17 June 2008
The Idler is coming to three festivals this summer.
1. Ledbury Poetry Festival
TOM HODGKINSON speaks on poetry, idleness and radical thought.
Sunday 5 July, 3.45pm, Burgage Hall
Click here for the festival website
2. Camp Bestival, Dorset
TOM HODGKINSON on merriment and ukuleles.
Saturday 20 July, 3.45pm
Also appearing are GAVIN PRETOR-PINNEY and MICHAEL SMITH.
Click here for the festival website
3. Secret Garden Party, near Huntingdon
Thursday 24 — Sunday 27 July 2008
THIS YEAR at the Secret Garden Party, we present our very own grove: a debating space with adjoining medieval garden. We have organised a programme of dialogues, during which our favourite poets, philosophers and writers will ponder the big philosophical issue: how to live. Appearing over the four days will be Crass co-founder, poet, essayist and artist PENNY RIMBAUD, New Economics Foundation director ANDREW SIMMS, NEF associate and medievalist DAVID BOYLE, QI writer JOHN MITCHINSON, author DAN KIERAN (I Fought The Law) and JAY GRIFFITHS (Pip Pip and Wild), brand-burner NEIL BOORMAN, plus poet and playwright CLARE POLLARD, radical historian JOHN NICHOLSON, and actor, musician and publisher DAVID BRAMWELL. Plus lunchtime poetry in KIRSTY KNIGHT-BRUCE’s medieval herber and music in the evenings from LOUIS ELIOT and JOHN MOORE.
Click here for the festival website
05 June 2008
There are two special bus services for those wishing to travel to the Lynton and Lynmouth Music Festival from London.
The first bus leaves from the Hammersmith Odeon at 12 noon on Friday 13 June, and the second bus leaves on 9am on Saturday 14 June from the same location. Both buses leave Lynton for the London return journey at 5pm on Sunday 15 June.
Return tickets cost a mere £25 and interested parties should apply to lyntonfestival@hotmail.com without delay.
02 June 2008
I’m pleased to announce the line-up of this year’s Lynton and Lynmouth Music Festival. Headlining this year is KEITH ALLEN’S ten piece party band GROW UP. The festival is free and takes place in the lovely North Devon towns of Lynton and Lynmouth.
The dates are 13th June to 15th June. For camping enquiries call:
Sunny Lyn, 01598 753384
Cloud Farm, 01598 741234 (featured in Cool Camping)
Oaremead Farm, 01598 741267
Channel View, 01598 753349
Caffyn’s Cross, 01598 752379
Millslade, 01598 741322
Southernwood, 01598 741174
And here is the complete line-up:
FRIDAY 13th JUNE
Lynton Town Hall, 8pm-2am
£12.50 a ticket (this is the only paying event)
Kaya Natty & EZPZ
Fajita Funk
The Yum Yums
SATURDAY 14th
Manor Green, Lynmouth
12pm till 6.30pm
Justin Welch’s Amazing Drummers
Candy Thief
Treasure Tones
Moon Music Orchestra
Judy Dyble & the Conspirators
KEITH ALLEN’S GROW UP
Woody Bay Station, Martinhoe Cross
1pm till 6pm
Tabloid Press
Dan Arborise
Dr Butler’s Hatstand Medicine Band
Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip
Beth Jeans Houghton
Jodie Jones
St Mary’s Church, Lynton
1pm
Charles Hazlewood presents a lunchtime classical concert
St Mary’s Church, Lynton
4pm till 9pm
musicatstbarnabas presents:
UK States
Off Ground Touch
Melody, Melodica and Me
Tallulah Rendall
Kerry Leatham
Fiona Bevan
Anthony Elvin
Sam Beer
Cosmicorus
Little Ray
The Crown, Lynton
From 7.30pm
Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip
Beep Seals
Superimposers
Gotham City Gangsters
Twinkranes
The Queens, Lynton
From 7.30pm
Dan Arborise
Balao
Beth Jeans Houghton
Juxtaposed
Chris Millington
Andy Votel
SUNDAY 15th June
Manor Green, Lynmouth
12.30pm till 6pm
The Guerilla Marching Band
Wolf People
Beep Seals
Booger Red
Indigo Moss
Pete Molinari
BABYHEAD
Woody Bay Station, Martinhoe Cross
12pm till 5pm
Balao
Music, Melodica and Me
Jane Weaver
Erland Cooper
Babelfish
Cosmo D Hines
Second World War
THE ALAN METHOD for successful chicken keeping has been a great success. Since moving the feed bins out of the henhouse, and locking them in till one o’clock, and disturbing any other stray nests, we have been averaging six eggs a day. Arthur is already salivating at the extra income this could give him. If we produce 42 eggs each week, and eat twelve of those ourselves, and he sells each box at the top of the lane for one pound, then he could make five pounds a week.
