Dr Sally Bayley.

When I was eight years old my grandmother taught me how to make tea. It has proved to be one of the most vital lessons of my life. Tea, in my household, was radically inclusive. Making it was my first lesson in socialising… In a house swarming with adults and children, you never made tea just for yourself, it was a community affair and took place in the depths of a large dark brown pot whose bottom seemed limitless. I peered down its deep dark shaft and thought of those striking miners I had heard about on the television and wondered if they were striking for more tea breaks as well as better pay…


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by TOAST ( 12.10.11 )

James Attlee invites us to savour the long nights of winter – their rare darkness and the too-easily-forgotten light of the moon.

For those of us who live in northern latitudes, one of the first signals of the changing of the season makes itself noticed at the end of August. Before we have reconciled ourselves to letting go of the summer, which may well give the impression of only just having arrived, the evenings begin to grow shorter. As September advances, even as we enjoy what may be some of the warmest weather of the year, darkness encroaches further, a forewarning of the long nights of winter waiting just offstage. What could there possibly be to celebrate in this shortening of daylight? Our hearts militate against rising for work in darkness, only to be greeted by darkness again as we leave to make our way home. After all, we feel like saying, we are human beings, not moles! We deserve a little more daylight than this…


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by TOAST ( 03.10.11 )

Returned from the seemingly never-ending school holidays, our Englishwoman finds respite from New York City in regular inter-state trips away.

It is largely blamed on the tradition of harvest days but the twelve-week (or more) summer holiday enjoyed by children throughout New York reaps nothing but havoc, headaches and ultimately feral children. In my mind it has more to do with keeping the lucrative Summer Camp business afloat, not to mention keeping those taxes down as few people want to be paying over the odds for other children’s education. One thing I can be sure of is that we will have moved back to the UK before these horrific holidays have been brought in line with the rest of the world…


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by TOAST ( 03.10.11 )

Lara Smrtnik

Last weekend we went to Harvest at Alex’s… Initially lured by talk of good food plus talks and demonstrations by the likes of Mark Hix, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jay Rayner and Alys Fowler, we thought Toast would fit in well…


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by TOAST ( 16.09.11 )

Rachel Seaton.

Some of my fondest memories are of car journeys immersed in music. They were not necessarily remarkable drives – it was the music that made them memorable. There is something about listening to music in a car – the enclosed space, the lack of distraction, the possibilities of high volume – that means it becomes all encompassing, you can focus on a melody, a beat, a rhythm while your mind drifts elsewhere…


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by TOAST ( 07.09.11 )

When Neil Ansell moved to a deeply rural Welsh cottage at the age of 30 he was prepared for a secluded life, but had not anticipated that he would all but disappear from his own story…

The sun drops behind the brow of the black hill that looms over the cottage from the west, and dusk begins to settle over the fields below. I throw a log on the fire, fetch through a gallon jug of water, and add another S-hook to hang the soot-blackened kettle so that it swings into the heart of the flames. When my mug of tea is ready I take it out with me and sit on the doorstep. The valley is in deep shadow now, but on the horizon the western flanks of the Brecon Beacons are still lit up by the sun’s last rays…


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by TOAST ( 30.08.11 )

One of our daily internet rituals (one that accompanies our regular checks of facebook, news sites, twitter, google reader… the list goes on) is a visit to NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. One of the simplest websites we’ve ever come across, it presents a single new picture of the universe and brief explanation of the picture each day. It has no home page and does not have a particularly handsome design. Yet, unusually for the world wide web, it manages to create a moment of space and perspective each day. A chance to sit and wonder at, to learn about the world (and beyond) without leaving your desk…


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by TOAST ( 24.08.11 )

Last week we packed our bags and moved to the Wilderness. We arrived on Tuesday, with two vans full of our favourite outdoor things – deckchairs, firebowls, storm lanterns, blankets… – to install ourselves near the lakes of the Cornbury Park Estate, and in the tents of the very first Wilderness Festival. We hefted boxes and carried piles of blankets, attached lanterns to bamboo poles and hung them from trees, arranged deckchairs, put up bunting and washing lines, decorated stages and projection screens, and late at night allowed ourselves a swim in the lake (four girls in matching polka dot swimwear) then warmed ourselves around our very own firebowl…


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by TOAST ( 18.08.11 )

Next year marks the fifteenth anniversary of ‘Moro.’ The Moorish Mediterranean restaurant was started by husband and wife team Sam and Sam Clark in 1997 in what was then a ramshackle, partly boarded up Exmouth Market. The street has since become a thriving and vibrant parade with plenty of independent shops and many competing restaurants (surely in no small part because of Moro’s success)…


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by TOAST ( 08.08.11 )

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…


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by TOAST ( 08.08.11 )
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