Generations Lost

A pretty single country girl yesterday

I have to admit I am a bit of a 'Towny' but only because I like nice restaurants, good coffee and meeting the odd pretty girl that doesn't wear her teeth upside down and point at planes. Being single in the countryside is a real bummer. The country ideal would indeed be ideal if the previous statement could apply. The thing is though, I thought I had found such a place. The definition of what I was after is basically a nice 1970's style upbringing for my children, you know when everything was safe and everyone was nice, polite and innocent, well it was from my eyes at the time walking home from school. Obviously I would want better TV than the 70's and home grown food rather than the 1970's frozen food revolution i.e the napalm filled deep fried pancakes that still show the burn marks 40 years later. Basically innocent life and innocent food and no I am not turning into a hippy and neither have I become a happy clapper.

Our Provencal alfresco dining room

As I say, I had thought I had found such an idealistic place that reminded me of that childhood innocence a few years ago and upped sticks and moved out of Chelsea and started living the dream in the South of France. Every day when I stumbled through the small meadow in front of the house trying to avoiding the killer thistles that can eat small children, there were completely different wild flowers and butterflies none of which I have ever seen before. It was jolly nice. Put it this way Kew Garden's would wet themselves if they went there, nothing fancy but rather interesting. If exotic rare butterflies and wild flowers were edible, every restaurateur would be here (they probably are in France because they are funny that way).

Mirabelle Plums in a deadly attack posture!

Anyway we had a few acres that hadn't been touched in a while and in the grounds amongst all the scrub, snakes and tigers were thickets of spikey fruit trees mainly different varieties, I found out, of miniature plums called mirabelles. These maybe small but they are very tasty. The thing is that my local shop down the hill 10 minutes walk away had the same trees outside with the same fruit growing but only riper. No doubt because in previous generations the land was probably part of the same farm. The only difference is that nobody and I mean nobody touched the beautiful red cherry-like berries that hung from them. But why? and this is the main point of today's rant. In previous days, people would have climbed over spikey hedges and would happily risk getting eaten by the farmer's dog to get at and eat this tasty fruit but not now. Nowadays the fruit just hangs there getting overly ripe waiting for the magpies to scoff the lot and drop the digested remains on your garden furniture. The reason for this, one assumes, is that nobody recognises them as tasty food anymore. They don't have a Waitrose 'best before date' stamped on them and so people may think that these bright red juicy berries are poisonous and so are just for the birds! We have been brain washed!

Gerard showing me around the garden in Provence

I do have to admit that I did stand and stare at our baby plums for a few days without touching them on our trees until I received the expert advice of a wondering/trespassing old bugger who appeared as if by magic like the 1970's shop keeper in Mr Benn to tell me that they were edible and delicious. It was only after the 4th week of seeing this chap wondering around did I find out that he actually came with the house and was the care taker called Gerard and lived in the little gate house at the end of the driveway. It took me a while to understand him at first as I struggled with his particular type of yokel accent, I think it was based on French but wasn't entirely sure. He waved his hands a lot and his broken English was better than my broken French but I just about managed to decipher his advice which was revolutionary. He pointed out so many things that are useful including all sorts of companion plants that serve various purposes for the crop plants that now appeared fairly wild all over the place. I also learnt that he had four bee hives dotted around my land with a million bees who simply love the wild flowers and made the best honey in the world because of it. 

Everything had a meaning now, gone were the plans of clearing all of the scrub and snake pits. Now that I understood what the land now meant and that the bulldozers won't be coming in as planned to make room for recognisable orchards and things because they are already here. They just needed tidying up a bit, well quite a lot really. All of the things that were growing don't appear in their current form in supermarkets but they taste so much better. There are actually more than one type of apple and just because a plum is the same size as rabbit plums it doesn't mean that they should be ignored. All of a sudden the wild meadow would remain and kept wild for all those delicious butterflies.

Another picture of my plums

So why do we automatically think something is poisonous? A smallish berry that is red is dangerous, why? I am glad I met the old bugger because now I can be righteous about why people ignore good food. It was a eureka moment for this particular townie and Gerard knew it. He was pleased too and when the old bugger presented me with a handful of mushrooms found in the wooded part of the land, he said the restaurants in London would be very excited by its beautiful pink flesh. I smiled and thanked him as I love mushrooms. How did they taste? I have no idea as I binned them when I went inside, they could have been poisonous!! I knew that my transformation wasn't complete and still wanted the Waitrose wrapping and name of what it was I was going to eat. Why is it when old people give you strange fruit you think yes and if they offer strange mushrooms you think no. As I said I am a Towny but I am keen to learn, though with mushrooms I need a second opinion from someone with lots of teeth. Perhaps my ex wife could try them! 