IN HALF TERM, we drove up to the Hay literary festival where I gave a talk with Big Issue founder John Bird and New Economics Foundation director Andrew Simms. We sang “The Bear Necessities”, “Seventeen” by the Sex Pistols and “Sunny Afternoon”, all chosen for their anti-work sentiments, to my ukulele accompaniment. Bird is a great man and a true radical and I hope to work with him on future Idlers and other system-smashing projects. Two days later I met up with my friend the writer Jay Griffiths and Penny Rimbaud. Jay was giving a talk. She banned Penny from coming as she was afraid he might cause a rumpus by attacking Jay’s fellow panel members. So instead Penny and I sat in the beer garden and chatted. We discussed the appalling corporatisation of the festival: it is covered in sponsorship banners of unspeakable vulgarity. There are Barclays Wealth banners, United Emirates airlines banners, Sky TV leaflets everywhere. One wonders where all this money is going: certainly the writers do not get paid. Penny was fuming about all this and then went to the bar to get drinks. On his return he reported that the bar staff were doing fourteen hour shifts at minimum wage, and were lucky if they took home £50, after an exhausting day of being abused by middle class Hay punters. Penny said the whole thing made him feel very uneasy and that he felt like slashing a banner. I said, “well, I’ve got my penknife here.” Penny said: “Shall we do it?” I said, “yes”. So Penny slowly strolled up to a United Emirates banner, and elegantly made a diagonal cut in it from top left to bottom right. Hardly had he put the penknife away when two very young Hay employees came up to him and said, “what are you doing?” “I’m protesting against this sponsor.” A minute later, three security guards came and hovered over our picnic table. One said, “we’re going to have you arrested for criminal damage.” He called the police who came over and questioned us. We remained pleasant and co-operative. Penny was arrested. I had my knife confiscated, and we were all escorted from the premises. I was told to stay out of the festival site, and Penny was driven off to the police station. He was released with a caution. He said that the police had treated him with the utmost courtesy and respect, and even suggested that they approved of his stance. What’s more, when he was wandering around Hay later, a family came up to him. They’d seen the slashing incident, and the Dad said: “We thought what you did in there was wonderful,”
BACK HOME life springs everywhere. In the hedgerows the blackthorn blossom is coming out. There are dozens of foxgloves (digitalis purparae) everywhere. There is red campion, herb robert (geranium robertianum), creeping buttercup (rununculus repens) and germander speedwell (veronica chamaedrys), a nice little four-petalled blue thing. It would be nice to look into the medicinal properties of these flowers. Everyone knows that digitalis has some uses. Back in the medieval days, of course, food and medicine were almost the same thing. Modern medicine has its roots in herbal remedies, of course, but these days—alas!—the potions are controlled and regulated and produced by vast profit-making drugs companies. Surely it is time for some revolutionary actions? I’ve been reading Mark Ames’ book Going Postal, which describes the various rage murders in the States over the last twenty years or so, and argues that the modern American workplace is a savage and inhumane place to be. And so no wonder that oppressed workers unleash their rage. In the vegetable patch there is camomile popping up everywhere, as well as mint, and self-seeded nasturtiums are all over the place. I transplanted several tiny nasturtiums to the side bed. The veg garden is looking even better since I weeded and tidied the paths. I have also covered them with sand and stones. The sand came from a local beach, and the stones are all just lying around. It’s starting to turn into a pleasant place to be, and I now plan to carve my diggers’ motto into a piece of wood. The motto is: IN TERRA LIBERTATEM QUAERIMUS, which means, as if I need to tell you, “we seek freedom in the earth”.
