Originally posted March 7, 2006

Update: On Pix’s advice, I posted for help on an evangelical yahoo knitting group, and received an incredible response, including this information:

I have found my notes, they are not mine, but my grandmothers. The shawl originated in Shetland, by one of the crofters in the 1800′s. It was a shawl made as a ‘wedding ring shawl’ in 2 ply Shetland wool. The wool itself is not a pure white, it fact being wool it is a yellowish white colour. However, originally, when made this shawl, could be passed completely through an average wedding ring.

And here it is. Apparently this pattern is about 70 years old; and see that square shawl next to it? I think that’s my baby blanket. Seems that Aunty Audrey had been knitting shawls for a long, long time.

Six months ago, I could still shop in blissful ignorance of working conditions in the Far East. I was far more concerned about going ten minutes over my own 37 hour week, than considerate of the fact that somewhere in China, 15 year old kids are working twice that for £40 a month. Now I’ve seen and read too much, and it’s so hard to shop.

But what can you do? You need clothes and shoes. There is a very limited range of stuff marketed deliberately at people who want to shop ethically. There’s a good directory of ethical businesses here, but of course it doesn’t tell you which of the high street retailers have good social compliance programmes. That’s because so few of them do; but it would be nice to know which ones they were, so that I wasn’t stuck with a choice between tie-dyed sarongs, hemp hoodies, and bags made out of recycled inner tubes. Bags made from inner tubes are very ugly.

Another option would be to become more self-sufficient, make things myself; but although I admire Pix’s adventures in knitting, I’m simply not very good with my hands. I am also slightly stupid when it comes to purchasing raw materials – where do I start? And how do I know that the fabrics were manufactured ethically, anyway?

And what if, by making my own clothes, I am in a small way doing some Chinese child out of a job? You see, making things better is a very big, daunting task.

So, assuming we can’t make our own, and we don’t want to wear organic clothing with unfinished edges, how do we know which high street retailers are good? It’s impossible. Obviously you can look at their website, and if you’re persistent then you might find something like the social compliance statement made by the Arcadia Group, which owns Dorothy Perkins, Burtons etc. If you get the Flash site, go to About Us and click on Ethical Policy. This will show you their code of conduct, which is fairly standard, roughly based on SA8000; but scroll to the end and check out the bit about Monitoring & Inspection: it doesn’t say anything about enforcement, does it?

In a desparate attempt to feel better about buying so many pairs of shoes, I emailed Faith to find out what their attitude was. They replied that they had an internal monitoring programme. This generally means that they tell the factories that they have to be nice, and leave it at that; what it most certainly does NOT mean, is that they make regular checks and drop the factories who systematically violate human rights. No, because those are the cheapest ones.

So should I only shop at stores that belong to my own clients? Because frankly, they’re just as bad. I have one client who dropped their entire compliance programme, because the audit results were so horrific. I won’t be shopping there. I have other clients who are impressively committed, but it’s like painting the Forth Bridge, really it is. They try, but there are so many factories, and the ones who get the highest grades are probably the ones most skilled at bamboozling auditors.

The best option seems to be to support the shops who try, and avoid the ones who transparently only do this to prevent a Nike-style PR disaster. Of course, I can’t ever tell you which is which, because I would lose my own job. Google is your friend.

Finally, you may be interested to learn that there are 720 factories worldwide that are certified to SA8000. Here is a map showing you where they are.

Our pre-festival preparation consisted of obtaining music by many of the bands that we didn’t know well, because we felt that we would enjoy it more if we were familiar with lots of the music. This is how we knew we were going to love Maximo Park, but also how we found ourselves disappointed by British Sea Power. Here is a picture of BSP and their stupid tree-waving fans:

The other thing I really wasn’t prepared for was the high incidence of underwear showage. Now I know that for ages, boys have been wearing their jeans low around the arse with a couple of inches of grubby designer label showing – quite a foolish look, I’m sure you will agree. But I didn’t know that this was now a common look for girls as well. Which is okay when your arse looks like this:

But not okay when your arse looks like this:

or indeed this:

I was also mildly entertained by all the individuals present. You know the ones: rebellious, pierced, dressed all in black. Don’t give a shit about nothin’. Very unfairly treated by parents [even those for whom tickets were clearly purchased by mummy and daddy]. Favourite t-shirt slogan: demand the right to be unique.

