Snowmail - Channel 4 news

"And so to sheep. At Lydd Primary School, Romney Marsh, Kent to be precise, where the head has raised a school sheep to show children where mint sauce comes into play and how food really happens etc etc. Trouble is, it is now chops o'clock for Marcus the sheep and some parents are upset, complaining their precious things cannot sleep and all manner of weepiness.
Not that I am unsympathetic - this being Kent the poor darlings already have the trauma of the 11 plus to contend with. After which a little abattoir action ought to be a piece of cake, or slice of lamb..."

This wanged its way into my email box this pm from Alex Thomson of Channel 4 news. Oh gawd. More people who think meat comes in polystyrene trays wrapped in cling film. No more burgers for you, chums.

Left, right, left

6am and I push sleepily into the bathroom. Through the windows I can see it's soot black outside. Mind on the warmth of bed my head jerks up as I hear, distinctly, "left, right, left" being bellowed from somewhere close by. My ears strain to catch other sounds, but I can't hear any marching, trudging or even creeping.
My thoughts whirr - too much Survivors - as I imagine the farm is under siege, that the army manoeuvres on Dartmoor have gone further off the moor than usual, or that some militarily trained burglars have decided to try their luck.
Feeble, and more pressingly, cold, I leap back under the duvet, listening hard. No matter how cold it is, the window is always ajar at night, but I can't hear a thing. Half an hour later the dawn chorus gets rolling, cockerels first, then the wild life. There it is again, "left, right, left, right", only, it's not a drill sergeant, but a corvid of some kind. I wonder if it's the same crow that imitates a mobile phone?
My turn to do the animals again this morning, and it's colder than ever. I'm wearing double layer fleece gloves, so thick that my fingers are kept stretched apart. When I open one of the metal field gates my glove sticks so firmly to the latch that I have to take my hand out of the glove and tear it off, leaving a line of the beige nap behind. I walk back from the sheep and there is the welcome of the smoke from the chimney, just visible in the photo.

Who knew the Clangers were pink?

The news is full of praise for Oliver Postgate. If nothing else it reflects the age of those editing the news. Like me, they must have grown up with and loved those surreal, utterly captivating and made-with-bits-of-fabric-and-tin-found-in-the-shed props that populated Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog and the Clangers. I must have watched it on a black and white telly, as I remember the Clangers as grey, while all the photos (and Youtube clips) reveal them as baby pink, and more reminiscent of George, the hippo who starred with Zippy, than a moon-based knitted mouse with an anteater nose should be.
A schoolfriend nick-named me Noggin the Nog for several terms; I never really understood why, but enjoyed the sound it made in my mouth.
I suspect I was getting too old for these delights by the time Bagpuss came on the scene. I liked the soft sepia beginning and end when the soft baggy cat snoozed, but I barely took in the main action; that woodpecker held no charms for me.
I remember the Clangers' soup dragon and the permanent supply of broth from within the bowels of the moon, and as a child I recreated my own version. My bed was its own universe, with everything I needed on hand (comfort, books, warmth, quiet) apart from food. So I imagined little taps and dumbwaiters in the wall by the bed that would deliver goodies on demand. Strangely, favoured deliveries were chicken hearts (the family always argued who got the one from the Sunday roast), and spaghetti - either with meatballs, or in vermicelli form floating in chicken soup. No chocolates or crisps or pop featured, although the odd slice of warm, thickly cut white bread with plenty of unsalted butter surely did, as white was restricted to my Father, and the rest of us gnawed healthily on stoneground wholemeal.
And thinking of animalistic colour surprises, I saw my first kingfisher on the farm this week. Walking across Bull's Field, a particularly marshy, reedy pasture with a deep ditch that runs with spring and rain water no matter the season, I saw a startling bravura of azure rise from beneath the lush ferny undergrowth that curtains the sides of the ditch. It was lost for a moment as it flitted through the black willow branches, and then shone bright against the sky before heading off above the hedgeline. Sometimes it's worth having land so spongy with water that wellies are required footwear even at the height of summer. I wonder if there are fish living in the ditches, or if frog was the plat du jour for my little blue bird?

