'publish list on blog' as it's taken me over a week to do so.  But here it is:

(NB  Having decided that I was going to devote the first few days to recovering from the end of term, I based my list on 5 weeks - 7x5=35)

1. Cycle to Bath along the railway path
2. Hold 5 dinner parties (ie have 5 friends/sets of friends round for a meal!)
3. Day trip to Oxford
4. Bake 5 pies from my new Pieminister Pie book
5. Visit Tyntesfield
6. Make tomato ketchup
7. Visit the M Shed
8. Go to Bristol Balloon Fiesta Night Glow
9. Make falafels
10. Walk: Snuff Mills
11. Read 5 books
12. Create a sourdough starter
13. Get up early to watch Bristol Balloon Fiesta Dawn Ascent
14. Shop for clothes for work
15. Bake 5 new breads
16. Swim in Street outdoor pool
17. Make icecream
18. Picnic at Bristol Zoo
19. Visit the Jeremy Deller exhibition
20. Walk: Blaise Castle
21. Crack Prashad's dhokla recipe
22. Visit St Werburgh's City Farm, eat meatballs @ Ikea and shop at Bristol Sweet Mart
23. Make rhubarb & ginger jam
24. Take advantage of podiatrist appointment to window shop in Cotham/Clifton
25. Preserve lemons
26. Swim and lunch at th Lido
27. Make a start on a recipe folder
28. Make pizza
29. Walk: Leigh Woods
30. Make lemonade
31. Picnic on Brandon Hill
32. Have a BBQ
33. Finish crocheting my daughter's quilt
34. Walk: Bristol Old City
35. Bristol Packet ferry boat trip to Beese's Tea Gardens

It's an eclectic mix of cooking, eating, walking, culture and fun.

I'm under no illusion that I'll get through it all and am therefore not going to beat myself up over it if I don't, but it should stop me waking up in the morning wondering what to do with the day!    

Glasgow: June 2014

Our hotel,the Victorian House Hotel (which I would highly recommend), was situated just along the road from the Glasgow School of Art so tragically gutted by fire.  The charred woodwork glimpsed through shattered windows was a depressing sight but the stone structure remains defiantly intact and there is real hope of being able to reconstruct the interior.

  

I continued my exploration of the city's independent coffee shops with a latte at the Laboratorio Espresso where I chatted to the owners about the Bristol Pound and their visits to our cafes.

We ate at the Ubiquitous Chip (disappointing), Tchai Ovna (quirky atmosphere and aromatic milky tea) and the Saramago Cafe Bar (delicious tapas).

We walked along the Clyde as far as Glasgow Green, popped into the Winter Gardens at the People's Palace, visited the famous Barras market and wandered through the Merchant City.

And, as always, we ran out of time ...

  

I won't be back until after the referendum.  We do indeed live in exciting times!

Iona

Quotations on the Abbey wall

My elder daughter is called Iona and it has been our intention, ever since she was born, to introduce her to the island after which she was named.  Well it took 21 year,s but last summer we finally made it.

Our visit was part of a mini tour of the Inner Hebrides.  We spent a few days in Tobermory before catching two buses and a ferry to the island.  The scenery was spectacular and the fine mist only added to the atmosphere.  

Iona Hostel

We were booked into the eco award winning Iona Hostel, at the north end of the island.  You can just about see it in the photographs, nestling under the hill.  There was no one around when we arrived, but the door was open and there was a message on the front desk inviting us to kick off our boots and make ourselves at home in the kitchen.  Which we did, and the memory of that cup of tea on a comfy sofa looking out over the sea to the Dutchman's cap and beyond will stay with me to end of my days.

View north from Iona Hostel

It wasn't long before the other residents began to drift back in after their day's adventures, followed closely by John, the affable owner, who showed us to our room and gave us a tour of the facilities.  The room was basic, two sets of timber bunk beds.  That was it.  The toilets and shower rooms were equally minimalist.  But the walls were dotted with poems!

