New advice from HM Govt to students

Preview of the new UK government poster campaign produced in the wake of the student protests

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Honey - the taste of the burbs

My partner and I visited friends on the outskirts of Melbourne last weekend. They are the proud recent owners of some bees, all lodged in a smartly painted white hive. Keeping bees is not for the faint-hearted. Beyond the threat of stings there is the possibility of "bee thrall" where the beekeeper opens the hive and becomes mesmerised, Quatermass-like, by the fluid motion of the bee commune, forgetting not only why they had opened the hive, but that the hive contains tens of thousands of potentially enraged stingers.

We were lucky enough to taste the first honey from the hive. Tradition has it that the first honey is magical and you should make a wish before you have the first taste. We duly did... and then tasted. The flavours of that honey - squeezed cold into a jar and eaten fresh, no boiling, no added anything - were astonishing. There was liquorice - "ah, they'll have been at the fennel flowers"; there were notes of pear - "the neighbour's pear tree". The teaspoon of honey was like flying through the local back yards. The flavours were like a bee's conducted tour of favourite, fragrant spots. Close your eyes and you're with them. Did I really detect the faintest aftertaste of rusting Holden?

Commercial honey is okay, in the same way that blended whisky is okay. Blended whisky contrives to taste like whisky ought to, generically, but if you want to get into the whole whisky experience: the heather, smoke, honey, peat and goodness knows what else, you need a single malt. Honey, it turns out, is no different.

That first magic teaspoonful has ruined us for all other honey.

Kettling

In the light of recent events in Whitehall, London, where grown men have been beating up children in the defence of democracy  I need to share a quote from Soviet dissident Boris Kagarlitsky:

"Globalisation does not mean the impotence of the state, but the rejection by the state of it's social functions, in favour of repressive ones, and the ending of democratic freedoms." 

I reckon this can equally apply to the idea of Small Government (aka Big Society).  The champions of Small Government imply it will mean less interference in our lives by the state. Events lead me to suspect the opposite will be true. 

For many of school age this was their first taste of how it goes if you use public places to exercise your theoretical right to express your opinions. When I was at school we were always told "if you want to know the time/are lost, ask a policeman." What are we teaching kids nowadays?

Inside the Whitehall Kettle - New Statesman article

Boris Kagarlitsky - Wikipedia biography

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Swiss couple’s reality check in the Maldives

 
Caveat emptor!

If you were from, oh I don't know, let's say Switzerland, and you wanted to renew your marriage vows, why would you go to a palm covered island and have them renewed in a hotel that offers karaoke nights and rides on an inflatable banana as part of its suite of experiences?

Of course, most of the western press are on the side of the couple - falling for the irresistible combo of self-righteous indignation, fundamentalism and consumer rights - so I’m going to skip all the crap-du-jour that the papers are trying to whip up about this. I mean, there may well be hatred, but I would doubt it has religious fervour at its heart. If I was serving cocktails that cost more than my weekly wage, I would probably harbour some lingering resentment of those who lazed by the pool. 

What I wonder is how far removed folks like the Swiss couple are from their sense of place: their sense of home, of where they are in relation to everything and everyone else. Their sense of reality. How can they have thought that going somewhere far away from their homes, friends and family to renew their sense of their place in the world was a good idea? What are they lacking that they need some mystic mumbo-jumbo intoned over them in a language they don’t even understand on a private hotel beach in front of a bunch of people they don't even know? 

It seems as though one of the things that we most want wealth to do is remove us from our fellows. In regeneration projects, if you want to find out about a place you ask the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community as they tend to be the ones spending most time out on the streets, and have the keenest eyes and ears. As you climb the socio-economic ladder you find people more and more removed from their immediate surroundings with less and less knowledge of and engagement with their communities.

For folks like the Swiss couple, it seems the ultimate expression of wealth is the privately-owned island. Those who can’t afford an island go for two weeks in the Maldives, Seychelles or some other self-styled paradise and play make-believe. Make-believe millionaires, make-believe ceremonies, make-believe vows.

Don’t they have a favourite place within walking distance of their house where they could celebrate with friends and relatives? If not, why not? Find one. Get real.

Vilu Reef Beach and Spa Resort

The video - if you really need to see it. You will also get access to the comments... considered opinion from folks who spell Islam with a 'z'.

Sat Nav – the end of hope?

I recently put instructions on the Sensory Trust's web site on how to find our office after an increasing number of visitors found that their sat nav deposited them in a farmyard with no mobile phone reception a half mile up the road. This got us to wondering about the effects of satellite navigation on our relationship with the world.

Back in the days of paper maps we never lost a visitor, but now it happens repeatedly. Even to folks who have visited us before (that is, before they bought a sat nav). How has the sat nav changed our perception of the places we travel through? What is the difference between following instructions and reading a map?

Where we used to move mindfully through a wide landscape of choices and decisions we now hurtle through a tunnel of digitally voiced instructions. There is no room for the side-track and no need for the spontaneous. Indeed, a spur of the moment detour leads to the science-fiction scenario of the computer squawking at you to “turn around as soon as it is safe”.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Those of us who live in urban areas have little chance to experience the natural world at the best of times. Everything from double-glazing and air-conditioning to television documentaries serves to keep our experiences twice-removed. Now, even when we're in it, the wider countryside is defined as a set of destinations that we're locked in to arriving at, “guided” by a tinny voice from the dashboard. Anything on the way is in the way.

Take a look at an OS map of the area around Stonehenge for example. A glance shows that we’re knee deep in prehistoric earthworks for miles around. This incredible richness was distilled for me recently by my (rented car) sat nav as “in 200 yards turn right onto the A344”.

A whole world of experience: history, geography, geology, the environment and landscape reduced to a list of left and right turns. Discovery is written out of the plan; no one gets happily lost.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”. With the sat nav, the only point of the journey is arrival. Can we still travel hopefully?

"I'm late, I'm late," said the rabbit, "I'm late for a disappointment."

"Don't you mean an appointment?" asked Alice, pedantically, "I've never heard of anyone being late for a disappointment before."

The White Rabbit pulled his satnav from his waistcoat pocket and peered at it. "No, it's definitely a disappointment. And I'm late!"

And with that he disappeared down a rabbit hole.

Tomen-y-Mur Roman Fort

Visited the site of the Roman Fort at Tomen-y-Mur in north Wales today. Refreshingly there was a complete absence of interpretive panels to drain every ounce of joy and discovery from the experience and I could Google it at my leisure when I got home. I was able to unearth this page from a rare textbook about the Romans in north Wales edited by none other than George Monbiot.

Regeneration Nightmares Volume 2

Another piece about how our public spaces are formed. Made for the Sensory Trust.