Robert Capa’s Lost Negatives
January 28, 2008
Robert Capa - Lost Negatives - Art - New York Times
Wow that’s a find. I’ve always admired Capa, not necessarily for his work, but for who he was. For the rogue, for the adventure. And for “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”
A Stranger’s Childhood in Pictures
January 20, 2008
About 18 months ago, mooching round a charity shop in Crystal Palace I came across a box of 35mm colour slides. They seemed to depict roughly a year or two in someone’s life. There were summer holidays, Bank holidays, donkey rides, church services, day trips to a zoo and an ornamental garden, family gatherings and finally Christmas dinner. The woman in the shop didn’t know where they’d come from, ‘perhaps a house clearance’ she said.
They’re amazing. This is what photography used to be like for most people. You took the camera out when there was an ‘occasion’ as getting film processed was a bit of a luxury. It’s the sort of photography I grew up with, what is jokingly referred to as ‘Christmas on each end of the film, summer holiday in the middle’. If you grew up in the late 60s/early 70s, you’re childhood probably looked like this too. When you like at images like these, you can squint and almost imagine your family members in the picture.
As this statistic from the National Media Museum says.
‘In 1979 amateurs took an estimated 750 million photographs. By then there were 10 million snap shooters …. Most used between one and three rolls of film a year’
Last November the number of uploaded Flickr images passed the 2 billion mark (in just four years). That’s progress after all, to quote Mat Locke talking about his own kids’ use of technology: ‘What we carved out of rock they take as landscape‘
We photograph everything these days; we’ve made our whole lives one long ‘occasion’. But when you look at these found images, you see not only the rapid change in how we used photography, but how rapidly we’ve changed as a society and as a Nation too.
Anyway, I was planning to do something clever and creative with them, but I (well actually Lee!) never got round to it. So instead, here they are, released under CC (Attribution-NonCommercial) for what ever you’d like to do with them.
Below are some of my favourites. (Full set here) If you recognise a place (or a face!) in any of them, please at a note/geo-tag in Flickr.
People made their own music
Spain had just become affordable as a holiday destination
People still went to Church
Christmas Dinner was still a free for all.
Most people holidayed in the UK
HMS Victory ( I think)
Twister was the new crazed
The Bugle in Hamble (Still there) and super weirdly I went there the week before I bought these slides.
The average family gathering, with tea
Anyone recognise the make of car?
Look at the dresses, the decor, the hair!
Sushi Masterclass at Billingsgate Fish Market
September 16, 2007
beep beep beep…it’s 4:45am and my alarm’s chirping loudly, am I up this early because I’m going on holiday? Nope, I’m going to Billingsgate Fish Market for their Sushi and Sashimi masterclass with Emi Kazuko. I’m in my battered Toyota and driving through the streets of London by 5am and it’s like a scene out of 28 days later, with nothing but me and the odd mini cab taking home all nighters. The sun comes up as I cross Tower Bridge. After a few wrong turns and three circuits of the roundabout underneath Canary Wharf, I eventually find the entrance to the Market. The car park’s packed and hordes of people are coming out carrying large bin liners full of fish. There’s a lot of Oriental restauranteurs who I presume like to see their fish banging fresh and from the wholesaler before buying rather than rely on a third party supplier. I ask two City of London Market Constables the way to the Fish School, and they direct me upstairs to the first floor where I’m greeted by one of the representatives of the Market who along with his two colleagues are also the on site Environmental Health officers. Due to the hideous time of the morning I forget to remember his name. Other delegates arrive and we all shuffle about yawning and watching the market in full swing below, it’s amazing to watch.
