Adam Tinworth: The Rest of My Life

A Little Summer Preparation

Deforestation

Because I'm a tree-hugging hippy at heart:

Just beautiful - and inspiring - and worrying.

[via Kottke]

Acorn

Suffolk Melancholy

...there undoubtedly is something unnerving about East Anglia. Whether it's those huge skies, that almost aggressively flat landscape -- or the sheer, slightly agoraphobic sense that the world could at any moment tilt and swallow you up -- it's a place that makes the heart race, the blood quicken. It's a landscape that makes you tread cautiously, glance behind you, check your tracks.

-- Julie Myserson in the foreword to Line Dancing: Stories from East Anglia

Suffolk is a strange place. In part, I love it. That "two decades behind the rest of the world" feel, the friendliness of the staff in the market town shops and the beautiful rural countryside. I spend quite a lot of time there right now, because it's where my mother lives. I look forward to my visits there, and quietly dread my return to the thronging metropolis at the end of my stays. 

And yet. 

When talk turns to the idea of moving to Suffolk, both Lorna and I hesitate. There's something uncanny in the beauty of Suffolk, an edge to it that keeps me from loving it fully because, truth be told, I'm more than a little afraid of it.

The Mystery Of Food

Brits in the dark over food production | Food | Guardian Unlimited Environment:

"Farmers produce 60% of all the food consumed in this country, yet many adults questioned didn't associated everyday foods with British farms.According to the survey, 35% did not know that porridge comes from a British farm. The origins of bread were a mystery to 23% of people, and 22% did not believe that sausages and bacon came from British farms."

This is just depressing beyond belief. That our understanding of the link between food, farming and plant and animal life has broken down so badly is very worrying.