The issue is that we very quickly forget about things in the space of only one generation as in what is good for us. Small delicious berries that aren't sold in supermarkets are automatically deemed dangerous. The people that know don't get asked because we rely on supermarkets to tell us what is good. Lets get these old buggers out and let them tell us what is edible from their childhood, tell us about the range of different apples or plums there are. It may even be nice to talk to them anyway, make sure they test the mushrooms first in front of you though, just in case.

Can't Paint for Toffee But My Brother and Two Uncles are Art Dealers

One of Van Gogh's famous impressions

This is not just about the most celebrated ginger in the world (apart from Ed Sheeran obviously) but it is about art in general. Why do people continue to pay over the odds for some art that quite frankly if your six year old nephew had painted it you would be concerned that they have special needs?

Why isn't a copy of a masterpiece the same value as the original? Why are people who copy works of art frowned upon, surely they have similar painting ability? Surely you stare and admire the picture itself and not the letter of provenance.

What creates the value? I am pretty sure that many collectors create the value itself rather than the original artists? It appears to be clever marketing and the creation of perceived value. If one collector suddenly pays a million quid for the work of a new artist the rest of their work is worth something and all of a sudden the complete collection is worth more than the original outset. I think its all about creating a bubble and offloading the profit before that bubble bursts, similar to the subprime mortgage or dare I say it bitcoin. I am sure Tracy Emin's bed is very comfortable but was it really worth £2.5m for the bragging rights of owning it? What's it worth now I wonder or has the maid washed the sheets and made the bed?

Turning Roads (A51 probably) into fields

Don't get me going on Cezanne either. I do admire the way that he very cleverly painted out the A51 and the massive Carrefour in some of his pictures but that doesn't mean people should pay over the odds for Aix en Provence's finest pictures. Interesting that his equally famous best friend from school Emile Zola never really gets a mention  in Aix though he does get the enviable accolade of having a bottle of cheap rose named after him. Cubism is obviously more powerful than the pen in Provence.

My Ex-Mother-in-Law yesterday.

I really like Picasso though, pictures with women with one eye higher than the other looking very much like the ex mother-in-law, who incidentally I like very much, it's just her daughter that I struggle with. I also agree with his statements that the ability to create art hasn't really changed since cave painting began. I did try and recreate a cave painting for my own man cave once but gave up when I realised that I wasn't as good as the  Neanderthal I was trying to copy. The Cave Person clearly went to art school. The series of pictures I really like are Picasso's bull progression which really show how far we have come in art since Neolithic times.

Cave painting to modern progress

One of Picasso's masterpieces sold for £45m!

Not all of Picasso's work has been as well received, I understand from Jeremy Clarkson that the Citroen that Picasso made had a few issues.

Cheating at art in the olden days

Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotti and Marieschi I absolutely adore as they show clear historical detail in their masterpieces. They did however cheat a little by using a camera obscura which can be compared to using tracing paper or painting by numbers as its difficult to get any of the perspective wrong. Just look how skilled they are drawing people in those pictures, pretty shocking. So are they masterpieces as they cheated? I would however quite happily stare at their brilliance in the form of a print. 

Does that make me cheap?

Lessons in Learning for Psycho Parents

When I was little, which wasn't that long ago, school was fun in the early years and it was enjoyable to learn. It only got a little bit pressurised later at the age of 13 or 14 when all those O'level exams started (I am showing my age now) and then all the other exams that followed. These intensely pressurised periods of last minute, panic stricken revision and blind attempts to decipher other peoples poorly written notes secretly borrowed from their rightful owners in the false belief that they may have paid more attention in class than you, allowed us to successfully sit exams after only 20minutes of sleep the night before. All this in a desperate bid for a higher than deserved grade in the exams that allow us to wave O'level, A'level and Degree certificates at potential employers. To this day, nobody has ever asked to see any of these certificates of playtime lost, not that I know where they are anyway or even remember how many I got. My mother no doubt has them somewhere, but as she managed to lose my original birth certificate which at some stage must have been fairly precious to her, I don't have much hope that the slightly less sentimental exam certificates will be found.

Some Teachers Yesterday

Anyway before all these pressurised exams, apart from the usual spelling tests my first big test was the 11+ which was hardly pressurised, I think if you finished it in more than 11 minutes you were officially classed as stupid and had to be separated to protect the others from harm. It made no difference anyway, our local grammar school was rubbish and nobody wanted to go there and so everyone ignored the results. That failed grammar school has since been turned into luxury apartments for stupid rich people that couldn't get in first time around.. 

