Learn | The Art of Gentle Activism

Turning anger into something positive is good for your wellbeing as well as for your cause. If you feel strongly about making the world a better place, here are a few groups that are protesting gently and creatively, that might inspire you.

CRAFTIVISM
Sarah Corbett of Craftivist Collective was a conventional activist for 30 years before setting up this group, whose members use “beautiful crafted works to help themselves and encourage others to be the change they want to see in the world.” Pick a project you’d like to work on, from barbie doll activists to stitched messages on hankies, and work individually or as a group while connecting with other craftivist members.

RIGHT TO ROAM
Join the campaign for greater access to our land and waterways. There are lots of ways to get involved, from joining peaceful protests and trespass events to checking and recording the rights of way in your area. Check out righttoroam.org.uk for updates and details of future events. Recent changes to the law that prohibited wild camping in Dartmoor are under appeal following protests and campaigns (insta: @thestarsareours.uk), proving that change can happen. Check out the Scottish Outdoor Access Code to see what responsible nature access looks like (since 2003, people in Scotland have had access rights to most land and inland water): outdooraccess-scotland.scot, while greenandblackcross.org has info on protest and trespass laws.

GUERRILLA GARDENING
Plant and grow in public spaces to transform local areas, empower communities, support our ecosystem and make a statement about public access to common land and nature. Guerrilla gardeners plant and maintain scraps of neglected land such as grass verges, street tree beds, car parks, roundabouts and so on 

TRASH-FREE TRAILS
Never mind leave no trace, the trash-free trails mission is to leave a positive trace by clearing rubbish as you walk/run/cycle. Join the community of litter pickers, document your route and your haul, and take satisfaction in reporting your trail clean at the end. It’s a great way to combine nature and exercise with making a positive contribution. Visit trashfreetrails.org for info.

INCREDIBLE EDIBLE
Help turn disused plots of land into growing patches to supply the community with fresh, locally grown food. What started with a couple of friends in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, in 2008, has grown to over 100 groups across the UK. Their motto is ‘If you eat, you’re in.’ If you want to join up or start your own, see incredibleedible.org.uk for details – and watch Pam Warhurst’s TED talk for inspiration.

YARN BOMBING
If you’re a dab hand with knitting needles you could have a lot of fun joining a yarn bombing group. They create knitted and crocheted works of art to appear in public places, often to draw attention to an issue but sometimes just for decoration and to raise awareness of the craft. Some groups also create knitted products for charities and events. See if there are any guerrilla knitters in your area and, if not, see how much interest there is. All you need are a few people and a pile of wool.

The above ideas were taken from our feature The Power of Gentle Protest by Rebecca Frank in our July issue. You can read more from page 47.

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SHARE YOUR GENTLE ACTIVISM

We’d love to hear about your gentle protests. Email us: thesimplethings@icebergpress.co.uk or leave your story in the comments below.

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Flowers | The Meaning of Posies

A posy always gives us a little boost, whether we’re giving or receiving. Who doesn’t love a little bunch of blooms, after all?

Next time you tie up a little bunch of garden flowers for a friend, spare a thought for people of Medieval times, who carried ‘nosegays’ (a small posy to make the nose happy) of flowers and herbs, to combat the natural stench of the medieval street. It was also believed that posies might ward off plague and other diseases. 

Thankfully, for posies and for humanity, life in general was to become gradually more sweet smelling.  By Victorian times, posies were enormously popular, both for covering up bad Victorian odours (it took them a while to get the sewers sorted) and also as a decorative item. They were often known as ‘tussie mussies’, a ‘tussie’ being a nosegay and a ‘mussie’ being the moss packed around the flowers to keep them moist. Posy holders also became popular, allowing the small, fragrant bunches of flowers to be easily portable. They could then be held, modestly, in a young lady’s hand or pinned to a lapel to allow for easy inhalation at infragrant moments. 

At the same time, ‘the language of flowers was evolving. What with the Victorians' aversion to wearing their hearts on their sleeves, being able to say it with flowers rather than words, made things a bit easier. They would send particular flowers, or colours of flowers, in posies in order to convey certain messages. 

If you’d like to send someone a message in a posy, too, here are a few ideas. 

