As with any interest the more you follow it, the more you will meet people with similar interests. In fact I found myself at the opening of  a herbalists apothecary, (I say find myself, I was actually invited). I have to applaud the fella (Max Drake) who opened it as starting a business and especially a retail business at the moment is not up there as one of the wisest moves.  However, this place is perfect from someone like me. If there are herbs that I can’t forage or have not grown enough of I can nip down to the Urban Fringe dispensary at the top of the Christmas steps , Bristol, UK and pick some up. Since the closure of Bristol’s Culpepper shop, Max’’s shop is the only place in Bristol where you can actually buy herbs (excluding non culinary of course). He is providing what I think is an essential service and the more that people learn about herbalism I am certain, the more they will agree.

Without becoming to gushy about this shop and risking sounding like a long advert, I have to say that it is worth popping in just to have a look round the place. As you walk in you will see to your right a display area made from wood salvaged from a 16th Century church.  This really does give the shop some context as it was built 400 years ago, the structure of the building gives this away and apparently parts of the building are made from bits of old ships! You get a real feeling of the people who populated Bristol when looking around this old place. It also seems too that by stacking it full of herbs used to make people well, you are somehow nodding to the past residents of the place.

Anyway, back to the official shop opening. I found myself chatting to all sorts of people from different places. I spent most of the night talking to Zoe Hawes another medical herbalist. We got to talking about books and I got very excited about the book she is working on as it sounds right up my street. It’s called a Foragers Guide to Medicinal plants and will be published by Haymln in March 2010. I have a copy of her 2010 herbal journal, which would be a lovely gift for anyone interested in herbalism and in need of a diary. Zoe seems to have a similar outlook to me insofar as she believes that picking our medicines roots us firmly as human beings and reminds us of the thousands of years of practice that preceded our treatment.

Talking to (but not for) Max, Zoe and another herbalist friend Kathy (who practices at Neils yard in Glasgow) makes me question much about the present medical system and especially the commerce that surrounds it. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes western medicine really is the best option. However, there are times when I make up someone a herbal infusion of lets say mint, chamomile, yarrow and elderflower when they have a cold and I know they are only humouring me when they say thanks just to reach for a paracetamol. Or if someone has an upset stomach and I pass them some ginger. I know that I am in danger of sounding real “new worldy” or “hippyfied” in some peoples eyes by openly talking about herbalism with this but I would not mention any of it if I did not know that it worked. Time and time again I hear of medical trials that place herbs above western medicine for certain ailments. Take cold sores for example Lemon balm comes up trumps when used to treat them! What’s more with herbs is that there are little or no side effects.

I guess the real difference with herbs, herbal medicine and especially foraged for medicine is that there are not huge companies making huge amounts of money from them. It everyone grew their own drugs where would we be then? Perhaps the massive drug companies would start to flounder and we would not want that would we? They do such a great job of keeping us well and as such reasonable prices too.

Max Drake’s Urban Fringe Dispensary is situated at 58 Colston Street, Bristol, BS1 5AZ, Zoe Hawes is the author of the Herbal Journal out now and Foragers Guide to Medicinal Plants out in March 2010. Cath Kay practices from Neils yard, Glasgow.

Been having Virgin Media hounding me with calls for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I ignored them a little as they were leaving automated messages. I also got an email telling me that they were going to cancel my service, which obviously I will need, this morning I got a letter saying that I owe £53. What a nerve, they still owe me money. I called them and got put on hold for 10 mins and was left listening to some god awful song. I hung up and called back today. Again I was on the phone for 10 mins, I ask you when a company messes up then asks you to call them back and has the cheek to keep you on the phone for 10 mins at a time something is not right.

The upshot is that Virgin were going to pass my details onto a debt collection agency due to the fact that I owed them £160 for a non existent broadband connection. It seems that I had cable and adsl broadband for a while both supplied by virgin one for £17.99 a month and the other for £18 a month rather than one for £10 that I should have had. Ah well they say it is sorted, I am not so sure Will wait and see. I will certainly switch to a more reliable company when all of my money has been refunded. An apology would have been nice too, is that asking too much. The moral of the story NEVER EVER, EVER, SIGN UP WITH VIRGIN MEDIA.

Anyway seems I am not alone, I found a web forum dedicated to people with Virgin media problems.

Scottish Bike Ride

Well I have been through the route a number of times and am now knackered, happy though I think I have a good solid route sorted. I got really excited today as I bought a map book with cycle routes on it. I even got two new tyres for the first time ever. They are some kind of magic tyres that are puncture resistant, it’s one thing to say fingers crossed and quite another to spend an extra £5 on tyres to try and evade the inevitable.

