aspen house diary

JULY - SEPTEMBER 2010

Monday 9^th August

Okay.  Things have been a bit quiet lately.  Not for the first time, of course.  So it’s time to trot out a few excuses – or possibly even tell you what’s really going on.

The fact is, there are changes afoot.  Those of you who are keeping up might recall that I hinted at change on 19^th July.  Since then, we have had a meeting with our web designers to discuss improving our internet presence, the upshot of which is that we have been advised that an ‘upgrade’ would be beneficial.  The downside is that our present website was built around six years ago.  In technologic terms, this is an eon, and it means that the tools used to build it are now obsolete.  The new tools are simply not compatible, so that means a completely new website, rather than simply tweaking the existing one.

Faced with this news, we have no alternative but to go with the recommendations.  We trust our design team, and we trust that they would not sell us something we don’t need.  What this has done, of course, is to enable us to approach the whole issue with an open mind, as we are effectively starting again – we may even end up with a different website address!

When it comes to how the internet works, much has changed in the last six years, and we found ourselves discussing the possibility of adding a Facebook page to our online presence.  Even having a Twitter account was discussed, but I have to tell you that this does nothing for us.  We can’t really see how having a Twitter presence is going to help . . . but who knows?

One thing that is certain, however, is that the Aspen House diary will come to an end (“well, thank goodness for that,” I hear you cry).  I have very much enjoyed writing it, and I would hope that one or two of you have enjoyed reading it, but it has changed in character over the years and the consensus is that its content is no longer appropriate.  The trouble is that, with so many serious issues in my mind at any given time, the diary has become a vehicle for all of my frustrations, concerns and general discontent with such matters.  Thus it is no longer simply a diary of life at Aspen House, and it would be better if these thoughts were confined to a blog site specifically dedicated to the kind of thinking that seems to preoccupy me at the moment.

I’m sure this will be a change for the better, and I hope you both agree.  This may or may not be the last-but-one entry on this diary.  You are guaranteed at least one more – but that will be to give you the address of the new blog site and any other information that might be useful or relevant.

Tuesday 3^rd August

The broad beans in our garden have been a disaster this year.  I make that statement not out of a wish to solicit sympathy but because I am baffled by what has occurred.

First of all, I should set the scene by saying that the weather has been kind to us this year.  Yes, we have had a six-week dry spell, but that has brought on the tomatoes, a pleasant change from seeing them rotting on the plant in the three previous wet summers.  It has been difficult at times to keep up with the watering of the garden, but I have no complaints – it has been a glorious year so far.

I had timed the planting of the broad beans to reach fruition after those from Carey Organic had come to an end, and all was going well.  In fact, I was impressed with the growth our beans were putting on, despite the dry weather.  I did keep them watered, and soon enough the flowers were out, the insects were doing their bit and little beans were forming on the stems.

Then it all went a bit strange.

Each bean plant had put out two or three pods that were developing well, but then the development slowed right down.  Those early pods held no more than three beans each (we did take one picking from the first crop) and the next two on each stem held only one bean, fully developed.

Reluctant to strip the plants of beans with so few formed, I decided to leave the first pods for next year’s seeds.  There were quite an abundance of new pods forming, so the idea was to wait until those grew to optimum size.  But they never did.  They seemed to have slid quietly into a state of suspended animation.  Meanwhile, the beans I had left to go to seed were reaching full maturity, with the pods turning black.

“At least I’ll have a few beans to plant next year,” I thought.

Wrong.

On Sunday, I went out to the garden thinking that the time might have come to harvest these seed pods and dry the beans for next year – but they were all gone.  When I say ‘all gone,’ I mean all gone.  Plants, beans, the lot.  The plant stems had been sheared off at the level of the first leaves, leaving nothing but a row of 8-inch twigs sticking out of the ground.  I might have suspected foul play with a strimmer or some such tool, but the ground was devoid of evidence of cut leaves or wilting plant stalks. Presumably, it was some small furry animal that had removed our beanstalks, but why was there absolutely no sign of them?  It seems remarkable that any creature can chew off half a dozen tall broad bean plants and then clear the scene of evidence so completely.

It will no doubt remain a mystery forever.  Meanwhile, other than the initial picking a couple of weeks ago, we will have had no broad beans from our own garden this year.  A sad state of affairs indeed.

Monday 26^th July

The other day, we overheard someone saying, “That really appeals to David and I.”  That this most basic of grammatical errors has now become the norm is irritating enough, but on this occasion the sentence was spoken by a teacher.