The kitchen/dining/living room ran the length of the hostel and was very much the heart of it.  Visitors were encouraged to make full use of anything and everything on the communal shelves and although we ate separately there was much sharing of tasks.  While drying dishes I met a woman who knew folk I hadn't seen since I was a child in India over forty years ago.  We bumped into a French family we'd first met a couple of days earlier in Tobermory.  We played Articulate late into the night with a young couple from the north of England and the two resident hostel helpers.  And on our final night we were entertained by the arrival of a large Scottish/Italian famiily who filled the hostel with laughter, the pattering of little feet and the aroma of herbs and tomatoes.

With only two full days on the island we couldn't hope to cover it all, so we picked out a few sights.  On our first day we braved the mist to walk right down the island to St Columba's Bay at its southernmost tip.

Dun I

St Columba's Bay

The next day, as bright and sunny as the first was cold and wet, we headed for the abbey.  To celebrate its 350th anniversary Historic Scotland has produced an excellent audio guide which allowed each of us to explore the site at our own pace.

Iona Abbey

St Martin's Cross

St Martin's Cross

St John's Cross

St Columba

Descent of the Spirit by Jacques Lipchitz

Afterwards we took advantage of the weather to climb Dun I for a bird's eye view of the island, including our hostel and the island of Colonsay to the south, our next destination.

Iona Hostel from Dun I

But of course, no visit to Iona would have been complete without a pilgrimage to John Smith's grave, perhaps one of the best Prime Ministers we never had.

Next stop Colonsay!

47/365

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
 and their spears into pruning hooks:
 nation shall not lift up a sword against nation,
 neither shall they learn war any more

If I had £100 billion would I spend it on ...

... building more hospitals, employing more doctors and nurses, ensuring that every child had access to a good school, investing in the public transport infrastructure, supporting individuals and their families with physical and mental needs, sponsoring medical research, providing shelter for the homeless, funding research into sustainable energy, ensuring that everyone is paid a living wage, eradicating extreme poverty ...

or would I spend it all on a nuclear deterrent?

Hmmm.

March for a Future that Works

Yesterday I took part in the TUC March for a Future that Works in London.  (My elder daughter was marching in Glasgow!).  I'm a member of UNISON and have taken part in a couple of smaller marches in Bristol, but this was the first time I'd joined in with other unions in London.

We travelled up to London by coach and were transferred to Blackfriars by boat which was an unexpected treat.  The boat dropped us off at the end of the march so we had to make our way up the outside of the marchers to join the UNISON contingent at the front.  As we hurried up the line I was moved both by the numbers and the variety of unions represented.  There were teachers, firefighters, musicians, students, actors, civil servants and all manner of public service workers.  There were adults, children, babies in buggies and people in wheelchairs.  There were choirs, drummers and a pipe band.  There were balloons, inflatables, placards, banners and effigies.  People were chanting, singing, and blowing whistle and vuvuzelas.  In fact, if you hadn't known that this was a protest against the government's austerity policies you could have been forgiven for thinking that you were in the midst of a carnival.

The march proceeded peacefully, if not quietly, along the Embankment, past Westminster, up Whitehall, skirted Trafalgar Square, up Regent Street, and along Piccadilly to Hyde Park.  There was a strong police presence, particularly outside Fortnum and Mason and the Ritz, but the officers were relaxed and friendly and obviously not expecting any real trouble.

We were among the first to arrive at the rally and were in a good position at the front to hear the speeches which, I am relieved to say, were of a higher calibre than I've experience at other rallies.  I was particularly impressed by Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace who spoke of the impact government policy is having on the environment.  The crowd listened politely, clapping and cheering enthusiastically, but were not altogether impressed with Ed Milliband or Brendan Barber, both of whom were booed and heckled by sections of the audience.  I am disappointed that the Labour leadership do not have any real hope to offer us in this crisis.  In fact it sometimes feels that, rather than us all being in this together, we're very much on our own.

I'd travelled up without any family or friends and had second thoughts about whether I should go, but I'm so glad I did.  I took comfort from the visible demonstration that I am not alone in my real concern at the effect this coalition government is having on our society, and reassurance that there are hundreds and thousands of ordinary people out there who are prepared to do something about it.