Western world preoccupations

I know that you can get terribly maudlin about the state of humanity, and spend a lifetime weeping pointlessly into your beer or beard about things you intend to do nothing much about - infant mortality, torture, abuse of human rights and so on. But there are times when media preoccupations are downright obscene considering what is truly important, and when the ability to value what's significant is appallingly flawed.
This whole week's nonsensical fixation on two light entertainment figures having made a daft balls-up made me want to chuck the whole media industry into a large blender and flick the switch. I wasn't madly bothered about the Russian oligarchy losing its roubles, although I had a moment of unsurprised horror when I read that $70 billion of the $700 billion coughed up by the ailing US government to prop up the financial sector would be going to pay bonuses to those workers who still somehow thought they had reached their performance targets.
But what really pulled me up short was a story so utterly horrific that I couldn't understand why it wasn't front page news and the leader for every TV bulletin.

Somalian rape victim, 13, stoned to death.

There aren't many stories in the press that can make me cry with shame and horror. This did.

Hibernating

Hard Hattie is getting slow and sluggish, and I expect to find her snoozing deep in her box of straw before long. She and her cosy box will be put in a rat-free cool shed for her hibernation and checked regularly.
I'm wondering about making plans to join her. What with the BBC ten o'clock news tonight being so very gloomy about employment, money, home repossessions and the like, I think I'd prefer to stick my head in a straw box and wake up when it's all over. How people can lose their homes when governments are prepared to shore up the banks is completely beyond me; why isn't the money going to pay the mortgages instead?
Apparently farming and government spending are the only two areas not slowing down at the moment... and I don't believe that will last. Bah humbug and all that.

Small IS beautiful

I don't know why I subscribe to Spiked; I've probably said it before but their stance (all progress is good, green politics is idiotic, cheap food for all rah rah rah and stuff the consequences blah bleurgh blah) drives me quite wild with fury.
Here they are grudgingly singing the praises of the new Jimmy's Farm spin-off, gasping with surprise that he can find it in himself to praise the new technologies and processes that large scale modern farming embraces.
Not surprisingly the piece made me spit chunks of small scale produced Gouda type cheese (the photo is of a cheese made on the course I attended a month or so back).
What is all this sneering at small scale production? Would you really want to only ever eat ready meals concocted in a factory rather than one made to order at a local restaurant or in your own or a friend's kitchen? Would you refuse to wear a hand knitted cardie and only buy your woollens from Primark?
Brian says: "I don’t believe that we should all know where our food comes from or how it’s produced". What? You're happy that your sausages come from the dregs of pork that you'd never consider eating if it hadn't been made palatable by factory processing? You don't care if people or animals are exploited to keep your guts full and your body warm? It's ok if farmers get shafted left right and centre just so you can buy a £1.99 chicken or get a bogof heap of fruit and veg?
I was in awe of the robot milking machine; you can't produce one celery plant or one pint of milk and hope to keep the world fed - large scale is essential. But small scale operations produce stuff that just can't be bettered. We need both, just like we need to maintain rare breeds as well as commercial strains of livestock to ensure a healthy gene pool. Small is forever beautiful.

Sir Alan says it's ok to lie

Did millions of viewers watch Siralan Sugar's Gerald Ratner moment last night? Did we really see Claire's victory tossed carelessly to a proven liar?
Perhaps I'm being over fussy and prissy, but last week when Lee's CV lies were revealed, I thought his firing was a no-brainer. When he escaped I thought Siralan was keeping him on for a spectacular runner-up firing: "What? Hire a liar and put him in charge of important business in my organisation? Never!". He was obviously lining up Claire to slide into pole position.
But no. Suffering from the myopia that saw the Badger relegated to second place (and Claire is after all the Badger Mark II), Siralan has told the world that it's fine to lie, that we all do it, and promptly picked a prime example of the dishonest charmer breed to represent the kind of person he wants in his organisation.
The brazenness of this decision has all the trappings of the insular view that led Ratner to tell the world that his products were "total crap". Now we all know, endorsed by the small man himself, that his staff are untrustworthy. I can see the painful twisting of Margaret's mouth.
Siralan, it was great tv, but you're fired!