So almost all set.

I have set up a webpage to collect donations for our little cooperative , they made me set a target so I paniced and put £2500 that is the figure we need but I doubt I will raise that on this trip, would be nice but I doubt it.

Dave and I had our first foraging course yesterday and to make sure it felt like a baptism of fire we invited along a film crew who were filming something for Irish National station RTE. There were smiling faces all round at the end and the whole group got on really well.

It seems that our forage is something slightly different than the usual forages some of the comments we got were, “I expected to be baffled with Latin names but you made it really assessable” and “I really enjoyed it and it was lovely to have the opportunity to learn so much with good company.  You both did a really good job of explaining things whilst keeping a good sense of humour and it showed in the light and friendly atmosphere.”

I am not just posting those comments to advertise the latest course here in Bristol on Saturday 11th October, 10am-4pm. But just to say what a great way we could earn a living. Well actually my motives are to try and fill the last few places we have left (email me for more details).

I keep being asked why we do this forage in a city and there is one really good reason, there are simply more plants. Think about the seed that gets planted in the countryside, acres upon acres of corn, maize, rape or whatever. Whereas every gardener seems to spend hours leafing through seed catalouges and will plant a huge array of different plants year after year.

Just as one gardener for example, I try to grow a new plant every year, this year being tomatillos and I also try different varieties of courgettes, tomatoes, basil, sweetcorn, beetroot and beans every year.  One year my fennel and my lettuce went to seed and Emma had also planted some evening primrose, now everyone on our allotment site is weeding out those plants.

The little extras that we gave out really seemed to go down well, I am just hoping that I can have some homebrew ready for the next one. We did instead have rowanberry and hawthorn berry jelly, sumacade and something else that will remain a secret until the RTE program is aired that the presenter Baz Ashmawy seemed to really enjoy!

He was a pretty nice bloke in the end, just a normal chap not sure how famous he is over in Ireland (or should I be saying Eire??). I asked him if he had a fan club and he it seems he does not, not sure if that is a real mark of fame or more of a reflection on the sorts of people who follow you. It made me and Dave realise that TV work really is not that hard and I hope it we will come across well. I would love to meet the editor though and just make sure that we do come across well!

They can’t ration these

I just picked up a book called “They can’t ration these” by Vicomte De Mauduit. It was recomended to me twice so I had to get it really. Quite an odd little book perhaps one for people who have made their first steps in foraging as it does not have much of a field guide. It does tell you how to cook Hedgehog though!

I guess this book for some would have more of curosity value as it does feel like a little window into what Britatin would have been like during the war.

There are some recipes about how to make food go further, others for wild food and it even tells you how to make the selfsufficientish old favorite the haybox oven. It was a war time book after all and I can really imagine someone during wartime treasuring it for the wisdom it opertunes. It would have really empowered the reader to make their rations last.

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.

The inside of a washing machine

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.

• 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, See below

Bio D came highly recommended by a friend of mine with 2 small children; they live on the edge of a city and so have plenty of muddy fields surrounding them. Needless to say she does have to deal with some pretty mucky clothes.

I tested this load with a dark load of washing and it has all come out pretty clean.  I have a pair of water proof trousers (that have been overused this summer)! they really do get caked and ingrained with mud. This was to be the item I inspected closely in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the powder. They still do have mud ingrained in them but I think this is from a while back when I went to a very, very muddy festival along with months on the allotment.  So again Bio D can’t work miracles but it is effective and does seem to wash clothes at low temperatures with similar results to one of the leading fish killing detergents.

Bio D 7.5 out of 10.

Undeterred by her environmental terrorism, I am trying out some alternatives that I have picked up to wash at 30 degrees today I am using Alma Win – Cleanut laundry Detergent. – Others will follow. We live in a hard water area so I used 60ml as stated on the bottle.

Results are in and it has performed ok, not great but ok. I must add that there were some pretty dirty clothes in the machine. I lifted my gardening fork up over my shoulder the other day and did not realise that it had been acumulating water inside the hollow handle. This water had turned black. Like an idiot I was wearing one of my favourite shirts. You can guess the rest.  This is why it has not turned out great, the shirt still has black marks on the shoulder and down the sleves. I would say this product just out performed soap nuts although it is hard to tell and is perhaps good for a person who does not get as muddy as me.

Alma Win Verdict – not to be used if you get dirty.   Marks 6/10