Scrutinising needs [551]
Greetings from The Borders...
I’m Christian Payne, freelance generalist for 23 years. In this weekly dispatch I seek out novelty, explore the relations between things, how we share, what we share and consume, plus where we might be going.
Thanks for stopping by.
#TheAction
The polytunnel is up!
Now all we need to do is figure out what goes where. This is easier said than done when anything could go anywhere.
I was impressed with the service from Northern Polytunnels. From the first call to delivery, everything arrived faster than I could read the instructions. And the team from Budwud (← warning that’s a Facebook link) who came to build it, worked through every kind of weather the Borders could throw at them. Yet still turned up smiling. That’s despite traffic accidents, road closures and my relentless pestering with hot drinks and questions
Five days, twenty cups of tea, fifteen coffees, a pack of Rich Tea and a handful of mince pies later, the polytunnel is ready for action.
Next steps are sourcing wood chips for the paths, building a potting area and planning the raised beds.
#ThePictures
Here is a video of the poly tunnel build.
This nature photographer of the year article on CBBC starts with a particularly horrifying photo of two crabs about tear a baby tern apart. Rather than call it ‘Two Crabs One Chick’, the photographer went with ‘Silent Scream’.
Here is more stunning photography from the same competition.
#TheWords
I’m re-reading Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher and in a world full of people talking about optimisation and accumulation, much of what he says still resonates…
“How could we even begin to disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinising our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.” ― Ernst F. Schumacher
And yet here we are with a 13.5 metre polytunnel in the garden. It is not essential for survival. But it extends the growing season, protects crops and makes things easier.
We can grow food outdoors without it, so in many ways it is an upgrade that offers comfort, control and convenience. That sounds a little luxurious.
But if part of our plan is to grow food all year in a northern climate, then a polytunnel starts to edge closer to a need.
Maybe it is a luxury until our purpose turns it into a need. The truth is in the doing. The poly tunnel does not decide… our intention does.
Schumacher also talks about how smaller, local, more human scale systems are needed if we are to replace some of the extractive ones. And that the world would be far healthier if we could live within our means and not beyond them.
He wrote all of this before I was born. You’d think smart ideas like this would have been mainstream by now.
His ideas didn’t fail. They just never really got a chance. Any talk of restraint, localisation and enoughness was drowned out by the rise of globalisation and consumer culture.
“You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don’t you?”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
Thanks to
for recommending this fascinating looking book.
Click for the article, stay for the comments… “We might ask ourselves who is really the lapdog in a world full of powerful AIs.”
#TheSound
While walking around Alnwick I spotted this LP sitting on a stand in a small gallery. It’s a Prog-tronic space rock concept piece by The Amorphous Androgynous & Peter Hammill called ‘We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal’.
The gallery was filled with AI generated art honed and finished by the artist Gavin Penn.
At first I thought the artist was a fan of the album and had copied the sleeve but on asking him about the album he told me that the sleave was his own painted work. He has painted for decades but recently pivoted to using prompts and photoshop as it’s far more lucrative.
Last week I wrote about how I missed out on having an album signed by an artist. This time as the artist of the cover was the one selling it, I had him make his mark.
The guitarist’s pallet. He makes it look so easy.
#TheConsumed
No idea if it’s because I’m in Scotland but I’m suddenly craving porridge now the weather is changing. I don’t mind a traditional recipe like pinhead or rolled oats, water and a pinch salt… but I also can’t help messing with it.
I’ve added so much to this that it’s hardly porridge anymore. There’s bananas, dried fruit and even a sprinkling of granola. I also added a little too much milk.
Thanks to the fact I shared it in this dispatch, I can tell you exactly when I had the best bowl of ‘fancy’ porridge ever. It was on the 27th of June 2018 while I was in Paris meeting Luke Rhinehart.
The ingredients were confiture de figue, fromage blanc, sirop d’érable & amande.
It was in a cafe called ‘Bol’ and cost €6. But their card machine was broken so they told me to pay next time I was in. That turned out to be the following year. They were so amused that i’d returned a year later they poured me a free coffee.
