The Netherlands has just bailed out its existing high speed network. Some of our nation’s largest corporates already have restrictions on the number of train journeys executives can bill for and told them to use the internet and video links to do business. Yet we’re pressing on with this flawed, countryside-eating project. Why not plough £34billion into better broadband technology and benefit the whole nation instead of putting the equivalent sum into a fixed point-to-point transport system that needs to be got to before it can be got on? Why not spend the money improving an existing service and rail system, instead of chucking them to one side like an old mobile phone going into landfill?

Our country has the gall to cry foul when a growing economy in a vast country like Brazil carves roads through the rainforests, yet we have less economic need, more existing transport infrastructure and live in a nation that is tiny in world terms and still we consider an environment like the Chiltern Hills to be disposable.

The High Speed 2 system being built will be out of date by the time it is in full use and our children, already saddled with the costs of university, failed banking and a national debt that makes their eyes pop, will judge us for  its environmental and financial impact.

Dynastic Egypt & Nubia © Richard Bryant & arcaid.co.uk

A well-known broadcaster let slip to the Ashmolean’s dynamic director Dr Christopher Brown recently that his Oxford school used trips to the museum as punishments for misbehaviour. That kind of threat wouldn’t work with modern kids – not because they’re too nonchalant – but because these days the Ashmolean is precisely the kind of place youngsters – even super-cool teenagers – find fascinating – I know, I’ve taken mine.
The dull, dark cabinets and dimly lit corridors are, for the most part, a thing of the past and in their place light, bright, inviting exhibits entice you to get closer, look longer and discover more. Phase Two of this £61 million-plus refurbishment opens on Saturday (November 26th 2011) and gives completely new perspective on the museum’s Ancient Egyptian and Nubian collections.

This section cost £5.2 million and, funded in the main by Lord Sainsbury and his wife Anya, has opened up the existing galleries, ousted the shop from the former Ruskin Gallery, repositioned cabinets (rather counter-inuitively) into the walls – and gives visitors more floor space and circulation room, making the whole welcoming and airy and – as architect Rick Mather puts it – an exhibition without dead ends.

As someone who visits the Ashmolean regularly I confess, I used to skip past these galleries and so had no idea they were home to the Shrine of Taharqa – the only pharaonic building in Britain. A gift to the University of Oxford from the rulers of Sudan as thanks for the work done preserving the country’s decaying sites and treasures, it arrived in 1936 like something from an Indiana Jones film, in 150 packing cases. Since it had to be assembled on metres-deep foundations it couldn’t be moved during the renovations and the exhibition is centred around it. But I’d never noticed this sandstone edifice before. Stripping black paint off glass bricks in the vaulted ceiling above it has allowed what looks like natural daylight to flood through to highlight its shape and throw its carvings into relief. In fact, it’s a trick of the eye – fluorescent lights have been installed over the glass because the courtyard beyond will be the subject of revamp Phase Three.

Shrine (detail) © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Patrick Berning of Rick Mather Architects explained that choosing the lighting had been another key element of ensuring the galleries evoke the exhibits’ homelands in the Nile Valley – bathed in sunlight and dappled by moonlight.

Coffin lid of Djeddjehutyiuefankh 'Jed' © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Think Ancient Egypt and you can’t help but think mummies – and, possibly dry, dusty sarcophagi with ghoulish contents. I used to be scared by the exposed mummy in the my home city’s museum at Norwich Castle and I was unimpressed as a small child when my school entered the Ancient Egypt frenzy and friends queued around the British Museum to see the 1972 Tutankhamun exhibition (though I’ve never forgotten how to spell the name).
These are things that become etched into the memory, but as the Ashmolean’s Assistant Keeper Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Liam McNamara, emphasises with schoolboy-like zeal, far from being obsessed with death the ancient Egyptians wanted to celebrate life and much of what is on show does just that. Liam has the kind of earnest enthusiasm for his subject that causes journalists to throng around him as he explains each display case’s contents and he’s touchingly concerned that another of the key exhibits, the mummy of ‘Jed’ has been found to be missing his heart – vital for weighing in the balance on reckoning day.