At the risk of being pedantic, I feel that our teachers should be setting a better example.  The whole point about this erroneous grammatical construction is that it was spawned originally by some tabloid hack, impressed no doubt by our Glorious Queen saying, “My husband and I . . .”  And quite right she was to say that, as this phrase forms the subject of a sentence.  To your average hack, however, it just sounds like Posh Talk.  Thus, in order to appear right up there amongst the cognoscenti of the English language, Mr Average Journalist begins to use that construction indiscriminately, regardless of whether or not the ‘I’ is subject or object within the sentence.

That’s fine for journos from The Sun or The Mirror – much of what they say is total rubbish anyway, as well as being ungrammatical.  We make allowances for their ignorance.  However, it didn’t stop there.  Before long, the concept of ‘you and I’ as the object of the sentence had crept into normal parlance.  Many people – even, it seems, teachers – believe that it is simply vulgar to say ‘you and me.’

You and I know how these mistakes are made, so such errors are obvious to you and me.  But should they not also be obvious to our teachers?  Or is it asking too much that our teachers should, at the very least, have a good command of their own language?

Tuesday 19^th July

It is often said that if you don’t ask you don’t get, and if you don’t try something you will never know whether or not it is good.  I think we’d all agree that this theory can break down – when it comes to the eating of slugs, for instance.  But don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about that.

No, when it comes to running food events without previous experience, the theory holds firm.  Out of our first Celebration of Real Food at Broadfield Court came a few new leads, plus a whole new outlook for me and Sally.  Here indeed was a case in point of not knowing how something was going to turn out but, on trying it, finding it full of pleasant surprises.

We delivered two talks that day, on our favourite theme of real food versus industrial food.  On both occasions, there was a good interaction between us and our audience, and quite a few people came to chat with us after each talk.  We were asked to repeat our talks at another local food festival in August, and we also have a couple more talks booked for next year.

For us, this was very positive.  Despite the fact that what we say about food meets with much scepticism from others, we know that what we are saying is fundamentally true.  We feel on safe ground because this is not some pet theory or personal crusade.  It is sound common sense, reiterated by many notable scientists and thinkers right through the last 150 years or so, and now taken up in earnest by organisations such as the Soil Association.  Thus, putting ourselves in front of a new audience like that, and receiving affirmation via bookings for further talks, we feel that not only are we on the right track but also there is an audience out there that is prepared to listen.

All of this has focused us somewhat.  We now feel so much more confident about the real food message we are proclaiming.  We are confident that the time is right, that more people want to hear about how our food systems work.  So, we feel change is in the air, and we’ll let you know how that change manifests itself in due course.  By way of a little preview, though, there will probably be some website changes in the offing, as we attempt to re-jig our presence on the internet to make it more effective.

Friday 16^th July

Am I the only one who gets irritated by all the updates on software that keep appearing on the computer screen?

There I am, just clicking on the internet to check something, and a message comes up telling me that Firefox will be few minutes because it is installing updates.  So I have to just tap my fingers and wait for it to do its thing.  Even then, it doesn’t want me to continue, as it throws up a new screen over the newly updated Firefox one, saying, “You must install the latest version of Adobe Flash Player now!”

Why?  What was wrong with the one I’ve been using up until now?

On another occasion, I might simply be checking my inbox and a little screen will come up telling me that updates are available for Outlook Express.  So what?  I’m not interested.  It’s working perfectly well – why do I need an update?

Of course, all of this is happening on our PC, a lumbering great brute of a thing, encased in a box big enough to house eight ferrets, and running on Windows XP.  It even has a monitor to match, with a tube on it so big we have to have a special extra-wide desk just to accommodate it.  This poor old deskbound PC is at least six years old now and therefore, by industry definition, obsolete.  The fact that it does what I require it to do would cut no ice with a salesman from PC World, Comet or Currys.  I would be told that no one, but no one, works with Windows XP any more.  Well, I’m sorry – I do.  Okay?  It does the job.  Except for the fact that it is constantly trying to upgrade itself.

However . . . to put things into perspective, let’s look at Sally’s laptop . . . that doesn’t work with Windows XP – it has the benefit of Windows Vista, sold to her as the latest must-have by people we thought we could trust (mind you, they weren’t to know any better at the time, so we’ll let them off).

Sally’s laptop is even worse than our PC, as far as the upgrade fetish is concerned.

