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The Jika-Tabi

30/9/2011

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The Health and Safety wallahs at the Chelsea Flower Show would have a fit if they visited the build up at the Gardening World Cup. At Chelsea, even casual visitors have to wear steel-capped boots and high-viz jackets. Here at Huis Ten Bosch, where the frenzy of construction is just as fierce as at Chelsea, there are no rules at all. No-one wears high-viz jackets. Some of the construction workers wear hard hats, but many prefer bandanas. And as for footwear, most of the workers wear Jika-tabis, which are light-weight split-toed shoes. They are made of cloth with very thin, but ultra-tough, rubber soles and are preferred by workers because they can feel exactly what’s under their feet. ​

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An Unexpected Water Feature

26/9/2011

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We are allowed 10 days to build our gardens for the Gardening World Cup. Ten days is little enough time but we didn’t begrudge a moment of the first day today to break off for a traditional Shinto “Breaking Out” ceremony. This is when all the designers, constructors and organisers get together in the Drawing Room of the Royal Palace to receive the blessings of the Shinto priests, who will bring all the participants good luck (not in equal measure, otherwise there’d be no point in the competition) and protect them from accidents. ​

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Japan’s Forests

24/9/2011

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Japan is dark green, England pale green. The dark green of Japan is the forest which covers three quarters of its land mass. The pale green of England is its agricultural land- what we fondly call our “green and pleasant land”. The stark contrast between our two countries came home to me today in a 500 mile plane journey from Tokyo to Fukuoka. There was no cloud cover, so you could see the country clearly set out before you, from coast to coast. ​

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Mr McGregor Takes Shape

23/9/2011

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This is me 20 years on. Alan Ward used the mould which he had taken of me on back in August, added a few wrinkles, white hair and a beard to create Mr McGregor. I’m happy to say that it looks nothing like me, but it’s a sobering thought that I’m going to get more and more like it when I look in the mirror as the years wear on. I’ve now got to get Mr McGregor and Alan’s model of Peter Rabbit to Huis Ten Bosch, which is near Nagasaki in southern Japan. They fit into one large suitcase, marked “Fragile” which, together with my other luggage, is quite a handful. The journey needs 5 taxis, 2 planes, 2 trains and a bus. 

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Peter Rabbit at the Gardening World Cup

22/9/2011

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I wanted to use live rabbits in my ‘Mr McGregor’s’ garden for the Gardening World Cup, but the rules wouldn’t allow it. This was a pity because nothing could have been more authentic. Beatrix Potter kept a rabbit hutch by her back door – for the pot of course, not as pets. When I was doing my research at Hill Top the orchard there was overrun with rabbits and there were obvious signs that they’d visited the vegetable patch. ​

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Françoise Hardy

21/9/2011

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for françoise hardy
at the seine’s edge
of notre dame
seeks t’ grab my foot
sorbonne students
whirl by on thin bikes
swirlin’ lifelike colors of leather spin
the breeze yawns food
far from bellies
​of erhard meetin’ johnson

piles of lovers
fishing

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Edwin Lutyens

19/9/2011

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“The piece of cod which passes all understanding”
~Edwin Lutyens (whose wife never mastered the art of cooking).
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To an amateur like myself there’s something especially admirable about someone who reaches the peak of their profession without any formal training. Raymond Blanc has achieved this in the world of cooking; Edwin Lutyens did it in architecture. Edwin (Ned) Lutyens never qualified as an architect; in fact because of illness he spent only two years at school and then, after a year as a teenager in an architect’s office, decided to set off on his own. As Matthew Parris told us in ‘Great Lives’, Gertrude Jekyll gave him a baptism of fire by giving him the commission to design Munstead and then, to Lutyens’ intense fury, endlessly rejecting his designs until he got it right.​

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Why the bumper crop?

18/9/2011

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It’s been announced today that this summer is officially the worst on record. Well, I take that with a big dose of salt not least because it seems odd that the worst weather should go hand in hand with the most bountiful harvest. We’ve had a better crop of fruit and veg in our kitchen garden this year than ever before and from what I hear, we’re not alone in that. Why should this be so when the summer has been so cold and damp? One theory has been put forward by Ian Bell who is a biodynamic farmer from Dorchester. He argues that it’s to do with last winter’s heavy snowfall. This is what he says:

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Video of Tour of Britain

17/9/2011

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I set off in bright sunshine and came back in bright sunshine. It was the bit in between which did it for me. It has been raining solidly for several days, but when the skies cleared I decided to risk it and set off in my cycling shorts and an open necked shirt. All was well until I reached the road which leads to the prom, where there is often a large stretch of standing water, about 3 inches deep. ​

