Kate started Feral Trade as an experiment in trading goods in person over social networks - the use word 'feral' describes a process which is wilfully wild (as in pigeon) as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (as in wolf). Goods such as coffee from El Salvador, sweets from Iran and Grappa from Croatia are traded through personal contacts, with the journey being minutely documented on the feral trade website. According to Kate;
In Bristol this weekend, I popped into Guild, a Bristol institution which since 1906 has been selling the best of modern design in gifts, accessories, and home-ware. In their gallery on the first floor I got chatting to artist, photographer and illustrator, Anthony Lewis Churchill, whose work was on display.
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I came across these colourful turtle bags in my favourite organic emporium, Fresh and Wild this week and they caught my imagination. I'd been feeling guilty about the amount of plastic bags we were using after reading an article in the Guardian about the campaign to banish them in the Devon town of Modbury.
I was thrilled to see that Olivia of High Culture on a low budget had featured the love exhibition at Bristol City Museum on Valentine's day, picking up on my recent post (thanks for the mention).
For those who haven't heard, this blog features the best of European art, opera and music for those on a limited budget. Whether you fancy an art city in Athens, puppets in Prague or baubles at Bolzano's Christmas market, this is a great site for the wandering culture vulture.
However, I rather like the idea that it's the all-round experience that counts. After all, why trudge across a muddy field if you can find a walk with a healthy dose of history, poetry, sculpture and a lemon drizzle cake at the end?
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Anyone for Tiffin? is the cry in Bristol this week. In India, Tiffin is a snack or light lunch, lovingly prepared by wives to ensure that their husband is delivered with a hot, homecooked meal to eat at their place of work. All over southern India Dabbawalahs deliver these lunches in steel tiffin-boxes in an efficient system which ensures that every meal ends up with the right person.
I discovered from Reuters that breaks in two cables off the Egyptian coast and one off the coast of United Arab Emirates had created chaos with internet access in the Gulf region and South Asia. Egypt lost more than half its internet capacity because of the breaks and the the service was not expected to be back to normal for 10 days. A major UAE telecom firm had been forced to re-route traffic via Saudi Arabia and India's internet services were operating at 80% of capacity, affecting Indian call centres.
The internet service has been down for the last couple of days. I couldn't do anything significant during the slow down. I couldn't even post comments on my own blog let alone others. Gmail was also down. Youtube? ... forget about it.
.... is in the air in my home town of Bristol as the shops start to fill up with all things heart shaped in preparation for Valentine's day.
I love to use this blog to escape the grey winter days in Bristol and travel in my imagination to places where the sun always shines. It seems that designer Jennifer Hill of Places I have never been has a similar idea, gathering inspiration from around the world to use in her designs. I love her latest cards inspired by the orange blossom of Andalucia, a place I'm hoping to visit this spring -see my post Spring sunshine in Valencia.