Sally’s laptop and its Vista software suffers from advanced technological paranoia to trawl obsessively for updates.  The difference is that, when it finds them, it simply displays an unhealthy level of techno-egocentricity and decides it is going to update, shut down and restart, without any consultation with Sally, and without her being able to stop the process.  Vista doesn’t bother with putting up a little screen about updates that politely give you the choice between ‘update,’ ‘skip,’ or ‘remind me later.’  No, it just says, “Sod you, I’m doing it.”  Sally might be in the middle of a document or an email, when suddenly all control of her computer is simply taken out of her hands while the software goes through its update and restart process.  I mean – how annoying is that?

Actually, all technology is annoying, full stop.  I just wish we (Homo technicalis) hadn’t painted ourselves into a corner whereby most of what we need to run our lives is now no longer comprehensible to ordinary mortals, but only to the computers themselves or ‘experts in their fields.’  Let’s hope that all the experts don’t suddenly die of some hitherto unknown techno-plague.  Then we really will be in trouble.

It’s funny, but I can hear a little voice somewhere saying, “I told you to get a Mac . . .)

Mercredi le 14 juillet

Allons enfants de la Patrie

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

Contre nous de la tyrannie

L’étendard sanglant est levé!

Celebrons! Le quatorze juillet, La Fête Nationale Française, est arrivé!

Well, that will be my contribution to the Entente Cordiale for this year.  And of course my homage to the Marseillaise.  Not that I am a fervent supporter of this kind of gung-ho imperialistic nonsense, but it is a good tune.  As national anthems go, it’s a lot better than ours, for instance, and it absolutely knocks spots of all those East European or South American dreary dirges that go no interminably.  Mind you, the Marseillaise has about seven or eight verses too, but you can forgive the old Frenchies for that when it is such good stirring stuff.  So let’s hear it for the downtrodden masses . . .

Aux armes, citoyens!

Formez vos battalions!

All good anarchic stuff.  It fills one’s head with thoughts of ragged-trouser’d revolutionaries in funny floppy red hats and a lust for aristocratic blood, storming the Bastille and chopping off the heads of those gluttonous and domineering perpetrators of an offensively oppressive regime.  It’s just a pity that the song wasn’t actually written for these raggedy-jacks, these romantically portrayed sans-culottes.  It was more of a war chant written three years after the fall of the Bastille, when the newly fledged French republic began to fight with its neighbours.  But hey – we’re not going to worry about little details like that.  We’re just going to don the floppy red cap, find some bare-breasted woman to brandish the tricolour, then party on down to the French embassy in Ross for a bit of a bash.  Or just stay in tonight and open a bottle of St Emilion.

Sunday 11^th July

The day after the day after the day before yesterday, and all is well.

The day before yesterday we were at Broadfield Court organising and setting up as much as we could for our first Celebration of Real Food.  This was very much a pilot event, a toe-in-the-water experiment to see whether or not we could persuade the good citizens of Herefordshire to think about their food in a different way.  There is an increasing number of food festivals, Farmers’ Markets and other food-related events around these days, yet we had what you could call the audacity to think we might be able to run one with a slightly different take, and the day before yesterday we were indeed wondering whether we would be able to pull it off.

Yesterday proved that we could.

That is not to say that the day was without its faults.  That wonderful tool, hindsight, brought into sharp relief a number of areas where improvements could be made in the future, and that other tool, experience, will be used to hone up any similar events we decide to run.  Our overall impression, however, was that our message got through.  Though we often seem to be in a minority (but by no means alone), our generic message is that there is no room in the future for industrial food and that it is up to us as individuals to switch our allegiance from that to real food.

In trying to reinforce this message without wielding a club, we attempted through gentle persuasion to ask people to think differently about what was on offer at Broadfield Court yesterday.  So often, the Farmers’ Market or the Food Festival is seen as an opportunity to indulge in free samples, grab some hot roast pork in a bun, buy a few treats that might otherwise not feature on the weekly shopping list or just simply enjoy a day out in a venue selling food and drink.  Rarely do people think, “What is on offer here is the food I should be buying to feed myself and my family.”

We tried to stimulate that kind of thinking yesterday.  Broadfield Court is in a superb location and the house itself is the architectural equivalent of a grand dame of opera, bearing its age remarkably well whilst easily retaining that aura of a respected diva.  It is, you might say, growing old gracefully.  More than that, it is a wonderfully intimate venue for a small celebration of any kind.  As the setting for a celebration of real food, it worked particularly well, what with its compact courtyard, walled kitchen garden, very productive vineyard and a kitchen that is mostly supplied from the garden.