About 6:15 we kick off with a short talk and introduction to the market, before heading downstairs. We’re warned about the choice language of the porters, who have a reputation for swearing like…. fish porters. In olden times Billingsgate became a byword for crude or vulgar language. However I’m with Billy Connolly who said there are no bad words, only words used badly. Then we’re down the stairs and exploring the market. The market’s also open to the public, though you probably have to buy a decent amount, it’s not like Borough put it that way. Personally I thought the porters and sellers were a great bunch of guys, laughing and joking with each other, shouting ‘mind your legs’ and half haggling half flirting with the Chinese Ladies buying fish for their restaurants. One even whistled a sort of ‘beep-boop’ as he moves, sounding like the noise large vehicles like buses make when reversing. All of them knew about their products, their sources, their cost, and how to use them. I got the sense that everyone there was a professional, it’s hard work and unsocial hours, and that must keep out a lot of chancers more than other industries. Our guide (what’s his name?! …Let’s call him Dave as it was something English and Biblical), Dave explained how the porter system worked. It’s heavily unionised, and only porters or the managing directors of the Companies can move fish. Porters get paid 14p and pound (I think) for moving fish, which doesn’t sound much, but Billingsgate, unlike any other fish market in Western Europe is a sample market, where fish isn’t bought by auction. And everything displayed is a sample or representation of what the wholesaler has in bulk in the back. And the porters are dealing in bulk orders and so moving large amounts of fish. Dave said that a porter can earn over £500 a week for 4 hours work a day. All porters working in the Market are licensed by the City of London, and it’s a long standing and noble trade. Michael Cain’s dad was a Porter in Billingsgate when Cain was born and there’s some nice recollections from Ted Lewis who was a porter for 50 years here.
Everyone we spoke to seemed interested in talking to us and didn’t mind us being there, I guess because the more we see of this fascinating world, the more we get to understand it and protect it. Billingsgate is right next to Canary Wharf, on land that developers must get wet dreams over. Remember Covent Garden used to be a working vegetable market, now it’s out at Vauxhall and hardly a top tourist destination. Since 2005 there’s been a review of all London’s markets, and talk about moving or consolidating them and rehousing them, probably further out of Central London. I think we need these markets accessible to remind us where food comes from and what it actual is. Other things I noticed about the market was how 80s it was. built in 1982 when it moved from the historical ward of Billingsgate, it had that hexagonal red brick 80s feel. Also all the phones the dealers still used were bright yellow industrial BT models straight from the Maureen Lipman ‘ology’ era that still rang with a bell sound, worked fine though. One stall holder summed up the changing times, sporting a straw boater, a fine moustache and a bluetooth phone ear piece. Dave talked us through some examples, first up Lobster. On the left is a young Canadian male, on the right an older native Scottish female. Lobsters take 7 or 8 years to reach catching age, the female one on the right could have been nearly 30 years old. They’re hard to farm because of their aggressive territorial nature. You can tell the difference as North American ones have a small horn on their noses, where as natives slope down to nothing.
We move round some other parts of the market, but by 7ish the main business of the day is done and dusted and everyone’s finalising and clearing up. At 7:30am (a time I’m normally just opening one sleepy bloodshot eye) we head upstairs back to the class room for a traditional Japanese breakfast cooked by Emi and her faithful assistant Kiko. After breakfast and a coffee we settle down to a lecture on the fish we’d be using during the day from the other expert there, Esme, in the cold room. She talks us through what to look for in a fish, freshness, usage, where it comes from etc. If you see a Mackerel with a damaged jaw, that’s a good sign, as it means it was line caught rather than net caught. Then we suit up with aprons on top of our white overalls and select a mackerel to fillet. This is great fun, then we move through filleting squid, Dover sole and opening oysters. We’re up against the clock now and sadly don’t get time to take apart the sea bass, as we have to move on to Emi’s Japanese cooking section.
I had a great time at the market, it was fascinating to see a side of London life few people ever see. On the one hand you want people to eat more fish as it’s healthy and good for you. On the other there’s the whole question of sustainability, as today’s Times points out, one expert thinks Fish will vanish from British waters in 20 years. At Billingsgate there’s fish from all over the world, and a lot of it is flown in. Dave told us that they can get fish from Florida as quickly as from Scotland these days, but at what cost? It looks like we’re going to have to face some tough decisions about where and how we source our food in the years to come, but it sure is tasty. PS. Hello all the people I met on the course! Please leave a comment underneath on what you thought of the day too. Here’s a link to the best pictures that I took on the day on Flickr. If they’re just for your personal use feel free to download them. If any of you or Emi or anyone from the school want to use them in a commercial way, please ask first, you can email me at eyedropper -at- mac -dot- com Thanks. |
Athena Classics: Tennis Girl
August 30, 2007
My first job after leaving the bosom of my Alma Mater was in the Strand branch of Athena around the mid 90s. We stocked such ‘classics’ as Spencer Rowell’s ‘L’ Enfant’, along with stoner favourites such as ‘I like the Pope the Pope smokes dope‘, ‘Bank of Ganga‘ and ‘Take me to your dealer‘. The obligatory Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison shots and very zeitgeisty at the time was the ‘Choose Life‘ Trainspotting piece. All of which are still available it seems, and all of which were much loved at the time by the hordes of shop lifting teenagers from all over the world who’d ransack the store after their obligatory pigeon feed in the square.
The one poster we didn’t stock however, was Tennis Girl. We’d often get older city folks come in and nostalgically ask for it, only to have to send them away empty handed. Well you can own it again, but instead of £2 it’s now a £300 limited edition signed by the Photographer and printed on canvas, courtesy of Pyramid Posters. (Must need the money, I hate photos on canvas, they looks really cheap) And for the completest, you could try getting your hands on the original dress and racket as worn by Fiona Butler which didn’t meet it’s reserve price in a charity auction last year. There’s an interview with her here.
It’s an odd image in a way. Now derided by critics, yet emulated by comedians and popstars, it’s now firmly part of the national consciousness. It was at the time however, the rudest thing you could get away with on a teenage bedroom wall. Mr Elliot admits his poster is “not a picture I would buy”, but puts its appeal down to the seaside postcard spirit of the image, coupled with “one of the world’s fantasies that you are going to see up a woman’s skirt”. (source BBC). Diane Smythe makes a good point in her leader for this weeks ‘the naked issue’ British Journal of Photography about the impact of Levy’s ‘Raunch Culture’, is Tennis Girl the start of that? Or was that Babs Windsor in Carry on Camping? Or Abi Titmus? Or Manet? - discuss.
Gordon Brown about to visit the Queen
June 28, 2007
Tony Blair - Gordon Brown handover - 14
Originally uploaded by eyedropper.co.uk.
He looked very happy, there was some polite clapping, in contrast to round the corner on Whitehall where every car that went in or out of Downing Street was boooed.
More here http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyedropper/tags/gordonbrown/
Media Guardian
Channel 4 news
BBC news
The ‘Diana’ Express
Difficult one for me this, as a photographer and picture editor for Channel 4 new media. Here’s my personal thoughts.
First off, I think we’re dealing with two separate things, one is the actual story of the photographers - of which the original piece was about, the other is the story of the story which is filling the media. What’s been missing from all the coverage of this I’ve seen, both on TV and the press is this (Source: Channel 4 press release)
• The three colour pictures from inside the tunnel, taken by a passer-by, Mike Walker, were used in a BBC Panorama documentary in the week following the accident and subsequently in another BBC documentary, Diana: The Conspiracy Files in December 2006. They were published in the Sunday Times and one was used in a recent Channel Five documentary.
• The photograph showing the ambulance has been commercially available from reputable picture agencies since 1997 and was used in the Panorama report in 1997 and numerous TV and newspaper reports subsequently.
• The photograph showing Dr Mailliez has been used in the same obscured form as it appeared on the front page of the Sun in July 2006.
So in short we’ve all seen them before (mostly back in 1997) on the BBC, and in the Times and the Sun, both of which are owned by News Corp, under Mr Murdoch, who also owns The London Paper, which ran the headline ‘Princes Pleas ignored‘, oh the irony.
Finally there’s worse images freely available through google image seach for the truely morbid.
The rest of the media, most of whom have been picking the bones of the Diana story for years are just loving bashing the C4 at the moment, this isn’t a Diana story, this is a story about the Diana story, therefore it’s new news and fair game. Lord Puttnam was on the Guardian’s Media Talk podcast the other day calling the film in question a fine piece of journalism, and that the subject is handled with care and in context.
However I personally believe that channel 4 is perhaps unwise to broadcast these images - it’s not because I’m shocked at their content, or out of any real respect for either of the princes, I just think that you can sometimes tell the story better by using less. All that’s happened now is that the original and potentially interesting story has been drowned out in media white noise. Further more I just think this is a poor choice of subject matter for C4. I do however think having the debate afterward is a good thing. This is something that should/could have happened after the Big Brother racism row. Channel 4 had a debate last year (I think) on the Danish muslim ‘cartoon’ affair and actually handled the subject well without feeling the need to show the actual images, why can’t this apply in this case? Of course one final thought is that, like Panorama vs Scientologists, this could all work out to get massive overnights and morning after water cooler moments… Who knows?
Amazing Lambeth Parking Stories
June 4, 2007
Amazing Lambeth Parking Stories
It’s all in the crop…
On Thursday I attended the Picture Buying Fair, organized by BAPLA, (The British Association of Picture Libraries -Yes, there is such an organization) It was rather a low key trade affair, with not a huge amount of display. However it did have an interesting seminar line up, of which I attended three.
The first one I managed to squeeze into as it had already started when I got there at 1pm was Seminar 2: A Word of Advice: Privacy, Censorship and Photography. Which was suppose to take place on the Wednesday but seems to have been rearranged. The speaker was Rupert Grey, who was a real life Judge John Dean style of a guy.Just look at his CV! Not only is he a top media lawyer, but he’s been a cowboy and lumberjack in the Yukon, an oyster fisherman in New Zealand, the official photographer on Arctic expeditions and he’s an 18th Century Furniture dealer! What a guy, bet he’s good for a yarn or two round the table. Like all people who speak publicly for a living Rupert held the floor in the palm of his hand with his beguiling mahogany voice, he enunciated each word like a wine taster chewing a Barolo, rolling it around his mouth.
Anyway, here’s my notes on his talk. His main thesis was the development of a Privacy Law in the UK. At the moment we don’t have one on the statue books, there is no Privacy Act. But recently there have been a number of cases where article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights have been used.
He went on to talk about this picture by Cartier-Bresson. And how perhaps nowadays, you couldn’t publish such a photo without the sitters model release, even though they’re in a public place. He went on to site Peck vs The United Kingdom 2003. In which Geoffrey Dennis Peck was awarded nearly £20K as an image of him brandishing a knife (after a faild suicide bid) in Brentwood High Street was used to promote the virtues of CCTV in maintaining law and order. So the ‘public place’ defense doesn’t always hold water. He then went on to talk about the Gilbert Duclos case in Quebec, Canada. A definition of privacy it seems, like pornography, is difficult to pin down.
He then moved on to the notion that ‘celebrities have the right to make an economic living from their image’. And talked about the OK! vs Hello! case. In summing up, he nodded to new technologies like Flickr and Facebook, and these are changing the public and private realms, see the recent myspace teacher photo episode. There are some very serious issues around privacy at the moment. It was a really interesting talk from someone who not only knew his legal onions, but also was a practicing photographer and new about the issues we all face.
The next seminar I attended was Seminar 5: Back to Basics: Clearing Image Rights for Media Use. It was interesting in that anything useful or thought worthy had to be dug out from under the showreel of Corbis or the plug for Mary Evans Picture Library, both of whom spent time talking about their businesses relative merits.
Paul Brown went first, to outline why Right Managed imagery and ‘personal professional searching’ were still important in this day and age, he then recapped the current rights situation, RM, RF, subscription and micro-payments, culminating with, if it’s just about cost, why isn’t everyone using micro?
Ivan Purdie then took the floor, and gave us a look at some of the work Corbis do, particularly in the commercial sector. First up was an advert for the Italian yellow pages I think, which the Rocky ‘Adrian?!’ scene was mashed up with a chimp trying to deliver something… Ivan dryly commented that this piece shows us, firstly that italian creativity knows no bounds, but secondly that the biggest area Corbis (and I presume Getty) are dealing with now is celebrity image clearance. He then talked about some of the ‘faces’ Corbis represent. On Albert Einstein he said, and I kid you not, ‘He’s working harder now that he ever did". What!? Solving the fundamental nature of the mechanics of space-time and leaving a lasting legacy upon which others are still building or selling computers? (And I say this as an Apple fan). For an interesting take on the use of Albert Einstein’s image, see this tale.
He then showed three images, one of Sydney Harbour Bridge with the Olympic Rings, one of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and one of the Eiffel Tower. The IOC are very protective of ‘the rings’ and are highly unlikely to let them be used on a product that isn’t an IOC sponsor. The Guggenheim, which I visited recently, is also protective of it’s image, and any company seeking commercial use is asked to become a museum sponsor. Finally the the owners of the Eiffel Tower are famous for their protection of their image, so much so that when the city of Paris took back the right to use the image during the day, SNTE copyrighted all shots of it in the evening as they’d added a ‘distinctive’ lighting display. (see here for more details). This was to illustrate the point that buildings can sometimes have clearance rights. Next up he showed an image of a professional golfer on a course making a winning put. He then asked how many clearance issues the audience thought there might be? The answer turned out to be nine. The player, his club maker, Ford, - who sponsored his shirt, the course owners themselves, the people in the background etc. When your business is rights clearance, you naturally want to obfuscate the situation and present yourself as the solution.
This point was addressed by the next speaker, Dominic Young, from News International. He talked about how they use over 250,000 pictures from over 5000 suppliers and how a huge chunk of their budget, perhaps even a quarter, goes on admin. He summed up the newspaper process thus ‘We have an idea, we want to do it, print 3-million copies and put them out on the street 30 minutes later’. He went on to to counterpoint Ivan’s view, saying that you shouldn’t need to clear all this stuff to to make content, though a bit o googling reveals NI trying very hard to protect their own content recently (here). He ended with ‘is there room for a rethink’.
The final seminar was Seminar 6: Adapt and Survive: Challenges for the content industry. Featuring an old work mate, Tom Loosemore, with Lisa Wren from Pearson Education and Daniel Harris, founder of the ‘Lost’ style sounding Kendra Initiative. It was chaired by Tom Morgan from the NPG. Wren kicked off first. She talked about how new media was blowing apart traditional models. For example, the way in which images are costed has totally changed - size, print run, does a thumbnail cost less that the image it pops up? Does that count as two uses or a reuse? She talked about how Pearson had paid in some cases three times for the same image at different times for use it books, CD-ROMs, and a website. Which doesn’t sound good business practice to me.
Dan then went off on one talking about visual search or something. Then Tom came in with the key message ‘you don’t add value through scarcity’. This was met with a rather telling silence. There was a straw pole taken and maybe a third of the people in the room were in archives. The discussion then moved on to the cost of images. One guy talked about how clients won’t pay high prices anymore, and that the cost is being pushed down and down. To which Tom rejoined, ‘well the cost is coming down’. Later he went on to say ‘You’ve no God given right to earn £300 an image’. Ahhh you should have seen their faces.
Later one he explained that if the there was another Buncefield, or 7/7, that the BBC would be totally overwhelmed with user contributions, that the ‘have your say team’ for BBC News numbers what, 10+ people, they would just not be able to process all that information. They would have to use the processing power of the audience to let the key things float to the top.
There was this funny atmosphere in the room, it was as if people knew what was being said was true, and most acknowledged it, but they didn’t want to believe it. They all thought that there must be a way out. There were two mature ladies (Hope they don’t mind me saying that, one admitted to the room, she was in her late 50s) who ran a picture library, one voiced the idea that eventually, when things ’settle down’ the archivist or specialist knowledge holder, would once again become valuable, that they would be a ‘trusted source’. And that is probably exactly what Encyclopedia Britannica said a couple of years back. The other woman said, ‘we’re just like blacksmiths and wheelwrights now’ but those two trades evolved… We’ll see.
In conclusion, here’s what I think.
1. Kudos not Cash: Institutions and media outlets can now look at alternate sources for content: users. People love seeing their name in the byline. Now it’s no good being loved by everyone with nothing in the fridge. But as one of the old ladies say to me afterwards ‘I used to have the only images of wild Polar Bears in Western Europe, EVERYBODY CAME TO ME!’ - them days are gone. There may even be a return to the idea of bartering. One idea I had at Channel 4 was to give away VIP credits to 4oD content rather than cash as ‘payment’ for using someone’s images. It would build loyalty, it would strengthen the brand, and keep the relationship solely between C4 and our audience.
2. Rights: I asked the the guys from seminar 5 about creative commons, they didn’t seem to have heard of it. Dom Young talked about a rival system but I can’t remember the name. I think CC has the potential to sneak under the nose of the industry that is just getting round to the idea of micro payments, and clinging to the cherished idea of RM. Why 1,600+ photos of London buses cleared for commercial use on Flickr. 1,800+ tagged ‘Poker’, that’s got to affect company’s like www.pokerimages.com -’the most comprehensive collection of gaming images in the world’. I was going to find a poker image from them and compare it to a flickr one, but I can’t even be bothered to register, because…
3. Search: …I should be able to search across multiple datasets. We need to open up the dark archives, some tiny fraction of the World’s data is online. One attendee complained that they’ve had to re-scan everything from only a few years ago, as the technology has improved so much, ‘this costs money’ say the picture libraries… and it does. But so does keeping not digital stuff on the shelf turning to vinegar.
3. The rise of the ultra-niche: Channel 4’s target audience is 16-34, they’re into a myriad of different things. Take music for example, Getty or whoever are not gonna send some fat fuck old Dad of two with a D200 to some secret small time boy band gig. And if they did, is what they shoot really going to capture the essence of the event for that particular market? Is it worth it? It is to the kids. Sure there’s young photographers around, but look at the line up of most paps.
4. The Gentleman Amateur: Photography will return, in part at least, to the world of the Gentleman Amateur (which is where it started with Fox-Talbot) Firstly the technology is there - DSLR’s are peanuts and everyone has a camera phone. Secondly, the distribution method’s now there with the growth of photo-sharing sites. Thirdly the rights frameworks is there with CC.
Media outlets better bloody wake up to this because we’re seeing stories ‘in the fly’s eye’ now, there’s not one image anymore, there’s no ‘Guernica’. There’s a multitude of contrasting and conflicting viewpoints from many different angles.
eye on food: Priory Free Range Foods
April 30, 2007
 Mark and Heather Thorogood’s organic shop is run out of the pantry at the side of their house in Lincolnshire. It’s dark and cool inside, and although at this time of year it’s no cornucopia, Mark’s still got the basics for sale - three different types of potato, carrots, leeks, cauliflowers, and such. He’s bang out of onions, mind, though he even goes so far as to see if he’s got any of his own I can have (he’s all out too). But what he has got plenty of is fantastic organic pork. Sausages - regular pork ones and the traditional Lincolnshire (flavoured with sage), loin, shoulder and leg cuts, and a sublime looking piece of belly pork, with the ribs still on.I’m in the area for a self-catering weekend away with my sister, brother-in-law and two nieces. And rather than do the shopping at the Sleaford branch of Sainsbury’s, I thought I’d take the time to find some local produce. I found Priory Free Range foods via bigbarn.co.uk, which lets you find local producers near any UK postcode. Mark’s also got a good website, with video and images. This is because his other job is as a web developer, but more on that later. In the meantime, he’s offered to show me around. We leave Mark’s house and walk over to his small-holding, which must be all of ten metres from his shop. It’s about the size of two football pitches, not huge, surrounded by large hedgerows planted by Heather’s grandfather years ago. One by one we meet the animals, First up, Luther the Wiltshire stud ram, who’s got another year left of ‘work’, as well as a couple of ewes. Mark explains: “All our lamb was sold in a day. We only had a handful of animals and we sold the lot. People were buying half an animal at a time, it’s really that good. We kept one leg back for ourselves, which we saved for some foodie friends.” Next to Lothario Luther’s pen is the first of three large old mobile homes, which, à la Jimmy’s Farm, have been converted into chicken coops. ”We did build a chicken coop at first, but it came out at around £500 for the materials, then you’ve got to build it. I can get one of these for £200 and they’re ready to go, and the chickens love them”. Mark has two breeds of chicken on his land, the Maran Noire and Black Rocks on his farm. The Black Rock in particular, according to this site is apparently ‘the ideal free-range layer. It loves the outside’. (You’d think every breed of chicken would love the free-range life, given the chance?) Mark’s got his chickens in groups of around fifty. This, he explains, means they can form a social group where everyone knows their place and the animals don’t get confused. It’s the opposite of a pecking order, because you don’t want birds pecking each other, which is what happens if they’re grouped in large numbers. As we’re walking on, a chicken darts out of the hedgerow, “One’s escaped!” I say. “It’s not one of mine,” says Mark. “I call this chicken Foxy Lady. She’s actually escaped from a larger, more industrial chicken farm about half a mile up the road. Normally the foxes would have had her in a day or two, but some how she’s surviving. I should do something about her as I’d rather she didn’t get too near mine, but I can’t bring myself to.” Mark hasn’t had to deal with any fox intrusions yet, and so doesn’t shoot or try to trap them. But he does dread the day one gets into his coop and action has to be taken, so I point out that most foxes have probably moved to the city to pull apart the remains of KFC chickens. In a way, I imagine having your chickens in lots of small groups, surrounded by other larger animals, might offer a natural form of protection, especially when it’s Luther the Ram and Boris the Welsh Boar, who we meet next…
He looks like his namesake Boris Johnson, with his blond hair and robust inquisitive attitude - an approach that sees him take a shine to my K-Swiss trainers, which he promptly tries to eat. My nieces (Hannah, aged 4 and Jessie, aged 2) and brother-in-law Vinny who’ve accompanied me on the trip take a closer look before we move on to his progeny. (see top image) “We’ve not lost one this year,” Mark points out. “Sometimes the mother can roll over one, or we might have a runt, but this year we’ve got them all.” The sow looks a picture of contentment, wallowing in the mud under the broad Lincolnshire sky while the piglets dare to come near the electrified wire to investigate my nieces. Mark leaves his piglets for around 10 weeks, while in industrial pig production it can be as little as 3.5 weeks. This all adds cost, mind. As a sausage maker said to me at the Abergavenny food festival last year, “That pig’s had two years of the best room and board imaginable at my expense. Now that’s reflected in the taste, mind, but also in the price.” (To read about the dark side, i.e. mainstream pig rearing, see Piggles.org.uk) The visit winds up and we start walking back to the shop, finally passing a vegetable plot about the size of two tennis courts where Mark grows all his veg. “We’ve just had the sprouting broccoli up as the weather’s been so good,” he says. “Ooh, can I have some?” I ask. “Sorry, it’s all gone,” says Mark. We stop to talk about his attitude to farming, and Mark points to the hawthorn hedgerows that surround his land, planted by Heather’s grandfather. “This is important. Look at this, we’ve got weeds and bluebells and lady birds.” We look across to his neighbour, George Adams’ pork processing plants. Now I’ve not (knowingly) tried any of Mr Adams’ pork products so I can’t comment on their taste, but their operation seems a world away from Mark’s despite being just next door. According to JSR Genetics they were instrumental in the development of the Adams Titan, bred ‘to improve carcass yield in the most expensive cuts’. And that they’re ‘a vertically-integrated business’? Futhermore, according to thepigsty.com Sainsbury’s have chosen this unique genotype for their ‘Taste the Difference’ pork range, specially selected for its exceptional meat-eating quality and tenderness’.And that is what us city folk have demanded, right? We say we want taste but we don’t want fat, we want it when we want it, and we want it at a rock-bottom price. JSR also produce Prosperm, which I suppose is like Wellman supplements for boars. I’m not saying they’re in any way bad; it’s just that these two neighbours show the different sides to modern food production.I’m not trying to paint a romantic picture here of part-time small-holdings. I fully realise that the countryside is a working place, not a picture postcard, and that it produces food for the massive population of this country in a process that has been ‘industrialised’ for well over a 100 years now and that, in short, keeps us from starving. Though for how long remains to be seen…Mark tells me how a previous article about them had the headline ‘Back to the good life’. “It’s anything but that - it’s bloody hard work,” says Mark. But as we talk about the future we agree that perhaps “a change is gonna come.” Mark talks about the rising cost of fuel, meaning that flying goods around may become uneconomical, but I think it’ll also become unethical. Local is the new organic. Look at this image of a ‘local’ shelf in a massive 24-hour ASDA in Colchester, and that was what organic food was like ten years ago.But more than that I think set-ups like Mark’s are like the web 2.0 of food – small, hard-working teams, multi-skilled, agile, self-promoting, good products, and word-of-mouth distribution. By using the internet they allow for perfect provenance, putting the owner of the fork in direct touch with the owner of the farm. www.snoutandtrotter.co.uk is another similar operation in Devon. We’re one of the most tech-savvy nations in the world, thinking nothing of getting goods online. 11.5 million people used ebay.co.uk in January 2006, so why does “I ordered it off the net” apply to nearly everything except independently produced food? Because the producers are not set up for it and the ones that are are hard to find. I recorded an interview with Jim Twine, communications director for the Soil Association at the International Food Expo a few months ago. He was talking about how to maintain the integrity of their accreditation and how the SA can help small farmers, and having seen a part-time small-holding at the coal-face, I think more should be done to support people like this. I ask Mark about grants and development loans. “It’s the paper work, I’ve just not got the time,” he replies. We cross the lane back to Mark’s shop. He apologises for the rushed tour, but he has to get back to man the shop as Heather has to go out and make deliveries. “We’ve started supplying The Queen’s Head, which is the best restaurant for miles around.” Mark’s keen to stress that he wants to sell his produce locally first rather than send it all down to London. “Sadly, most restaurants around here are only interested in price. We’re competing with the likes of Dutch pork, for example, and few people seem care about where it’s come from which is a shame.” We go on to talk about how so few restaurants fully promote their local credentials. And Lincolnshire isn’t the most affluent county in England. “If we were a 100 miles further south certain things would be much easier,” says Mark. He’s trying to change that through word of mouth, who he supplies, and his website.Back in the shop I make some purchases. And here’s the thing. Back in London, before writing this, I went to Sainsbury’s at Upper Norwood and tried to match what I bought at Priory Free Range foods.
So that’s meat, potatoes, and two veg, plus sausages and eggs, enough for five/six people for £23.81. All organic, and at a price that’s competitive with Sainsbury’s. On the whole, taking into account such things as carbon footprint, holistic attitude, regional variation and ’supporting local business’, I think Priory Free Range Foods does very well against a leading supermarket. And Mark even helped me carry the bags to the car - you can’t say that of your average “Do you want help packing?” till staff, can you? Back at the holiday home, the pork went in the Aga. Agas - you either love them or you hate them. I think trying to cook on one is like driving a steam train. It’s all great-looking, with enamel, smoke and cast iron, very rural farmhouse, but it’s just not for me. Having said that, the exceptions that proves the rule are fried eggs done on bake-o-glide and the jacket potatoes I got which came out like shrunken leathery pygmy heads, just how I like ‘em.The crackling on the pork was fantastic, all blistered up like a first-degree burns victim (what!?), so that the top-most piece nearly caught in the furnace that was the Aga. Underneath was a sublime layer of fat, and then the tasty meat. I would have liked to have cooked it slower for longer to render out some more of the fat. I don’t think I did it justice battling with the guesstimates of the roasting oven vs. the simmering oven, however, or the guidelines set out in the Aga cookbook that came with the place. Carrots. These tasted like regular carrots, to be honest, but perhaps a little sweeter. There was a world of difference in the leeks, however. These you could tell were part of the proud onion family: they had a zingy bite with a slight peppery taste, coupled with a bright green colour. And none of that squeakiness on the tooth you can sometimes get with leeks.The potatoes were, again, excellent. I love spuds when they’re done so they’re only just about holding together, letting you break them apart by simply pushing them against the roof of your mouth with your tongue - yum. I hope there’s a future in this country for this sort of enterprise. I think we owe it to ourselves (and the planet) to try to augment our shopping with at least a few items from people like Mark - and I think the internet can help there. I hope also that there’s a viable workable future for the countryside. Channel 4 is screening Molly Dineen’s ‘Lie of the Land’ next week (which looks very similar to a BBC Four show from 2005). The blurb says ‘Farming has sculpted our rural landscape. But in recent years the farming industry has been decimated by disease, development, legislation and the power of the supermarket chains. I’d like to think that people like Mark prove that there’s a potentially bright future for the British countryside. |
Kicked out of Skool for being old : Flickr fully moves to Yahoo!
February 1, 2007
In my Flickr inbox this morning
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member, On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
So now I’ve got to get a Yahoo! Account, I’m a bit miffed about this to be honest. Part of me can understand why - these new feature’s better be good! But a part of me thinks it’s the end of an era, that’s it’s going to be all about Yahooy things now. Plus I’m pissed off that eyedropper’s already taken as a Yahoo! ID, that’s my name!
Perhaps the thing I’m most worried about is account deletion because I’ve not logged into Yahoo! for 30 days or whatever.. As a test I logged into yahoo mail using an old user name and password that I used to use in the late 90s and probably last logged into in mid 2005.
The result:
Why is my account inactive?
Yahoo! Mail deactivated your mail account because:
• You have not logged into your mail account during the past four months; or
• You have requested that Yahoo! Mail deactivate your account.
What does this mean?
• All email messages, folders, attachments and preferences have been deleted and cannot be recovered.
• All messages sent to XXXXXXXXX@yahoo.co.uk are being returned to the sender.
• You can still use your Yahoo! ID to access other registered services on Yahoo!.
Ok so that’s only email and it’s four months now, but what if it becomes one month? And what if I go travelling for a four months? If they don’t want old emails clogging up their servers they’re sure not going to want 1000s of images. I used to use Yahoo messenger, I still use MSN messenger, but I never use either of their email services as I can get that elsewhere. Flickr just used to be about photos, now I’m not so sure, the Private Frazer in me suddenly worried that all his photos might be dooooooomed. We’ll see.