Know thy self

I have been lingering far longer than normal for a book, over Doris Lessing's autobiography, Under My Skin. For a change I haven't rushed at it, but savoured the descriptions of a childhood in Rhodesia and furrowed my forehead untangling the communism of her young adulthood.
Last night Alan Yentob was allowed into her kitchen to make her tea, lots of tea, and we were reminded of a woman who has made the word indomitable her own descriptor.
Age presumably plays a part, or perhaps not after all, but I cannot remember ever hearing or reading someone so absolutely self aware, so understanding of her own nature, and with such a sharp and clear view of humanity. This does not make for a soft experience, for her (leaving her first two children to pursue the life she had to must have been beyond painful) or for us (people are interesting but hardly important). She is revealed as a woman full of drives; her love of the physical, the sexual, the political, the humanitarian, all without caveats, all without delusion.
The programme shows her in 1958, very beautiful and specific as ever, sponsor of the Aldermaston marches, putting an unequivocal case against nuclear weapons, coolly and unemotionally.
To be so clear in ones own mind on any issue, about oneself... how few of us have that rarest of abilities. And if we think we do know our own mind, we mostly struggle to express what we know.
Watch The Hostess and The Alien here.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Enough of lambing and spring. Let's leave the pastoral red in tooth and claw world for some rat race sneering.
I don't know anyone like the competitors on The Apprentice. I have no idea if they are actors or one-offs or clichés of a group that I just haven't come across (other than in the zoo perhaps). They lie without compunction (have they forgotten that they are being filmed, watched and noted?), have the kind of bitter rows I've only ever seen within families, and are, each and every one, vile on a surfeit of ego.
Can you imagine announcing to anyone let alone to the whole BBC viewing public, that you have a high IQ? Serious chips on shoulders and inferiority complexes going on there. Or perhaps you'd feel happier emphasising some part of a self-perceived brilliance? No. The narcissism is of truly Greek proportions.
It makes for extraordinary viewing and tells you everything you need to know about how not to manage people. Not one of the current crop is a simply nice, intelligent person with good or interesting ideas; they are all deeply flawed humans. They will all be fired because of their hubris, human frailties and the will of the gods - aka Siralan (is that one word or two?).
I wonder how they would fare being put in charge of the lambing shed? How would they divvy up the shifts, make sure they had the right equipment and skills, collaborate in a life or death situation, ensure cleanliness and good husbandry? If they can't run a pub grub night effectively (otherwise known as a piss-up in a brewery), they wouldn't stand a chance.
Horrid tykes the lot of them. I watch it through spreadeagled fingers; it's almost unbearable.

Sign up for a free range future

Just the thought of a battery or intensively reared chicken makes me ill. It's time the practice came to a complete stop. Cheap food is not always good food (and never when it comes from an animal). Go and visit Hugh's site to sign up if you feel strongly about this.

Too much on your plate?

On the days you wonder if you have just too much to do and much too much to think about, or have an over-complicated life that just can't be fitted into the days available, it can help to know that others in Devon have taken on even more.
This morning ten lambs and 2 cull ewes went off to the butcher. I come back and sort lamb sales and then start looking at tenders for work and draft something to titillate a potential funder. I pay the wages, look at the cashflow and try and get everything sorted for taking a day out tomorrow to do a cattle course with Dexters.
It's noon, I've achieved a lot, but I haven't had to deal with an escaped wolf, a jaguar that has found its way into the wrong big cat enclosure, a boss who doesn't know when it's time to put down an ancient arthritic tiger, or a bear with horrendously overgrown claws.
Ben's Zoo is Jimmy's Farm with claws. I feel much better now.

Over my ranting body

I watched the news in utter dismay last night. Yup, the civil servants are now downloading information onto discs so that your identity can be stolen and abused. 25 million parents and their children have been added to the hordes who will now refuse identity cards. If the attempted introduction of these cards doesn't create more resistance than the poll tax riots, I'll eat my passport.
(And I can't believe that I actually agree with George Osborne on this).