Most of the producers present were housed in a modest marquee, although there were enough in the courtyard to make the place look inviting and busy.  The compact nature of the venue allowed us to put our own personal stamp on the event by decorating the walls of the marquee, as well as lining the walk from the car park to the house, with pertinent quotations from food writers and sages past and present.  Some of these appear in How To Eat, but there were others too, hinting at ways in which real food is central to the human experience in connecting us with nature, the very source of our sustenance for body and soul alike.

During the day, we ran talks and Q&A sessions in a lovely first floor room, occupying what was once the roof space of an old barn.  Sally and I did two talks, the turnout for which was reasonable, but not spectacular.  Yet who could blame anyone for resisting the temptation to sit indoors listening to someone talking about food, when the alternative was to sit out in the sunshine on the lawn, eating some of the food on offer and listening to three young lads playing exquisite gypsy jazz?  It is worth adding that, from our own observation at least, food and the issues surrounding it are not very high on most people’s agendas.  On that basis, we were certainly pleased to be speaking to a modestly sized but very receptive audience.  I guess that it takes someone pretty dedicated to trade al fresco dining for a relatively serious discussion indoors.  Maybe next year we’ll have these sessions out on the lawn . . .

In conducting such presentations, we like to create a relaxed atmosphere in which people are keen to ask us questions.  It is a way of gauging what bothers people the most, and it is safe to say that certain standard topics (wheat and dairy intolerance, soya products, butter and cheese, modern-day health issues . . . ) come up every time.  Predictably, we are often challenged from the floor about the cosy, idealistic world of real food that we portray, and the usual old chestnut is, “This is all very well, but we must feed the world.”  Generally, this comment will come from someone who is pretty clued up on the usual arguments supporting the need to ratchet up the production methods of agri-business because we are somehow burdened with the task of ‘feeding the world.’

Personally, I really cannot see how our modern, globally based methods of agriculture are helping to feed the world.  I see the complete opposite, in fact.  I see that our global food system, far from feeding the world, is contributing significantly to creating poverty, hardship, dependence and starvation right across the less ‘developed’ parts of the planet.  I see that organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, subscribing as they do to the principles of the Codex Alimentarius, are virtually in league with each other in wresting control of all food production from the hands of small countries, indigenous peoples, communities and even individuals around the world in order to maintain profitable control of global commodity food supplies.  Corporations such as Monsanto, in the drive for GM advancement as the latest contribution to feeding the world, are using the hyped and cleverly marketed benefits of this technology as a smokescreen to obfuscate the public’s perception.  This conceals from them the real truth that the prime motivation is to control global seed production through patents, in order to charge royalties whenever their seeds are used.  This malfeasance extends into the realms of fantasy, as we can see from the reports now coming out of places like Poland – lawsuits for non-payment of royalties are indicting small-time pig farmers for feeding their pigs proprietary products that contain patented varieties of plants.

Frustratingly, it is difficult to talk rationally about these things to a room full of people who are confused by the conflicting arguments, the smoke-and-mirrors illusions, the hall-of-mirrors distortions of reality and the absolute madness of a Wonderland of which Lewis Carroll would have been proud.  However, Sally and I are not scientists, techno-heads or academics of any sort, so our answers always come back to common sense.  In response to the imperative that we must feed the world, and therefore have no choice but to continue with our intensive farming practices, Sally hit the nail on the head by saying, “Does that mean that I have to stop buying local food and switch my support to the industrial food system so that we can feed the world? Why can’t we get the world to feed itself in the same way that I feed myself?”

That’s pretty much the last word, as I see it.  Commercial agriculture and, in the last couple of centuries, corporate power, has taken away each individual’s ability to feed himself.  We can see the results in millions of displaced villagers all over the world migrating to towns and cities in search of work.  That includes the Kikuyu of Kenya, whose lives as subsistence farmers have been taken away by the handful of commercial enterprises that now grow huge acreages of beans and other crops for Western supermarkets, leaving all but a few without jobs..

