...but it's ending on quite a positive note!
Here at Chateau Angevin we believe what you put in your mouth in terms of nutrition is quite important. So we go to some length, occasionally quite ridiculous length, to source good quality food which hasn't been mucked around with too much. Nothing chi-chi or fashionable or pretentious; just good, honest grub.
A big contribution to this has been made by Riverford Farm (www.riverford.co.uk) who supply a wide range of top quality organic fruit and veg boxes - I get my milk and a few other bits and bobs from them too. They are, also, cheaper than Tescos as well as not having the 'corporate bad-guy' image. Graham, the guy in charge of our area, is an absolute star and always, without fail, gives superb service; a rarity indeed and very much valued when he turns up in his little van on Friday afternoons.
Historically we've always been pleased with the quality of the produce which up until a few months ago was delivered from Riverford HQ in Devon. However, as they've expanded, Riverford have entered into partnerships with other organic farms in different parts of the country so for the last couple of months we've received our supplies from Norton Farm in Hampshire. Now, I'm not the sort of reactionary old fart who sees change as something to moan about so I didn't really mind my order coming from a different place - I was assured the quality would remain the same. The bottom line is, however, it hasn't; and since the changeover I've noticed our things are not packed with the same level of care and attention we've been used to receiving from the Devon end of the operation - this has resulted in rather more waste at this end owing to things needing to be binned because they've spoilt.
I've borne with it for a few months because I DO understand with any changeover there will always be a few teething troubles, but when over half the nectarines I ordered this week were mouldy on arrival I decided I'd had enough, and fired off a firm but tough email to Graham and Riverford HQ. I suspect I am not the only customer to have noticed the difference in attitude after all, so it's important the company are made aware of what the problems are, rather than just losing custom gradually.
In the normal course of events these days I'd have expected a courtesy call promising to behave better; whether or not that actually happened in reality is another matter. However, I was both surprised and delighted today to receive TWO lengthy calls from both Riverford in Devon and Norton Farm in Hampshire; both the callers took my concerns seriously and for once didn't make excuses or try to pass the buck. The phrase used in both cases was 'We accept full responsibility ...' - NOW HOW UNUSUAL IS THAT?? Rather more importantly, Norton has undertaken what sounds like a complete overhaul of its packing drill and has been giving staff extra training as well as instigating new quality control procedures.
For once, I am totally impressed - how rare it is for companies to take customer-gripes seriously! And it really does make the mind boggle to think just how much better British industry would do if every company took the same attitude as Riverford have, rather than spouting out a load of pre-prepared 'customer relations' soundbites which mean nothing and alter even less. Hats off to you Riverford, even without the complimentary boxes you are giving me this week, your attitude would have ensured I keep shopping with you - please teach the rest of the country to do as you do!
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Well it's only 9am and I'm already ranting...
... which is something of a record even at Chateau Angevin...
This morning's torrent of ire is directed against a report from the BBC website, which I shall quote in full (apologies to the Beeb, sue me if you like!.
....Britain's part in the slave trade will be studied by secondary school pupils in England and Wales from September. Should the history of the slave trade become part of the national curriculum?
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has said that children aged 11 to 14 will study the development of the slave trade and colonisation. The study of World War I, WWII and the Holocaust is already compulsory for history pupils.
Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said: "Although we may sometimes be ashamed to admit it, the slave trade is an integral part of British history....
...and from a related article...
...The curriculum has been developed with the assistance of the Understanding Slavery Initiative, which encourages teachers, educators and young people to examine the history and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade through museum artefacts.
The initiative's learning project manager, Ruth Fisher, said: "There's a lot of mis-education about slavery and it hasn't really been taught in schools at all.
"It's quite interesting in terms of today's history and what students need to know about the past to understand the present.
"You can't really talk about the history of the British empire without discussing this part of history."
Now, don't get me wrong. I love history, as even a casual perusal of my bookshelves will demonstrate, and it was touch and go whether I read music, history or politics at university. (Music won, for a whole variety of reasons which aren't germane to this post). I am a passionate advocate of teaching children history because I believe it 'grounds' them to know where they came from and how society got where it is today. And this is just my point - children are NOT taught history even approaching adequately today. Instead, as this latest exercise in lunacy demonstrates, they approach the subject in a topic-based manner in which 'themes' are plucked out and 'discussed' in almost total isolation from what went before and what else was going on at the time. Furthermore, it seems to me, children are only asked to consider what came after any particular 'topic' when the current pressure group of choice perceives an opportunity to make everybody feel guilty about something. A few years ago people were far more exercised about the Holocaust and thus we have this 'topic' appearing as a compulsoty subject; now it seems 'slavery' is taking over.
