29 February 2008

To all the mothers of the world

To all the mothers in the world...


who sing their babies to sleep...


who nurture and nourish them...


who love and cherish them...


who teach them right from wrong...


and send them out into the world like ships from a safe harbour...


I wish you happy mother's day.

I can't take any credit for the lovely photos - thanks to Phitar on Flickr.com. You can see his Mother and Child set here.

28 February 2008

A Cornish fishing village and a walk through the dunes

On my recent weekend in Cornwall I visited Padstow, a typical Cornish fishing village. Let me clarify - I don't mean typical in terms of a village that time forgot, but typical in terms of smart restaurants, art galleries and gift shops and the locals complaining about being priced out of the housing market.

Boats in Padstow harbour



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27 February 2008

Going Bananas in Fairtrade fortnight

To celebrate the beginning of Fairtrade fortnight I got busy baking and came up with a delicious Fairtrade banana and pineapple cake.

Banana loaf for Fairtrade fortnight

Bananas are the most popular fruit in the UK and are a major export for Latin America and the Caribbean - in some places such as the Windward isles the economy is completely reliant on them.


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26 February 2008

Feral trade - or the wanderings of a coffee bean

First Fairtrade, now Feral Trade. Don't worry folks - I'm not abandoning my Fairtrade principles completely, but I had to share with you this intriguing concept of Feral Trade that's linking Bristol with other parts of the world.

It was all started by Kate Rich who works at the Cube in Bristol, a microplex cinema, art space and music venue.

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;

...the passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, techniques or individuals can potentially travel ...


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23 February 2008

Roses and pirates - in Bristol

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.


Behind an exotic display of scarves and other accessories, Anthony was demonstrating how to burn the edges of velvet with a candle to make fringed scarves and rose corsages.

Anthony Lewis Churchill at work

He told me that he had started experimenting a few weeks ago, having found a length of velvet and been inspired by a magazine showing this season's floral trends from the catwalks. Already he had been commissioned to provide some crimson and cream velvet roses to adorn a bridal gown.


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21 February 2008

Fairtrade fortnight - coming soon to a world near you

Food lovers get ready - Fairtrade fortnight starts next Monday 25 February in Bristol and throughout the UK and runs until 9 March. If you're the kind of person who enjoys your food and cares about how it's produced, then I'm sure you'll already know all about Fairtrade.


But just in case it's passed you by, let me fill you in - Fairtrade is all about making sure that producers in developing countries get a fair price for their produce with a premium to invest back into their community. Fairtrade is big in coffee, tea, chocolate and bananas, but it also covers many other foods and even cotton, clothing and handicrafts.


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19 February 2008

Bright skies and blue seas in Cornwall

Didn't I say the skies are brighter and the sea is bluer in Cornwall? And how right I was - I've just returned from break in Cornwall that was both energising (breathe in that sea air) and relaxing (stoke up that log fire).






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15 February 2008

Turtles and plastic bags

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.

Rebecca Hosking, a wildlife camerawoman, managed to convince the residents of her home town of Modbury to say no to plastic bags after filming a documentary about the terrible environmental impact they were having on marine life in Hawaii. These colourful string bags seemed the answer and I promptly bought one for my mother and two for me. They're small enough to scrunch up in a pocket and looking so pretty it would hardly be a hardship to use them.


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Love and culture on a budget

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.


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13 February 2008

A walk to Kings Weston - in Bristol

The Victoria and Albert museum in London once ran with the controversial slogan - an ace caff with quite a nice museum attached. The art world spluttered into it's collective tea-cup at the thought that a nice cup of Earl Grey could be more important than the riches of art and design on offer.

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?

The walk from Blaise Castle to Kings Weston that I made last weekend fits the bill on all counts and I'll share the highlights with you, just in case you'd like to take a walk too.

We started at the car park of Blaise castle estate, which was teeming with Bristolians out for their afternoon of family fun. When my children were tiny the café was a small hatch and a few tired swings and slides passed for a playground. Now, thanks to lottery funding, the park has been revamped with a shiny new steel café with a water-fall running down one side, poetry etched in the glass windows and a quirky scrap metal dog, keeping guard over it all.


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12 February 2008

Valentine street art - in Bristol

My heels are feeling a little worn down after all that window-shopping, so I've just a couple of small treasures from Bristol to share with you on Valentine's day.

A poem from the LA show of Bristol's own favourite street-artist, Banksy

Banksy poem from LA show




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11 February 2008

Window shopping for Valentines - in Bristol

The shop-keepers of Bristol are sharing the love this week in the run-up to Valentine's day. So I went out window shopping for Valentine inspiration and this is what I found....

Some georgeous girly stuff to dress up in...


Foody fetishes to feed your fantasties...

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Tiffin and Jaipur - in Bristol

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.

