Slow Life Blog from the Lake District
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Dylan vs. Eminem

11/7/2014

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The last time I was at Wembley it was to see Bob Dylan; this time Eminem. Dylan, the old cynic, likes to play tricks with his fans by singing the words of his back catalogue to new tunes, so that you spend most of the time wondering what the hell it is you’re listening to. The distortion caused by the volume being turned up to the maximum doesn’t help.

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Mr Chips at Work

7/7/2014

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The British public are so damned polite and relentless in their praise that it comes as a breath of fresh air when you receive a complaint. About five, or it may have been ten, years ago (probably ten as it came hand-written) I received a letter from a visitor saying that it was all very well building gazebos and towers from which to enjoy the view, but this was next to useless if the viewer wasn’t given any clue as to what they were looking at. ​

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Sunday Cobblepot

6/7/2014

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Sunday Cobblepot, (pictured here with her Shih Tzu called Elmer) the most interesting of Saturday’s life models, was fascinated by the clump of ‘Hot Lips’ Salvia, growing in the lower terrace.  It reminded her of ‘Hot Lips Houlihan’ from M*A*S*H, a show which she loves so much that she has its star, Alan Alda, tattooed onto her right arm.  She’s also mad about the Avengers and has John Steed, complete with bowler hat, on her chest and a full-length Emma Peel, with bowler and rolled umbrella, on her left leg.  But this is no frivolous fascination with television stars of the sixties and seventies – Sunday (her real name) is about to finish a PhD on the subject of fashion design as portrayed on TV in that era. A book will follow, no doubt to great acclaim knowing Sunday’s skill at self-promotion. The generation gap has well and truly disappeared when girls of my daughters’ age know more about the TV of my youth than I do.
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Life Class Day at Yewbarrow House

5/7/2014

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Slow life doesn’t come any slower than this.  The life models had to keep perfectly still, sometimes in water, for up to an hour.  Alan Ward, who holds a life class at the Storey Institute every Saturday, booked 11 models, 5 male, 5 female and one trans-gender, to pose for his students in my garden.  We were expecting a washout, after two inches of rain had been dumped on us the day before, but by a miracle the clouds disappeared just as the models started to arrive and we were bathed in sunshine all day long.  

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Road Testing the Google Glass

4/7/2014

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I’ve been road testing my new toy, aka the Google Glass, by using it to record a video while out on my bike. The picture quality in video mode isn’t as good as it is for still pictures, but I think it did pretty well whilst I hurtled along at speeds of up to 30 mph. You get a good sense of the fun I’m having on these narrow country lanes.  ​

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The Bees Are Back

3/7/2014

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The bees are back- if they ever went away. As this video vividly shows, the flowers on my echiums are smothered in bees. And as there are several dozen echiums in the garden and each flower spires is between 4 and 6 feet long, this amounts to an awful lot of bees. Honey bees prefer blue flowers, so the lavenders and salvias are also getting their fair share. After the blue flowers in popularity come the white, of which my cabbage palms and sea kale are doing well in attracting bees.
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In spite of the plethora of honey bees, I don’t keep a working hive at the moment. I’ve got a hive, but can’t spare the time to make my own honey, so I leave that to the experts. As a result I rely on my favourite shop, the Farm Shop at Sizergh for my honey supplies. I buy runny honey, supplied by Nook Farm in Cumbria, which is perfect with my porridge in the morning. But when I looked for the Nook Farm brand, the clear honey was out of stock, so I picked up the jar pictured below. It looked just the ticket, with its artisan jar, and farm shop price. Luckily, I checked the label, which disclosed that it isn’t local at all, not even British. The small print revealed that it was the “produce of EU or non-EU countries”. To my mind, that’s a bit of a con trick. If I was looking for rubbish like that I’d go to Tesco’s and pay half the price. Perhaps I should make my own honey after all.


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The Scurrilous Squirrel

2/7/2014

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I caught the squirrel red-handed, or in this case red-toothed, with a ripe strawberry in its mouth.  Not just any strawberry but one of the fattest, reddest, juiciest in my crop.  At moments like this Jeanette Winterson*-like ideas of revenge come to mind, but as the squirrel isn’t as tasty as a rabbit, I’m told, I contented myself with thoughts of a cruel and painful punishment.  But squirrels move fast and I didn’t have my gun with me. ​

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Yewbarrow House Gardens in June

1/7/2014

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June slideshow from Jonathan Denby on Vimeo.

My overwhelming impression of the garden this June has been the scent. The most impressive flowers have been the peonies, of which one, Cora Stubbs, supplied by Cath’s Garden Plants, is gloriously fragrant, but some of the best perfume has come from less distinguished plants. The strongest, whose scent pervaded the entire garden, has been the Cordyline Australis, or cabbage tree, a half-hardy palm, which produces masses of white flowers near the crown. Another white scented flower in June is the Crambe Maritima, which self-seeds freely in my garden. A particularly spectacular specimen emerged among the Gunnera this year. As these flowers fade, their scent is gradually being replaced by the sweet small of Buddleia Davidii. This slideshow of the garden in June may look good but it can’t, regretfully, convey the entire picture.
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    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

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