Bringing these mummies back into the museum’s centre and treating them with the reverence they would have been afforded at death has been a labour of love by the museum’s world-renowned conservators. Using innovative and inventive methods, they have prepared both the familiar pieces and some that have never before been seen by the public. New cases featuring micro-climates within allow coffins, portraits and artefacts to be displayed in fascinating detail, while modern scans have helped unravel the stories of the people beneath the wraps.

Life After Death gallery © Richard Bryant & arcaid.co.uk

Head of Conservation Mark Norman – who still can’t believe he and his staff were granted such a wonderful space to work in – top-floor overlooking-the-city state-of-the-art north-facing studios housed in the newly built part of the Ashmolean – later explains the museum’s policy of respect and honour for any human remains in its possession. Taking us on a tour of those conservation studios (an oasis of calm now all the exhibits are back in position) he considers that the museum would never put an exposed body – for example a crouched burial – on show – and would be highly sensitive even to acquiring such a item for the museum’s collection.

The new galleries are an opportunity to exhibit world-renowned artefacts in a world-class place – but what’s on show still represents only 4 per cent of what the Ashmolean has, although Mark Norman is at pains to explain that much of what is behind the scenes would only be of interest to scholars and experts – shards and fragments – a bead, a tile, a shred of fabric, for example. Nevertheless, it’s such vast reserves that make the Ashmolean’s collections of early Egyptian material one of the most significant in the world outside Cairo.

That said, the museum as a whole is now Britain’s most visited outside London and Dr Brown (speaking candidly at lunch) said that if you think education should be free – and he does – ensuring that entry remains free is paramount to encouraging people’s knowledge. Wooed from the National Gallery, where he was Chief Curator, he is backed by a team of like-minded experts and visionaries – people like Project Director Henry Kim and Keeper of Antiquities Dr Susan Walker. Dr Brown thinks big and thinks the museum and the University, of which it is part, were lucky that the remodelling process started when financial confidence was high and funds could be secured. The current economic gloom may account for museum’s ongoing appeal – somewhere to visit on a wet Saturday rather than a trawl around the shops, perhaps.

Dr Brown always liked the way people popped into the National between train journeys or to see one or two things on their way to somewhere else and that’s something he’s been successful in translating into the cosmopolitan, but small, city of Oxford.

The Ashmolean’s newest galleries won’t appeal to everyone – there will always be naysayers who will dislike the smart-phone-like information guides and headsets and will gripe about the price of a coffee in the basement café (the top-floor dining room is invariably packed at lunchtime, so clearly no-one minds the prices there). But as my son – then aged 12 – remarked when the Ashmolean re-opened in 2009, entry is free and they do have to make their money somewhere. The profit from these ventures last year was £3 million and a large amount of that was creamed off and put back into running the museum, Dr Brown revealed while eating a sandwich. You can always take your own sarnies with you and sit on a bench somewhere quiet to save cash. Visiting the Ashmolean needn’t cost more than the price of a bus ticket – and that can’t be bad in these times of austerity.

Favourite things:

Min statue (3300BC)
Carved silkstone figure 3600-3500BC
Clay lion (2686-2175BC)
Protective amulets (on loan from Queen’s College)
Painted wood portraits
Artist Angela Palmer’s recreation of a young child on 111 glass slides

Ashmolean Mummy Boy by Angela Palmer © Richard Holttum

Mummy Portrait © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Don’t miss

Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape

For more information about the Ashmolean Museum and all its exhibits visit www.ashmolean.org or tel: 01865 278000.
Admission is free, donations are welcome.

*Please note images here have been used with the permission of The Ashmolean Museum Press Office & The University of Oxford.

After listening with some pleasure to the news that Tom Archer, of long-running BBC radio soap The Archers, is promoting his organic pork sausages through HEFF – the Heart of England Fine Food Group – I thought I’d post this. I’ve been writing for HEFF and its producers for a couple of years now.

Small and mighty, blackcurrants were credited with health-giving properties long before scientific research could prove they were not only packed with Vitamin C, full of anti-oxidants and bursting with nutrients, but could also promote healthy vision, brain and kidney function, benefit the cardiovascular system and had anti-ageing properties.