We also can see it in the disintegration of Senegalese coastal societies losing their piscine livelihood to the voracious offshore factory trawlers.  We can see it deep in the South American jungle, where the villager with the truck is in a position of power, able to use his transport to earn money from his neighbours so that he can drive into the local store to pick up a six-pack of Budweiser and some cheap candy bars for his kids.  Is this feeding the world?  No, it is not.  And that is why Sally’s appraisal is valid.  We must move towards a situation where the inhabitants of this planet can indeed feed themselves as they once used to.

Tuesday 7^th July

Mark my words, when all’s said and done, it can be the Devil’s own business coming up with diary entries that are just what the doctor ordered.  But, though I might find myself in the doldrums, I wouldn’t want it to be like a millstone round my neck, so I must gird my loins.  The show must go on, so it’s shoulder to the wheel and nose to the grindstone, best foot forward and all that.  Time to put on my thinking cap and try not to pull the wool over your eyes or put my foot in it, but to come out with an all-singing, all dancing flight of fancy and hope it will pass muster with all and sundry.

Of course, it’s no skin off my nose, and it’s not a matter of life and death if, at the end of the day and in the final analysis, my words fall on deaf ears, or even on stony ground.  I think I can safely say that, despite lacking the gift of the gab, I leave no stone unturned and every effort is being made by me to come up with the goods, something off the cuff that ends up being that one in a million jewel in the crown of diary entries.

Far be it from me to say what it is that will hit the spot.  When push comes to shove, one man’s meat is another’s poison.  Needless to say, though, I will go out of my way to grasp the nettle, bite the bullet and get down to brass tacks in my unending quest for that glittering prize.  I know the ball is in my court and I shouldn’t fiddle while Rome burns – I need to get right down to it, hoping that I won’t go off at half cock, that something will come out of the blue, like manna from heaven, so that I really can hit the ground running, firing on all cylinders.

Adding fuel to the fire, I’d make sure I am no nine days’ wonder.  Who wants to flog a dead horse, go off like a damp squib or indeed float belly up, dead in the water?  Let the dog see the rabbit, that’s what I say, and make hay while the sun shines.  I know it’s easier said than done but, all things considered, I don’t want to go back to the drawing board after falling at the first fence.  So I’m not going to beat about the bush – actions speak louder than words, after all.  It goes without saying that I’d like to think of myself as bright eyed and bushy tailed and, to all intents and purposes, champing at the bit.  Like a breath of fresh air, I feel I can go from strength to strength in beginning this new era.  Out with the old, in with the new, that’s my motto.  I feel I now have a platform on which to build.  Though wit and words of wisdom have been few and far between, all that’s over and done with.  The trite aphorism, the hackneyed phrase, will be conspicuous by their absence – a thing of the past.  So, to cut a long story short, to cut to the chase, I wash my hands of such banality.  Enough is enough.  Time to turn over a new leaf, roll out the red carpet and come up with the goods.  I hope against hope that all this gives you food for thought – or words to that effect.  Onward and upward!

Monday 6^th July

I broke a fingernail today.  That may not mean much to you, but it was a highly significant moment for me.

The fact is that there was a time when broken fingernails represented my normal state.  Not so many years ago, my nails would chip, split and flake all the time.  They were inherently weak, and breaking them was a regular event.  Worse than that, the skin above my fingernails had a tendency to peel back from the edge of the nail, leaving my fingers painful and unsightly.  But then one day I reintroduced raw milk into my diet and these conditions subsided.

In a short space of time, my problems were over, as my nails hardened and the skin on my fingers healed.  My fingernails became so hard that it became impossible to cut them cleanly unless they had been soaked in hot water, so I would cut them after a long session of washing up after breakfast.  For the last four years or so, I have had no trouble at all with my fingernails, and in fact I cannot remember the last time I broke or chipped one.  What I can remember, however, is how my nails have saved me from injury on quite a few occasions when the kitchen knife has slipped and collided with my nail rather than the flesh of my finger.  Even on these occasions, the nails have remained undamaged.

I am sure there are those who would argue that this is nothing to do with raw milk, but I would beg to differ.  I do accept that milk is not to everyone’s taste, in the same way that chocolate, eggs or meat might not be to everyone’s taste, but those who include milk in their diet are getting very little benefit, if any, from consuming modern-day pasteurised, homogenised, standardised milk.  Most of this comes from over-worked and unnaturally fed Holstein cows that are little more than glorified milk machines, mere units of production and part of the process of hitting bottom line targets for litres per cow per year.  Real milk, by definition, comes from small grass-fed herds of traditional cattle, like Guernseys, Jerseys, Ayrshires and Shorthorns.  This kind of milk is a fabulously nutritional whole food that is practically an essential elixir – and it fixes broken nails.  Modern commodity milk is no help to nails, despite the hyped-up advertising claims that we need milk to make calcium and good bones.  The startling truth is that the pasteurisation of milk destroys the enzyme that we need to assimilate the calcium in the milk, so this vital element is unavailable to us through heat-treated milk.