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Grange Lido – As it is now

16/9/2011

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My Slow Life has had to speed up a little bit this week, with meetings with the Town Council, the District Council, English Heritage and the 3P’s committee about Grange Lido. English Heritage told me that the restoration of the Lido “doesn’t come close” to meeting the criteria for a grant. I’ve also been on the site again with a structural engineer and a builder to look closely at the condition of the terracing and the existing buildings. It really is as bad, or worse, than we had thought. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the sad story of the structure since it closed to the public 20 years ago. There is an overwhelming consensus amongst everyone who has followed the history of the Lido (including the Grange Civic Society) that there is no prospect whatsoever of restoring the outdoor pool.
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I was amused to read an article in the Westmorland Gazette by the historian, Roger Bingham, that the term ‘Lido’, is in fact a misnomer, as during its heyday it was always known as “Grange Bathing Pool”. Real Lidos were much grander, and prettier, affairs and it was only in recent times, when attendances began to drop off, that it was bigged up as a Lido. This link is to a chronology of events prepared by the 3P’s committee showing the numerous efforts which have been made, since the pool closed, to revive it. 
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What’s in a McDonald’s Hamburger

14/9/2011

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When I took the plunge and bought a dairy cow, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a Holstein.  Holsteins are the black and white cows that you see in the fields everywhere and they are popular with dairy farmers because they have been bred for one purpose and one purpose only – to produce as much milk as possible.  So much milk that when their udder is full it’s grotesquely distended. I went for a honey coloured Jersey instead even though they produce half the milk of a Holstein, but at least I could bear to look at the thing.​

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The Throw Away Society

12/9/2011

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The usual fate of a “buy one, get one free” offer is that the one you pay for gets eaten and the “free” one sits in the fridge until the sell by date passes, when it gets thrown in the bin.  Fridges are essentially cupboards for perishable items and most of the good food which gets thrown away has been sitting in the fridge.  This is a surprisingly modern trend – when the Queen was crowned in 1952 fridges were very rare – in fact only 2% of households had them. ​

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The Extinction Myth

10/9/2011

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I have a rule never to read anything in the papers about sport or the royal family.  There’s more than enough drivel to wade through as it is.  But I broke the rule today when I saw a headline which read ” ‘Mankind is faced with extinction’,  says Charles”.  ”What’s the old fool on about now?”, I wondered.  It turned out that he has become the president of the World Wildlife Fund and used the opportunity of his inaugural address to say that we are so busy driving animals to extinction through our abuse of the planet’s resources that we run the risk of annihilating ourselves. He calls it “the sixth great extinction event”.

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The Cottage in the Wood

8/9/2011

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Nowadays every restaurant worth its salt proclaims that they are passionate about using local produce. Most of them lie. As a matter of fact 70% of all the food that restaurants use is imported, so there are a lot of porkies being told. But one restaurant which is true to their word, I’m sure, is the lovely Cottage in the Wood and tonight the food was not only local but, for a good part, foraged by hand by the owners, Liam and Kath Berney.

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The Cuckoo Brow Inn

7/9/2011

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The world’s best commute has just got a whole lot better now that the Sawrey Hotel has been magically transformed into the Cuckoo Brow Inn. I can take precious little credit for the transformation, but that hasn’t stopped me from lapping up the extravagantly lavish praise which I’ve received from just about everyone in the village of Far Sawrey. ​

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David Hockney – Freedom is Choice – Part 2

6/9/2011

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“If you can’t be a good example to your children at least be a horrible warning”.
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There was nothing half hearted about my father’s dedication to the pleasures of smoking. He went at it full tilt, 60 a day and none of those namby-pamby filter-tips, but only full strength John Players. I don’t remember ever being put out by his habit, but I think I recognised that tobacco had taken an unpleasant hold on him and this was enough to put me off smoking for life. But I’m with David Hockney all the way. 

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Freedom is Choice – David Hockney

4/9/2011

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“Tobacconists in England look like Eastern Europe circa 1970. Cameron, Clegg and Milliband treat us all like children, I am sick and tired of them. They stand for a meanness of spirit that pervades everywhere in England. Pettiness, meanness, dreariness. That’s all I see from them. Meanness of spirit is very bad for the health no matter how long you live. Can’t they look into their own hearts and understand that many people in England are fed up with unthinking, bossy-boots politicians that believe us to be infants.”

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Surprising Survivors Part 13- Musa Basjoo

2/9/2011

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Following on from our Echium discovery we’ve had another lovely surprise in the garden- the discovery of a little colony of banana plants. Three years ago we had two mature banana plants (Musa Basjoo) growing in a corner of the Palm Thicket. To everyone’s surprise, in our last decent summer, which was 2008, they produced fruit. They’re not supposed to fruit outdoors in this country. ​

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The Garden in August 2011

1/9/2011

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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.
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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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