A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Potato

28 March

Releasing the inner Da Vinci

Inside all of us there is a demiurge, a primal creative instinct to make something that wasn’t there before. Admittedly this inner Da Vinci is hidden deeper in some than others, but nevertheless given time, materials and an ounce of self-belief, it is bound to emerge.

How about some Jethro Cull?

Amongst the many scraps of knowledge that I’ve picked up since I arrived at Pilsdon in March, one of the most obscure has to be how many people it takes to carry a cow.  And so I can now divulge this to you too, dear reader : seventeen.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Economic Crisis

I have become used to the expression of mild astonishment that flits across people’s faces when I explain to them that until recently I had been working for years in the mobile phone software industry in London.  Maybe it’s something to do with my ever-lengthening beard and hair that make me look more like a Viking marauder (albeit a bespectacled one) than an urban professional. Or perhaps it’s just that the world I now inhabit is such a long way from that of inner-city London, on most measures you can think of.

Keeping up with the Joneses

I first heard of Pilsdon from a book I read last November called Utopian Dreams. It’s written by Tobias Jones, who documented his visits to various communities in UK and Italy, searching for somewhere he and his family could feel at peace in. He was dissatisfied with the standard model of our contemporary Western lifestyle of consumerism, studio flats and TV dinners. He also wanted to discover whether a community with religion at its core would prove to be more cohesive than one without. It’s a very thought-provoking and intelligent read.

Nice warm ice warm, fresh milk!

It’s 5:40am. I get up and open the window on the verdant panorama which the early sun is warming, and listen for a minute to the dawn chorus. A quick wash then it’s on with my blue overalls and steel-toe-capped Doc Martin’s and outside to the dairy where I collect the two metal pails, the two plastic milking buckets, the dual-teated bucket for the calves Boris and Daffodil, the single-teated bottle for the youngest calf Bluebell, and another bucket of warm water with cloths for udder cleaning. My milking partner will normally meet me here.

Stumped for words

The sharp thud of leather on willow. The desultory applause. The cries of fielders certain that a batsman is now out. The shake of the head of an umpire equally certain that he is not. The baa’ing of the sheep on the hillside above. Yes this was an actual cricket match that I was actually participating in, and oddly quite enjoying it.