Ethical Terrorist and bread soup

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 09/10/08 at 12:10:32 pm

Ethical Terrorism and the birth of the Ecorist

If you ignore what is going on with the banks and look at the bigger picture the news has been dominated in the last few years by two big topics namely the environment and the “War on Terror”. I was having a chat with a few mates about this and we wondered what an Ethical/Eco terrorist would be like. As journalists are always coming up with new names I thought I would too and our Ethical/Eco Terrorist would simply be called an Ecorist.

So what would define our ecorist? Firstly they would not be able to hurt anyone as it would be immoral. This would mean that all normal forms of terrorist attacks would be redundant as in general it would involve hurting people. They would also be concerned about where they bought their tools of terror ensuring that they are fair trade and sustainable. On top of that the Ecorist would be very aware of their carbon footprint ensuring that they terrorise in a carbon neutral or even carbon negative manner.

This meas they could not get on a plane as they would be increasing their carbon footprint. Nor would they want to destroy anything as it uses valuable resources that are no doubt sourced from dodgy dealings in Africa, raping the natural environment and giving next to nothing back to the local inhabitants. Indeed the only thing that they could even contemplate destroying would be a building built with sustainable and FSC materials. This building would also be part of what the Ecorist would be campaigning for so what would be the point.

So if the Ecorist can’t destroy anything or hurt anyone then I guess they will be left with protesting. We all know that travel is one of the highest personal contributers to greenhouse gasses this would rule out the protest march, unless you could get enough people to one place by bike. How would it then be advertised? You can’t flyer it or put posters up as they both cause litter they would also be unfair to dsylexics and non native speakers who might be unable to understand them. So protesting is out.

There are not many options left for the Ecorist, the only thing that we could come up with is going through peoples bins and pulling out the recycled products and sorting them out for them.

Bread Soup

Using the book I mentioned in my last blog, You can’t ration these I decided to give one of the recipes a go. It was a real war time make do recipe of Bread Soup. I basically cut up some stale bread (2 slices), boiled it for a little (in 1.5 pints of water) then simmered for 30 mins sprinkling some salt and pepper to the mix. Adding an egg yolk whipped up in some milk just at the end.

The results were certainly interesting. I wolfed mine down as I will eat almost anything whilst my two guests were not convinced.  It was just bread in hot water, it tasted almost like egg bread but not as nice and almost like bread and butter pudding and again not as nice.

I think that if you sweated down some onions in butter and added a little spice of your choosing this might be saved. It is not one however, that I would recomend unless you really don’t have any food in the cupboard.

Ireland calling – Virgin Update – Lacock

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 25/09/08 at 08:09:34 pm

Seems that I have somehow managed to strike a cord with Ireland. In a couple of weeks we are due to film a small something for a documentary to be shown on RTE and tomorrow I have been asked to talk about ecotarianism on a show called the Last Word on Today FM. Apart from the late, late show that we got over here for a bit, I have never really watched any Irish telly or indeed listen to that much Irish radio. Not really sure what to expect of either to be fair.

The Radio thing span off from an interview with the Times that I did the other day. It was a pretty good extract I thought and for once I was not misquoted.

Closer to home, Andy Hamilton is a Bristol-based forager and environmentalist and author of The Selfsufficient-ish Bible, an urban guide to “almost self-sufficiency”. Far from being a politically motivated firebrand, he is charmingly affable and at ease with this concept of compromise. “You have to question everything and look down the chain,” he says, “but it’s about being realistic.” He grows his own vegetables and will cycle half an hour to buy a “decent” pint of milk. “But equally I will buy Fairtrade orange juice now and again and I’m not just thinking ‘Right, I’ve done my bit for Africa there’, but I do actively choose not always to buy local for that reason alone. I like to buy local honey, but occasionally will buy Fairtrade because it is helping the rainforest, in that if they are making money from it perhaps they’ll stop chopping it down.

Enough of the showing off there!

Virgin Update

Virgin media have put a foot forward in the right direction and are refunding me some money, about bloody time too! I am still not entirely convinced that everything is square as yet need to sit down and scour through my bank statement. I have a feeling that all this arose due the staff being paid commission on getting sales. We got a letter from our phone company telling saying that they were sorry to see us go when we first signed up to virgin, we did not sign up our phone with them and had to get this overturned.

Pretty slow day otherwise.