Again, don't misunderstand me - I think children SHOULD learn about both the Holocaust and the part slavery played in the development of the British Empire (and indeed plenty of other countries' colonial empires). However I don't think either of these issues can be really understood and put in context without learning a whole bunch of other things which came before, sometimes things which occurred many centuries before and which might, at first glance, seem totally unrelated. Personally, I can see nothing wrong with the deeply unfashionable 'linear' teaching of the subject I underwent - ie. we all mucked around making Viking shields, grubbed around in mud pretending to be Saxon and capered around a Maypole dressed in whatever our hapless parents could kid themselves 'looked Tudor' (I regret this latter usually involved tights and puffa jackets) during primary and junior school and then commenced at the events immediately prior to 1066 when we went to senior school, following the timeline sequentially through the Norman, medieval, Tudor and subsequent periods thereafter. Unimaginative it may have been, but at least it gave us all a sense of a continuous progression, a feeling that 'one thing led to another' which this plucking out of 'topics' most certainly does not.
Ruth Fisher is quite right when she says children need to understand the past to make sense of the present but the sad fact is they usually DON'T know enough about what went BEFORE Ms Fisher's particular field of concern to be able to consider it sensibly. Sally, a perfect example of what the modern system turns out in terms of historical understanding, admits herself she knows next to nothing about British or world history, despite being one of the most intelligent and articulate teenagers I've come across. She herself has said she's learnt more about the subject in the two months she's lived at Chateau Angevin than she did during the entire course of her schooling - which bearing in mind we live 'normal' lives and don't spend all day sitting around yapping philosophically about things, is really quite shocking. As a result of this huge hole in her knowledge, when anything kicks off in the world today she has no framework on which to hang it - and consequentially usually just ignores it. I can't believe she is the only one to react like this, which leads me to conclude there must be a whole load of teens out there who are wandering around in a vacuum of ignorance, unable even to begin to put world events in context: they are effectively intellectually anaesthetised. Given this, is it therefore very surprising society is in the mess it is and we hear so many bleats about the apathy of young people to all things political?
I believe humans have a basic need to feel themselves part of the 'humanity fabric' and I would suggest knowing where they come from and how this has made the world the way it is is an integral part of this. Cherry-picking fashionable topics doesn't teach them very much, despite Ms Fisher's well-intentioned intiatives. I would suggest learning about what went before - how societies developed the conditions in which slavery COULD flourish, or, for example, where lots of ordinary people viewed exterminating Jews as a desireable course of action - would.
Or is something more sinister going on here? - it the intention merely to make the young shoulder the responsibility for what went before so they, out of such artifically-induced guilt, hand over ring-fenced rights to whichever group feels itself hard-done-by today? If this is the case, it will backfire badly I suspect, because without any context in which to place anything, people are only going to see they are being expected to feel guilty for something they don't understand, don't feel they are responsible for, and which they don't perceive as having anything to do with them. Rather than feeling guilty, therefore, they are merely going to feel somebody is EXPECTING them to feel guilty and in fact are merely going to feel resentful - against the very people on whom the perceived historical injury was perpetrated. Thus, in this crazy approach, the likes of Ms Fisher are displaying not only their own prejudices (ie. they are portraying people as 'goodies' and 'baddies' where in real life things, as we all know, are a lot more complicated) but also their own appalling lack of historical knowledge - there are plenty of examples where societies so bitterly resented being 'made to pay' in some way for their past crimes against others that worse crimes were rendered possible (in a simplistic way WWII is a perfect example of this). All Ms Fisher and her cohorts are going to achieve is an increase in membership of the BNP.
So, Ms Fisher, kindly direct your well-meaning interfering towards a more sensible target - re-establishing the proper teaching of history in schools. I would argue this would be part of the means of establishing a notion of social responsibility in young people - ie. the things we do today affect generations coming after us - in a wider context that the endless eco-debate. Rather than getting your ego-trip 'apology for past wrongs' this alternative approach would surely have the knock on benefit of ensuring things like slavery don't happen in the future. Which, surely, could only be a good thing?
This morning's torrent of ire is directed against a report from the BBC website, which I shall quote in full (apologies to the Beeb, sue me if you like!.