The whole place was thoroughly branded by Carling, which the little darlings didn’t seem to mind at all; consumer ethics are only useful when they don’t apply to the things we all want to consume, such as music. Only the soft drinks and half pints were served in cups advertising Ethical Threads, which gives you some idea of the target market for those items. Real beer drinkers want t-shirts that weren’t just made in sweatshops, they’re printed using the blood and sweat of chinese children. Oh yeah.

Seriously, these kids couldn’t even pick up their own litter. After three days, they were happily sitting on the dusty grass in a sea of their own filth. None of the bins were full, not because they were regularly emptied, but because no-one put anything in them.

In summary, Reading was ace, not least because I could feel superior whenever I wasn’t enjoying the music. Also because of Pete’s beard.

Then she made a telephone call to the Secret Apartment, where she takes all visiting colleagues from the UK and America, to buy handbags and watches with dubious designer labels…

We met another colleague, and then Taiwanese colleague had to go off on an emergency errand, leaving me and Chinese colleague to browse through an amazing selection of belts and bags and other leather goods. She had given us guideline prices, so when we had piled up everything I wanted, we decided on what we considered to be a good price, which was RMB600 [remember, 15 to the pound].

The Secret Shop’s Secret Assistant rattled the prices she had decided on into her calculator, and came up with a figure around RMB3000, at which point Chinese colleague started to argue. She had never been to the Secret Place before, and she was terrified, but she argues like a good ‘un, and we eventually walked out. This is what you do. Secret Assistant followed us to the lift, and I raised the price to RMB700. Chinese colleague was disgusted with me. Secret Assistant begged me for a little more so I said 750, at which point the lift arrived and we got into it. I gather this is all part of the proceedings, and I needn’t have gone up to 750; in fact it would be better if I hadn’t, because among the many counterfeit items in the Secret Apartment, were the counterfeit RMB50 notes – which was what they gave me in change.

Nonetheless, I’ve got 2 watches, 2 handbags, 4 purses, a belt and a silk tie, all with very good fake brand labels, for fifty quid. We left the Secret Apartment feeling like we had been had, and met up with Taiwanese colleague again; she reviewed the haul, and said I hope you didn’t pay more than RMB1000 for this. Very pleased with our handiwork, I can tell you.

We crossed the road (which is a horror story in itself), and went into Lohou Commercial City – like a giant indoor market crammed with little stalls selling all kinds of tat. As we walked through the aisles, all the shopkeepers called to me Hey! Missy! Looky! and offered their wares: watches, dvds, silk scarves, manicure-pedicure-massage, everything under the sun.

We shopped and shopped until we could shop no more, then went for more food. I had my first chopstick disaster, when I dropped a dumpling into a bowl of oil and soy sauce: splat.

I’ve taken lots of photos today – you will have to wait until I get back before you can see them.

There is very little information about how to get around these parts, because it is strictly not a tourist destination. On Wednesday we visited a factory in the next city, and the drive took two hours; yesterday we were at a factory in Shenzhen district, and the drive took two hours. There are skyscrapers as far as the eye can see, in every direction.

Driving is crazy here. Lane markings are treated as general guidelines, so where there are three lanes marked, the traffic will be five cars wide, changing lanes at random right under each other’s bumpers. Pedestrians cross roads anywhere, even on a major intersection, and wander as slow as they like – traffic just stops for them. Bicycles, tractors, small cars, all merrily drive up the wrong side of the road, and slip roads are a directional free-for-all.

A smart innovation: when we’re lost, we look out for guys on motorbikes beside the road. For 20RMB they will guide you to your destination. Could’ve done with that when I was in Essen last week.

Haven’t taken any photos yet, because really I have been working too hard and haven’t seen anything pretty.

The plan was to meet my boss on the Circle Line platform underneath Paddington Station, but thanks to my own personal disinclination to get on a crowded train at Reading, I arrived a few minutes late – a few minutes after they closed the gates, telling everyone there was a power failure. I called my boss and left a message saying I would get a bus to Euston; I assumed she would do the same thing.

It took a while to push through the crowds and work out which bus I needed, but when it arrived there was simply no chance of getting on. As I stood waiting for the next one, the police closed the road; at that point I decided to walk. An official outside Paddington advised me it would take about 15 or 20 minutes, which is testament to the reigning confusion; what with the detour caused by Edgware Road being sealed off [and my subsequent wrong turning], it took an hour.