In awe of the tv artist

For those of us who deeply admire Stephen Poliakoff the BBC have laid out a banquet - not so much a taster menu as a complete blowout. Last week those seeking out rare television drama gems had to juggle whether to record the new adaptation of A Room With A View whilst getting a Poliakoff hit with the exquisite Joe's Palace or vice versa. If your DVD was up the spout you were quite possibly in tears. If you'd watched the reruns of the first two parts of Shooting the Past a couple of days before, I doubt you headed for the Forster.
I remember the impact Poliakoff's Shooting the Past had on its first showing in 1999 - the best evocation of how pictures tell stories that I can recount. A collection being so much more than the sum of its parts; that storytelling is one of the most important attributes of the human race; how the brain is exponentially superior in every way to a computer no matter how large the electronic database; that business schools may be money making machines for churning out mini mes but they do not develop the soul: all these concepts were set out for the viewer. When something is so near perfect, any minor irritant galls, and my ointment's flea was Emilia Fox playing the redheaded leather trousered Spig who lopes and stares to minor effect. Up against Lindsay Duncan, Timothy he can do no wrong Spall and Billie Whitelaw, she didn't stand a chance; eight years on she's still not really fit for purpose.

Next up was Joe's Palace, bringing together worlds so disparate you expect the dissonance to be greater than it is. Unlike some interpretations, I didn't believe that any of the people Joe met thought he was wise, brilliant or clever. He was a young, lonely, inexperienced soul, a quiet boy neither overly naive or worldly. He was easy to befriend, mildly exploited, but saw things as they really were. He was simply the least complicated of the people around him, a cipher with little personal baggage. Chippyness was reserved for all the remaining characters, their baggage slowly unpacked for the viewer.
Holocaust references can jar - like child abuse, its horror can be misused to create undeserved dramatic tension. In Joe's Palace the revelations of the source of the billions that had bought the 'palace' and its contents were portrayed with frightening originality. Jewish men in Berlin forced to crawl naked through the park whilst the women perched in trees chirruping like birds were extraordinary harbingers of ultimate degradation.

Last night we had Mark Kermode head to head with Poliakoff, who openly shared his absolutism; his vision, his script, his work. It's a rare artist that can command control. I could rabbit on about A Real Summer or the fact that I loved The Lost Prince and Gideon's Daughter. I don't care that all the pieces are set in luscious surroundings; there is more than enough cold reality available on every channel every day (and for some good reality stuff see The Street where you can have your Spall and eat it too). All I know is there is more brilliance to come.

Spinal treat

I wasn't planning on doing a post tonight; the lamb korma needs my attention. But the lovely man at The Spine (Guardian accredited dontcha know) has obliged and produced a collided and elided Janet and John that absolutely proves my point that Mr Depp and Ms Street-Porter are Russell Brand's parents. The Sun will carry the full story tomorrow.

Spawned by Janet Street Porter

Johnny Depp and Janet Street-Porter must have been intimate a trio of decades ago and Russell Brand is the result.
Brand's face has peered out at me from the back page of my Saturday Guardian sport section for some while, and although I normally bin the sport pages or use them for firelighting, I would rather read the back of a cereal packet than stare into space whilst visiting the bog.
Trapped with the sweaty muscular thigh pages or perforated 2-ply to choose from, Brand's column was digested. He has good style I thought - wish he was writing about something other than goals, balls and footie players.
And then last week (yes, I am dreadfully behind the times, he is probably already passée), there was Janet Street Porter's voice and character whanging out of Johnny Depp's face and body. A strange cross Atlantic fusion that had me unhover my finger from the remote.
I think I'll ask the clever chap at The Spine to do a melding of Janet and John and see if my suspicions can be validated.

(Mopsa desperately needed to think about something other than MEAT. Seven lambs and two hoggets picked up from the butcher today and distributed, alongside the offal which the butcher smilingly gave me in a huge bag with all the lights so I had to do my Hannibal Lecter bit and remove the livers and hearts from the rest of the innards. Then I plucked pheasants. Don't fancy tonight's dreams at all at all.

