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This Little Piggie Stayed at Home
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THE PIGS ARE DEAD. The night before killing day, Sunday, Victoria and I sat with our John Seymour and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall books and read about blood puddings, offal, quartering heads, brawn, chorizo, scalding the skin, butchering, salting and all the rest of it and found the whole thing mightily daunting. Because we haven’t got a [...]
30 October 2007 DISASTER WITH THE pigs. Over half term we went away for a week to visit relatives, and we left the pigs in the charge of our neighbours. When we returned there was a rather stern note on the kitchen table from one neighbour telling us that the pigs had undermined the foundations [...]
THERE’S BEEN more death on the farm. The fox came back and took all the hens, leaving only the young cockerel, who now wanders around lone and forlorn, with only pigs, a rabbit and the cats for company. Often I see him hanging around by the gate to the pigs’ enclosure, as if chatting to [...]
SOME DAYS ARE GOOD, some days are bad. Sunday was a bad one. Well, the evening was, anyway. First Victoria and I had been arguing about cleaning. I suggested that maybe she’d like to clean up her pony’s shit from the yard occasionally and she screamed that she did her best and if I didn’t [...]
WELL, IT’S been three long months since the last instalment, during which time I have done very little work, been to four festivals, drunk a huge amount of beer and wine, and watched weeds completely cover the vegetable patch. One weekend we left the pigs in the care of Divorcing Dad. During their time in [...]
I SHOT A RAT yesterday. Just to see it die. No, what really happened was that a rat got stuck in the pig feed bin. Victoria found it. It was leaping up in the air, but couldn’t get quite high enough to escape from the bin, and so kept slipping down the plastic sides. Great, [...]
THE MOST EXCITING event of the past month has been the arrival on Monday this week of two pigs. They are weaners, a cross between Saddleback and Devon Black. They are mainly black and cost thirty quid each. We plan to slaughter them in November in order to have a larder full of meat for [...]
Country Diary 24 April 2007 AS EVER, there have been both triumphs and disasters in the garden. Mainly disasters. A little Scottie puppie has been visiting us and savaged the new bunny, Georgina. She lived but had two bloody ears and sat in shock for 24 hours. Georgina was allowed to play in the front [...]
I’M WRITING THIS week’s diary by hand as I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with computers. With pen and paper, nothing much can go wrong and also there is no outside force to come between you and the writing. The ink flows almost directly from your hand. Pen and paper also has the distinct advantages [...]
THE WOOD-BURNING stove has been ripping through the logs in this cold weather. This speed of burning has led to me to reconsider our fuel system. In the past I have bought huge £100 loads from the local National Trust house, but over the last six months they have not been offering this service. Having [...]
10 January 2007 MY FRIEND Oli Claridge came down just before Christmas to build us a treehouse. We were lucky weatherwise: the three days he was here came just after a period of non-stop rain and just before a period of bitter cold. We spent about fifty pounds on materials, the basic beams, the screws [...]
16 November 2006 MY BRASSICAS are disappointing me. There is one brussels sprout plant which has reached a reasonable height but the other two are barely a foot off the ground. Then there are the broccoli plants which I put in months ago. They seem stuck at dwarf level. When I look over fences at [...]
21 September 2006 IT’S BEEN three months since the last country diary. How slack I have been. Must try harder. I resolve henceforward to write them weekly. The summer was long and hot and we had a great visit from Crass founders Penny and Bron, who completely renovated our front garden, planted an apple tree, [...]
3 July 2006 TODAY I wandered though my raised beds in my little edible garden, marvelling at the bounty hanging from the branches, and those lines from Andrew Marvell’s The Garden came to mind: “The nectarine and curious peach, into my hands themselves do reach.” The peas have reached over six feet and many pods [...]
7 June 2006 THANK GOD for the hot weather at last. I was beginning to grow extremely miserable. The endless winter was very depressing. Is this strange weather something to do with global warming and climate change? I sometimes ask a friend to explain it all to me but it never really sinks in. The [...]
15 May 2006 I HAVE VERY SAD NEWS to report about Rosie Blossom Brownpatch, our lovely bunny. Rosie had been a great companion and provided hours of fun for adults and kids alike. We had grown quite attached to her. She had recently moved from the kitchen to the wilder environment of the yard, where [...]
24 April 2006 EVERY NOW AND THEN you read a book which is so inspiring and such a pleasure to read that you feel impelled to buy multiple copies, give them to your friends, and stride down Barnstaple High Street shouting “read this!”. You want to tell your girlfriend, the postman, the landlord and your [...]
5 April 2006 AT LONG LAST Spring has arrived. We were beginning to think it would never come. The winter seemed to last for five months. It is still a bit cold, in fact there was a frost last night, and my toes are cold, but the sun is shining. WE HAD a very enjoyable [...]
17 March 2006 TODAY I AM very sad. We have lost Rosie Blossom Brownpatch, our lovely fluffy bunny. Ten days ago we bought the rabbit, a white dwarf English T Rex, from the pet shop for Delilah’s birthday. Since then she has been a great source of fun, living in a basket in the corner [...]
9 March 2006 A WORD ON varieties. To be able to choose your own variety of vegetable and therefore to free yourself of the narrow choice available in the supermarkets is one of the great pleasures of growing your own vegetables. In the first year I couldn’t get my head round all the different varieties [...]
A 32 page book from Mr Gwynne, giving the principle parts of speech and basic grammatical elements. An essential component of any library, this is a beautifully typeset booklet which has been hand-sewn by Mr Brett. £8.95.
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Tom Hodgkinson's literary guide to husbandry. 'A delightful read,' James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday. 'Hugely inspiring,' Sarah Bakewell, New Statesman. 'Bizarre yet always beguiling,' Daily Mail. Illustrated by Alice Smith and typeset by Christian Brett. Signed first edition hardback. £16.99.
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The 2011 issue of the Idler is devoted to the idea of small business as an alternative to the grind of the nine-to-five. Tom also tells the story of how he and Victoria Hull set up the Idler Academy.
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The new 'Back to the Land' issue features a major interview with David Hockney who has also contributed two sketches. Essayists include Paul Kingsnorth, Harry Mount, Penny Rimbaud, Jay Griffiths and Simon Fairlie,.
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350 page Idler, a collection of radical essays by Alain De Botton, Penny Rimbaud, John Mitchinson, Jay Griffiths, Paul Kingsnorth, Oliver James. Published 17 June 2009. In Stock. Order now.
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Order Now. Published 5th March. "Wise, funny, practical and personal, The Idle Parent puts the fun back into parenting." Oliver James
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Take control of your life and reclaim your right to be idle. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.
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A sumptuous compendium of one hundred pleasures, each lovingly described and illustrated.
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"Packed with wit, anecdotes and ideas ..." Word Magazine
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"Very funny...should be at the top of Tony Blair's reading
list." The Times
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Recommended to anyone interested in either angling or doing nothing.
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"Read this eye-opening and amusingly written book" Daily Mail
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The Idler is an annual, book-shaped magazine that campaigns against the work ethic. It was founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. The intention of the magazine is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject. As well as providing a radical and thought-provoking read, the Idler is also very funny. MORE …
"For Jerome, idleness had little in common with laziness. His notion of idleness in the world beyond his fiction was one of contemplative productivity with the minimum of fuss." Idle Idols: Jerome K. Jerome
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