Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’

« Older Entries

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

A Kiss Before Dying – The Video

Two years ago I got up before dawn to witness one of my bulls being taken through the abattoir.  I made a video of the spectacle, an extract from which was put on Youtube with the title “A Kiss Before Dying”.  The title alludes to a moment when the bull appears to share a kiss with a cow a few moments before it’s taken to its fate.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience watching the bull being killed and then its blood being let and its innards removed.  It wasn’t pleasant either seeing how desensitised that abattoir staff had become; how they appeared to enjoy the killing, how they cheered when its throat was cut.  None of the gruesome bits were included in my video, but my PA, who did the editing, found the spectacle so appalling that she was put off eating meat for a year.

To my surprise the short Youtube version of “A Kiss Before Dying” has recently become a Youtube hit, with 62,000 views and pages of comments.  I’ve also been surprised by how vicious some of the comments from vegetarians have been. These have been received in the last few days:

Awwwwahh :’( YOU FUCKING BASTARDS -.- i hate animal slaughter. if you want to eat meat, slaughter the people in prison, the ones who have slaughtered other people, they are the ones who deserve it, what have animals done to deserve this cruelty?
MissEquineBabe 4 days ago

Fucking faggots gro a heart and stop killing the fucking cows that way go to hell
xXMrMinionXx 4 days ago

I thought the abattoir staff were a little bit brutal, but it seems they’ve got nothing on the veggies.  It must be all that red meat they’re not eating.

Postscript 12th December: In the three weeks since this was posted the number of views of this video has risen to 126,079 and the comments from the veggies get better and better. Here’s the latest:

When I see people doing this to animals, I look forward to The End of This World. Whatever befalls mankind, he brought it upon himself.

preciousmetalz

Tags: ,
Posted in YouTube | No Comments »

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

The Garden in August 2011

We’ve never known a summer before when we haven’t had to water the garden, not even once. It isn’t that the weather has been continuously poor, just that we’ve not had a single long dry spell. There’s nothing I enjoy more than standing around looking gormless with a hose in my hand, but I suppose that the respite has given us the time to get on with some proper jobs. Our biggest achievement this August has been to get the kitchen garden into shape. Matt has done a tremendous job there, especially in cleaning the raspberry patch of pernicious weeds. There’s one thing about warm wet weather, the weeds love it.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Garden | No Comments »

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

Wayne in the Recording Studio

Wayne is loving it. Although this is his first time in a recording studio he’s completely relaxed. I popped in to say hello and wish him good luck and found him recording an original track written by Tim Riley, producer, song writer and music guru. The studio is at The Allen, in Kendal and Wayne is there to record his first album. He arrived with a clutch of his favourite songs, prepared to record an album of covers, but he’s enjoyed singing Tim’s composition so much that he’s asked for more of where that came from.

This video features Wayne singing Breaking Down These Walls, a song written and produced by Tim Riley.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Music | 4 Comments »

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

The Voodoo Lily

voodoo lily

This is one of the best small plants in my garden, made beautiful by its snake-skin stem. Its latin name is Sauromatum Venosum and it is not to be confused with the other voodoo lily, which is known as Pseudophallus, which translates as Misshapen Penis. The other voodoo lily is a carniverous plant which attracts insects by emitting a horrible smell, which is supposed to be resemble rotting flesh, whereas ours has no obnoxious habits and just sits there looking lovely. It does however have one strange characteristic in that, in the spring, a snake-skin stem will grow but before it produces any leaves will wither away. It will then re-grow fully in July.

I bought one plant several years ago which has now spread to become a little family. It reproduces from little bulbs which appear at the base of the plant. This year we have been surprised to see several new voodoo lily plants growing in a bed behind the potting shed, about 50 yards away. Its a mystery how they got there, but my best bet is that a squirrel has taken the bulbs from the mother plant and buried them there-a trick they have played with daffodil bulbs.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Garden | No Comments »

Monday, August 1st, 2011

The Garden in July

It’s many years since we’ve taken a summer holiday, partly because the summer is when we have the most work to do, but also because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. It’s a real wrench to spend even a couple of days away from the garden. But this July I had to be away for ten whole days and whilst it was sad to be away, it was a joy to return to see the astonishing change which had taken place in such a brief period. The garden had burst into colour. I was greeted by banks of vivid vibrant primary colours- reds, yellows and oranges from cannas, gladioli, dahlias and crocosmia. It was wonderful to see the garden at its best again and almost worth being away to see the transformation.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Garden | No Comments »

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The Missing

On our visit to Fukushima it was poignant to see household objects in the mud, a piece of pottery here, a kitchen knife there. What we didn’t realise when we were there is that the mud also contains human remains. In fact, the bodies of 8,000 of the 26,000 victims have yet to be recovered. This is one family’s story.