From whimsical to strident in one easy step

Cosy in my chair, empty supper plate being licked by one of the cats, dogs snoozing at my feet. Turn on the telly for some Sunday evening soft soap - nothing too enervating or illuminating required.
And then the ads come on and I find myself moving from calm to crazy in seconds. Is it just me or will Boots have to withdraw their new ad within the week? A breathily voiced woman (surely no-one speaks like this for real?) pants over some pseudo scientific face product. We see and hear how this stuff has resulted in women queuing like desperadoes in a state of heightened agitation, giving high-pitched screams, elbowing their fellow women painfully aside, and praised for their innovative use of handbags to bash each other on the head.
What is all this ridiculous stereotyping of women as violent idiots? Considering women must make up the massive majority of Boots customers you think they would avoid wholesale sneering at their lifeblood. We've moved on guys. Get a grip.

The Green Room

Chugging up the A30 in the dark, back from another working trip to London, and having spent the day thinking and talking about theatre, I had a sudden flashback. Aeons ago I worked for a year or so in the Green Room at the RSC in Stratford upon Avon. It was an exciting time. The Swan Theatre had its Royal opening - I was there to see the surprisingly titchy Queen sweep to her seat - with the magical performance of The Fair Maid of the West, and I have been a mega fan of Imelda Staunton ever since.
There are dozens of stories to tell about that era in my life, making and serving breakfast, lunch and supper to the cast, crew and staff while truly extraordinary plays were being made and delivered simultaneously in three auditoria. Gossip flowed with the cans of lager and the mugs of tea. Young, beautiful faces, many of them now middle aged stage, television and film stars and stalwarts, flirted with the already famous and the older backbone of skilled performers and directors.
You couldn't afford to be star-struck; pouring hot tea over Roman sandal clad feet, or burning the longed-for toast after a trying rehearsal would not have been popular, and Jeremy Irons was very particular about his poached eggs. But one day a mother came to see her daughter and they chatted and snacked before curtain up. I cannot even begin to tell you how nervous I was saying my lines: "your cauliflower cheese is ready, Vanessa".

If you offer peanuts, you get monkeys

And if you give chocolate, what do you get then? Recruitment; it's a difficult task and I used to think that interviewing was a two way process, with the candidate sussing out what is on offer every bit as much as the prospective employer. Was I wrong? Are employers struggling so hard to find good staff that they feel the need to give away goody bags, or are they actively seeking out endorphin chasing post-adolescents as task-focussed automatons, manipulated through sweet cravings rather than managed to achieve job satisfaction?
Master Drage caused me to chortle - I thought he was joking about the appeal of the company website and the chocs as a real incentive to join the company, but I'm not so sure. Perhaps I'm just a killjoy and miffed that I was never offered a literal sweetener by a prospective employer. Perhaps that's where Sir Alan goes wrong; he offers such a sugar rush (sorry!) what with his name, the media attention and instant TV notoriety that he gets planks rather than people to choose from.
Very shortly I will be chairing an interview panel to fill the most senior post in a third sector organisation. They will need to lead a great team, achieve a complex set of objectives and give all stakeholders more than a warm, fuzzy, post-choc feeling. Am I bonkers to take it all so seriously or should I be offering a year's supply of jelly beans and give the job to the person who successfully negotiates the addition of Smarties?

(The Beatles insert is entirely gratuitous; any excuse for a good tune and a giggle).

Reasons to be cheerful - part 5

I could put my hand out and touch them - but I won't. I think there are six of them, but can't be sure. When the parent swallow goes off to find food they all rest their chins (do birds have chins?) on the rim of the nest. When mum arrives back they open wide their yellow maws. She goes off to seek further refreshment and the wide-mouths shut, Zippy fashion.

Midsummer madness

On midsummer night you should do something fabulous, and as the stuff on the box is positively appalling tonight, you are going to have to make your own entertainment. The suggestions made to me so far include "sprangling our mangelwurzels" and "spurtling our furtleberries". If you have any idea what these might be, please feel free to share. Alternative activities include: looking mournfully at the drenched hay field; having to water the veg in the polytunnel, because no matter how hard it rains, the rods can't penetrate plastic; hunkering down with a good plate of nosh and the DVD of Casino Royale. Daniel Craig wins hands down. Also hands up, behind his back, etc.