ENDS
19 May 2008
WE CAME HOME the other day to find that Milly the cat had brought home a little wild bunny. Presumably she intended to kill it and eat, but when we arrived, she was doing a bit of laid back torturing and tormenting prior to moving in for the kill. The bunny was perfectly alive. It was about eight inches long and a sort of grey colour. At first we speculated that it might be the offspring of Blossom. Blossom has gone half wild. We saw her sitting under the gate, being courted by a wild rabbit, who scarpered when I approached. We have seen her disappearing down a rabbit hole near the vegetable patch, presumably to spend some time with this boyfriend. I have also noticed a lot of evidence of nibbling in the vegetable patch: radish seedlings have lost their leaves overnight.
Well, whether or not this rabbit was the progeny of Blossom and Wild Jack Rabbit, we decided to keep her. We put her on the table whereupon she ran along it and flew off the end, I suppose never having encountered a table before. We held her and she seemed to enjoy being stroked, although her poor little heart was beating at a furious pace. We put him in a basket with some water, hay and leaves and put it next to Delilah’s bed. Delilah called her Thomasina Nibbles Hodgkinson. We warned the children that the bunny may not be weaned and therefore could die overnight without its mother’s milk. But in the morning, Nibbles was still alive. Yes, we said. You can take her to school.
But then, tragedy struck. In a moment of neglectful parenting, we left Henry alone with the bunny. Ten minutes later, Delilah brought a very limp and floppy rabbit to see me. “Her head’s gone floppy,” she said. A frank and full investigation led to the following conclusion: Henry had repeatedly thrown Nibbles high into the ait and let her land on the sofa. We guessed that it was during this treatment that her neck broke. Henry got a stern telling off, and while the kids were at school I composed the follwing epitaph for Nibbles’ grave:
Here lies Thomasina Nibbles Hodgkinson. Rabbit. Brought in by Milly on 10 May 2008. Killed by Henry, 11 May 2008. RIP.
I AM CURRENTLY enthused about the vegetable garden. After suffering repeated attacks from the pony, and from the hens, I decided it was time to spend a little money on fortifying the area. From the start I have tried to keep the vegetable garden spend down to as near nought pounds as possible, and apart from the cost of seeds, have managed quite well. But to lose all one’s hard work as a result of inadequate protection is very frustrating. The general aesthetics of the place were woeful, too: barbed wire and broken gates, nettles in the borders. So I asked my friend Alan to come and help and advise. We bought fourteen fifteen foot rails and a few fence posts. Between each existing fence post we put in a new one. I took down all the barbed wire. We sawed the nails to length and nailed them up, and stapled in chicken wire all around the fence. It now looks a thousand times better, and I have started to tidy up the paths and the beds.
I now proudly present the following list of what is growing right now:
Peas: the variety is Alderman. I have sowed three times: the first sowing was completely lost, I know now to what. Now there are three short rows sprouting, with two more to be sown. You can’t have enough peas. I have put up pea sticks in the form of old beech twigs and bamboo pole bits, plus some spikey hawthorn branches. I’m planning on trying out another method, where you hang pieces of string down for a frame. The peas cleverly grip on to the sring as they climb.
Squashes: I sowed ten courgettes and other squashes on the windowsill and have so far planted out four. Three are protected by cloches: an old see-through plastic box with a stone on top and two scruffy old plastic bell cloches. The fourth has a protective ring of salt and broken egg shells around it. It has a pleasingly magical appearance. This is my plan: to mix up a big load of slat and egg shell and keep it i a sack on the veg patch, for constant use to deter the slugs.
Climbing French Beans. The variety is called blauhilde, and they did very well last year. This year I grew twelve in pots on the kitchen windowsill. I put in a row of willow poles recently cut down from the willow tree, and planted two plants at the base of each. I also sowed two further seeds into the ground by each pole. Then I put up some kitchen wire all a round the bottom to deter animals. I’m pleased to say that so far so good: the sown seeds are germinating and the planted plants are starting to curl anti-clockwise around the willow poles. And it looks rather charming in a Permaculture sort of way. Most pleasing.
Potatoes: I forget the variety but they are first earlies, and most now have sprouted. I’ve also noticed a few others potato plants sprouting, from last year’s Duke of York tubers which must have been left in the ground. So I am attemting to transplant these into the gaps in the main potato bed, but whether that will work or not I don’t know. All in all there must be around fifty to sixty potato plants.