....Britain's part in the slave trade will be studied by secondary school pupils in England and Wales from September. Should the history of the slave trade become part of the national curriculum?
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has said that children aged 11 to 14 will study the development of the slave trade and colonisation. The study of World War I, WWII and the Holocaust is already compulsory for history pupils.
Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said: "Although we may sometimes be ashamed to admit it, the slave trade is an integral part of British history....
...and from a related article...
...The curriculum has been developed with the assistance of the Understanding Slavery Initiative, which encourages teachers, educators and young people to examine the history and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade through museum artefacts.
The initiative's learning project manager, Ruth Fisher, said: "There's a lot of mis-education about slavery and it hasn't really been taught in schools at all.
"It's quite interesting in terms of today's history and what students need to know about the past to understand the present.
"You can't really talk about the history of the British empire without discussing this part of history."
Now, don't get me wrong. I love history, as even a casual perusal of my bookshelves will demonstrate, and it was touch and go whether I read music, history or politics at university. (Music won, for a whole variety of reasons which aren't germane to this post). I am a passionate advocate of teaching children history because I believe it 'grounds' them to know where they came from and how society got where it is today. And this is just my point - children are NOT taught history even approaching adequately today. Instead, as this latest exercise in lunacy demonstrates, they approach the subject in a topic-based manner in which 'themes' are plucked out and 'discussed' in almost total isolation from what went before and what else was going on at the time. Furthermore, it seems to me, children are only asked to consider what came after any particular 'topic' when the current pressure group of choice perceives an opportunity to make everybody feel guilty about something. A few years ago people were far more exercised about the Holocaust and thus we have this 'topic' appearing as a compulsoty subject; now it seems 'slavery' is taking over.
Again, don't misunderstand me - I think children SHOULD learn about both the Holocaust and the part slavery played in the development of the British Empire (and indeed plenty of other countries' colonial empires). However I don't think either of these issues can be really understood and put in context without learning a whole bunch of other things which came before, sometimes things which occurred many centuries before and which might, at first glance, seem totally unrelated. Personally, I can see nothing wrong with the deeply unfashionable 'linear' teaching of the subject I underwent - ie. we all mucked around making Viking shields, grubbed around in mud pretending to be Saxon and capered around a Maypole dressed in whatever our hapless parents could kid themselves 'looked Tudor' (I regret this latter usually involved tights and puffa jackets) during primary and junior school and then commenced at the events immediately prior to 1066 when we went to senior school, following the timeline sequentially through the Norman, medieval, Tudor and subsequent periods thereafter. Unimaginative it may have been, but at least it gave us all a sense of a continuous progression, a feeling that 'one thing led to another' which this plucking out of 'topics' most certainly does not.
Ruth Fisher is quite right when she says children need to understand the past to make sense of the present but the sad fact is they usually DON'T know enough about what went BEFORE Ms Fisher's particular field of concern to be able to consider it sensibly. Sally, a perfect example of what the modern system turns out in terms of historical understanding, admits herself she knows next to nothing about British or world history, despite being one of the most intelligent and articulate teenagers I've come across. She herself has said she's learnt more about the subject in the two months she's lived at Chateau Angevin than she did during the entire course of her schooling - which bearing in mind we live 'normal' lives and don't spend all day sitting around yapping philosophically about things, is really quite shocking. As a result of this huge hole in her knowledge, when anything kicks off in the world today she has no framework on which to hang it - and consequentially usually just ignores it. I can't believe she is the only one to react like this, which leads me to conclude there must be a whole load of teens out there who are wandering around in a vacuum of ignorance, unable even to begin to put world events in context: they are effectively intellectually anaesthetised. Given this, is it therefore very surprising society is in the mess it is and we hear so many bleats about the apathy of young people to all things political?
I believe humans have a basic need to feel themselves part of the 'humanity fabric' and I would suggest knowing where they come from and how this has made the world the way it is is an integral part of this. Cherry-picking fashionable topics doesn't teach them very much, despite Ms Fisher's well-intentioned intiatives. I would suggest learning about what went before - how societies developed the conditions in which slavery COULD flourish, or, for example, where lots of ordinary people viewed exterminating Jews as a desireable course of action - would.