Lacock

Spent yesterday in Lacock, a small village 4-5 miles from Chippenham. There was not much there but that did not really matter, it was great to spend the day ambling along the Route 4 cycle path by the river Avon from Chippenham to get to the village. Then stopping for cream tea at a traditional tea shop when we arrived, before wandering around taking pictures and generally just have a relaxed time.

We did not have tea served in this massive tea pot but there were plenty of oddities like this hanging around. It managed to be touristy without being Disneyfied, well I thought so anyway. Some of the shops had women serving wearing serving wench clothing, it took a moment to take in what I was seeing but seem fine. The whole village has been pretty much untouched from the 13th Century.

I did find that there was an odd calm to the village and indeed it seemed that I was not the only one. During wartime Londoners were evacuated there and there was a school set up in the Abbey (also used by Harry Potter). Aparently, the children behaviour was exemplary during this period. Reading other history’s of the abbey there certainly seemed that anyone who had any contact experienced this calm.

There is a spaced out theory that new places hold lots of chaotic energy and so we can react badly, this is why new estates can get vandalised etc. Not sure about the chaotic energy, but I do know that in an old place you can feel more relaxed. Old places have a character of their own, with the creeks, uneven floors, woody smells and small doorways. I really do defy anyone to tell me they feel less relaxed in a place from the 12th Centry than a concreate block from the 1960′s. Well unless it is haunted.

Look to the left, now is that not just sheer beauty? Well it is to me but then I think I am becoming a sucker for houses with even just a hint of wood and am slowly becoming a hater of Urban mistakes! In fact I am seariously debating a move away from the constant wails of sirens, house alarms and all that. I would miss being able to nip out and do all the stuff that a city can offer though. So this will possibly stay an internal dilemma for a lot longer.

Anyway back to the point, I was sort of speaking of wood; we also found this amazing Yew tree, not sure how old it is but looking at it I would say it predates the house above. You could almost transport yourself through time when you held onto this tree, it must have had so many stories happen around it.  People do report to have some strange experiences beneth a yew, perhaps as it is pretty toxic. On that note must make some food as I think I am getting decidedly light headed myself.

Virgin Media Broadband overcharging

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 17/09/08 at 05:09:45 pm

Not a very selfsufficientish day today, I did get some elderberries, some yarrow, some plantain and some hawthorn in order to make stuff will post at a later date about that.

Just a bit of a waste of 3 hours I have had trying to sort out my Broadband bill.  You know you often glance at a DD and just think ok that must be right, it is not until you really can’t put your hands on any cash that you start to look at your transactions. I did just that recently, well over a month ago and found that Virgin Media really were taking me for a ride. – reminds me of a quick joke,

Just got stung by a bee.

Really are you OK

Not really £20 for a jar of honey.

Anyway, I was in a writing mood today shame that it ended up being spend on something so trite and down right unnecessary as trying to get money back off a massive company with millions. I wonder if I am alone in getting really bad service from Virgin Media? Well below is the email I have just written them, it is my third.

I have a few problems with my Virgin Media service and am not at all happy. I am happy with the connection but very unhappy with the level of customer service and billing and am still unsure as to what I am actually paying for. I have not had the same reply from your customer service operatives more than once so as to add to the confusion.

I am self employed and so to me time literally means money, I have had to waste a number of hours talking and emailing Virgin trying to rectify my billing. In the end I was told to speak to my bank who are in the process of sorting out my account, it seemed that Virgin media are incapable of doing so. Indeed when I first set my account up Virgin Media even tried to disconnect my telephone without permission and make me sign up with them. In fact I have never signed anything with Virgin media and certainly did not ask to sign up for the phone line.

On one of my recent calls I was assured by telephone that I would only be paying £10 a month instead of £35.99 as I have been paying. One payment of £18 that is apparently correct and one of £17.99 that is not.

I was also told that I would be refunded the extra £25.99 a month that I have been paying extra and this would be sorted out forthwith. Rather than being paid this amount I was offered a telephone package as an add on and asked to pay £20 a month and not £10 as previously agreed. I was also told that the person I had spoken to before hand was a liar and told that “I could stop emailing now”! This Sales caller in customer service clothing told me that the case would now be closed and I would have to pay £18 a month. He then gave me the number of you collections department who to be fair did look into the problem and were very polite, but did say that I should contact my bank and not you.

