Or at least of those things, jaded and happy on the 22nd December, that we could remember…
A is for avaaz – giving the good people, the millions of ordinary people, a real voice. A great thing. www.avaaz.org
B is for Barry the Barber – a Geordie in Spitalfields via New York, great haircuts & beard trimming, good chat, good vibes. www.barrythebarber.com
C is for Christmas, still wonderful, longed for, magic, restful and festive in the right measure…
Alexandra Harris tells us about her favourite place, though she struggles to choose just one… Places are a huge source of pleasure in my life: mostly rural, mostly English, not too wild, preferably with signs of the past close to the surface. I know there are people who skim through Thomas Hardy’s descriptions of Wessex in order to get to some plot, but I’m the sort of person who skims through the events in order to get to the descriptions. I think I’m happiest when looking at a view. But how to choose a favourite place? They all have their moods and seasons; recent discoveries can be thrilling while the old haunts do their fair bit of haunting…
For those of us based in London our forthcoming trip out of this wild city and into the Oxfordshire countryside will come as a welcome relief. The cause of our exodus has been planned for some time however – Wilderness, a new festival run by the same people as Secret Garden Party, asked if we wanted to join them in their celebration of arts, music and the outdoors, and we saw no reason to refuse…
Nat Lucas.
It is difficult to imagine Orlando Gough entering into anything without total enthusiasm. His full steam ahead approach to life gathers you up in his wake – whether he is discussing cooking, a new rap artist or in this case, the day of events that he has curated for the ‘Voices Across the World’ festival at the Royal Opera House (commissioned by its contemporary arm ROH2). At the heart of the day are twelve of his favourite singers…
Our Englishwoman finally moves in to her new home, and sets about exploring and decorating… It was strange but a joy to sleep in our own beds and indeed an absolute pleasure to clutch our own mugs and drink tea brewed in a pot. The house embraced our belongings and they in turn looked as though they had been hand-picked for this new space. We were momentarily on a high…
Kim Trethowan.
As producers of a handmade, unpasteurised product, slow food is not a concept for us, but a way of life and working. This does not mean we are backward looking; indeed it places Gorwydd Farm at the centre of a modern, yet traditional, community of slow food devotees, made up of interwoven and ever increasing circles. What community actually is provokes significant debate, but for us it represents all the people and groups who have contributed in some way to who we are, what we do and why we do it…
We talk to Alastair Sawday, founder of the Special Places to Stay guidebooks and the new luxury camping website Canopy & Stars, about his childhood spent in trees.
We’ve heard that you liked building inventive tree houses as a young boy… My first ‘tree house’ was actually more of a den – a few planks up in the canopy with a rope ladder for my friends and me to scramble up and down…
Having searched for and found the perfect house, our anonymous Englishwoman waits for the day she can move out of hotel limbo and into her own new home…
There it stood, on one of the wider, brighter but busier streets of Park Slope, Brooklyn. A five-story brick build with two identical arched front doors painted pillar box red. An eternal gas lantern was guarding a neglected front yard. The symmetry was pleasing but I could not imagine the internal configuration…
Tamasyn Gambell has taken the iconic preserve of high-end fashion houses – the silk scarf – and has found a completely new approach to them. Her scarves are the opposite of those that are shinily new and mass-produced in garish designs; rather, her scarves are reclaimed, sourced from a textile recycling unit in the north of England and then hand-printed with her own designs using organic dye.