1. Sweet peas - thank you for a lovely time. 

2. Daffodil - the sun is always shining when I’m with you. 

3. Chrysanthemum - you’re a wonderful friend.

4. Azalea - take care of yourself for me. 

5. Daisy - I’ll never tell.

6. Hydrangea - thank you for understanding.

7. Narcissus - stay as sweet as you are. 

8. Zinnia - thinking of an absent friend. 

9. Violet - let’s take a chance on happiness.

10. Monkshood - beware; a deadly foe is here. (Well, you never know). 

If you’re feeling inspired to work with flowers, you might like to create a midsummer floral crown, like the one pictured below. There are instructions for making one on the Gathering feature in our June issue, which is in shops now. The ‘Gathering’,  a Swedish-inspired Midsummer Feast by Rachel de Thample,  also contains recipes for Cold Cucumber Soup with Summer Flowers, Roast Beetroot Salad with Crispy Capers, Meadowsweet and Strawberry Snaps, Homemade Pickled Herring with Fennel, Pommes Anna with Dill Sour Cream, Rye Knӓckerbröd with Caraway and a Swedish Midsummer Strawberry Cake. If working with flowers truly captures your imagination, you may even want to explore florist jobs, where creativity and nature combine beautifully. Or for more floral fun, turn to our Almanac pages, where we have an idea for making an indoor or outdoor flower wall hanging for a summer supper with friends.

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Folklore | Jack in the Green

This May Day, meet a famous folklore face… Jack in the Green…

Compton Verney in Warwickshire, famed for its folk-art collection, is hosting an exhibition called Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain, curated by Simon Costin and Mellany Robinson of the Museum of British Folklore, and Professor Amy de la Haye from the London College of Fashion. It features more than 40 costumes on display, including this ‘Jack in the Green’ get up, the walking embodiment of the Green Man, that emblem of rebirth commonly carved in churches and painted on pub signs.

A Mayday custom first recorded in the 18th century, Jack and his attendant Green Bogies lead merrymakers until, at day’s end, he is stripped of his leaves to unleash the spirit of summer. One of the most notable annual events is the one revived in Hastings in 1983.

Exhibition curator Simon Costin was so enchanted by the spectacle that he co-founded Gay Bogies on Acid (fellow member, Spencer Horne, is pictured above), whose subsequent – and spectacular – impact on proceedings is widely seen as a touchstone for advancing LGBTQ+ inclusion in folk customs.

Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain is at Compton Verney until 11 June 2023. comptonverney.org.uk. See more of the costumes in the May issue of The Simple Things, which is on sale now.

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Photography | Magic Light

How do you capture that fabulous light when photographing nature?
With a sprinkling of magic!

There are five types of natural light, as far as wildlife photographers are concerned: front light, side light, back light, diffused sunlight and… Magic Light. The first four are pretty much self explanatory. Magic Light is a little bit harder to pin down but if you manage to capture it on camera, always worth the wait. 

It’s also known as ‘God’s light’, which seems fitting when you notice the way the light seems to ‘fall’ on your subject, as if sent directly from the heavens, surrounding them in a glowing halo. But if we’re accepting that The Big Man has more important stuff to do than giving our photographs a lovely finish, where does it come from?

Magic Light tends to occur at times of change, being most in evidence at the change of seasons, as well as as dusk turns to night or sunrise into morning. It’s also more obvious as the weather changes, so just after it has rained or when there is interplay between the sun and the clouds. It’s impossible to pin down exactly what Magic Light is but what it looks like is, well, like magic… as if someone is shining a torch down through the clouds onto the landscape below. Rather than a light which illuminates its subject in various ways, Magic Light can often be the subject of a picture itself.

Do not make the mistake of muddling Magic Light with the ‘Magic Hour’. The Magic Hour refers to the hour after sunset and the hour before sunrise when photography takes on the warm colours of the sun. And Magic Hour itself is not to be confused with the Golden Hour, which occurs the hour before sunset and the hour after sunrise. If you take a few pictures around these times, you’ll see that Magic Hour photos have more bluey pink tone and Golden Hour photos have more golden yellow about them. As we say, it’s difficult to pin down, but so worth taking the time to get to know these variously tinted lights a little better so that you can use them in your photography, whether you’re a semi-pro or simply snapping pictures on your phone. 

At the change of seasons, wander outside with your camera in the mornings and evenings, maybe during the Magic Hour, even, and see if you can capture a little of the magic for yourself. 

The photograph above was taken by Finn Beales in the Redwood National and State Parks, California. It’s just one of the photographs featured in our Gallery this month, which we’ve called ