Blog Archives - Slow Life Blog from the Lake District

The Bad Tempered Gardener

29/11/2011

I think I’m in love with Anne Wareham. It’s true that I’ve never met her and the one photo I’ve seen of her has her wearing goggles and driving a tractor. She also appears to be spoken for, as she’s dedicated her book to “Charles with love. Without you, nothing” and writes about making love to him by their “reflecting pool”. So it looks as though my love will be unrequited, but love it is, nevertheless.

Real Handkerchiefs

27/11/2011

This isn’t a disaster at the laundry or a new fashion trend – in fact it’s a testament to the frugality of this Yorkshireman. It’s my attempt to get some value from a worn out shirt, but above all to maintain my supply of decent handkerchiefs. The items sold as men’s handkerchiefs nowadays are nothing of the sort; they’re little more than a lady’s hankie. A real handkerchief is 16 inches square, which is almost 50% larger than what’s sold in the shops. At this size it will suffice for all its original purposes and one essential new one – to wipe your hands dry instead of having to use one of those wretched hot air machines.

The Lakes Waterbird

25/11/2011

When, a hundred years ago, Edward Wakefield built a prototype seaplane, the Waterbird, and tested it on Lake Windermere, Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty, jumped in beside him.

A Kiss Before Dying – The Video

20/11/2011

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.

Asda’s Make-Believe Wagyu Beef

19/11/2011

At Gordon Ramsay’s Maze Grill in London I was offered an 8 oz Wagyu steak for £110. A lovely waitress came to my table holding a tray on which was laid out a selection of steaks and she tried to justify the high price of the Wagyu meat by saying that Wagyus received much more tender care than any other beef cattle, so much so that they were even given a daily massage. She spoke sincerely and probably had no idea that she was talking poppycock.

Val Bourne – “The 10 Minute Gardener” – Vegetable Growing

17/11/2011

Double digging is deeply unfashionable now – the modern trend is to leave the soil alone and just apply a thin mulch of compost. That wasn’t the case when I started vegetable growing here 12 years ago, when I well remember losing a stone in weight as I nearly killed myself double digging our vegetable patch in our first autumn.

Bamboo or Grass?

15/11/2011

Ornamental grasses have been all the rage in the gardening world for some time now. So much so that the style even has a name, ‘New Wave Planting’ a style made famous by the Dutch Designer, Piet Oudolf. It’s all a bit flat and insipid for my taste, although I do use quite a few of the bolder tall grasses (by tall, I mean over six feet) in my garden to add structure to the borders. One of the tallest and the best is Arundo Donax, which is sometimes known as the giant cane, and can grow to 20 metres (although not here).

The Turner Prize 2011

13/11/2011

“Plaster is sieved perfectly on to the floor, is disrupted, and is repaired, all the time leaving behind traces of what happened before. Once encountered it is impossible to avoid the appeal of such a sensual feast to our bodily desires.”
- Katherine Walsh, describing Karla Black’s art in the Turner Prize brochure.

The 2011 Turner Prize exhibition doesn’t disappoint – it’s just as daft as last year’s. The purpose of the Turner Prize is to expand the boundaries of contemporary art. This year’s contenders, which can be seen at the Baltic Gallery in Newcastle have little to do with art, but do manage to push the boundaries of contemporary humour. There is the sculptress Karla Black, whose favourite materials include topsoil, eye shadow and petroleum jelly.

Over-Wintering Cannas

11/11/2011

Last year I had a magnificent 12 ft purple banana plant in the Orangery (alas, no more) and I would tease visitors by asking them where it came from. The tentative replies included “China”, “Brazil”, “South Africa”. “Homebase” I would triumphantly answer. Indeed, Homebase is one of the best sources for gardening exotica and when the 12 ft specimen succumbed to the cold last winter I found its replacement in their “pot plant” department for a fiver.

The plant pictured here is a canna, also bought at Homebase for a fiver. I planted it in June; it came into flower in August and has been in flower ever since.

The World’s Biggest Liar Competition

9/11/2011

“The Lake District is the venue for the ‘World’s Biggest Liar’ competition. Politicians can’t enter, because it’s only open to amateurs”
~John Penrose MP

It’s fascinating to be in the presence of professional politicians and watch at first hand how they practice the black arts.

The Laskett

8/11/2011

When A A Gill, the restaurant critic, was finishing his meal at a restaurant in Wales the chef asked him what he thought of the food. “Disgusting” replied Gill. In fact he thought the food was good, as he confirmed in his review in the Sunday Times, but it gave him pleasure to torment the chef. This would have remained his private little joke if the chef hadn’t gone back to the kitchen and beaten up his assistant, after which the chef was done for assault and all the grisly facts came out in court.

Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami

7/11/2011

‘What makes us most normal’, said Reiko, ‘is knowing that we’re not normal’.

I used a minor domestic crisis as an excuse to stay at home all day and read a novel. This was so enjoyable that minor domestic crises will soon be a major part of my life if I’m not careful. The novel in question was Norwegian Wood, which is the most successful book by Japan’s best selling author, Haruki Murakami.

Death Plus Ten Years – Roger Cooper

6/11/2011

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n
- Milton

After his trial in Iran on charges of spying and fornication, Roger Cooper received a visit from the prison governor who told him he had received two sentences: one was death, the other ten year’s imprisonment.

Jimmy Wales as Howard Roark

5/11/2011

“You could have made a billion dollars, why didn’t you?”

This question was put to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, in Radio 3’s ‘Free Thinking Festival of Ideas’. This was his reply:

“It reminds me very much of the fabulous scene in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead when someone offers to make Howard Roark’s career if he will deviate in some way from something which he believes is the right thing to do and he grips the desk and closes his eyes and he says “NO”.

Chocolate Cosmos

4/11/2011

I’m going to give the prize for the best performing perennial of the year to this Chocolate Cosmos, whose official name is Cosmos atrosanguineus “Chocamocha”, and names don’t come more splendid than that. I bought a few plants of it in June from Cath’s Garden Plants, ( http://www.cathsgardenplants.co.uk/) who are just down the road from us at Heaves and they have been in flower from then until now with no sign of giving up.

Carla Carlisle’s Slow Life

3/11/2011

I was running over in my mind who are my favourite columnists. They are: for politics Matthew Parris; for business Luke Johnson; for venom Rod Liddle; for films Deborah Ross; for TV James Delingpole; for campaigns Christopher Booker; for restaurants Giles Coren; for gardening Robin Lane Fox. They’ve all got one thing in common which is that they don’t take themselves too seriously (except, sometimes Giles Coren) and they write, as all columnists should, with the main purpose of entertaining the reader.

The Gardening World Cup – Mr McGregor’s Garden

1/11/2011

The story of the snail started slowly with an article in the Northwest Evening Mail and spread via the Telegraph and the Mail until it finally reached its pinnacle with the Chris Evan’s Breakfast Show. The story was used in the ‘Head 2 Headlines’ slot in which a celebrity is asked to choose between two headline stories.

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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