On-going research into Alzheimer’s Disease, asthma and post-exercise muscle and joint regeneration ranks the blackcurrant firmly as a super-food. What’s more, they taste delicious! Sandra Kessell spoke to the new generation of Herefordshire blackcurrant growers who are bringing innovation to the fruit market and introducing ranges of blackcurrant-based products to the public.

Jo Hilditch

Jo Hilditch took over her family’s fruit farm after her brother Johnny was killed in a car accident. She has blended her upbringing with her former PR and marketing career to develop new products for the twenty-first century whilst still growing the crops and managing the activities traditionally found at a family farm. It’s one of her newer ventures, however, that is enjoying some time in the spotlight. Around five years ago, after selling the usual blackcurrant harvest to Ribena, the farm had an excess of the fruit and Jo decided to make the French-associated drink cassis. Now her name is synonymous with British cassis. Though the first year’s techniques were rather rudimentary, the results were delicious and Jo and her team have refined the process and their know-how. Rather than distil the juice, Jo Hilditch British Cassis is made in a similar way to wine, resulting in a less cloying flavour and less syrupy consistency than its continental counterpart. “It’s much easier to use our cassis in recipes and savoury dishes,” says Jo, explaining that it can add a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to venison stews or gravy, for example. Now they are set to offer a whole fruit product preserved in cassis, capitalising on the fact blackcurrants’ thick skin makes them less absorbent, less alcohol-infused and full of fruity flavour. “It’s really exciting. This can be used as an ingredient in cocktails and you’ll get the berries in the bottom of the glass – a bit like a Pimms. You can top it up with a fizzy wine – it looks great – and obviously you can still use it in cooking,” says Jo. “We think it’s a British innovation – we don’t think it’s been done before.”

Click here to find out more about Jo Hilditch British Cassis

Anthony Snell

Though their family’s been farming for three generations Anthony and Christine Snell’s business started when they bought their own land to grow vegetables and salad crops. Over the years, they switched their expertise into fruit growing and now their blackcurrants not only go to Glaxo Smith Kline for Ribena, but also to Marks & Spencer. Anthony emphasises the benefits of buying British, traceable, sustainably managed and environmentally friendly fruit with fewer transportation costs and carbon emissions. In addition to their other fruit crops, 120 acres are earmarked for organic blackcurrants. “We take our very best fruit, very carefully harvest it when it’s at the right stage of ripening and within hours of harvesting it’s blast frozen,” says Anthony, revealing that the high-tech and very sensitive equipment processing individually quick frozen (IQF) blackcurrants cost the farm £70,000. It’s all far more delicate – and sophisticated – than pick-your-own to freeze at home – the fruit doesn’t go watery when defrosted and is perfect to use in yoghurt, jam and fruit-juice making. The blackcurrants are also sold under the Windmill Hill Fruits brand, marketed by HEFF, and there’s an online ordering service for next-day delivery. “They’re fantastic in a pie or cooked and served with crème fraiche but we’d like to find a new variety you really want to eat fresh and completely raw. That’s the ultimate but we haven’t got to that yet,” says Anthony.

Click here to discover more about the Snells’ British Blackcurrants

Edward Thompson

Edward Thompson didn’t join the family hop farm at Pixley Court straight from school – he studied mechanical sciences at Cambridge, travelled and returned to Herefordshire in the Seventies. New products, new processes and even new varieties of blackcurrant have ensued as Edward has gathered a dedicated team around him. Pixley Berries superfruit cordials are just part of the story. They contain a massive 60 per cent fruit juice, not from concentrate, capturing that quintessential summer flavour lacking in more sugary standard drinks and cordials. Edward emphasises the “not from concentrate,” a key requisite for brands like Innocent drinks and some Marks & Spencer products, provides flavour and aroma best served by local production. Careful analysis of taste profiles ensures the right bushes are planted including a new blackcurrant variety, Pixley Black, which Edward sought out to counter the effects of climate change and our warmer, wetter winters. Thankfully, it has also proved hardy in the last two, trend-bucking, very cold winters. Unsurprisingly, given his background, Edward has invested in new machinery enabling Pixley to do all its processing at its own pressoir. “It was a huge decision in 2003 – massive,” says Edward, hinting at the cost. “But now we can control the quality, which we wouldn’t be able to do if we outsourced. Most of the fruit is processed on the day it is harvested.” It’s a testament to Pixley’s products that one of their largest overseas customers, on spotting Edward in the audience at the spring International Food & Drink Event, introduced him by announcing: “This man makes the best blackcurrant juice in the world.”