At Edgware Road I saw what looked to me like a bomb-squad sort of vehicle, and first heard the rumour of two explosions. As I walked, emergency vehicles were screaming by, and every tube station was sealed. I started to worry because my boss still hadn’t returned my call; also I was lost by this point, so I phoned Pete for directions, and he told me a bit more about what was going on, when I could hear him through the sirens.

It took me about an hour to reach Euston, and by the time I got there, the station was completely closed, and all mainline services out of the capital were suspended. It sank in very slowly, that not only could I not get to my client, nor could I get home. Nor could I get hold of anyone in London, because the mobile networks were so busy; and it didn’t feel like anywhere was safe. That was a lonely moment.

My boss finally called me; she had been trapped in the underground for two hours, and when I spoke to her, she had no idea what had been going on; she wondered why I was so glad to hear from her. As far as she was concerned, she had been inconvenienced by a local power failure, spent a couple of hours observing the funny Brits being all blitz-spirity, and then had a high old time walking along the underground tracks to be rescued. I’m really glad that, when she was stuck in that train, she had no idea why she was stuck in it.

She told me to get a cab to her flat in Kensington; well – someone must have been able to get a taxi in London yesterday, because there were a lot of them about, but they were all taken. I walked, and it occurred to me that I might want to avoid the main roads; it occurred to lots of other people, too, but the text messages saying avoid Kings Cross and walk through the park only reached me in occasional batches.

I managed to get a cab at Knightsbridge, by which point I didn’t think I could walk another step. A quarter of a mile down the road, he let me out again because the road was sealed. He charged me £3 for the brief sit-down.

There was a constant flow of information updating me about what was happening. I had seen the Evening Standard headline saying people had been killed by now, and a graphic of the targeted areas on Sky News in a TV shop window; Pete and my office kept calling me with warnings and news; and I just kept walking. Even while helicopters hung over our heads, London felt like it was somehow in control of the situation. There was no panic. The traffic wasn’t entirely at a standstill. London was suddenly full of people doggedly trying to get to where they had been going before they were so rudely interrupted.

Eventually I was rescued, given tea at my boss’s flat, where she kindly allowed me to work all afternoon. The quality of weblog reporting seems to have improved a lot since 2001, but maybe that’s because I read more weblogs that are actually based in London, so the quality of information is better. It was good to know when the trains started running again, and it was particularly good when Mr Sevitz offered to walk me to the bus to Clapham.

I appreciate how lucky I was yesterday, that the bus didn’t explode outside Paddington, and that I didn’t get down to the tube a few minutes earlier. I’m happy that all I’ve suffered is enormous blisters and aching legs. I’m really impressed that London was so cool in the face of attack. And I was bloody glad to get home to Pete last night.

What I did at the weekend:

• Went to Bristol to see the good Doctor Pockless
• Observed a number of urban birds
• Watched The Kingdom of Heaven
• Ate good food
• Lost at Monopoly.

Ingredients 1 aubergine 1 sweet potato 1 red onion 2 sticks celery 1 clove garlic or a blob of garlic puree 2 tsp pesto or basil in oil 2 sun dried tomatoes Small chunk of strong cheddar cheese

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade and oil an oven-proof dish.
2. Half-fill a pan with water and put it on the heat. Peel and chop the sweet potato, and cut the aubergine in half lengthways. When the water starts to boil, put the potato in the pan, and the aubergine in a steamer above it. Both take about ten minutes to cook.
3. Chop up the onion and fry very gently in olive oil. Chop the celery and the sun dried tomato and add these to the onion along with the garlic (crushed, chopped, whatever) and the basil. Season with salt and pepper and cook slowly until the potato and the aubergine are ready.
4. After it has steamed for ten minutes, put the aubergine to one side to cool slightly. Drain the potato and add it to the other vegetables, stirring hard to mash it up a bit.
5. Put more water on to boil for rice.
6. Carefully hollow out the aubergine, chopping the removed flesh and adding it to the pan.
7. Put the two aubergine shells in the baking dish and heap the vegetable mixture into them. Cover with grated cheese and bake in the oven for ten minutes during which you can cook the rice.

Best job ever. Best boyfriend ever. Lost my last grandparent and disowned my hometown. Didn’t leave the country once.

The recipe turned out to be the biggest load of nonsense I have ever read. I was about to email the BBC, lambasting them for publishing a recipe that has obviously never been tested, when I noticed that there was a second version of it, with an amended ingredients list, attributed to the tellytubbyesque Anthony Worrall-Thompson.