Garlic: this is shooting up. I don’t know why I haven’t gone big on garlic before. It’s very easy indeed. And is supposed to deter slugs.
Lettuces: I sowed a load of Buttercrunch directly into the soil between tow rows of peas. So far they ar growing beautfully, although there are far too many so I will have to throw away or eat the little ones and leave just four or five to grow up. I have cut an old piece of chicken wire and bent it into a triangle shape to protect them. The same is true, by the way, of the peas. I also sowed a seed tray of lettuces, and have now potted on about a dozen, which I will have to find space for somewhere at some point.
Kale: I sowed a load of kale into a seed tray on the windowsill. I have now transferred fourteen of the seedlings to bigger pots and they are sitting on a table in the sun in the fornt garden. The idea here is to transplant them eventually and create a good kale patch for winter greens.
Turnips: They are growing well. I thin them every ow ands then. They were sown by sprinkling rather than neatly in rows and the effect is wilder but I think good.
Parsnips: I planted some parsnip seedlings and they are doing fine.
Chard: A few of the chard plants are growing back, but do we actually like the taste? Not much. I may replace them with spinach and lettuces.
Marigolds: I sowed twleve marigold seeds on the windowsill, and the little seedlings are now sitting in the front garden. My plan is to grow them up a bit and then plant a couple in each raised bed, in the fashion of the French grape farmers who plant marigolds at the end of each row of vines.
Rocket: I have sowed patches of Wild Grazia and Suzette in various pots and corners of the front garden. “You can never have too much rocket,” we have decided.
Parsley: I sowed a patch of parsley on one of the reaised beds and the seeds all seem to have germinated and are growing steadily. It would be nice to have a large patch rather than the two or three feeble specimens I grew last year.
Tomatos, beetroot and carrots: I’m not bothering with any of these this year. The tomatoes in particular were a huge disappointment last year. I can imagine buying a few plants and just letting them trail aroundf the garden in beds, but never that awful busienss with the pots again. All that work for a handful of mediocre tomatoes - no thanks.
Leeks: I sowed them in a seed tray and now I don’t know what to do with them. I think I did this wrong. Must call Alan.
Sweet peas: I sowed them in a circle around the tree stump on the front lawn, but nothing has happened.
Nasturtiums: There are quite a few self-seeded nasturtiums springing up both in the fron garden and in the vegetable patch. I also bought a packet of nasturtium seeds, and on neighbour Caroline’s advice, placed them in the cracks of the dry stone wall in front of the house. This year I will collect the seeds in a brown envelope, as the nursery man advised me when I bought the seeds. “Save yourself a pound!” he remarked. I think nasturtiums are wonderful: they grow anywhere, the flowers are beautiful, they don’t get slugged, you can eat them and it’s easy to collect the seeds. What’s not to like, as they say?
In the veg patch, I have also taken up all the old black plastic that I’d put underneath the paths as a weed preventor. Little bits of plastic emerged here and there and flapped around, making the palce look awful. On top of the black plastic, the wood chips which I put down a few years ago had turned into soil from which sprang grass and weeds. Now I have removed all that, peeling off wedges of turf like a carpet, and flinging them upside down into the border, because I read somewhere that they will turn inot compost if you do that. Now we are down to weedless mud paths, fine now in the dry, but I suspect which will get muddy and sprout weeds. So my plan is to put down strips of old carpet, then cover that with stones and sand. Then we will have elegant stone paths. I have also started building a cold frame out of bits of wood lying around. I have also acquired a load of sheets of glass from our neighbour’s barn, and intend to make frames out of them somehow or other, maybe using the old glassless windows that are lying around.
So thanks to Alan and the good weather, the vegetable garden is delighting me again.