This Weekend ...

This weekend ...

• I attended Reading Group where we discussed Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow.  Listening to other readers' observations is always enlightening but I remain of the opinion that this is a very boring book.  Apologies to all Huxley admirers.
• I worked my way through an enormous pile of ironing.  I had planned to to do more in the way of preparation for the arrival of my sister on a visit next week but, as usual, I found other activities to 'distract' me from the housekeeping.
• I made Spicy Moroccan Chick Pea Soup from a recipe in the Waitrose newspaper.  In truth it was red kidney beans rather than chick peas as I had none of the latter but a stockpile of the former.  I love it when I come across a recipe that I can make straight away.
• I tried out one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Three Good Things.  It was a salad of roasted beetroot, boiled eggs and anchovies, all from stock, and it was delicious.
• A and I followed part of the West Bristol Art Trail.  The venues are considerably more dispersed than its Southbank equivalent but the views from the houses and gardens are superb.  I met Susan Taylor who designed the Glasgow print I bought for my elder daughter, and a singing friend who turns out to be an accomplished card maker.
• I had dinner with a couple of friends in a local pub to celebrate two of their birthdays.  

The Feeding of the 5000

Every year thousands of tons of perfectly edible food is sent to landfill sites.   We tend to blame supermarkets and the food industry and they do have to take responsibility for food waste caused by packaging errors, out of date promotions, discontinued lines etc.  But half of the food thrown away in the UK comes from our own homes - and more than half of this is food we could have eaten or drunk.

At the same time there are over 4 million people in the UK who cannot afford a healthy diet, including the homeless, the elderly, disadvantaged children, refugees and people suffering from mental illness.

Fareshare aims to marry the two issues and offer a solution by redistributing surplus food to those who need it.  No waste.  Better health.

To illustrate the magnitude of the problem Fareshare Southwest hosted the Feeding of the 5000 on College Green yesterday, when they served a vegetable curry prepared from a ton of donated vegetables.

I volunteered for duty as a steward and was assigned to recycling bin duty, helping diners to dispose of their waste in an environmentally friendly manner.

The sun shone.  Crowds descended.  Queues formed.  Curry was eaten.  Children potato printed.  Bands played.  Cooks demonstrated.  Awareness was raised. 

Less food will be wasted?

I hope so. 

One & Other Again

I've spent more time than I care to admit this afternoon watching a succession of individuals taking their turn on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar. The first plinther took up her position at 9am this morning, the first of 2,400 to do so. There was a man with a blackboard and a piece of chalk who wrote messages to the crowd beneath him, a second dressed as a panda who got viewers to phone him on his mobile, a third who didn't do anything except walk around looking out over the square, and the present incumbent who is by turn reading poetry, playing music and having afternoon tea! Every hour, on the hour a cherry picker swaps them round. It's compulsive viewing.

One & Other is described as 'an exploration of the connection between individuals', with the plinthers becoming 'representations of themselves and of the human population of the world viewed by fellow members of the wider society which they inhabit'. From what I have seen today I think the genius Antony Gormley has done it again.

As mentioned in an earlier post I've applied for my own hour on display, but have thus far failed to be selected. However, there are two more draws to come and, having witnessed the first day of this incredible installation, I'm now more eager than ever to take part. I've even decided what I would like to do but am not telling you what it is yet, just in case I get lucky! Fingers crossed.

Simple Acts

I spent the afternoon soaking up the sunshine at the Celebrating Sanctuary Fun Day in Queens Square. There were stalls and workshops and food and drink and some amazing music. We arrived to hear some Ghanaian drummers, followed by Polish and then Ethiopian dancers and finally a Middle Eastern band.