Unfortunately, the ridiculous cooking instructions haven’t changed. Anyway, by the time I discovered the updated recipe, I had already created my own, which I give to you here.

Ingredients 90ml/3fl oz extra virgin olive oil 600g/3lb 2¼oz butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced nb. half a butternut squash is about 400g. 250g/9oz fresh ricotta cheese paprika to taste fresh ground black pepper

For the béchamel sauce: 55g/2oz butter 55g/2oz plain flour 350ml/10 ½fl oz milk 1 egg 25g/2oz grated cheddar cheese

250g/8 ¾oz green lasagne pasta 25g/1oz Parmesan cheese, grated

Method

1. Put the olive oil in a large pan and cook the diced squashfor 25-30 minutes or more on a very low heat. Stir frequently and keep covered. The pumpkin is ready when it is completely tender.
2. Season squash with plenty of paprika and ground black pepper
3. Add the ricotta cheese while it’s still on the heat. Stir well then remove from the heat. Cover and allow to stand.
4. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
5. To make béchamel sauce, melt the butter in a small saucepan without letting it fry, add the flour little by little, stirring regularly to avoid lumps. When the flour has evenly absorbed the butter, continue to stir and let it cook. Add the milk a little at a time until a smooth, thick and creamy sauce is obtained. Season.
6. In a large ovenproof dish, spread a thin layer of sauce, then arrange a layer of lasagne pasta. Cover with a layer of squash mixture, pasta again, another layer of sauce, more squash mixture and finish with a layer of lasagne pasta.
7. Add the beaten egg, the grated cheese, and about two tablespoons of water to the sauce, and return the pan to the heat, stirring continuously for about a minute.
8. Pour this mixture over the lasagne, and sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.
9. Bake for 30 minutes, and serve with a sharp rocket salad to contrast with the creamy butternut squash.
Of course, we haven’t eaten it yet, so it might be shite. I’ll let you know.

Update: The lasagne looked a little dry when it came out of the oven, but in fact was most edible, and my only complaint would be that it was slightly bland. I think something sharper needs to be added to the filling, or alternatively you could put the butternut squash mixture in one layer, and spinach in the other.Meanwhile, my apple and raspberry crumblets were the star of the show.

In my twenties, I acquired a taste for olives, largely thanks to house-sharing with an Italian who cooked everything with loads of olive oil. It makes me very happy to have acquired this taste, because olives are lovely, and I can think of lots of good ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, but sitting in a bar with a bottle of wine and a plate of olives is one of them.

In the last few months, thanks to Pete and his predilection for sag paneer, I have started eating spinach. At first it was just the highly spiced stuff, and only in combination with that deliciously bland fried cheese; but slowly, bravely, I tried some baby spinach leaves in my rocket salad. I think I may have eaten them before, without realising what it was.

I’ve discovered a whole green world of new flavour and texture that I’ve never experienced before! Menus suddenly have a new section on them: it turns up in cannelloni with ricotta cheese, on muffins underneath poached eggs, mixed up with all manner of interesting things in Indian restaurants. I feel like a new kind of food has been invented just for me.

So, olives in my twenties, spinach in my thirties, and I fully expect to be joyfully consuming tripe by the middle of the next decade.

The first one was a former girls’ grammar in Kendal, with a strict bottle-green uniform [and white knee-socks*], but I only went there for two terms.

The second school had a dress code, which meant that our school photographs looking like youth club gatherings, as we all stretched the boundaries of the code as far as we could get away with. I have a lot of long-harboured resentments about this school, but the dress code is a good demonstration of the apparently-casual student-centricity of the teaching style and the curriculum. Bear in mind that I’m talking about nearly twenty years ago [dear god], not the current txtspk era, which effectively suggests that my school was at the vanguard of modern educational technique. Hurrah. Lucky me.

At school one, we were taught Classical Studies. At school two we were taught Social Studies. Very modern. So much more useful to practice completing council house application forms than to learn about Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection.

At school one, the music teacher drew crotchets and minims on the blackboard. At school two, music lessons were about listening to a random piece of music while drawing our impressions of it on a piece of paper, then performing in small groups a piece made up on the spot that was supposed to be related to the original piece. This was the audio version of the aforementioned school photograph: a pointless cacophony.

