The second dispatch from author, printer and dealer in ‘Vintage Fishing Tackle for the Soul’ John Andrews (a.k.a Andrews of Arcadia). John is one of the six working men photographed by Neil Gavin for our spring/summer menswear collection. The photos here are by Jim Eyre (@scribblebag).

In the month of March the first thing I notice is the difference in the hours as dawn gets earlier, it seems, by an hour a week, although it is only a quarter of this in reality. As I step out of the van after the 7 O’Clock News there is light in Hanbury Street and for the first time in five months I will be able to load the trolley in something akin to daylight. The feeling this brings on is slow realisation that days at the market will get slowly warmer and brighter. It is a hope that you do not realise gets buried by the winter months…


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by TOAST ( 28.03.13 )

It’s half past nine on an exceptionally dreary Friday morning and I’m racing southbound towards Fitzrovia aboard my bicycle – hands freezing, lights glowing, tyres squealing. I pass by the thunderous Euston Road, whiz around the corner and arrive, a minute later, in Warren Street. I disembark and chain up the bike, push open a door beneath cobalt blue awnings and suddenly the drab streets outside are forgotten. The room before me is softly glowing, warm and inviting. I’ve arrived at Honey & Co., a fairly new but perfectly formed café-bistro, owned and run by ex-Ottolenghi husband and wife Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer…


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by TOAST ( 27.03.13 )

Orlando Gough. 

OMG, it’s all going horribly wrong, we’re eating all the wrong stuff, and the Obesity Czar is banging on the door, demanding to see a detailed inventory of everything we’ve eaten in the last three months. We’re living a good two years less than those cunning health-conscious Japanese with their sophisticated restaurants that won’t accept foreigners.

We’re eating too much horse, and we’re not doing enough foraging. We’re bingeing on TV cookery programmes, and then we’re buying packs of Findus frozen lasagne. We’re ricocheting between dieting and cup cakes. There’s the Fast Diet, invented by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. There’s the alarming Milf Diet (1/3 pint of milf a day), and the Cambridge Diet, a diet of Aristotle and Beowulf. Some of these diets involve weird pouches of stuff you add water to. It’s like being an astronaut. (Actually, maybe if you’re an astronaut you don’t add water, because the water will just fly away……not sure about this…)…


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by TOAST ( 26.03.13 )

Thom Hunt is a fisherman, hunter, forager, scuba diver, teacher of all these things… and television presenter: two series of Channel 4′s Three Hungry Boys, in which he and two friends were challenged to survive in the Hebrides with nothing but a battered old VW camper van (and absolutely no money) by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Thom has since moved from the River Cottage hub in Devon to the far reaches of Cornwall, where he runs exciting residential courses in wild food foraging/cooking and general living hand-in-hand with nature from an isolated, rudimentary (and lovely) cottage on the banks of the River Fal. This year Thom also plans to climb Everest.

He’s a man of great zest, infectious enthusiasm and relish for life. He likes nothing better than spending time in the Great Outdoors, Having Adventures. People love his courses, for more about which, visit 7thrise.co.uk


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by TOAST ( 25.03.13 )

We celebrated the opening of our newest shop on London’s Marylebone High Street last night with a good party. The Flower Appreciation Society did a fabulous job of decking the shop with fresh flowers and partygoers were treated to bespoke floral headdresses and buttonholes. Gin & Tonics were served by Sipsmith and decorated with peppery edible flowers from Greens of Devon. If you weren’t able to pop by, make sure to pay a visit to the shop over the next few days – the flowers will be in bloom until Monday 25th March.


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by TOAST ( 22.03.13 )

Flowers by Andy Warhol. 1964.


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by TOAST ( 22.03.13 )

Lia Leendertz.

A crystallised primrose is not something you knock up in a hurry. The polar opposite of ‘bish bash bosh’ cooking this is delicate and painstaking, gentle and slightly prim. It is a task that requires a cup of Lady Grey tea, a calm mind and a Radio 4 afternoon play. Such crystallised flowers are a nonsense really, not there to fill you up and providing perhaps the tiniest trace of nutrients, but they do provide colour and a little magic, and link your food irrevocably to your garden.

Edible flowers are generally an easy bunch to grow…


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The Flower Appreciation Society will be decking our Marylebone shop with flowers for its re-launch this Thursday. In their final dispatch before the main event, Ellie and Anna present their brief guide to edible flowers. Be sure to try violas, pansies, primroses (great sugared and used to decorate cakes), borage (an excellent addition to cocktails), and nasturtiums (brilliant in salads).


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by TOAST ( 17.03.13 )

The Bridge, Staithes by Sydney Lee. 1904. Colour woodcut. Private collection. © estate of the artist.

From the Shadows: The Prints of Sydney Lee RA is showing at the Royal Academy of Arts until 26th May 2013. This long overdue celebration of the art of Sydney Lee RA (1866–1949) offers an opportunity to rediscover the work of one of Britain’s most significant yet overlooked painter-printmakers. The exhibition coincides with the launch of the first publication on Lee, written by the exhibition’s curator, Professor Robert Meyrick, Head of the School of Art at Aberystwyth University. Find out more here.


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by TOAST ( 15.03.13 )

Richard King has worked at the heart of the independent music industry for twenty-odd years, from founding a label in his bedroom to looking after a&r for Domino Records as they released albums by Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Bonnie Prince Billie and many others – that label has an amazing list!

He is the co-editor of Loops, an occasional journal of long-form music writing published jointly by Faber and Domino. He has contributed to the Guardian, the Observer and many other publications. He is a regular contributor to Caught by the River.

He lives with his family in his native rural Powys. His first book ‘How Soon is Now’ (Faber) is a landmark survey of independent music – the record labels and the inspirational, eccentric and visionary figures who created them. He is an honorary founding partner of The Do Lectures and lurks in the background of Domino Radio.

Beyond all that – he’s a man of apparent and active intelligence, a calm getter-of-things-done and delightful company.

www.how-soon.com


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by TOAST ( 13.03.13 )
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