Pressure!

Hello again

My kids want a dog, they really want a dog, they don't want to hear excuses, they don't want to hear justifications for not getting one - they just want a dog.

I have had to resist in a grown up parent kind of way, spouting on with "who's going to take it out", "who's going to clean up after it" etc but mostly I have resisted because we don't have the right sort of car to move a dog in; I have an Audi TT and my wife has a Fiat 500, neither of which can accommodate a dog cage - what am I supposed to do?

I thought that this kind of logic would make sense and that they would "understand" the point I was making. Sadly not, all they hear when I resist is "no" followed by "blah, blah, blah" and nothing except "yes, let's go and get a cute puppy" will do.

Just to ram the point home, they went to their school Christmas Fair on Saturday and returned with a little reminder for me!!

Until next time...

Punk - a trip back in time

Hello again

The Haunch of Venison Gallery in Burlington Gardens has done it again. Their latest exhibition, Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper is fantastic.

It captures a moment in time during the seventies when Punk scene burst into the public conscience. The moment when the country first had to face up to the snarling, spitting aggression of anti-establishment, the in-your-face names of the bands, the mad hair, chains and safety pins. Punk was a new movement that took no prisoners, it didn't want to be liked, didn't want your respect and definitely didn't want your approval.

The exhibition is a collection of posters, fliers and fanzines from the early days of Punk; a fantastic mixture of uprising, anger and innocent naivety.

The style and quality of the imagery really do two things: 1) it demonstrates how Punk really did come from the underground and rose up to challenge society and 2) it demonstrates how far graphic design has come in that time.

The early posters are handmade and then photocopied using images cut out and pasted onto a master, often with hand-written instructions about where, when and how much the gigs were. In terms of quality (not content), these are the sort of posters my young children make today. These fliers & posters were really crude; both in the sense of them being graphically unsophisticated and often in the sense of being vulgar. But that is part of their charm, punk challenged everyone, it was deliberately over the top, it wanted to upset you, it wanted to get under the skin of the establishment and it succeeded.

In the (slightly) later posters, you can see how the record companies must have seen the pound signs flashing and seen the opportunity to take advantage of the situation. They instinctively brought in the professionals to promote the bands and take them to the main stream. In the sense of the punk movement and music this must have looked like "selling out" but the upside of this is that they took the graphics to a different level and produced what are now iconic images of the 1970s eg the Public Image Limited and the Sex Pistols branding .

A really interesting half hour in an excellent gallery, just off Jermyn Street. Go and see for yourself.

Until next time...

Watch out for evil Guinea Pigs!

Hello again

I need to tell you about a terrifying experience I suffered this weekend.

My daughters have a Guinea Pig each; Polo (nearest the camera) and Cookie (in the background).

On the whole, I have no issue with their existence alongside mine, the girls love them, my wife loves them and they in return love the girls and my wife. When the girls or Teresa walk past the cage, Cookie and Polo put their front paws on the cage and tweet hellos to one and all.

It's not the case with me though, I get angry chirping noises. That aside, the pigs and I get along ok and although I occasionally try to buy there affection with celery or broccoli, we all know the real truth

On Saturday, I was sitting on the sofa minding my own business, fiddling about on my iPad whilst the girls and my wife had the Guinea Pigs out for a cuddle on the same sofa (I don't cuddle the pigs, I'm not keen on all that scratchy, scrabbling they do). Then, without any notice Polo leapt from my daughter, straight onto my throat. It was terrifying, like a flying fox jumping from one tree to another or that film with the vampire bats attacking the man. Shocked and terrified, I screeched like a little girl "get it off, get it off" only to see my wife and daughters laughing hysterically at the situation. After a few moments Daisy (9) picked it off me, still laughing.

The girls believe it was "just trying to say hello" but in hindsight, I think the Guinea Pig was giving me a warning - a bit like Chukky in the Child's Play horror film.

My card is marked

Until next time.

Bowood House

Hello again,

I had the pleasure of visiting Bowood House in Wiltshire last week. It is a really good example of an English country house, garden and park and well worth the time for a visit. We had the added pleasure of being escorted round the house by Lord Lansdowne who's wonderful enthusiasm really brought the history to life.

Like a lot of country houses, it has had a very chequered past with layers of history built by the family and, to top it off the parkland was designed and built in the 18th Century by Capability Brown and contains one of the best cascades in the country, designed by Hamilton.

Go see it

Until next time...