When the earthquake struck Mamoru Oikawa, a firman, was relieved to receive a text from his wife Emi telling him that she and their baby daughter were safe at an evacuation centre. But there was no chance for him to go to them as he had to work flat out responding to the crisis. When, four days later, he was able to snatch an hour to drive to the centre he found that it was no longer there: it had been washed away. Oikawa sat in his car, dumbfounded. “I knew they were gone”, he said, “I was dead inside. There was no crying or anger, only emptiness”. Since then he has devoted every spare minute to finding their bodies. Within days, he discovered the family’s black car, its windows shattered. Inside he found the baby’s car seat and a single tiny shoe. Later, he located what he’s sure is the baby’s pink-and-white-striped baby towel. His expeditions sometimes last 10 hours or more. With patient precision he plots the ground already covered on his map, gradually moving away from the evacuation centre in concentric circles, following the paths the waves might have taken.Weeks ago he thought he had found Emi. He and other searchers spotted the body of a woman lying face-down in the mud, as if some-one had pushed her there. Coming closer Oikawa realised it wasn’t her. Her hair was too white, the frame too small. (This story, courtesy of John M. Glionna, The Yomiuri Shimbun)

The slide-show and video are of pictures taken during our visit to the fishing village of Schinchi.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Japan | No Comments »

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Patisserie Coin de rue

As a foodie film Patisserie Coin de rue will never rival Babette’s Feast, not least because the main character is an annoyingly petulant teenager, but it’s a feast for the eyes nevertheless. The film is centred on a patisserie in a Tokyo suburb, which specialises in making lovely cakes and pastries. It’s a Japanese film, made for a Japanese audience, although it will be seen in the west after winning the “Best East Meets West” prize at the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this year. The film is completely absorbing because of the glimpse which it gives into the way the Japanese treat food as art. It’s about creating food which looks beautiful and tastes exquisite. They won’t accept any compromise; they are entirely devoted to perfection.The art which they are practising may have its origins in France but it’s raised to a completely different level in Japan.
There’s one thing which will strike any westerner watching this film as odd- the fact that although everyone in it spends their life making and tasting pastries, not a single person carries an ounce of surplus fat. Very Japanese.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Film, Slow Food | No Comments »

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Leda and the Perfect Breast

For the last year a five ton lump of rock has been sitting forlornly underneath the stone arch in my garden. People have wondered whether it was a piece of abstract art. If it was, its message would have been so dull it would have been worthy of the Turner prize.

But today visitors to my garden (it’s one of our Yellow Book open days) have been treated to the sight of the block of stone coming to life. Alan Ward, who has done so much amazing work in the garden making sculptures out of the limestone rocks, is turning the stone into his version of Leda and the Swan. This video shows Alan’s intense concentration as he chips away at the stone with his chisel. Each part of Leda’s body requires a day’s work. Today 250 visitors have had the pleasure of seeing him perfecting her right breast.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Arts, Garden | No Comments »

Friday, July 1st, 2011

The Garden in June 2011

June has been rather cold and damp, perfectly normal weather, in other words, for the start of summer. The rain has been good for the soft fruits but the cold has been disastrous for the flower garden. We’ve had an excellent crop of blackcurrants and gooseberries. On the other hand, the seedlings which we planted for cutting flowers at the beginning of May have hardly moved at all. I reckon we’re about a month behindhand and the only flowers I’ve been able to take to the hotels have been carnations. This slideshow, of photos taken in the garden during June, is much less colourful than we would expect at this time of the year.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Garden | No Comments »

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Mamihlapinatapai

Mamihlapinatapai means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to initiate”. It comes from the Yaghan language, which is used by the natives of Tierra del Fuego, or, to be more accurate, one native of Tierra del Fuego, as there is only one speaker of the language still alive. The word has a place in the Guinness Book of Records, as being the world’s most succinct word- that is the word which contains the most meaning in the fewest letters.

In this Youtube video a young Australian girl with captivating blue eyes explains the meaning of mamihlapinatapai and why she loves the word. The video forms part of a film, soon to be released, called “Life in a Day” which is made up entirely of short videos recorded by ordinary people all over the world saying what was important to them on one particular day, Saturday 24th July 2010. 81,000 videos were submitted. The Australian girl speaks of her regret at the loss of a language which contains this beautiful word. It’s a lovely video and Life in a Day promises to be a lovely film.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Arts, Film, Language | No Comments »

« Older Entries