Here in Bristol, Tiffins is a cross between a take-away bar and eat-in cafe, and the authentic Gujarati dishes are freshly cooked each day by owner Jay Jethwa who runs Tiffins with her husband Nick. Gujarati cooking is spicy, healthy and delicious and as Gujerat has a high proportion of vegetarians, Jay's menu includes a range of vegetarian and vegan dishes which change daily.

As I passed Tiffins this week I was drawn in by a colourful wall of photographs - a mini exhibition called 'Pretty in pink' - celebrating the vibrant colours and interesting faces of Jaipur in India. The photos are by two Bristol based photographers who are regular customers at Tiffins, Billy-Jay Starling and Alex Stoneman. You can see more of their wonderful pictures here, even if you can't make it to Bristol (or Jaipur).


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Egyptian fisherman creates chaos in the blog-sphere

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in Bristol, I passed the time of day with my neighbour at the garden gate. He told me a funny story about his friend who was unable to book a flight to Dubai because the airline websites were down - it was all because an Egyptian fisherman had dropped his anchor on the cable, causing havoc with the internet connections in the middle east.

My neighbour specialises in telling those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories that seem so improbable, they must be true. So I decided to investigate this particular tall tale for myself.

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.

As bloggers we rely on our internet access and fellow blogger Dubai-Jazz had a good old moan;

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.

All this was because some extra-witty Egyptian fisherman has decided to drop his anchor deep in the Mediterranean. Not only he'd dropped the anchor so deep and hurt one of the cables supplying bites to the Middle East and India, he had also dragged his anchor for 400 meters and cut another main cable in the process.


This surely must be a living example of chaos theory, where the beat of a butterfly's wings may alter the balance of nature and cause a typhoon.



Thanks for their photos to creativity+, dgrobinson, pete4ducks on Flickr.com

7 February 2008

All the tea in China - in Bristol

These days, when there seems to be a Starbucks on every street corner, how refreshing to find contemporary tea bar in Bristol, dedicated to serving all the tea in China.

Hoping to improve my knowledge of the English national drink, I spent an evening tea tasting at Attic in Bristol, which opened a year ago, to sell fine teas through its website and tea bar. We were guided through the tea tasting by Anne, the knowledgable co-owner of Attic, while her partner Richard carefully brewed the tea we were to sample. The philosophy of the tea bar was proclaimed on Anne's t-shirt - to know life, in every breath, in every cup of tea. In the busy life we lead, she explained, a cup of tea can provide a quiet pause to rest and reflect on our life.

Ann from Attic, Bristol


Fifteen of us had gathered at Attic for some tea contemplation - on one side of me was a lady who had invited her sister as a birthday treat, on the other a couple in their 20s who had been given a tea infuser for Christmas and wanted to taste some teas to use with it. Soon we were slurping like professional tea tasters and enjoying the ritual of warming the cup, pouring the tea and breathing in the fragrance of the tea leaves left in the pot. Anne had prepared a small snack to accompany each tea we tasted - my favourites were the green olives steeped in earl grey tea and the dark chocolate infused with jasmine tea.


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6 February 2008

The world hears about my adventures in Ecuador

Congratulations to Suzie from Beijing Notebook on publication of her great article on her designer friend Ira Walendy.

So far my only claim to publication has been in my local church magazine. For those of you who don't attend my local church of St Bonaventure's in Bristol, let me share it with you below. Yes, I know it's not National Geographic or Sunday Times travel section, but a girl's got to start somewhere!

click to see more detail



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4 February 2008

Love and street-art in Bristol

.... 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.


The Bristol's city museum has been caught up in the mood with this exhibition on the theme of love, which I went to see this weekend. I particularly liked the small paintings from the British artists Amrit and Rabindra Singh otherwise known as the Singh twins. They paint in the delicate style of an Indian miniature but weave in their observations on contemporary British life. Take a look at their work here.


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3 February 2008

A culinary trip to Thailand

We celebrated my husband's birthday this weekend and when I asked him what he would like to eat most in the world, his heart's desire was for a Thai green curry.


Knowing a work colleague had visited Thailand many times, I sought her advice on the recipes and she told me about the wonderful Chiang Mai Thai cookery school where she learned to cook some delicious dishes that have only enhanced her addiction to Thai food. Her two day course included a visit to the market to buy the produce that she later cooked and explain how different foods and spices would be used. You can read an article on the cookery school from the Times Newspaper here.


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1 February 2008

Bristol and Places I have never been

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.

It set me thinking about the inspiration that Jennifer and other artists might find in my home town of Bristol.

Our balloon fiesta held every August is a riot of bright colours and interesting shapes. I remember how one summer evening we took a picnic out on to the green space of 'the downs', to watch the balloons drifting over the Avon Gorge, only to be forced to scatter as an enormous bag-piper descended rapidly onto our picnic spot.


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