Look up and enjoy life

Hello again,

With busy lives, distractions and a world focused on doing it, doing it, doing it, it's easy to become jaded and not see the obvious beauty around you, beauty in many different forms.

Enjoy

Until next time...

Stuff it!

Hello again,

Knowing my peculiar penchant for unusual stuffed animals, we paid a visit to the Haunch of Venison gallery on Saturday, to look at Polly Morgan's first solo exhibition of taxidermy art, called Psychopomps.

This is taxidermy at another level; no sign of glass covered wildlife in "realistic" settings. Instead you see a flock of tiny finches flying up and taking with them their cage - stunning.

Luckily, at the same time, the gallery have a big, mixed media showcase of the Portuguese artist, Joana Vasconcelos. It is stunning: a darkened room with a maze of fibre optic flowers to follow, massive textile creations of embroidery, knitting and crochet, giant sized porcelain creatures wrapped in lace, a mechanical, factory style merry-go-round with porcelain dogs hanging by their collars and classical lifesize figures encapsulated in beautiful, black, skin tight lace.

Honestly, this exhibition is well worth going out of your way for, the images simply don't do it justice. Great, thought provoking work work in a fabulous setting. Don't muck about, just get down there and see for yourself - now, go on...

Haunch of Venison is at 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1S 3ET.

Until next time...

Parkour

Hello there,

It's been a while since I blogged, am now getting back into it and will be reliable from now on.

We were in London yesterday, on the South Bank, just mooching around, seeing what was going on, looking at a couple of exhibitions, having something to eat and watching the world go by.

Amongst the skateboarders, street painters and bmx riders were the free runners. Free running is another name for Parkour [taken from the French, parcour or obstacle course] and is the art of running gracefully whilst using gymnastic prowess to navigate ones way over, across or around everything in the way including bridges, walls and buildings.

I was particularly taken with the Parkour[ers], they are great to watch, get down there and see for yourself.

Aside to that, I was also quite pleased with this photo, which was taken with an Iphone no less because I didn't have my Nikon with me.

Until next time...

Communal art

Hello again

There is something afoot in Richmond Park; neatly stacked sticks and branches forming dens, camps or even dinosaur skeletons (see image).

On a trip there last week with my daughters, we happened upon a number of these man-made, low tech structures. I don't know who has built them or why (maybe someone can enlighten me) but they are great.

I like to think that they are built by everyone who ambles by. That each visitor adds a stick or two and that they evolve from nothing, with no design, no instruction, no title or label, no purpose, no point, no ownership and no explanation. Just in case that is how they evolved, I added a couple of sticks of my own - now I belong??

Until next time...

Just plane crazy

Hello again,

The world without aeroplanes is a different place. Since the unpronounceable volcano erupted and spewed its cloud of dust into the sky its as if we have been transported back to the 1940s, a world without significant air transport.

It seem strange that a cloud of dust can bring all air transport to a halt – indefinitely. If I were a conspiracy monger then I might be tempted to think that there is something else to this - a cloud, bringing an entire industry to a standstill, it just doesn’t make sense. Surely a cloud of dust must behave fairly predictably and that it can be tracked and defined by governments, agencies and the met office. If so, why on earth don’t they just fly around it?

I understand a 747 flew into a dust cloud in 1982 and lost all four engines for fifteen minutes by which time it had glided down from 36,000 feet to 12,000 feet. The pilot managed to restart three of the engines and land “blind” because the dust had abraded the windscreen and made it opaque. So we know that there is a danger but is the response [of completely shutting the UK airspace] proportionate.

There are now so many people trapped in countries around the world with long waits for flights back into the UK that we are beginning to see all sorts of problems beginning to occur; families with children who should be in school, people on medication who are running out of tablets and, if the latest dust cloud makes matters worse, what about the UK nationals who are stuck abroad and cannot vote in the forthcoming elections.

On a different tack, my office is beside the flight path for Heathrow airport and until last week a plane flew overhead every minute or so containing cargos of people, products and produce; a constant supply of exotic, out of season fruit and vegetables to which we have become accustomed. Maybe this break will just make people think about the food miles that there dining incurs; tomatoes from Saudi Arabia, asparagus from Peru and Sugar Snap Peas from Guatemala.