The fun day was one of a number of events to mark National Refugee Week, which started on Friday 12 June and runs until Monday 22 June. For those of you living in Bristol see here for details of all that's on offer. One thing that caught my eye was the Simple Acts campaign, which invites us to 'do something small to make life better for refugees and everyone else around you'. The list runs as follows:

Cook a dish from another country
Tell a child a story from another country
Watch a movie about refugees
Do a quiz on refugees
Say a little prayer for me
Read a book about exile
Sign off your emial with a note about refugees
Find five facts about refugees
Find out who you REALLY are
Visit a Refugee Week event
Smile :O)
Learn to say a few things in a new language
Have tea with a refugee
Share a song
Join a big action campaign in support of refugees
Share your sweets
Give a book about refugees as a present to someone
Define the word 'Refuge'
Take a picture of you and your pro-refugee banner
Play football with a refugee

The website states that if everyone does at least one of these acts then we can make a big difference to the way refugees are perceived in the UK.

Which simple act will you do this week?

Happy Birthday Rabbbie

Yesterday being the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's most famous poet, we celebrated by inviting a few friends round for dinner. We ate cock-a-leekie soup, haggis, neeps and tatties and cranachan and partook of a wee dram o' the hard stuff. I'm not so keen on the whisky but I love haggis.

I think it's important to celebrate occasions with family and friends, but I don't do nearly enough of it.

Organic Food Festival

On Saturday I visited Bristol's Organic Food Festival. I love this annual event which gets better and better every year. My personal highlights were:

• Listening to a talk by the West Country's very own Self Sufficientish duo where, amongst other things, I learned how to make an insect house using a plastic bottle and corrugated cardboard. They were so reassuringly down to earth and unpretentious.


• Watching a cookery demonstration by Sophie Grigson, she of the amazing ear rings. On Saturday she was wearing ones that looked as if they had been made from a tin of pilchards. She prepared a selection of 'white' dishes - a chowder, a Thai soup and junket.


• Being given samples of organic recyclable female sanitary products and discovering that I can buy them locally


• Watching another cookery demonstration by Xanthe Clay, whom I had never heard of, but who created several dishes from one duck including confit, which my daughters loved during their recent exchange visit to south west France, and which I would like to recreate for them at home.


• Discovering Dove Farm's Ezekiel Bread Mix and picking up two packs for £1 each. It's a savoury loaf which apparently goes very well with cheese.

My only reservation about the festival is the amount of waste it must engender but I was pleased to note that most suppliers appeared to be using recyclable containers and utensils and the site was well supplied with recycling bins.
PS If the mention of Sophie and Xanthe's dishes has tickled your taste buds then you will, hopefully soon, be able to access the recipes on Bordeaux Quay's website. However you'll have to wait as they are not there yet.

Happy Holidays

We've just returned from a fortnight in St Ives. The weather was disappointing. There were only two days when it did not rain at all and only one (our last day) which could accurately be described as warm and sunny. However we did not let this prevent us from having a wonderful time. In fact, our inability to spend whole days on the beach lead to our doing things we might not otherwise have done. Highlights included:

• visiting the Penlee and Exchange Art Galleries in Penzance and the Leach Pottery in St Ives (the first two were worth a visit including the cafe at the Penlee, but I wouldn't rush back to the Pottery)
• shopping at the recently introduced farmers' market (where we bought delicious locally produced cheese, sausages, cake, curry sauce and chocolate)
• attending a concert in St Ia's church given by the Cologne New Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra which was an absolutely brilliant performance by musicians who clearly love their music
• walking from Zennor to Gurnard's head and back in the mud and rain
• rising early most mornings to walk along the beach before anyone else got there
• reading three books (I highly recommend 'if nobody speaks of remarkable things' by Jon McGregor and 'the private parts of women' by Lesley Glaister)
• watching the Olympics
• drinking cups of tea and playing Uno and Scrabble
• attending services at St Ia's church and saying goodbye to Andrew Couch, who has been the vicar ever since we started holidaying in St Ives and who retires in just a few weeks

I could go on and mention sandcastles, mini golf, Cornish pasties, clotted cream ... but I will stop there before I lose you.

As you may gather from the above I positively adore St Ives and can't wait until our next holiday there.

The photo is the view along St Ia Street from our cottage in Burrow Road.

The Tate Bedminster

I mentioned in my birthday blog that I had received a card from my younger daughter which I was going to stick up on my kitchen cupboard door. So I thought I'd lead a guided tour around my existing collection.