Click here to find out more about Pixley Berries

To find out about HEFF and the producers it supports, please click to visit the HEFF website.

It takes dedication to keep up a regime of early mornings, twice-daily milking and caring for your “girls” no matter what the weather, or the season. You’re unlikely to make your fortune, either – so why would anyone take up small-scale dairy farming?

That’s a question Matt Dale, the man behind the celebrated North Aston Dairy, admits he’s asked himself on many a cold winter’s day, but he wouldn’t swap what he’s doing for life in an office. He’s been on Radio 4’s Food Programme and some of his principles will be familiar to followers of the long-running radio soap, The Archers. Now, inspired by eco-pioneers Pam and Nick Rodway, of Findhorn in Scotland, Matt is offering cow bonds – shares in his herd, to people who want to invest in his vision.

“The idea is a local person actually finances the purchase of a cow. So, for instance, a cow might cost £1200 or £1300 to buy, they provide that money and they are supporting a local enterprise and it’s a secure and ethical investment which provides us with finance and avoids going through a middle man or a bank,” explains Matt.

The investor receives a return on their money and gets to name their cow – or cows, which, in turn are all known individually to Matt and are monitored through his close daily contact with the small herd.

There’s plenty of demand for North Aston Dairy products. Those lucky enough to live within two-and-a-half miles get a doorstep delivery while other customers receive their milk with North Aston Organics veg boxes. Some of the milk is sold at Wolvercote Farmers’ Market.

“They are getting milk from the cow that morning. It’s very fresh and totally traceable. I think there are a lot of people interested in buying local produce, organic and non-organic, direct from the producer,” says Matt.

He’s happy to share his knowledge – and mistakes – with anyone wanting to try a similar set-up, but he warns it’s a hard , though rewarding, way of life.

North Aston Dairy can be contacted through North Aston Organics, tel: 01869 347702. www.northastonorganics.co.uk

Click here to find out more about Seafarer Magazine

International professional surfer James Pribram became a world environmental campaigner for the sea after contracting a serious illness through surfing in polluted waters. Besides appearing on television, he has written for the LA Times and many other publications, raising awareness of his EcoWarrior clean-up project. He also runs the Aloha School of Surfing.

What’s the best thing about life as a surfer? Going to the beach. For me, growing up on Laguna Beach, I would wake up in the morning as a little kid, open up the sliding glass door, go out on the deck and look at the beach and the ocean. Besides my parents, surfing’s always been my everything in life; it kept me from making some of the wrong decisions that some of my friends, unfortunately, made when we were kids.

And the worst? Do you know I’m not really sure there’s anything too terrible about being a surfer. Perhaps the worst thing is, if you’re like me and you love our oceans and beaches, to see pollution affecting them.

How does an American surfer boy from Orange County become a man tackling worldwide ocean ecology issues? It is just something that has happened naturally. In 1997 I was teaching a surfing lesson in Doheny Beach [made famous by sixties pop group The Beach Boys]. I had a tiny scratch on my wrist and two hours later I was in the emergency room with IVs [intravenous drips] stuck in my arms and the doctors said: ‘Had you not come in within eight hours, you could have died.’ That was something that changed my overall view of our oceans and beaches and really was the beginning of a major change in the person I was.

What advice would you give an environmentally-conscious seafarer? If you want to do something positive, participate, take that first step. Whether it’s attending a local Surfrider Chapter meeting, or Heal the Bay, or Reef Check, or Surfers Against Sewage or even your local city council. Get out there and voice your opinion and get involved.