From an environmental point of view, the issue isn't wholly the transport of food; for example, apples are harvested in the UK in Sept and Oct. A percentage are sold immediately and the rest are put into a cold store to preserve them. They are gradually brought out of cold storage to be sold and for the most of the following year, until late spring/early summer, represent good value in terms of carbon footprint. However, by the summer the apples will have been in storage for 10 months and the amount of energy used to refridgerate them for that period is greater than the carbon cost of transporting them from New Zealand. So strictly speaking, if you are buying apples in August and September then buy New Zealand apples.

What I am saying is that, like most things, it isn't a pure science and that the real lesson is to eat seasonal produce. Learn to enjoy the seasons and the food that is associated with them. Look forward to the brief window where asparagus is available in the UK; simmered gently and served with hollandaise and a soft boiled egg. When the asparagus is finished, enjoy the broad beans; cooked in oil with Chorizo. When the beans are finished, revel in the new potatoes; served simply with butter and mint and for a flourish add lardons or anchovies.

You get the point, focus on seasonal food, look forward to it and then allow yourself to enjoy it with real gusto. Why? because there is not guilt attached to eating healthy, local product that is in season.

For now though, whilst it lasts and the planes aren't flying, enjoy the peace and quiet, listen to the birdsong and enjoy the fact that there isn't a constant whiff of Kerosene in the air.

Until next time...

Launching a new service

Hello again,

As I mentioned in a previous blog, we at Waterwell, have introduced a new service for our customers.

Having a customer service ethos and a background in horticulture and having been installing garden irrigation and lighting systems for so many years we reckon understand plants, gardens and most of all people, and what they want.

It was for this reason that we have introduced the "Planting Your Garden" service, instant gardens for busy people. Think of it as "off the peg" rather than "bespoke", a simple solution to improve a garden quickly and easily with minimum fuss and bother.

If a client is fed up with the look of their garden and wants to update it for the summer, replant it for the future or just "dress" it for a garden party or family occasion then "Planting Your Garden" is the answer. Waterwell can come in and refresh the garden; create a totally new look with scent, flower, impact and interest all year.

To achieve this, we have teamed up with Cleve West who has won numerous gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show and he has designed perfect borders and beds that will work every time.

It's easy to organise too, as simple as 1-2-3. The client just decides: 1) which borders and beds do they want to renew? 2) which of Cleve's colour palettes do they like most? and 3) which size of plants would they like? After that we do the rest.

If this is a successful offering we intend to invite other successful garden designers to offer their own planting palettes into the "Planting Your Garden" service so that our customers have the broadest possible choice.

In the first place though, let's see how it goes, fingers crossed.

Until next time...

Why plants are the stars

Hello again

With the advent and subsequent demise of the garden makeover show, we now have been left with a slightly distorted view of what constitutes a garden. We have been led to believe that all gardens need one or more gimmicks to be creditable. I am talking about gimmicks like trellis, decks, water features, terraces, gazebos, ponds, hammocks and all sorts of other paraphernalia. Please understand me, I don’t mean that these elements should never be included; on occasions, one or more of these elements can be a useful addition to a garden but they should not be the essential elements.

When you strip away all the bells and whistles, good gardens are quite a simple mixture of skilful design and the intelligent use of plants, trees and grass.

Good design should lead you effortlessly around the garden, allowing you to pause and take stock before tempting you to explore a little further. Good design should tantalise you with surprises and views. Lastly, good design should me memorable in an indefinable way; you know it’s good design but you are not entirely sure why.

Good planting on the other hand, is the ability to create interest all year around; to challenge the senses with scent, texture, sound and even taste. Good planting is not only three dimensional, it has the added complexities of evolving year by year and changing throughout the seasons. Planting design is an under-valued art that deserves a bigger stage.

Think of the best gardens in the country: Sissinghurst, Powys, Hidcote, Wisley, Nymans, Trelissick and you will realise that the key element is the quality and use of plants and trees. Having visited any of these gardens, you are not left with a mental image of blue trellis, timber decking or “comedy” statues, you are left with a sense of plants and trees.

The definitive measure of a quality garden is atmosphere; does the garden have its own atmosphere? Atmosphere is the culmination of good design meeting good planting. A successful garden should be able to change your mood in an instant in the same way that a piece of art, a film, a play or piece of music can. A successful garden should control and manage your senses and your mood. Finally, a successful garden will linger in the memory for days, months or even years.

So what now?

It’s time garden design and gardening got back to the raw elements of what makes a successful garden a success – how?