ALAN HAS also provided some good thoughts on our hen situation. As you know, not a single one of the thirteen chickens appeared to be laying eggs. Now, I had seen a rat quite frequently in the hen house: each time I poked my head in, he would scuttle away. It was like a scene from Babe: at one stage, Blossom the white bunny was living in there. I would open the door, and the bunny, the rat and the hens would hurriedly scurry away from the middle of the barn, where it looked as if they had been holding some sort of animals’ council. Well, one day I found this rat in the fed bin, stuck and sqeaking piteously as he tried to jump up the plastic sides of the bin, and instead of shooting it as I should have, I got the cat and let the rat out. It disappeared through a hole in the wall while the cat looked on. Now, this clever rat, said Alan, may be the cause of our problems. He and his mates are probably stealing the eggs as soon as they are laid. We’ve been providing him with a no-effort food source. Now, that day, thanks to this insight, I policed the henhouse, visitng every half hour. Each time ratty scuttled away, and at around noon I found two eggs. Alan also drew out attention to another nest: Delilah had seen a hen in the hedge. “It’s stuck,” she said. It ran away when the kids approached. “Could be a nest,” said Alan, and a nest it was: I hpsuhed the brambles aside and found a fresh egg sitting there, and the shells of old ones. Alan advised to discourage the hen from returning to the nest by taking the eggs and messing it up. So now we had a total of three eggs, directly attributable to a new level of understanding. Arthur has put them in a box and marked it “Town Farm Eggs, Free Range, Arthur Aged 8, we hope you enjoy our eggs.” Clearly he has an insticnt for marketing. He has also put the price up: doubled it, in fact, from last year’s 60p for six to £1.20. If quizzed, I suppose we could blame the credit crunch, or even rising fuel costs. Although we have no fuel costs. We just use our legs. Maybe we should reduce the price slightly. £1 per box? This morning I put a cat in the henhouse to deter the rats, and we are going to keep them locked in there until one o’clock, to encourage them to lay in the right place and not the hedges. Yes, we will not give up! We will never surrender!
ENDS
06 May 2008
Thanks to everyone who came to our May Day Riot on Thursday May 1st, during which we managed to roast and eat a pig on a traffic island in central London, without having asked for permission.
We had first attempted to roast the pig in the small park in Clerkenwell Close, behind the church, but the local vicar put a stop to that plan for merriment.
We then carried the hot pig and the two burning log baskets to Clerkenwell Green itself and continued to cook the hog there. We’d like to say “Thanks” to a local council man who could recognise the good spirit behind what we were doing and told us to carry on. At around eight thirty, it was ready, and we gave out hog roast buns with apple sauce to the assembled Idler friends, readers and local residents.
It was interesting to note that of all the authorities, council and police seemed to let us get on with what we were doing, but the church did not.
Anyway, you can read Stevyn Colgan’s blog about the event here.
I think it should become a May Day custom: gangs of rogue hog roasters roaming London and cooking up and doling out on the streets.
24 April 2008
I’VE JUST read a diary entry I wrote for 15th March, but never posted. It makes for rather depressing reading: “Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Children and wives wreck everything… the pony is just an expense and a hassle, and now we’ve got this new puppy. Do the children look after it and feed it? No. They’re stuck on the computer… Brave New World has conquered. I have lost. Goodbye.” Yes, it’s been a depressing couple of months. The English gloom never quite seems to clear. Occasionally, very occasionally, we are treated to a bright, sunny day, and all seems right with the world. But the next day, the gloom descends again. This bad weather combined with the sorry state of the nation makes for a miserable outlook. The bureaucrats attack from all sides. In my case, I have had another call from the pig police. You’ll remember that so far we’ve had a home visit, two phone calls and a letter from the Food Standards Agency. To add to this onslaught, I received a phone call in late March from Devon County Council, asking me what I did with the pig by-products, the heart and liver and so on. I said that we’d thrown it away. Also, we’d eaten the blood and the kidneys and made paté from the liver. The woman on the phone told me that by law we were supposed to have had the by-products transported to an approved incineration facility. A few days later, one hundred pages of bumf arrived in the post, various pig movement forms, record books and the like, and a list of the incinerator companies. None is local. I called one up and it appears that the cost for incineration would be £29 collection fee, plus 22p per kilo of waste. So that would total around £40 to £50. Well, the bureaucrats have done their job well. I am thoroughly dissuaded from ever keeping or killing pigs at home again. It all seems like far too much headache. Better go to fucking Tesco’s for my plastic-wrapped bacon and watch TV every night with my cans of Stella. That’s the modern British ideal.