 You tackle some huge worldwide issues through your EcoWarrior project. Last year it was the Mexican Gulf oil spill – this year it’s radiation pollution around Fukushima. How do you keep motivated? It’s easy to be motivated. There’s always a new issue, a new crisis, a new something going on in the world. I feel like I have a responsibility to those people and kids who look up to me as a role model so, being motivated, that’s the easy part. The most difficult part is finding better solutions and compromises in our world.

 If you hadn’t become a surfer what would you be doing now? For a school assignment we had to make a coat of arms and answer the question ‘What do you want to be when you’re older?’ and mine said ‘A professional surfer.’ That was 1977 and I was six years old. The first professional surfing champion was crowned in 1976. Let’s just say I was destined to be a pro-surfer and to be this person, I think.

Your EcoWarrior project has the wonderful tagline “We are all connected by one ocean.” How do you unite all who use the ocean? For me, the ocean represents so many different things. Obviously, I’ve made a living from it, but I feel a deeper connection to the ocean and the beaches. I think everyone can relate to the beauty of the sea – a sunrise or sunset, or watching the dolphins playing in the ocean – seeing whales.

 Where’s the most beautiful place you’ve been or surfed? Home – Laguna Beach Pearl Street. It shaped me to become who I am today.

And the most dire? Grand Isle, Louisiana [which bore the brunt of the BP Mexican Gulf oil spill disaster last year]. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. It smelt so bad and was like something out of a sci-fi movie. The ocean is dead there. The colour of it, the smell of it – it’s not blue, there’s no oxygen in it. It was something that I could never fathom happening within our own country – and let’s not forget, 11 people lost their lives there.

When you’re too old to surf what will you be doing? I don’t know – maybe I’ll be in politics!

You can keep up with James’s activities at www.jamespribram.com/blog, on Twitter and Facebook.

This interview appears in the summer edition 2011 of Seafarer Magazine.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited to a sneaky preview of the latest attraction at Waddesdon Manor. Not, as you might think, a new piece of art bought by the renowned collector Jacob Rothschild, whose family built the manor – but instead a glorious new building. Designed by Stephen Marshall Architects, the cynical might suggest that such a breathtaking location and, presumably, budget, ought to bring out the best in any architect worth his salt, but whatever your viewpoint – inside, outside, aesthetic, architectural, structural – it is a triumph of the kind only a love of the English landscape, combined with skill and vision, can create.

Add to its already charmed pedigree items from Lord Rothschild’s modern art collection and the fact it will be open to the public and available for hire and you can see why the art world, architectural world and the plain nosey are excited that Windmill Hill opens this weekend. It will house the Waddesdon archive and has a reading room, complete with artworks from the former BP building, recycled glass sculptural lighting and a benevolent gorilla on guard outside.

It was blowing a gale and the rain was falling in sheets the day I was taken around with three other journalists – yet the weather could do nothing but emphasise the building’s harmony with the landscape. The water polished the flagstones and ribbons of rain trickled down the windows, while the grey drifts drenched the hillsides beyond. If you’re visiting Waddesdon Manor over the summer, make time to get up to Windmill Hill. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Fifteen years after bursting on to our sporting sightlines as a fresh-faced 19-year-old chasing a podium place in the Olympic Laser class, yachtsman Ben Ainslie is aiming for his fourth consecutive gold medal in his fifth games and a place among the world’s greatest-ever Olympians. Sandra Kessell caught up with him for Seafarer Magazine.

Yachtsman Ben Ainslie talks like a gentleman on a mission – he has fast, firm, decisive, soft-spoken replies for every question – until I ask him about qualifying for next year’s Olympics. It’s not that he stops in his verbal tracks, just his answers become very considered and measured.

Ben recently came second by a single point, after picking up penalties, to former training partner Giles Scott in the Olympic Classes Regatta in Miami. Giles is a man who acknowledges he has looked up to, and sailed in the wake of, Ben for a number of years. Ben, meanwhile, is very sporting in his praise for fellow British competitors, but there’s no hiding the quiet resolve in his voice when he’s talking about the crucial qualification regattas the squad will be competing in later this year.