There must be infinite ways to make porridge. Both savoury and sweet. I might try to share a different recipe every week and if you have a favourite, or one you think I might like please let me know.
Porridge oats are not on our list of things to grow but packed with vitamins, minerals and fibre, oats store well for up to three years in a sealed container. All you need is a pan, water and a heat source to turn them into food.
You can make porridge (sweet or savoury), overnight oats, oatcakes, energy bars, oat bread, crumbles or oat milk. They also work as a natural thickener for stews and soups. The leftover straw can be used for animal feed, bedding or as a weed-suppressing mulch.
They are also space efficient. A family of four eating oats once a day would only need around 200 to 250 square metres of land to grow a year’s supply.
I’m not sure it’s worth the work though (around 50 hours across the year) as at around £1/Kg it would only cost £120 for a years supply for a family of four.
I had no idea that the only cider I have ever made was called Living Cider till I read my friend Richard’s blog post. His post also inspired me to pick up this glass drinks dispenser.
Living cider is cider that is still biologically active. In other words, it’s not been pasteurised, over filtered or force carbonated. It is alive in the same way unpasteurised kombucha is alive.
Supermarket cider is pasteurised, filtered, sweetened and carbonated so that it can be ‘shelf stable’, predictable and as a result... dead.
There are so many reasons why I prefer this unpredictable way of making cider. But mostly it feels like an honest reflection of the apples that went in and is continually evolving.
#TheThings
In Berwick-Upon-Tweed there is a shop that sold blinds for over 40 years and just closed. It’s now stood empty but in the window is a single mug sat on a box. I’m including two shots of it so you can see both sides.
I’d spotted the weird scene from over the street and as I crossed, I wondered why an old blind shop might be displaying a single mug. My daughter was with me and as I stared through the glass she asked me what I was looking at. I told her to read the mug and the box as it looked hand made.
Unremarkable at first, it was in fact just marker pen on a white mug and a homemade box. We both wondered if this was some kind of site specific intervention, or micro installation.
Either way we think we were the only people who’d spotted it in a while, and in that moment felt like the artist had made it for us.
#TheThanks
Massive thanks to the paying subscribers who continue to support this dispatch and the adventures/experiments that make it. You know who you are. ♥️ I shall especially remember these people when the corporations, hellbent on building endless data centres running software designed to replace human effort do just that. And capitalism will no longer see the point in supporting human work at all.
Till then… If you value these words, ideas and curation, please consider an upgrade to paid…
Or if you prefer a random hat tip you can do that via PayPal
or Monzo (Thanks Steph!)
Either way… Thank you for reading, sharing, liking and supporting a human doing manual work with their brain.
#TheWeb
Medieval peasants who lived in the area I just moved from once enjoyed a surprising range of sick, annual and bereavement leave benefits.
Have you added yourself to the Documentally community map?
Billy Bragg has a Substack.
The crypto industry got everything it wanted. It’s still having a meltdown.
Past Map is bringing me a lot of joy. Check out your neck of the woods. Especially if you live in Scotland.
As a ‘professional oversharer, some of my other places include Letterboxd for film logging, Discogs for my physical music collection, Strava for documenting exercise, Untappd for new beers I might sample, my audio RSS feed stores recordings, Swarm where I log the occasional place, Vivino for questionable wine reviews, LinkedIn for… not sure what that’s for, YouTube for vlogging, Mastodon for decentralised social, a ham radio newsletter, foto for random photos, or search ‘Documentally’ on Wire and Bluesky or G5DOC on Zello to stay in touch. Supporting subscribers also get access to a Discord server. Message me for a link.
Plastic can be programmed to have a lifespan of days months or years.
Imagine powering long-haul aircraft and heavy ships with fuels derived from just air, water and renewable electricity
#TheEnd
Thanks for reading. All spelling and grammatical errors are signs of life.
Next week might be a shorter (more invisible to some) instalment as I’ll be travelling.
I hope you have a great weekend/week and I’ll no doubt catch a few of you in some of the other places.
“Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.” ― E.F. Schumacher
Stay curious and be human.
See you out there.
Over…
Brilliant polytunnel video. The snow made it extra exciting!!