Or is something more sinister going on here? - it the intention merely to make the young shoulder the responsibility for what went before so they, out of such artifically-induced guilt, hand over ring-fenced rights to whichever group feels itself hard-done-by today? If this is the case, it will backfire badly I suspect, because without any context in which to place anything, people are only going to see they are being expected to feel guilty for something they don't understand, don't feel they are responsible for, and which they don't perceive as having anything to do with them. Rather than feeling guilty, therefore, they are merely going to feel somebody is EXPECTING them to feel guilty and in fact are merely going to feel resentful - against the very people on whom the perceived historical injury was perpetrated. Thus, in this crazy approach, the likes of Ms Fisher are displaying not only their own prejudices (ie. they are portraying people as 'goodies' and 'baddies' where in real life things, as we all know, are a lot more complicated) but also their own appalling lack of historical knowledge - there are plenty of examples where societies so bitterly resented being 'made to pay' in some way for their past crimes against others that worse crimes were rendered possible (in a simplistic way WWII is a perfect example of this). All Ms Fisher and her cohorts are going to achieve is an increase in membership of the BNP.
So, Ms Fisher, kindly direct your well-meaning interfering towards a more sensible target - re-establishing the proper teaching of history in schools. I would argue this would be part of the means of establishing a notion of social responsibility in young people - ie. the things we do today affect generations coming after us - in a wider context that the endless eco-debate. Rather than getting your ego-trip 'apology for past wrongs' this alternative approach would surely have the knock on benefit of ensuring things like slavery don't happen in the future. Which, surely, could only be a good thing?
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Chickens!
Yes, other people spend the Bank Holiday sitting in traffic jams to spend an hour at the seaside, but La Famille Angevin spend it traipsing up the M1/A1 to go and pick up chickens. No contest...
We haven't had chickens at Chateau Angevin for a few years, after Sir Reynard helped himself rather too liberally one night and I lost the heart to restock. But, after the blandishments of the new house-guest (Sally, my neighbours' daughter - long story) and the pleading of Mini I succumbed to the charms of a lemon pyle Brahma quartet who are now firmly installed in the front garden. The cockerel (whom Mini christened 'Edgar' for some arcane reason) has already fallen into the usual way of all things male at Chateau Angevin - ie. he's been strutting about as if he owns the Northern Hemisphere and attempting to boss his womenfolk around. They, of course, are having none of it (anthropomorphic, moi??)
To those who've never had the experience of sitting in the garden drinking a cup of tea and reading a book whilst poultry mill around doing their own thing I would say 'get out there and get some birdies NOW', because there really isn't anything like it. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed the vast chicken vocabulary echoing around the place, but this afternoon and I'm so glad I gave in to Mini. Watching Edgar and his ladies explore their new territory was an absolute joy and much, much better than Big Brother....
We haven't had chickens at Chateau Angevin for a few years, after Sir Reynard helped himself rather too liberally one night and I lost the heart to restock. But, after the blandishments of the new house-guest (Sally, my neighbours' daughter - long story) and the pleading of Mini I succumbed to the charms of a lemon pyle Brahma quartet who are now firmly installed in the front garden. The cockerel (whom Mini christened 'Edgar' for some arcane reason) has already fallen into the usual way of all things male at Chateau Angevin - ie. he's been strutting about as if he owns the Northern Hemisphere and attempting to boss his womenfolk around. They, of course, are having none of it (anthropomorphic, moi??)
To those who've never had the experience of sitting in the garden drinking a cup of tea and reading a book whilst poultry mill around doing their own thing I would say 'get out there and get some birdies NOW', because there really isn't anything like it. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed the vast chicken vocabulary echoing around the place, but this afternoon and I'm so glad I gave in to Mini. Watching Edgar and his ladies explore their new territory was an absolute joy and much, much better than Big Brother....
Monday, 25 August 2008
Yes, I AM still alive...
... and, after a year or so of flooding, offspring-trauma, choir-lunacy, PC-explosion and other less dramatic events, I remembered I used to have a formal forum for my ranting - my very own blogsite. And, having actually managed to FIND the said blog after all this time, I might actually mention it to people.. who will probably ignore me as, indeed, they usually do; but it's worth a try.
(admittedly, entering the site on my list of 'favourites' might also have been a good idea in the first place, but at least I've done it now. Only a year or so late - about average for me, as my friends would doubtless say...)
(admittedly, entering the site on my list of 'favourites' might also have been a good idea in the first place, but at least I've done it now. Only a year or so late - about average for me, as my friends would doubtless say...)
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