Wow. This is something else. Philippa is completely dwarfed by the magnificent grandeur of the Aviary at Waddesdon Manor. The House and Grounds of Waddesdon Manor are closed at this time of year but Lord Rothschild has kindly let us visit so that we can look at the finer details of the construction and design of the aviary in preparation for building our own (slightly more modest) building for our Victorian Aviary Garden at Chelsea. We are given a warm welcome on an icily cold day by Vicky Darby, who helps to run the garden on behalf of the National Trust and Paul, their Head Gardener. Paul tells us that the Aviary was restored six years ago following a visit by Lord Rothschild to St. Petersburg where he got the idea for the stunning colour scheme of gold and blue. We will be using the same colours at Chelsea.
Archive for January, 2010
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Waddesdon Manor Aviary
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Giving Birth
Not for the squeamish. These video clips have been taken by Jean who, sometimes with her husband Tony, and sometimes alone, attends the animals on the farm when they give birth. The first part of the video is of Jo-Jo, our Jersey cow giving birth to Jasmine. All dairy cows have to produce a calf every year if they are to continue producing milk (an obvious fact, but one of which many people are ignorant). The second part is of Pinky Pie, one of our rare breed sows, on her way to producing a litter of 16 multi-coloured piglets. Below is a picture of Pinky Pie with her full litter of 16.
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
A Black Swan on Lake Windermere
A Black Swan is the term which economists use to describe a unexpected and devastating event which scuppers all your plans. The Lake District had its own Black Swan in November when the unprecedented rainfall caused unprecedented floods which frightened away all our tourist trade. This was followed by a family of Black Cygnets when 5 successive snowfalls over as many weeks made certain that the tourists wouldn’t or couldn’t come flooding back.
Some lateral thinking was needed if our businesses were to be saved. We hit upon the idea of ‘Super Sundays’ where hotels would give away their rooms for next to nothing on the first four Sundays of the year. We put the idea to our colleagues and they loved it. So did the public. As soon as ‘Super Sundays’ went public more than 1000 room nights were sold. The idea also caught the imagination of the local TV and the national press. This video is of me being interviewed about Super Sundays for the ITV news and the item was shown on the 6 o’clock news and again at 10.30.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
How to Make the Perfect Steak – Part 4
Here’s a resume of Parts 1 to 3:
Part 1. Put a Cumberland White (Shorthorn) Bull with an Aberdeen Angus cow to make a Cumberland Angus bull calf. Time required: 9 months
Part 2. Fatten the calf outdoors on the grass of the Lake District fells. Time required: 31 months
Part 3. Take the bull to the abbatoir in the shortest possible time, to minimise stress. Time required (from leaving the farm until the moment of death) 45 minutes.
Part 4. Leave the carcase to hang. Time required: 21 days. This video shows the strength, dexterity and skill of butcher Simon who works at Ayres Butchers in Ayside in transforming the two sides of beef into cuts of meat, which will be shared between the Newby Bridge, the Damson Dene and the Riverside Hotel, Kendal.The meat becomes more tender the longer it hangs- 21 days is perfect for a carcase of this size. The fillet is described here by Simon as “more gravy than butter”. The sirloin has been reserved for the Slow Food Burns Night dinner at the Damson Dene Hotel on January 25th.
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
The Non-Wimpish Wimps
You’d have thought that on a bleak Tuesday night in January restaurant tables would be easy to come by- not so in London. Our first choices of Zuma and Scotts were already fully booked when I rang in the morning but fortunately there was a table free at the Ledbury, a small stylish restaurant in Notting Hill which has just been awarded its second Michelin star. The evening was enlivened by the presence of a group who call themselves the “Wimps”, a wine appreciation society whose table is pictured here. What “Wimps” stands for I don’t know, but there was nothing at all wimpish about their capacity to knock it down, as glass after glass was brought to their table. The extraordinary thing is that although they seemed to drink enormous quantities, they didn’t show the slightest sign of drunkenness.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that on the very same day the Government has announced a series of measures to discourage alcohol consumption, which they intend to bring in before the election. The proposals include a ban on “all you can drink” offers in pubs and hotels and a requirement for pubs and hotels to offer wine in a range of glass sizes. Similar proposals had been put forward a year ago and had been quietly shelved after the British Hospitality Association and others had pointed out their numerous flaws. The proposals have been re-introduced solely as a vote-attracting policy now that an election is in the offing. The government is saying that alcohol consumption is on the rise. The truth is that it is falling- the Government’s own “Statistical Handbook” shows that it has fallen in each of the last five years and is now 6.4% below the level of 2004. In fact Britons drink less than the French, Germans and Spanish, and much less than the Czechs, who are the European leaders with a consumption of 12.4 litres of alcohol a year compared with the UK’s 8.1 litres. Most studies of the effects of alcohol on health show that regular drinking has health benefits, particularly for the heart. A recent Spanish study for the cardiology journal Heart concluded that in men between the ages of 29 and 69 alcohol intake was associated with a more than 30 per cent incidence or coronary heart disease. Which is good news for the Wimps.