THAT AWFUL dog Lulu, our neighbour’s Scottie, came round again yesterday. She yelped, whined and chased chickens, and that was bad enough. But then she did something worse. Earlier in the day two ducks had arrived, a pair or mallards. Delilah and I talked to them and told them we hoped they would stay. I said that they were looking for somewhere to bring up their fmaily. So we made encouraging noises, and the ducks stayed all day, waddling up and down the stream, and investigating the pond. Then Lulu arrived, saw the ducks, chased them, whereupon they took off into the sky, quacking noisily, and never returned. Thanks, Lulu.
THINGS in the vegetable patch are very slow indeed. The potatoes show no signs of sprouting. The broad beans have finally germinated and are about an inch tall. A few of the peas have emerged above ground, but only a handful. Some animal had dug up one of the pea trenches. The radishes and turnips have all germinated and are thriving: I really think turnips are a good bet. They are very easy to grow, delicious and unusual and also they’ve got that medieval vibe. Also the garlic is doing well: I put a load every foot or so around the sides of one bed, and they’ve all sprouted beautifully. Again, garlic is a very good bet as it’s easy to grow, deters slugs and should save you a lot of money. On the window sill I have sowed kale, leeks, marigolds, blauhilde purpple climbing beans, courgettes and a variety of squashes, the seeds of which were sent to me by a kind reader last year. I think seed collection is the next step. Sometimes I hope for a global financial collapse of some sort, so we can really concenrate on the smallholding, despite the setbacks and my grumbling, it is a hugely enjoyable way of life.
THE HENS are looking much prettier and plumper, their feathers having grown back. But still no eggs. Our landlady says that they will start soon enough, though. So I am feeling less despondent on that score. They are sharing their coop with Blossom the bunny, who is proving to be good entertainment. But I am considering banning after-school computer sessions. Arthur runs straight through the kitchen on his return form school and plugs in immediately, which I find depressing. “You wrecking your chldhood!” I exploded at him the other day. How was your childhood? What are your memories from four to fourteen? “I stared at a screen.” Instead, they should play with the animals. Surely once released from schoo, chldren should want to run outside and play! Oh woe and alack! What is the world coming to? Hemmed in by interfering do-gooders, oil prices going crazy, bureaucrats halting any attempt to live freely, smoking banned in pubs, drinking banned on the street, pubs closing every day. Our village shop and post office will probably close next year. The wonderful Royal Mail service is being slowly destroyed as small post offices are closed. And the the shop is simply not busy enough. That’s because all the brain-washed television-watchers of the village obediently troop off to Tesco’s to do their shopping, shunning the shop on their doorstep. Or they get the Tesco’s van to deliver to them. It’s the same in other nearby villages. The villagers themselves do not use the local shops. Our local butcher recently closed down and now he has a job working for - Tesco’s! Why? They are sending their hard-earned cash straight into the pockets of the Tesco’s shareholders, making the faraway rich richer and the local poor poorer in the process. Last week I read in the papers that Tesco’s announced record profits. Wake up, England! Is everyone fast asleep? Can’t you see what’s happening! BOYCOTT TESCO’S! Get on your bicycles, grab your shopping baskets, go to your local shops! Burn down the supermarkets! There will be nothing left soon, nothing except vast retail parks selling sofas and pizzas, surrounded by crumbling roads. WAKE UP!
ENDS
08 April 2008
It is hereby announced that there is to be FEASTING and REVELRY on Mayday, Thursday May 1, on CLERKENWELL GREEN in London, from 6pm, to celebrate the release both of Idler 41: The QI Issue, and the Book of Idle Pleasures, both published by Ebury. Copies of the books will be available to buy and the authors will be present. Bards, jesters and musicians will promote merriment, and there will be ale-drinking and carousing. At 9pm we propose to repair to the THREE KINGS of Clerkenwell Close. All the loafers, loungers, ne’er do wells, gate-leaners and layabouts of London Town and beyond are welcome to attend.
13 March 2008
An extended version of Tom Hodgkinson’s Guardian article on the people behind Facebook is today released as a pamphlet. “We Want Everyone: Facebook and the New American Right” is typeset, printed and hand-stitched by Christian Brett of Bracketpress. The 20-page pamphlet comes in a limited edition of one hundred numbered copies, with a light blue hand-printed cover. It costs £5 and is available now from the Idler shop.