I'm starting with the corner cupboard. Top left is a list of Riverford organic fruit and vegetable boxes, out of date as they now offer many more than the three boxes featured. They have an excellent website from which I order online. A couple of weeks ago we ordered our first meat box. Some of it's still in the freezer but what we've eaten so far has been excellent, the porchetta being particularly delicious.

Immediately below is a Corn Street Market postcard which I will deal with later.

Bottom left is our refuse collection schedule. Bristol's making serious attempts to reduce the amount of refuse that ends up in its landfill sites. We have a weekly kerbside collection (paper, cardboard, glass, cans, kitchen foil, battery, shoes, rags) and a kitchen waste collection. All other rubbish is collected fortnightly. Christmas trees are collected in January. Plastic bottles have to be taken to collection points in supermarket car parks (why do they make it so difficult for pedestrian recyclers who have to take their lives in their hands to reach the bins?). A recent development is the tetrapak recyling point in the Asda car park. The recycling website is reasonably helpful.

Bottom right is a flyer for St Nicholas Market. This is a vibrant shopping centre in the heart of Bristol. Running right through the centre is a row of stalls selling the most tempting food from around the world - pasta from Italy, olives from the Mediterranean, pies from Bristol, Jamaican curries, fresh soup and salads, wheat grass juices, North African couscous, local sausages, Portuguese stews and Welsh cheese. Oh and round the corner there are more curries, this time from India, and a whole food cafe. I sometimes pop in for lunch on Wednesday and am spoilt for choice.

On the open cupboard door is a picture of Nelson Mandela, one of my heroes, about whom I blogged on his recent 90th birthday. What more can I say? The man is truly a legend. I keep his picture here to remind me to continue to strive to be one of that great generation.

The two postcards below were picked up at Bristol's recent Ethical Expo. They advertise Fig1 a shop in Totterdown which sells fairly traded goods. I'm very rarely in that part of town so I can't claim to have shopped there but I liked the artwork and the messages they illustrate.

So there it is. Part 1 of my collection. Part 2 to follow.

The End of An Era

This evenng I attended a party to mark the closure of our local post office. Despite considerable opposition the government did not back down from its decision to close numerous local post offices. Our postmaster shut shop at 1 pm on Wednesday 9 July and the signs came down the following day.

Hang on a minute. A party to celebrate the end of a livelihood? Yes indeed. Instead of just walking away our postmaster threw a party to acknowledge the support he had received from the local community. It was a bring and share event in the church across the road, with food and wine, music and singing. We arrived some time after it had started, not knowing what to expect, and were surprised by the attendance - over a hundred people of all ages and backgrounds, from an elderly man in a wheelchair to a babe in arms. Despite the sadness of the occasion this was a community come together to show appreciation for an institution and a person who have served us well over the years.

I wish him well whatever happens next.

In Praise of Morris

William Morris said “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

I first read these words in the window of a shop down a side street in St Ives and they struck me then, as now, as being a very wise principle by which to manage one's possessions.

I am, by nature, an inveterate hoarder, the result of which is a cluttered house. Friends are kind enough to say it looks lived in but I know it's often a mess. Not only is it difficult to keep clean but it's also a terrible waste of stuff that would be better off elsewhere.

Lately I've been attempting to 'downsize', in other words, get rid of stuff. It's not always easy but there is a real sense of liberation in filling a charity shop bag and carrying it out the front door.

The other side of the equation is attempting not to acquire any more stuff to take its place. This is harder but William Morris' maxim might help.

Happy Birthday Madiba!

Nelson Mandela is 90 today.

23 years ago I took part in a demo in Hyde Park when we called, once again, for his release and the end of the apartheid regime. I can't remember whether I dared hope at the time that anyone would pay any attention to us, or to the millions of others across the world who were doing likewise. However five years later he walked out of jail and I saw him at Wembley - a small figure on the large stage, but with that now famous smile and a wave of his hand. I watched him at his birthday concert on the telly tonight, suddenly looking much older but still smiling and waving.

