Yes, yes, I know – only bad news
sells – Ukraine, famine, the leadership contest, the young and desperate spending thousands of pounds to have healthy teeth capped in Turkey and bringing any ensuing dental problems back to the staggering NHS. And energy companies, cost of living, police failures, and a new book about Harry and Meghan. So clearly, annalog isn’t about money because I am not going to write about any of them.
I am going to tell you that a week in which it is noted that small independent bookshops are thriving in the US is a trend to be celebrated and I hope it crosses the Atlantic.
Fin whales have made a quantifiable return to the Antarctic.
Every time I see a grey squirrel, I wonder if it has had its daily contraceptive which is an irreverent way to respond to serious experiments to dose the Canadian intruder into infertility and give native red squirrels a chance. Hope it make them so sick
it makes them unable to do the damage they do to trees too.
I was pottering about in a long cool A shaped cotton dress, modest neck and half sleeves, when there was a knock at the door. Not a week goes by without somebody trying to collect for something. But before I could speak the very young and appealing Asian exclaimed “ Oh, that material. Where’s it from ?” “Russia, “ I said truthfully. 1930s.”
He asked where I got it, made sure he had the name straight, I declined to contribute to his collection and asked if I could show him something else. Casting a glance at his companions, who were moving on, he said yes and I raced to show him an Indian fabric so fine, you just handwash it, drip it and wear it. He asked reverently if he could touch it, we beamed at each other. “I make dresses” he said. “Thank you for all this –“he gestured. I asked his name, we shook hands. Thank you, Ali.
Discarded fast fashion is spread 30 miles across the Atacama Desert, has impeded a successful Indian industry for recycling but our often misguided government has invested in a goody – a infrared scanner sorting through clothes too worn to be sold in charity shops and based in Kettering, it’s a new project from the business wing of The Salvation Army.
It won’t stop thoughtless people dumping the unwearable in the street or pushing off the unwanted into charity shops where it can’t be used (Pam the Painter tells me she spends a lot of time sorting out the “can be sold” from the “must be dumped”). But it is part of WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), John Lewis is looking at co operation and the machine has four time the capacity currently in use. Three cheers for “it’s never over till it’s over” the slogan for linouiio the recycling firm of Linda and John Parkinson.
Magazines were my first print love, offering colour and introducing you to a magnificent range of ideas. Once (and only once) I turned a page in Vogue, to see the fashion edition of a dress already in my wardrobe. Usually editorial teaches you something – thanks to Loise Eccles as Consumer Affairs Editor, Sunday Times for the above – makes you think or get in touch, buy the book, ask the questions. Just occasionally though, you smile knowingly. Because you got there first.
In one of the trilogy on Elizabeth I , the fine historical writer Margaret Irwin has a doctor upbraid the young princess for the amount of glass in her room, letting in light. I am not suggesting we go back to holes in the roof but I like the light where it belongs – outside.
My flat is on the ground floor and I hate curtains. In a city, they are very expensive dust traps. I have heavy wooden shutters. Keeps the warm in during the winter, keep the light and thus heat out in summer. One time investment.
Something I got right. The flat is 100 years old, the windows are sashes. You close the shutters to the light at the front, open the windows to the air at the back : good news.
Annalog 