27 February 2008
27 February 2008
LAST WEEK we brought home fifteen chickens. We want to get serious about egg production. Victoria had gone to get them from a big organic farm, for only one pound each. Organic they may have been, but elegant they were not, and rarely have you seen such a raggle-taggle band of scrawny brown hens. Two or three had the full complement of feathers, but the rest seemed to have lost all the feathers around their neck, or on their back, making for a distinctly unappealing look. It seems that these organic farms are still run on quasi-industrial lines: really these hens look like ex-battery farm inhabitants. I spent the afternoon in the chicken barn with a few planks, a saw, a hammer and nails, and managed to knock up a couple of reasonable looking long nesting boxes for the critters. I also arranged an old elder tree in there, with the intention of providing a roosting spot. I was quietly pleased with my work. The next day we opened the door at elevenish and found a few eggs, which was mighty satisfying. We’ve really missed having chickens over the winter. The next day we brought home a cockerel for them. Now the brood had been pretty noisy, but when Victoria let the cockerel, a mighty Dorking, into the barn, there was a sudden hush. Perhaps they’d never seen one before. Perhaps the effect could be compared to George Harrison walking into a room of giggling fifteen year old teenage girls in 1964. I don’t know.
After three days confinement in their barn, we opened the door. Most of them strangely, stayed inside. “They were terrified!” Victoria said. I suppose that they’d become accustomed to the lack of freedom on the organic farm. Scared of freedom. But with each day that passes, they seem to venture a little further from their front door, and it’s great to have the soothing clucking sounds of contented hens around the place once more. We worry about the fox, and so to that end we’ve contacted a local fox shooter. He is going to come and walk around the farm one evening with his shotgun and try to track down the fox. Of course, the fox may or not be there: the last time we saw him was last Autumn when he ate every single one of our chickens.
MORE PIG NEWS: after our visit from the local environmental health, and letter from the Food Standards Agency, both of which told us it was illegal to kill pigs at home, it appears that the legal situation is not clear. A local radio station called me to say that they’d contacted Defra, and Defra had told them that it is not illegal to kill and eat your own pigs at home. I’ve written to the press office at Defra in search of an authoritative answer, and in the meantime, you can check out my new website, www.thislittlepiggiestayedathome.org. I want it to be a repository of all things piggie, from legal situations to porcine poetry, literature and philosophy. I want to bring back the independent spirit of William Cobbett. Maybe we’ll even have a pig art gallery up there one day.
UP ON THE VEG PATCH all is not great. After the pony ate it, I confess I was little disheartened by the whole thing, with the result that I neglected it for a long while. It is now in rather a sorry state, grass everywhere, broken glass, bits of black plastic, orange peelings that have escaped the compost heap, brambles and weeds. My seed order came yesterday, though, so that will I hope motivate me to get tidying and sowing. This year I’m majoring on broad beans, French climbing beans and peas. Also I hope cabbages. I will do one bed of early potatoes, and a side bed of squashes of various kinds. Beetroot and carrot are never great so I may not bother. I will dig up the old strawberry plants to make room for more veg. And we are going to do a load of shallots again, as they were fairly easy last year. As far as fertility goes, I am continuing to stick to the idle gardener’s “no-dig” idea, and instead of strenuous spade-work, I am piling straw and horse manure onto the beds. Now we have the chickens, we will have a new source of excellent manure. Remember that Fukuoka’s method of retaining fertility in the soil is simply to lay down straw with a bit of poultry manure. The cold weather has slightly put me off going out there to sow seeds and plant things, I’m ashamed to say. But really I think I need to get the broad beans in there TODAY.
MORE ANIMALS are coming. My mother would be horrified: “why have you got all these animals?” she shrieked on her last visit—over a year ago—as a hen walked through the kitchen and shat on the floor. Next we are getting a dog for Arthur and a bunny for Delilah, for their birthdays. The dog is a well-bred black labrador, which I hope to take out hunting for pheasants and rabbits. Yes, I know they have a Sloaney reputation, but all things considered, we reckon they’re a good bet. They’re called shooting dogs. Arthur and I have started training ourselves to shoot with the .22 air rifle, by taking shots at tin cans which I hang in the trees. Soon we’ll go out and find pheasants, and the dog will retrieve. Apparently they can carry an egg in their mouths without breaking it. So the dog will have a practical purpose, unlike the pony, which we are told is too old to pull a cart around, so there goes that profit-making venture. Delilah will get a white bunny. She is still angry with Victoria for killing Rosie Blossom Brownpatch two years ago. She was a lovely bunny! The bunny I think will live in the house, at least at first. Maybe later it will join the hens.