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Philippa’s London Office
We are in Philippa’s London “office”, which is the South Bank Centre in the Festival Hall, for a meeting with Mark Richardson who has taken on the role of contractor for our Chelsea garden- in other words Mark will build the garden for us. This may seem an unlikely venue for a business meeting but in fact it fits the bill very well- it’s spacious, airy and comfortable- people come here to read, to sleep, to chat and because there’s so much space the noise levels are low so that it’s a congenial place even for an intense two hours of discussion. Mark has built gardens at Chelsea before, so he knows that the time which we put in now in planning every detail can save a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth later on. And so we meticulously went through Philippa’s 24 point agenda, at the end of which I felt we’d done a good morning’s work. We have arranged to get together again next week- this time at Waddesdon manor, when we will all get to see their famed Aviary for the first time.
Monday, January 18th, 2010
At the BBC with Radio 1
It’s an uncomfortable truth that almost no new British bands made it big in 2009. The BBC and in particular Radio 1 have received a lot of stick for not giving airplay to new acts. Radio 1 has a playlist of 50 records each week which is dominated by the big three labels, which doesn’t give small outfits such as Northern Music and the Heroes of She a fair chance.
We are fighting back and we are lobbying hard to get a fairer share of the airtime. Radio 1, to give them their due, have been listening, which is why I’m down at the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane, at the invitation George Ergatoudis (see posting on November 13th) the Head of Music at Radio 1 who is giving a presentation to explain just what Radio 1 is doing to help the independent sector. George speaks from the heart, he loves music, he quite clearly isn’t intimidated by the power of the “big three” and here gives us independents lots of insights into how we can get onto the inside track. My thanks to the Association of Independent Music, who organised the evening. I made a “Flip” video of the entire presentation and as this short extract shows there’s no doubt that George and his team are doing their best to redress the balance.
Monday, January 18th, 2010
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”
From “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B.Yeats
This recording of Yeats reciting “Innisfree” may be old, scratched and barely discernable but it is absolutely wonderful. No poem epitomises the Slow Life better than this. It was inspired, as Yeats describes in his introduction to this recording, by Thoreau’s “Walden”. He wrote the poem as a young man, before the publication of his first book of poetry, and it was to become his best loved. But not by Yeats himself who grew tired of it and he was seen to visibly wince when asked to recite it.
He made this recording when he was 67, for the BBC. There is no sign of any tiredness here. If the poem were to be recited by an actor today on a programme such as “With Great pleasure” it would be read as a piece of prose in a conversational style. But not by Yeats, who captures the beauty of the poem by emphasising its rhyme and its rhythm
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Maggy Haworth’s Workshop
Maggy Haworth is simply marvellous. This picture shows Maggy in her workshop with her assistant Mark showing Philippa the astonishingly intricate process involved in making her beautiful mosaics out of pebbles. Her pebble mosaics are to be found in some of the world’s grandest gardens, from Lady Arabella Lennox Boyd’s at Gresgarth to Lord Heseltine’s at Thenford. Now, she has agreed to make one for us for our Chelsea garden. Maggy’s workshop is in a barn next to her home on the top of a hill near Kirkby Lonsdale, with wonderful 360 degree views all round.
Maggy has done Chelsea before. She knows the ropes, she understands the psyche of the judges. She gave us some sage advice and after two hours of lively discussion and a lovely lunch we settled on a design. Now we will wait while Maggy performs her magic.
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Pigs on Ice
The farm is frozen solid, which is not surprising after 20 consecutive days of sub-zero temperatures. Some of the consequences of the cold are serious, not least the fact that there is no running water to the farmhouse as the pipes which run underground from the spring to the farmhouse have frozen. Jean and Tony and their three children are relying on bottled water and buckets carried from from the yard. Because of the ice it is impossible to drive down the one mile long track to the main road, so the children haven’t been able to get to school. But they are more than happy looking after the pigs, which are shown here enjoying the morning sunshine with some Herdwick lambs.