Courteous and generous, Ben’s very far from being over-confident but he leaves you feeling you’ve just spoken to a highly-trained, extremely professional assassin – ruthless, clinical and effective with laser-beam sights. It’s these qualities he’s brought to bear while winning three successive Olympic golds as well as the silver medal he took in his first Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. With all that Olympic success heading his list of accolades, it’s often overlooked that he’s also a nine-times world champion and nine-times European champion.

British sailing’s strength is also British sailors’ downfall. It’s not enough to be second in the world and number two in your country these days. New rules allow only one boat from each nation in each sailing class. Ben and Giles will be up against Wales’s current World Champion Ed Wright as they vie to wear the red, white and blue lion of Team GB in the Olympic Finn class 2012. Which means some excellent sailors will have to watch from the marina at Weymouth and Portland, the venue for the Olympic 2012 sailing events.

“There are three or four in the UK who head the current world championship rankings – including Mark Andrews and Andrew Mills. It’s nice to see younger names coming through but it’s going to be very difficult to qualify and very tough on the guys who don’t qualify – any one of them could take a medal,” says Ben.

So we won’t be seeing three Britons filling the podium, as happened in February at the Miami Regatta, or three Union flags raised while the national anthem rings out over British waters. In the next few months heart-rending, life-changing decisions will have to be made and you don’t envy the selectors the task.

No longer the young whipper-snapper, Ben, at 34, is the old man of the Olympic sailing squad. He had been concentrating on America’s Cup sailing, but the withdrawal of his team, whilst a disappointment, has also meant Ben can switch his focus to individual matters. That means more time on the water, more time in the gym and surprisingly, much, much more to eat. Naturally lighter, he has had to put on 10 kilos to make the right weight for sailing in the Finn, but he’s been here before, and been successful in peaking at the right time in the right place, as his record shows.

Though sailing is highly skilful, and the equipment has to be world-class, physical fitness is a key factor in success and hard training part of the preparation, he emphasises. But with all that work in prospect you can’t help wondering if he still finds sailing fun, the way he did 15 years ago.

“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. I love the sport, obviously, but I also love just being able to go out sailing with family and friends, going on sailing holidays and cruising boats,” he says. He also gets a thrill from sailing alone – something he’s been able to do since he was eight or nine, when he used to go out a little dinghy in Restronguet in Cornwall.

“It was a real ‘Swallows and Amazons’ experience. I loved being in control,” he says. And whilst he’s an advocate for safety he adds that it’s important for youngsters not to be too scared of doing exciting things.

“Back then, I wasn’t even wearing a life jacket. I had an old duffle coat and wellies on. There’s no way any parent these days would let you do that, but we are talking 25 years ago!” he says.

He’s credits his amateur sailor parents, Roddy and Susan, for imbuing him with his love of the sea and says he’s grateful for the huge amount of support they’ve given him in every way imaginable throughout his career. Roddy skippered at the first Whitbread Round the World Race in the Seventies.

Ben took his first Laser world championship title at the age of 16 and hasn’t looked back since. Though he says he’s lucky to have the backing of his sponsors, in the current financial climate he takes nothing for granted and names a hatful of them for good measure.

Other key players in his life have been his coach David Howlett as well as Jim Saltsonstall and John Derbyshire. He goes on to praise the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) and UK Sport for the way competitive sailing has been developed in Britain, showing he’s not only a man who commands respect, but who gives it too. His heroes include legendary Danish yachtsman Paul Elvstrøm, F1 racing driver Ayrton Senna and tennis player Pete Sampras and when the 2012 Olympics come around, he hopes he’ll be in a position to watch some of the athletics.

“I was lucky, in Atlanta, I was able to see some of the other sports. I think any Olympic sport at that level is worth watching,” he says, adding that the British cycling and swimming squads have excellent medal prospects.

“It’s really exciting. Every day you meet someone new talking about the games coming up next year. Training towards it as a potential competitor has obviously been very different this time around. It’s very different being able to race in your home waters but there’s the added pressure of hoping you’ll be there with your friends and family among the spectators. More than ever before it’s a challenge!”