That’s the way it is, however.  Milk is just one of the basic real foods that have been demonised by a profit-hungry food industry that has bent over backwards to persuade us that real foods (milk, cheese, butter, eggs, red meat, saturated fats, etc) are somehow injurious to health.  Slick advertising has further convinced us that the artificial alternatives, laid before us in a cornucopia of choice by disingenuous food processors, is what we need to keep us healthy.  The inexorable rise in the diseases of civilisation has proved them wrong, yet no one now pays any attention to this simple fact.

Well, I have seen that the Emperor of New Foods is naked, so no one is fooling me.  I’ll stick to my raw milk, and my eggs, butter, cheese, red meat and saturated fats, and I wonder how long it will be before I break another nail – or pay a visit to my local GP.  Local GP?  I can’t even remember what he/she looks like, it has been that long since I had to visit the health centre.

Sunday 4^th July

The Earth is 94 million miles from the Sun, yet standing in our garden on any given day over the last few weeks has been pretty much like standing next to a roaring log fire – and this isn’t even as hot as it gets on this planet.  Actually, it is not even as hot as it can get in Hoarwithy, but let’s not worry about that.

I am simply amazed by the power of the sun, something that so many people take for granted.  I am awed by it, and I marvel at its ability to renew life each spring, to enable plants to grow and animals to thrive.  I am humbled by the enormity, the simplicity and complexity of our solar system and the finely balanced relationship between sun, moon and earth, to say nothing of the other planets, our galaxy and all those beyond it.

Yet, if I go to Hereford, as we did yesterday for the Farmers’ Market, I hear comments like, “Ooooh, innnit ‘ot!”  This long dry spell will no doubt come to an end before long (and my prediction would be that the weather will change on Monday 12^th July, the day after the new moon), and then those same people will be saying, “Ooooh, innit miserable!”

Rain or shine, though, the power of the sun will still drive our summer of growth, our annual time of abundance and our ability to live on this precious sphere.  We are forever under its influence, and without it we cannot survive.  We like to think of ourselves as the dominant species, but we are as nothing in the face of the eternity of the cosmos and the ball of fire at the centre of our solar system.  Can we really afford to take it for granted, or risk changing our atmosphere in such a way that we end up too close to the flames?

Friday 2^nd July

Much has been said by me on the subject of Jimmy Doherty and his morbid fascination with our mechanised global food system, but there is just one more little niggle that I feel compelled to get off my chest, and that is the question of customer choice.

Standing in the middle of a vast field of dwarf beans in Kenya, Jimmy was discussing the crop with the grower.  He asked the grower what makes a good bean, a leading question if ever the was one.

“This bean is bent, and I have been told by consumers that they don’t like this,” responded the grower obligingly.

Jimmy asked the grower what happens to such beans, and he was told that they are simply thrown away or fed to animals.

“Bent beans are thrown way,” said Jimmy disapprovingly, “Because we consumers like our beans straight.”

Well, sorry Jimmy, but not so.

It’s all very well Jimmy tut-tutting and wagging his finger at the consumer, but it’s not quite as simple as that.  It is the supermarkets that have driven the demand for straight beans (or straight cucumbers, straight carrots, courgettes, etc, etc etc . . .).  Supermarkets are obsessed with standardisation and uniformity, because it suits their packaging and display requirements.  At the same time, they have developed their own rules regarding what is or is not a ‘perfect’ fruit or vegetable, and they have used these standards to compete with each other during the unprecedented growth spurt they have put on in the last thirty years.

In that time, the subliminal supermarket message has been, “If you want the very best of fruit and vegetables, this is the place to buy it, not some seedy old greengrocer in town.”  Striving to meet criteria of perfection that are nothing short of fantasy in some cases (such as computer-controlled colour balancing of apple skins), and coupling that with touchy-feely display facilities that allow customers to handle the produce directly, has led to the creation of a bizarre world in which the products of nature have all been channelled into an impossibly narrow spectrum of uniformity.  This has been going on for so long now that there are probably at least two generations of ‘consumers’ who have absolutely no idea that fruit and vegetables actually vary in size, colour and shape.