• Don’t ever be tempted to do a “garden makeover”
• Think about investing and not spending
• Use fewer materials but invest a little more money in them
• Invest in soil preparation because you will reap the rewards later
• Resist the temptation to buy big plants because smaller plants cost less, establish more quickly and soon overtake their bigger cousins

Remember gardens are about evolution, not revolution and if you use good design wedded to well chosen, healthy trees, plants and grass to create a garden with atmosphere then you have succeeded.

Until next time...

The eco-bandwagon and Dragons' Den

Hello again,

Yesterday I went along to the Ecobuild show at Earls Court. I have been to this show several times over the last few years.

When I first went to the Ecobuild show, it was a relatively small effort, full of enthusiastic Eco-adventurers happy to share their thinking with anyone prepared to listen. It had some of the charm of an undiscovered glade. It was interesting, it had unusual people who were finding their way and were happy to take a different approach to things, not necessarily to make money but because that's what they believed. It was refreshing to be amongst them and it felt good.

Now though, the Ecobuild show is immense. A gargantuan exhibition filling both halls of Earls Court. Every inch of this vast space, stuffed to the gunnels with the big players of industry, so big in fact that I had to photograph the exhibitors list and plan so that you would believe it. The big boys have clearly moved in and plan to clean up. It is hard not to be cynical.

I am not being overly sentimental and I am not a muesli and sandals hippy. It is not the fact that the show is now so big that bothers me, it is the fact that the stage is not longer available for innovators to show their wares, for the little entrepreneur to make his or her way, for the eccentric inventor to have their moment in the spotlight.

Take Dragons' Den for example. The concept is good; innovator pitches to venture capitalists and if they like the product then they agree to buy in and work together. The problem with it is that the whole show is now about the Dragons and not about the quality of the ideas. The ideas should be the stars of the show. It has become a testosterone led, willy waving contest at the expense of the innovators. A big part of the problem is that the Dragons have been on for too long and are not hungry enough to do a deal again at the expense of the innovators.

The answer, give the Dragons only one series each: they won't then think that they are TV "stars", they won't be competing to demonstrate who is toughest and they will be keen to do the deal. The end result would be that the innovators would be appreciated and not be belittled and abused, more deals would be done and the economy might improve.

We have to remember that Britain is famous for creating innovators, inventors and eccentric entrepreneurs and we must find somewhere for them to be free to demonstrate their thinking without derision - they are the future.

Until next time...

We're introducing a brand new service!!

Hello again,

We, at Waterwell, are introducing a brand new service for our customers and this is an unashamed plug for it. The service is called “Planting Your Garden” and it is designed to complement the irrigation, lighting, rainwater harvesting and maintenance services that are currently available.

We all know the cost of re-landscaping your garden can run into tens of thousands of pounds. So what is the alternative if you want to improve your garden and the quality of your life without spending a fortune?

The answer is to try Waterwell’s new “Planting Your Garden” service.

Waterwell has always focused on providing new services to make life easier for our customers and “Planting Your Garden” is no different. This is your chance to refresh and revitalise your garden for the summer with new plants. If money is tight, it is madness to spend fortunes on paving, walls and terraces when you can focus your money on replanting your borders and beds and laying a new lawn. New plants will provide an instant “hit”; colour, scent, flowers and year round interest - get the planting and lawn right and your garden will always look great.

The process couldn’t be simpler; choose which borders and beds you would like to refresh and identify the aspect of each border (north, south, east or west). Waterwell will then come in, remove existing unwanted plants, improve the soil and plant up your new borders and beds. Using a purpose-designed mixture of shrubs, perennials and climbers, you will have year-round interest with plants complementing one another with colour, form and texture which can then be set off by a new lawn, if required.

For more information email sarah@waterwell.co.uk or tom@waterwell.co.uk or if you prefer call the office on 020 8742 8855.

Phew, romance isn't dead after all.

Hello again,

I know this is a little late (we've been away for a short break) but cupid's arrow struck again on Valentines Day.

I had the idea to make these simple red hearts and hang them from the trees in our garden for my wife to find on the day.

The idea might have been simple but the executions was less so; buy red card (stiff red card is only red on one side), buy red paint (to paint the other side and edges), buy brush (to paint the hearts), buy silver card (to make the arrows), buy glue (to glue the arrows on the hearts), buy cotton (to hang the hearts from the trees).

A couple of hours spent cutting out, painting and glueing had it sorted and then, I was outside in the garden, in my dressing gown, in sub-zero temperatures, way after midnight, trying to hang the hearts from the trees. If my neighbours had seen me I don't know what they would have thought. Luckily they didn't see me or at least they didn't let on.