There will be life after the Olympics and, he hopes, a future with a family of his own once he’s stopped living out of a suitcase, but till then his focus is the 2012 Olympics, his gold medal tally and the task of joining the legends of competitive sailing.

You can keep up-to-date with Ben Ainslie’s progress by visiting his website www.benainslie.com

Ben Ainslie – facts and stats:

Born: February 5, 1977.

Olympic successes:

1996 Atlanta, Silver (Laser class)

2000 Sydney, Gold (Finn Class)

2004 Athens, Gold (Finn Class)

2008 Beijing, Gold (Finn Class)

Other awards:

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)

Three-times ISAF World Sailor of the Year (1999, 2002 & 2008)

Five-times British Yachtsman of the Year (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2008)

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Three weeks ago I was delighted to learn my application to be a World Book Night giver had been successful.

I’ve copied below the text I understood to be the essence of WBN, which all donors were asked to read before they undertook to be a giver and I’ve underlined the section I considered most relevant as I filed my application and stated why I’d like to be part of this big giveaway.

From today, 2 December 2010, members of the public are invited to apply to be one of the 20,000 givers of 48 copies of their favourite book chosen from a carefully selected list of 25 titles. Most givers are expected to be passionate readers who will take pleasure in recommending a book they love to other readers. However, World Book Night will also encourage givers to pass the books on to others who either may be reluctant readers or who are part of communities with less access to books, bookshops and libraries. 960,000 books will be distributed by givers and a further 40,000 will be distributed by WBN to people who might not otherwise be able to participate.

I stated in my “pitch” to the organisers (every potential WBN giver had to do this) that I wanted to give my books to refugees and/or asylum seekers living in my locality. Buying new books, for me, is better than any other form of shopping – clothes, food, shoes, jewellery, anything – and anyone giving me a book for my birthday will be elevated in my estimation – regardless of the book, regardless of the content, regardless, even, of whether or not I already have a copy on my increasingly groaning bookshelves. I hoped to pass on or renew that yet-to-be-read anticipation to people who might love reading but for whom a new book is, or has become, a luxury or to people for whom reading is a forgotten or undiscovered pleasure. I recognise the loss of reading material would have been the least of their worries as they fled from war, famine or persecution, but while sanctuary, food and shelter are primary needs, friendship and understanding are fundamental to well-being and books are gifts of the heart. Without wishing to appear patronising, ignorant or seeking to stereotype, books are an opportunity to escape real world troubles and slip into another place, even if it’s only for a chapter or two.

To be honest, I was dismayed to learn that some givers are viewing March 5th 2011 as an occasion to treat their mates to a freebie. As far as I understood it, World Book Night was never about giving readers a chance to donate the books they were allocated to readers who could easily buy their own copies and who may already support writers and booksellers. There have been some gloom-mongers, sellers and writers alike, who have moaned about WBN being a blow to book sales, but you could just as easily go and picket your local secondhand book shop or village fete book stall for all the same reasons. Or do writers receive a second royalty on a £1 book bought on a hot summer’s day by a sandalled reader slurping on a £2 ice-cream? Given Susan Hill‘s recent rants, I suspect not.

In line with my original pitch and the news that I’d been selected as a giver, I’ve been in touch with relevant Oxford charities to find suitable places to donate my 48 copies of Sarah Waters‘s brilliant writing. Whilst being sensitive about the content of Fingersmith, it’s less graphic, in my opinion, than say, The Finkler Question and less disturbing than Never Let Me Go.

I’m hopeful that someone enlightened is administrating these charities, someone who will see 48 free books for their group as a gift of friendship from a sincere book lover to a recipient (or 48) who would get a great deal of pleasure from the gift. I want these books to go to people who would not, in their current circumstance, walk into their local bookshop and buy a brand-new, world-class novel. Perhaps their uncertain status means they can’t yet join a library, perhaps they don’t have the money to buy books, new or secondhand, perhaps they don’t have the confidence to try – perhaps though, they’d really like to.