I await with baited breath to see what Virgin Media will do next, will I ever get a refund, will I ever pay £10 a month? Will another DD appear on my account? In the meantime I am paying interest on a debt created by Virgin Medias ineptitude and I have also lost out on the possibility of a lot of money due to having to sort out this problem instead of looking for freelance work.

I have decided to blog this so as to have a permanent record of it and also to see if anyone else has had the same problem. I have also contacted various consumer rights radio and television shows.

Washing with Borax and Bicarb, TV stuff too…..

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 15/09/08 at 09:09:28 pm

Well I carried on my quest for the perfect eco wash today and used two teaspoons of domestic Borax powder and two of Bicarbonate of soda. I must admit the results were not that great the item I looked at to test the wash this time was a white shirt that I had worn on Dave’s allotment.

It came out with dirt still on it! I am not sure if I need to up the dose. The Duvet cover seemed alright though and looks and smells clean. I wonder if I would have got the same results if I had of used nothing though.

4/10 but need to up the amount from two teaspoons of each.

So to recap

• Soap Nuts – not bad for everyday but fails to really clean mucky clothes.  – 5/10
• Alma Win – Cleanut laundry Detergent. -An improvement on above, still does not remove the most stubborn stains. However, it does warn this on the packaging. 6/10 (I might even push up to a 7 on a good day.
• Bio D Non Biological Washing Powder best so far 7.5 out of ten

Other News – TV stuff

We did some filming at the weekend with BBC inside out west They were a great bunch to work with and it was a real good laugh. I think it will be broadcast next month on local BBC west country not sure if they have a watch again thing will post it if they do.

Also had a call today from a TV company in Ireland who are filming something for RTE one of the national channels over there. Apparently they want to film something in a few weeks and have us appear on a show, been down this road before with the Paul O’grady show, we even filmed all day and it was cut at the last moment after telling all of our friends so I won’t be daft this time and announce it publicly. Definitely keep all TV stuff to myself from now on.

Quince Comfits and Knowle west

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 14/09/08 at 09:09:42 pm

Quince Comfits

Just finished making some Quince Comfits a recipe from the 1700s. I made it with Quinces that I picked from along the river Avon last week. The recipe came from an excellent book called “Food in England” by Dorothy Hartley. I won’t bother putting a link to anywhere to buy this as it was first published in 1954 and you are sure to find it in a second hand book shop or charity shop somewhere.

Anyway, the recipe for quince comfits is pretty simple. Chop up and Stew every part of the quinces, I used just enough water to cover them and cut them into quarters they took roughly 10-13 mins and 32 seconds to become soft. Then push them through a sieve. This takes some time and will take even longer if you have loads of quince to get through, enlist someones help if you get bored. You should be left with pips and a sort of dry pulp in the sieve and what looks like baby food in the bowl beneath. Now put this into a saucepan put the heat onto about 3 or medium and put the same amount of sugar in. To do this cover half the bottom of the pan in the pulp and measure next to it (using your eye) the same amount of sugar.

Keep stirring, the book says wait until it dries up I did not know what this meant and worried a little, it just means wait until it becomes a bit stiff. – I am sure the story of some peoples lives! Scoop this out onto a bread board and roll in shapes about the size of marker pen lids. Dust with icing sugar and this should keep until Christmas in a tin. Might try this with other fruit at some point, haw comfits anyone?

Knowle West and the food Fayre

I was told yesterday about an event in Knowle West the “Knowle West Carbon Makeover Food Fayre”. I was in two minds about going as this is considered to be one of the worst areas in Bristol. I then thought about my trepidation and decided that places are never as bad as they are made out to be. This indeed was the case with Knowle west, the streets might not have been paved with gold but they were clean (apart from near to the shops) and the people we had to ask for directions were very friendly; one girl even waved us off after giving us perfect directions. I saw a couple of people with beer cans at 10am but really this seems to be the case in many areas in cities these days. What I did see were families out enjoying the sun and lots of smiling people.

After walking for about an hour we found the Knowle west media centre and the Knowle West Carbon Food Fayre. First person we saw was the omnipresent Tea bike person. Then various other people including a food co-op, an anti plastic bag league where they teach people to make bags, a cob pizza oven, jam making and a medicinal herb woman. We were in fact the first customers of Green Medicine a lovely woman who is sharing the knowledge she gains whilst learning about herbalism. There were more stalls and people and I apologize if I have not met them as it was a great morning spent and they helped make a very relaxed yet insperational atmosphere.

We then went to the alloment and havested some of corn. A magical Sunday really.

..