At school one, drama lessons featured a fey, floaty woman encouraging us to write and taking us to the theatre. At school two, drama lessons consisted of the teacher setting a theme, and us making up and performing a scene in front of the class. All I learnt was how to die on my feet in front of the rest of my class, once a week, for three years.

I would like to have learned about music. I would have liked some technical information about how it works, and a structured understanding of which composers were writing what music, when.

I could happily have skipped drama altogether, but then on the other hand, it would have been nice to know a thing or two about stagecraft, and presentation skills would have been useful. Just think what you could do with drama classes, if you took elements of media studies and film studies, and discussed the technique of acting or stage lighting or directing, instead of focusing solely on who could come up with the best ideas within a 35 minute lesson [i.e. anyone with the sense to plagiarise whatever they saw on TV last night].

Certainly, I had a handful of talented peers, for whom these showcase classes were great fun. And perhaps some of them were somehow disadvantaged, and did not already have music lessons or a local theatre club, in which case I’m happy that the teachers encouraged them to be creative.

I suspect, though, that rather than trying to find the hidden gems, this style of teaching was intended to be democratic; something we could all join in, regardless of our musical or acting abilities. Perhaps it was supposed to be a chance to let off steam, tire us out so we didn’t give the maths and history teachers too much trouble.

In subjects that were not streamed according to ability, perhaps it was too difficult to specify a sensible middle ground, where the majority of the pupils could learn something, so they sat back and let us make a racket instead. how patronising, to decide that too many of us were incapable of learning about music, to make it worth while actually teaching us about it.

I feel as though I have missed out, been deprived by an indulgent education authority who were too concerned with giving “everyone” a “fair” chance, to give any of us any useful training. Because you can be sure that the kids who were going to need to know how to complete council house application forms were probably skiving that day.

*Gratuitous school uniform detail provided solely for Pete’s enjoyment. Stop drooling, Sevitz.

I described the job that I have now been doing for the last seven months, and she didn’t just find it for me, she created it, by telling her Director about me and my unusual penchant for ISO 9001.

By mid-August, the company was fully accredited, but there were still lots of things for me to do, so my contract was extended to the end of October, and now it’s finally up and I have to leave.

Frankly, they’ll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming, this afternoon, because I’ve had the most fantastic time. There have been frustrating moments and some of it has been hard work, but I have really, really enjoyed both the work and the company. I realise how lucky I am to have been doing my ideal job with such fun, friendly and intelligent people, for these last few months. I am gutted to be leaving.

This rating scale was developed over the weekend by the Uborka-Pockless Restaurant Rating Committee, on a field trip to Bristol. It was calibrated and tweaked over the course of a 48-hour eating spree, which included paninis, curry, pizza, full english breakfast, and a lot of beer.

The scale is named, not in an attempt to offend any god-botherers or alienate Sevitz, but after one of the exclamations uttered during the hour-long wait for our main courses on Saturday night.

The twelve criteria represent the twelve disciples, although we haven’t got round to giving them actual names yet, mainly because we don’t know the names of all the disciples. This is just random and irreverent, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

The scale is a closed-option marking system, where the venue scores either a YES or a NO against each criterion. The number of YESes are added up, and that gives a final rating. If you feel particularly geeky, you can then turn this into a percentage, but that would be a bit much, don’t you think?

The original version of the scale was developed in the Kathmandu Nepalese Restaurant in Bristol, which scored a shockingly low 6/12 Christs on a Bike, or Christ on a Bikes if you prefer.

We still had plenty of time while we were waiting for our bill, so we went on to test the scale by assessing the nice little cafe where we had delicious paninis at lunchtime. The place was the Boston Tea Party, and the score was 9/12 Christ on a Bikes.

On Sunday we had the opportunity to evaluate the Full English provided by our charming bed and breakfast. We were obliged to award 12 Christ on a Bikes, which I have just decided to call a Jesus. It really was that good.

Finally, in the spirit of indulgence that characterised our weekend [but please bear in mind that we went on a four-hour walk on Saturday and a three-hour walk on Sunday], we had pizzas in the Bar Room Bar, where Pete was delighted to revisit the Crispy Duck Pizza, and they scored 8.17/12 Christ on a Bikes before visiting the toilets, and 9/12 Christ on a Bikes afterwards.

As an interesting aside, we discovered that when in the process of waiting for an unacceptable amount of time in a Nepalese restaurant, the most effective way of conjuring up more attentive service is to complain to the waiter and then get out your notebook and start making comprehensive notes about the restaurant.