ENDS
27 January 2008
The New Economics Foundation’s excellent new collection of essays is out now. Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth? is an inspiring anthology with polemics from Oliver James, Rosie Boycott, Colin Tudge and Idler ed Tom Hodgkinson. It offers a cheerful reflection on the possibilities of a life beyond capitalism.
Buy it here from Amazon
Tom Hodgkinson is giving a talk at Tapeley Park in North Devon as the guest of North Devon Active Youth. It’s one of their Reel Indi film nights, and they are showing The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, Gregory Greene’s 2004 movie on peak oil. Sponsored by Marshford Organics. www.myspace.com/northdevonactiveyouth
Wednesday 6 February, Tapeley Park, Nr Instow, North Devon.
7pm, £2 suggested donation
15 January 2008
Here is a nice little film from Adbusters magazine to launch their Slow Down Week:
http://www.adbusters.org/media/flash/slow_down_week/
Here is a link to my piece on Facebook, published yesterday in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
TH
08 January 2008
WELL, you try and do something good and you only get hassle. Yesterday morning we had a knock at the door from our local environmental health officer. He had come round to tell us that according to a law that was brought in two years ago, what we had done with our pigs—that is to say, have them killed at home— was illegal. You are not allowed to kill and eat your own pigs. The law says that you have to take them to the slaughterhouse. This is, they say, so they can be checked by the slaughterhouse for disease. We argued that it is surely more humane to have them killed at home, because the pig does not suffer the stress of being bundled into a van and then lined up on the racks in an unfamiliar place and killed. He actually agreed that meat that has been killed at home, stress-free, tastes better than meat that has gone through the abattoir. So that is why our meat tasted so good: because it was killed at home. But that is illegal now. Our meat is illegal. So that means that pork that tastes as pork is meant to taste is now illegal. No one will be able to try it unless they don’t mind outlawing themselves. Also, an age-old custom has been outlawed. For millennia, smallholders have killed and eaten their own pigs. It is the basis of the cottage life. And today around the round, from Mexico to Moldavia to Uruguay to Africa to Vanuatu, country people kill and eat their own pigs. But we are no longer allowed to do this in the UK, where they would prefer we eat meat that has been appallingly treated in factory farms than compassionately and humanely give the pigs and happy life and an instant death. And surely the it is a basic human right, to raise and kill and eat and share your own animals. Insane, truly insane.
ENDS
22 December 2007
Right-click-and-save this link to listen to Tom Hodgkinson talking about The Freedom Manifesto on the Dr Alvin Jones show, North Carolina and the world and click here to get the book from US Amazon.
21 December 2007
The Idler office is now closed for Christmas. We’ll be back on the 9th of January to deal with all your orders. Thanks so much to everyone who has ordered subscriptions and t-shirts and books from us this year—those orders really help to keep the magazine afloat.
Have a very merry time.
17 December 2007
Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Free is published today in the States, under the title The Freedom Manifesto: How to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, Work, and Waste (yes, they do like these long titles, don’t they).
Following a glowing review in Slate, the book is climbing up the charts and we hope to rekindle the great American tradition of freedom, reclaim it from the neocons, and give it back to the Whitmans, the Kerouacs and the Keseys of this world. Down with Facebook! Up with hoeing the cabbages!
19 November 2007
Today I’m digging Lord Byron’s famous love poem, “She Walks in Beauty”. Byron, we remember, was the only member of the Houses of Parliament to stand up against the frame-breaker’s bill, which made being a Luddite - ie, smashing up the new machines, into a capital offence. Love and freedom, then, were his passions.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
08 November 2007
Today’s poem is another Edward Lear favourite, The Owl and the Pussycat, that delightfully romantic ballad about running away together and dancing by the light of the moon. It is nice, I think, that it is Pussy who proposes to the Owl, when convention might have suggested the other way around.
I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
II
Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III
‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
On a heavier note, I think everyone should read this article about the people who run Facebook.
TH
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"The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."