The whole point of today's rant is that up until the age of 13 or 14, children should be allowed to be children as there is loads of time for the pressurised scary stuff later on. This allows children to develop their character, because the early years is when characters are essentially formed and we all know that character maketh the man or woman or ladyboy. It is character that gets people grown up jobs rather than the results of pressurised exams sat at the age of eight. Yes, exams at aged eight, and two hours of homework each night from the age of six. The prep school that my children originally went to were all streamed into groups at the age of 7 based on ability. What is the point of that at that age? All the children in the bottom groups were coincidentally all the youngest. But the only difference now is that they have it in their mind that they are stupid rather than just being the youngest. Not good.

The English School system is not allowing our children's characters to form but they are bashing whatever they have out of them. I am not talking about state schools, they don't learn anything, but fee paying prep schools. I will talk about state schools another time in the interest of fairness. I am focusing primarily on London, though I can imagine it is much the same in the Sticks of Richmond and beyond.

Its not as if these schools are cheap, they all appear to be strangely much the same price, I am not sure whether they use the inverse to the the price checking system that the supermarkets use but it seems that they are trying to match the most expensive. Perceived value appears to be the name of the game in London which is a polite way of saying cartel with a heroic charity status.

Original English plans for the first moon landings

But what do you get for your £15k per child per term at prep school? You get an overly stressed child who has strangely developed an Australian accent! All the teachers appear to be just friends of friends who just needed something to do. I have heard that apparently you don't need a teaching qualification to teach in a public school, you just need to be a mate, though I could be wrong on this. I need to point out at this stage that the three half days per week at nursery that my daughter enjoyed as a 2/3 year old was significantly more than the prep school and apart from cheerfully punching me in the dingles every time she saw me at pickup (she thought the reaction was hilarious) there was little else to show for this investment, though there were some pretty mothers to talk to. 

At my school we did have some eccentric teachers, especially in science. One was very much in the ilk of Francis Godwin the famed 17th century bishop who planned the first moon landing using a flock of geese and a heroic chap in a harness, it wasn't rocket science but interesting nevertheless and I had fun learning.

The early years of education should aim at installing the joy of learning and not installing the fear of failing, there is plenty of time for that later. In many respects I blame the psycho clipboard parents who demand that their children be  tortured so. It may be unintentional but it could be classed as a form of emotional abuse. I think children should remain children and not face too much pressure until they are strong enough to cope with such pressure. The alternative is children whose characters are being moulded by emotional stress and not by the joy of learning. I say that the clipboard parents should put on the top of their lists in big letters 'My Child's Safety and Happiness'. 

Something A Bit Fishy Here

Following on quite neatly from my last posting is fishing. I am not talking about the supposedly 'most popular sport in the country' of grabbing a fishing rod and heading towards your nearest river or lake and in a sporting-like manner sitting motionless, staring at the ripples in the water for hours on end without so much as a nibble on your extravagantly decorated hook. I am yet to meet anyone who takes part in this 'most popular sport', maybe its one of those things that blokes don't tend to admit to each other or maybe its just an excuse blokes give to their wives as they head off tackle in hand to meet their girlfriends. I suppose that explains why there is such a successful fishing tackle shop close to me in South Kensington, far away from any self respecting swimming fish.  The Thames is close by but has anyone ever seen anyone fishing there apart from the police boats fishing out bodies? No, my point is made then.

A fisherman's wife

The type of fishing I was thinking about is sea fishing with nets where everything that doesn't get out of the way fast enough within a few miles of the back of the trawler gets dragged aboard and dies. The issue here is that half of this dead catch gets thrown back into the sea. Why? Its not because the fish aren't edible, they are. Its not because the fish are deformed or rotten, they aren't. It is because either the tasty fish are not what some customers would recognise as they aren't cod or and this is the really foolish bit, its because the EU says the fish caught are too young to be sold. Did you know that half of all fish caught in the North Sea gets thrown back in the water dead!

Catch of the day

Now lets focus firstly on the EU rule that tells our good hard working fisherman to discard the younger fish. There were probably very well intentioned reasons why these rules were put together in the first place. It appears to be just the implementation of those rules that haven't really addressed the issue that the rule was created for. 

A good reason for the rule, one assumes, is to try and stop fisherman from catching fish that are not old enough to breed and so give every fish a chance to have baby fish and so keep the fish levels fully stocked. Trying to get sustainable fishing is a good idea. Well I am not a marine biologist but throwing a dead immature fish back into the sea does not  do anything for this noble cause. All it does is hide the evidence of the damage we are doing. This is a good example of a well intentioned change that hasn't been followed up to see if it is delivering its objective. How long is the EU going to wait to see if its policy is working? Is it going to wait until all the fish have all gone? 

The golden rules that I always employ when putting changes in place in any organisation is to trial the change in a sample area, closely follow up to see if the change achieves its objective and apply any corrective measures. When it is proved to work and only then, roll it out to the wider area and then continuously follow up and monitor to see if the objectives are being met. It seems to me that the EU doesn't follow up their implementations but also they don't appear  to remember the reason behind the change in the first place. We need to remind them.