So now, as a result of slick marketing and promotional inculcation, the ‘consumer,’ (more appropriately called the ‘docile, compliant, indoctrinated supermarket shopper’), has come to believe all of the insanely unreal standards of perfection imposed by the supermarket culture.  This has played right into the hands of the supermarkets, a serendipitous bonus of Big Business’ original conjuring trick.  Now they can say without fear of contradiction that they are merely bowing to consumer demand.  If only the consumers could see how they are manipulated.  Through the natural belligerence inherent in all of us, consumers might then turn round and say, “We’re not going to be told by Big Business what shape of vegetable or what colour of apple we are going to buy.”  If this were to happen, there might be some kind of cultural revolution and a clear understanding that the Consumer really is King.  Until then, however, the likes of Jimmy Doherty and the bean growers of Kenya will be able to continue to claim with impunity, “The consumers don’t like beans that are not straight.”

Thursday 1^st July

We’ve just watched Home, the film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, he of the breathtaking aerial photography.  If ever there was a film that puts things into perspective, this is it.  It makes such a nonsense of all the chatter out there about climate change statistics, carbon footprint analysis, arguments about the way we farm and all the rest of the tedious griping, bickering and carbon offset trading.  Why are we bothering, for instance, to discuss learned papers about the comparisons between feedlot and pasture-fed cattle?  Two minutes of film footage showing the growing of cash crops for cattle feed and the millions of listless cattle standing around shin-deep in their own muck in grassless pens – that’s all you need to see.  All the pro-feedlot arguments are just so much hot air after seeing stuff like this.

Also, it’s the kind of film that should be seen by anyone and everyone.  Anyone with a heart could not fail to be moved by it.  Anyone whose heart is inured by the toil of trying to keep up with modern life would also be moved towards a re-appraisal of what’s important.  Even those with a heart of stone might find fissures appearing in its impenetrable surface.  As for those earnest hand-wringers, like Friends of the Earth, CPRE or all those Transition groups, their members should be watching films like this.  Instead, they are all depressing themselves with the likes of the Age of Stupid.  That’s a brilliant film too, and really thought-provoking, but it leaves the average person with a sense of gloom rather than hope.  With Arthus-Bertrand’s film, at least the audience has a chance to think, “Wow! Look what we have left – there’s still a chance to save all this!”

Retaining what we have left, and working towards the kind of thinking that makes us want to reclaim all the life we have already lost or damaged – that’s what is required.  It’s not about energy descent plans.  It’s not about lobbying Government, and it’s not about those little spiral fluorescent light bulbs.  All these are part of the process, but the real process is what most people are too timid to confront – the fact that it’s about changing the way we live.  It’s about personal decisions for change, starting today.  What am I going to do that is going to make me a different person?

We all have to become different people.  We can no longer afford to look at anything in the way we have done up until now.  The planet needs our help and it is time to stop being anthropocentric, academic and abstract.  The time has come to grow up, take responsibility for our collective actions (and those actions carried out implicitly on our behalf) and do something that clearly delineates a change of direction.  None of this is going to come from discussing energy descent plans.  Energy descent plans and the like, though ostensibly worthwhile, come from the same kind of thinking that caused the problems in the first place.  Therefore by their very nature they are going to appeal only to the mechanistically minded, science-grounded academics in the room – they won’t touch the quick of those humble beings who sense in their souls that there is something intrinsically wrong but feel powerless to do anything about it.

There are many worthwhile NGOs out there that have already got it right.  Mostly, they are working with indigenous peoples.  They recognise that such ancient cultures are still close to the natural pulse and that much can be learned from them.  Other NGOs, though they are zealous in the promotion of their particular causes, would do well to learn from those working with traditional cultures, to see if there is some way of adapting their own messages for audiences in over-privileged, comfort-seeking, infantilised consumer cultures.  Unless we can change our understanding of what is really going on out there, we really will lose what we have left, probably before the end of the century, exponential growth being what it is.

I recommend Home to anyone who lives here on this planet.  It was made by someone who has observed this home of ours from a viewpoint that gives him a clear comprehension of the collective onslaught that we have released on this unique and frail sphere of life, one dot in the empty vastness of our galaxy.  It really is our only home, and we really are fouling it up so quickly and so comprehensively that the end is in sight for civilisation as we know it.  Don’t take my word for it though – have a look at it from Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s point of view.