The end result was rather nice though, slightly surreal and very peaceful to watch them slowly spinning around - ahh, points in the bag;)

I think I'll stick to irrigation and lighting from now on though, it's something I know a bit more about.

Until next time...

New year rant #1

Hello again,

More snow eh! I bet you've had enough of it now, even the kids are bored with it. We all love the initial snowy scene on the first morning but that soon turns to frustration when we are stumbling about on ungritted pavements, sliding sideways downhill in our cars and having to arrange childcare because schools are shut. Then the snow turns to ice and it all gets dirty and unpleasant.

My irritation is none of that, (rant time) I am fed up with the BBC news and weather departments for two reasons.

Firstly, the news department appear to enjoy the suffering of others; reporting pointless, self-evident nonsense from wherever. They hurridly dispatch an outside broadcast unit to anything, including the reporting of the weather. We are not to be trusted to imagine what four inches of snow on Dartmoor might look like, we have to put up with someone showing us. On Saturday evening they had some dreadful shouty woman reporter on the TV, standing on a bridge over the A3 in Surrey yelling "It's minus 2 degrees and it's been snowing solidly for 2 hours" To translate "It's a UK winter, unsurprisingly at night it is just below freezing and their are a few flakes of snow in the air".

These outside broadcast units are everywhere, turning up in 4x4s, like middle class vultures at a Waitrose kill. What a waste of the license fee. Why, when there is some horrible train or plane crash do they insist on camping out for weeks on end and making every report from the site? What do they think that adds? It's all too goulish and voyeuristic for my liking. Someone at the BBC needs to consider the costs of such activities in relation to the benefits that may (not) be derived by the viewer. Minimise outside broadcasts and use the money for something creative.

Secondly, the weather forecasters (especially the BBC) have just got in the habit of overplaying the weather. Whether (excuse pun) it is to make their industry seem more important or interesting I don't know, but we are constantly deluged with "SEVERE WEATHER WARNINGS" like "Severe weather warning - Blizzards [light dusting of snow] expected in York", "Severe weather warning - Floods [drizzle] expected in Shropshire" and then when the sun comes out we are told to stay inside because we'll burn. They tell us not to make journeys in the snow because we might get stuck, not to drive in the rain for fear of being washed away and to stay indoors in the summer for fear of heat stroke.

The problem is, that although this might make the lives of weathermen and women more exciting than it probably should be, it provides a false perspective on the real events - too much like crying wolf. I suspect that following the 1987? hurricane (when Michael Fish famously got caught out) it may have become a meteorological rule to over egg everything just in case it happens. The problem is though, that it creates a nuerotic society, one which looks for reasons not to do things rather than finding a way to get them done. We didn't used to let the weather get in the way of things; football matches were played in the snow with an orange ball, people didn't used to stay away from work if there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground and schools didn't shut for days on end.

Let's get back to reality; the weather in the UK is nothing to get excited about. For most of the year the UK is cloudy, quite rainy, occasionally sunny, sometimes hot, rarely snowy, often a bit breezy, sometimes gusty and from time to time slippery. Have you got that at the Met office.

Lastly, if you need to know more about meteorology (the science of exageration) then build your own weather station by hanging a small length of string outside your window. Then, each morning study it and compare it with my scientific findings below:

• String moving around - Windy day
• String dry - Nice day
• String wet - It's raining
• String cold - It's winter

Easy eh! Well that's enough of my rantings.

Until next time...

Winter cycling

Hello again,

It's been a little while since I have blogged and I thought I had better get back into the routine again. 2010 is a new year and the beginning of a new decade and with it comes renewed optimism and enthusiasm for life.

Last year I made two new years resolutions: The first was that as a family we would avoid wasting food as much as possible; for environmental and moral reasons it seemed like a good intention and one which we frequently remind ourselves of, even now. The second was not to make any more new years resolutions because, on the whole, they are overly optimistic, unrealistic and doomed to failure. I managed to stick with this resolution this year.

I thought I'd add an image of the new cycling shirts that I designed for our local cycling club (Berrylands Cycling Club). We were keen to have a "standout" shirt that worked from a safety point of view but was also different and made people smile. We have 26 club members with shirts but this was the first official outing on a very cold Sunday morning and only 5 men braved the elements. Imagine what it will be like when all 26 turn out together!! When it happens I will record it and show you.

Until next time...