Welwyn Garden City and the Art of Foraging: Blackberries in Sherrards Park Woods

Since I was a kid, I’ve loved scavenging. My mum used to despair of the stuff I’d pull out of skips and bring home. That also extended to blackberry-picking and (more illicitly) scrumping apples. Oh, the lure of free things!

Nowadays, most people seem to have lost the art of foraging. Emily, the kids and I went for a walk through the woods yesterday, along a path lined by brambles. The path is a popular haunt for walkers, so I was amazed to find the blackberry bushes were still full of ripe fruit. Free food! Being ignored! It’s crazy…

The family collected a good haul of the delicious morsels. I made a rather nice blackberry crumble that evening. Thank you to everyone else for ignoring them!

Contrast this with Brittany, where we recently went for a break. Every beach was full of French families ‘foot fishing’ – carrying little picks, trowels and baskets, looking for mussels, cockles and other fruits de mer.

Maybe as the UK sinks further in recession, the art of foraging will see a revival?

The woodland path and the bridge where kids obviously hang out at night.

Humbled

I was humbled yesterday by our neighbour, who I spotted hauling a load of bags back from church. I offered to help and found that she was collecting clothes for inmates (detainees?) at the local Immigration Detention Centre nearby. I knew that conditions were scandalous in these places and made a note in the ‘Guardian reader’s outrage’ lobe of my brain without bothering to do any more about it. I do this with most things that trouble me morally, yet never anything practical or even symbolic about it. Yet the congregation of the local church in a staunchly Tory area are mobilising to help. I feel ashamed of myself.

It’s possibly a hyperbolic analogy, but I suspect that there were people in the communities around Nazi death-camps who were morally – but passively - offended about what was going on nearby or just chose to ignore it for the sake of a quiet life.

What I find most shocking about what my neighbour told me was not that entire families, including babies and pregnant women, are kept in appalling conditions. It’s the fact that the detention centre is run by a private company. Someone in a boardroom somewhere is making a fat profit from keeping families – people who have committed no crime – in squalid captivity.

So what am I going to do? Well, I’ve just joined Amnesty International, I’m giving clothes to the church and researching which organisation I want to join to campaign against these centres. It’s not much, but it’s better than my usual complacency…

Positivity Week: Welwyn Garden City Edition

I spent the day in the chilly house on a windy, rain-swept day, waiting for the man to sort out my boiler (please, stop right there – this isn’t a Carry-on film), so one wouldn’t have thought there was a lot of pleasure to be had (unless we were in a Carry-on film).

But – hold on – I’m now Mr Positivity, so I can identify something that did make me smile.

Having procured my lunch from M&S, I was coming back from Welwyn Garden City’s majestic Howard Centre (it is not simply a mall, it is an architectural wonder that rivals the Colossus of Rhodes or, indeed, the Great Pyramid of Giza) when I saw big clumps of foam gliding along in the wind. Then, as I progressed along the street, I was stunned to discover a winter-wonderland of ersatz snow covering the parklands of our charming little town.

Yes, some moron had put washing-up liquid in that other Wonder of Welwyn Garden City, the Coronation Fountain. Normally I’d decry the idiocy of our nation’s cretinous youth, but today the foam looked both spectacular and seasonal. So that’s my small pleasure of the day.

Scott Walker Made Me Cry

To say that music can have a powerful, often irrational, emotional effect is not an original observation.

After all, it’s the principle behind every single male’s ‘Shag CD’ (or Pooching Playlist for the technically savvy); the hope that a bit of Luther Vandross and Lionel Richie will act like an aural Rohypnol when they’ve got a woman back to their fetid man-pad. However, when music does conjure up a big emotion from deep inside my brain it always catches me unawares.

This morning I was on the 08.14 from Welwyn Garden City, listening to my iPod on shuffle. In between Alexandra Palace and Finsbury Park ‘If You Go Away’ by Scott Walker began to play. For some reason the melancholy tune and Jacques Brelle’s poetic lyrics made me pause and cry.

I must have looked slightly bonkers and have no idea what emotional connection had been made in my head. All I can say is that, for a moment, I was watching London rush by and living that song.

Civilization 3 Addiction in Turquoise

Apologies to my reader for the lack of blog this week (as if it affects your quality of life). I’ve been taking a bit of time to relax and enjoy the rather snow-flecked spring in WGC. I had kind of promised myself that I’d redecorate our turquoise living room (including the removal of the curtains with PELMETS. What a great word that is. Pelmet. Sounds like a newly discovered genital organ. “Ohhh, me prolapsed pelmet’s givin’ me gip today!”) However, as it is, I’ve only daubed the walls with the contents of 8 paint sampler pots and stuck 6 wallpaper samples up. My motivation ran out midway through. Due in no small part to my continuing addiction to Civilization 3.

At least I have the small comfort that Iain Banks is also addicted to the same game. After 3 months of solid Civ, he had to go cold turkey - smashing the CD and deleting all files – to get his latest novel written. Jesus, if I worked at home I’d probably have to do the same thing…

On the iPod today...

I’ve been listening to a fair amount of new music recently, especially in the morning on the train from WGC to King’s Cross. There’s nothing quite like passing through Potters Bar whilst digging a cool tune. Oh, the exhilaration!

Here’s a roundup of what’s currently on me iPod…

The Horrors – Strange House

I was never a Goth during the 80s (although I did fancy a Goth girl named Eleanor at 6^th Form and loved the Sisters of Mercy), but remember the movement vividly. The Horrors have been touted as a Goth revival band, but I think this is unfairly diminishing the excitement of their musical output. If anything they seem to be more of a furious mix of garage, punk and, yes OK, 60s organ-driven Hammer Horror theatrics. I’ve only listened to this album once, but I know I like it. Particularly the wild single ‘Count in Fives’ and the melodramatic opener ‘Jack the Ripper’.

Mr Hudson & the Library – A Tale of Two Cities

I loved the Madness-alike single ‘Too Late Too Late’, so invested in the album by this London band. I’m a bit underwhelmed, sadly. The first 5 songs are really interesting, then it seems to run out of musical imagination. I’m listening to it now, hoping it might be a grower. Albums like this raise the iTunes dilemma – on the one hand, new music is more accessible than ever, on the other hand it’s also more disposable. I now tend to have less patience with albums, giving them less time to get their hooks into me.

Air - Late Night Tales

This is an eclectic mix of stuff from Air’s record collection. It’s nice and melodic, but ultimately a bit wispy and lacking substance. A bit like Air’s music in other words. Mind you, any compilation that brings together the Cure, Lee Hazelwood and Ravel has to be considered a worthwhile listen.

The outro from Layla by Derek & The Dominos

I’m not a big fan of Clapton (any man who pushes his own son out of a window to get a hit is decidedly dodgy), but I was reminded how great the last bit of this song is by a Scorsese/Sesame Street piss-take on YouTube. It was genius of Scorsese to pick out this bit of music and use it in the way he did in ‘Goodfellas’.