I listened to an interview with Stephen Fry who was refreshingly frank about the great man, saying that if, when he dies, as will surely happen sooner rather than later, our hope for the future dies with him, then it will be a tragedy. But he is just a man, like the rest of us, and if he can live for what he believes in then so can we.

In the words of the man himself: 'Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.'

Our Daily Pinta

This afternoon I answered the door to a man from Dairy Crest trying to drum up trade for doorstep milk deliveries. I was able to tell him that we not only use this service but are also very pleased with it.

Our milkman's called John Mills. He delivers a daily pint of semi-skimmed milk and a weekly pint of pink grapefruit juice. The milk costs 54p per pint and the juice 91p per pint. We could buy our milk from our local Tescos where it is considerably cheaper at 42p per pint. However for various reasons we have decided to stick with John. It gives him a job, saves us from having to venture out in the mornings, is fresh, local and flexible and uses electric powered floats and recycled glass bottles instead of plastic cartons. While researching for this post today I discovered that I can amend/cancel my order online and have a sack of compost delivered along with my daily pinta!

Doorstep deliveries have declined dramatically over the last couple of decades. According to DEFRA only 7% of milk is delivered to our doorsteps today, compared to 30% in 1984. 65% of milk is bought from supermarkets and 23% from convenience stores. In order to boost sales milkmen have set up a website (http://www.findmeamilkman.net/) which allows visitors to discover whether their address is covered by a milk round.

The truth is that we do not buy all our milk from John. The girls drink 2-3 pints of full fat milk a day, which we buy in 4 litre cartons from a supermarket. We also have 2 litres delivered by Riverford along with our organic fruit and veg box. We can't(?) afford to spend £2 per day on milk so we compromise. That's life, I guess.

Christian Aid

Last week was Christian Aid Week. I've collected door to door for many years now, in Sunningdale, London and Bristol, and I can honestly say that I've always enjoyed doing so. In Bristol I cover the same road every year and have grown to know and be recognised by its residents. No matter how many visits I make, there are inevitably some doors that are never opened. However whenever they are, the welcome has, until this year, been generally friendly and rewarding. There were always a few people who refused to donate, but they numbered no more than a handful and only one or two of them were rude.

This year I noticed a distinct difference. Almost a quarter of the road refused to give anything at all. That's almost a quarter of the total population, not just of those who answered their doors. A few of them claimed to give to other charities, but the majority didn't give any reason, just that they did not want to give.

This saddened me. Firstly because after a fortnight of media coverage of the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China, they could not fail to be aware of the necessity of giving. Secondly because they were, almost without exception, young people. The older residents are remarkable. They have their envelopes filled and waiting by the front door and have even been known to cross the road to hand them to me, because they know they will be out, or in the back garden hanging up the washing, when I ring their bell.

Despite the credit crunch we have so much more than our fellow human beings in the developing world. That's at the best of times, let alone in times of crisis. If we are unwilling to put our hands in our pockets and place even a couple of coins, let alone a note, in a Christian Aid envelope, then we are indeed a very sorry lot.

Post Office

I've just responded to my local MP's consultation on the proposed closure of our local post office. I am opposed to it, as I am to all the other proposed closures. I realise there are financial considerations but I also believe that there are aspects of our life as a community on which one cannot, and should not, put a price - and local post offices are one of them. Doorstep milk deliveries are another. It would be cheaper to buy my daily pinta from the local supermarket but it's not as convenient, not as environmentally friendly and wouldn't keep my milkman in a job.

Anyway I hope I remember to post my response in time and that it helps keep our post office open.

Local Heroes

The Observer outstanding ethical achievement award was given to Leona Williamson, of St Werburgh's City Farm cafe. In all the 16 years I have lived in Bristol I have never visited St Werburgh's City Farm. Perhaps the main reason is that we we have our own excellent city farm here in Bedminster, Windmill Hill City Farm. When the girls were little I spent hours and hours down there looking at the animals, painting in the play centre and bouncing in the rumpus room. It is now the location of our much neglected allotment.

However I am now tempted to venture to St Werburghs and see what all the fuss is about. I promise to let you know when I do.