I’m hopeful that in future years, when those same recipients are settled here (assuming their cases are approved) and have become part of our society, one that has, over many centuries, been created from different cultures, races, creeds and religions, that they will have their own book collections, will be members of their local library and will be buying and passing on books themselves.

That’s not to discount the pleasure a middle class, middle income reader would get from the gift of a World Book Night book. But giving to the converted was never part of this deal, I thought. Encouraging a whole new community of readers was always at its heart.

http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/simple-acts/

Oxford Women’s Festival

Simple Acts

It’s not a thought that’s new to me, but perhaps I’ve not really acknowledged the nagging feeling at the back of my brain. In order to spark plots and provoke daydreams I need a chance to observe (slyly) the goings-on of unknown passers-by and a reminder that there are people out there who read. Essentially nosy, I like to snatch snippets from the everyday lives of urban folk. My creative cogs start turning as I stand on a station platform, or wait at a pelican crossing. Here are characters to write about – here’s an audience to write for. So yesterday, as I drove up St Giles in Oxford, past The Eagle and Child – literary second home to the Inklings, whose number included JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, I was already feeling the clank of creaking thought on rusty imagination. Once I’d parked and started walking along the street, I ear-wigged other people’s conversations (what a wonderful invention the mobile phone is – half an exchange of dialogue delivered in a public space – leaving the other half to be imagined). The population of Oxford is a quirky mix of foreign visitor, eccentric don, too-young student, elderly blue-stocking, yummy cycling mummy, serious scholar, earnest curator, muscular sportsman and terribly thin artist. The clothing that they wear, or affect to wear, includes silk scarf wrapped around canvas bag, brown boot, tan brogue, crepe de chine skirt, Converse trainer, tweed suit, red hat and black gown.

Of course, it would jolt anyone back into a creative phase if the person they were meeting for a mid-week lunch happened to be artist and novelist Roma Tearne – a one-woman walking wake-up call, whose output includes books, videos, paintings and lectures on the literary circuit. While we’re sharing a platter in the roof-top restaurant at The Ashmolean exchanging gossip, catching-up on several months’ news and speculating on who is doing what with whom and why they’re meeting, the grey skies are forgotten, the rain is elevated to a water feature on the outdoor terrace as it imparts a sheen on the sodden tables and chairs and gushes through gargoyles’ mouths. Apart from a trip to sunnier climes, is there any better way to shake off the winter blues? A descent through the atrium stairwell into the new galleries, glancing at the beckoning treasures of the world brings stories to mind. Who could fail to be inspired?

Afterwards, I drove home to the humdrum, past the girls from St Edward’s School in their unfashionably long skirts, overtaking a Tesco lorry and postal van to dutifully perform the school pick-up before the routine of supper, homework, music practice, bed. Cyril Connolly’s “pram in the hall” is often cited as an excuse for a lack of creativity. His quotable quotes survive him, however, and in common with many male writers, he had wives who got on with the child-rearing and housekeeping, leaving him free to earn a living in whatever way he chose, or was able, to. I don’t believe the pram is the only barrier to getting out of the door, or that children are the thieves of time; what really stifles, constrains and contracts our thoughts is the lack of opportunity to connect with the outside world. The rushed journey into the office (or the dash downstairs to the desk), the need to earn a living, the whizz around the supermarket, each push wordplay – or in my husband’s case, painting – towards the bottom of the priority pile. If wordplay and painting were always at the top, the children would go unfed, the house would be filthy, there would be nothing in the bank account (ever) and I’d probably sink into a routine of writing in an exercise book with a pencil (there being no money to pay for electricity to charge my MacBook), while my husband would be re-using old canvasses to get his creative fix. But there’s a balance to be struck. Would I write if I didn’t think I had an audience? Probably. Would I get satisfaction from it? Possibly not. Do I need to earn a living? Yes. Is writing how I’ve done it for 25 years? Yes. Am I lucky that my day job dovetails nicely with my aspirations? Um – yes.

Yesterday’s trip to Oxford was a wake-up call. I need to unplug my i-Pod, open my eyes and dust off my notebook. Switch off the internet, drink my latte and get creative. The only person stopping me writing fiction is myself.