To help us remind the EU of how foolish some of the fishing rules are there are some people who have heroically taken on the challenge. The person I am thinking of is Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall of River Cottage fame. His recent television programmes called the 'Fish Fight' highlight many of the issues involved  with the fishing industry that we can help stop. Please have a good look at his website and get stuck in. http://www.fishfight.net

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and a sustainably caught fish. Please ignore the way it appears he is drop kicking the fish.

The good work by Hugh also highlights the other main reason why mature fish are being discarded needlessly. The market is limited because essentially people don't recognise the name or look of a fish. In the UK most people have heard of cod, tuna, haddock or prawns and so only choose them in the supermarkets. Its a marketing issue. People tend , given the choice, to go for a name or brand that they have heard of rather than take the risk of trying something new. Lets try and change that, let us persuade the supermarkets  and fish & chip shops and anywhere else that sells fish to market the fish in a different way by highlighting similarities with the fish that we know and how better some of the alternatives are. We need to start the re-education now to ensure that we get sustainability of all the household name fish but also let us enjoy the delicious alternatives which will also help save our seas.

Fisherman need to land everything that they catch instead of hiding the evidence of ditching the discard in the sea. This will show the full scale of the foolishness being practiced. We need to create a market for this alternative fish which would ease the pressure on the levels of  household name fish .  Fishermen need to start using nets that allow the immature fish to escape without having to kill them first.  I know such nets are being trialed successfully, how long do we have to wait until they are implemented on a wide-scale basis, 5 years, 10 years. I am not sure whether some of the stocks will last that long. Also trawling the sea bed  for catch is like catching butterflies with a plough with a net attached on top going through a meadow. You may catch what you want amongst other things but you also destroy the environment where further catches can develop from,  this method should really be outlawed. If as consumers we want to eat fish in the future we really need to ensure that proper rules get put in place to protect this valuable resource. If the EU cannot think for themselves let us educate them and anyone else who doesn't understand. 

Fruit Cases

In theory rules are put in place to to be useful to some party involved, whether this is to maintain order, morality, standards etc. If these rules are only useful to a tiny minority whilst the greater majority suffer from it then generally speaking the rule is a bad one. These rules should reflect what is reasonable. When a rule is deemed reasonable then the greater majority should in theory be happy to comply with it without too much complaint. Nod if you agree.

Why is it then that a huge percentage of the food that our farmers grow gets thrown away before it gets to our supermarkets? Let me clarify this. The food that is dumped is perfectly good to eat, the problem is that rules have been put in place either by the EU or by the supermarkets themselves on the size and shape of the items themselves. For example if a delicious apple is deemed slightly too big, even though it is still delicious and in perfect condtion it cannot get on the lorry and so will not be offered for sale making it a redundandant apple. Hands up anyone who, given a choice of eating a larger delicious apple and a smaller delicious apple would go for the former (assuming that no-one is watching as I don't want politeness to be a factor on this). So I am not the only one then. You can put your hands down now.

Obviously the production cost of the good food that gets thrown away unecessarily gets added to the cost that we pay for the standard size food that appears on the supermarket shelves. Imagine what would happen to the prices if supermarkets also sold the rejected good food at a reduced price as a choice for the customer. All the prices will be lowered because less wastage cost will need to be offset. Why not give customers the choice? If a standard large potato sells for 30p but on another shelf there are similarly tasty potatoes of the same variety from the same farm selling for 10p only because they are sub-standard because they are shaped like a bottom, why not give us the choice?

Bottom shelf potato

Now I am not one of those politically correct activist type do-gooders but I do get a bit annoyed when organisations throw money away unecessarily, which is why I like my day job so much because I get the opportunity to fix things. The issue with this dilemma is that there are many, many organisations involved that  appear to have all just given up and have accepted things as the way things are. It doesn't have to be this way.

So what can we do? 

As voters we could influence the EU, this is unfortunately a little slow.

As customers we do have the power to influence the supermarkets which can be a little quicker. By asking for changes and having a choice of both standard and cheaper non standard items all costs will be lowered, the farmer's, the supermarket's and the customer's. 

If the supermarkets don't want to do it then if you are a farmer that is tired of having to throw away good stock and production time whether it is because it is the wrong size, shape or variety for this season, then get in touch. I am sure if we can get enough suppliers interested we can set up a consortia run Odd Shape Food Company Shops in every town to sell this good quality food at the right price that customers will want. It will not involve very much investment from those taking part either, especially as you the farmer will be offsetting this against the cost of production that would have been lost. It doesn't have to be limited to fruit and veg either, what happens to the cuts of beef that aren't sirloin or rump? Bring it on.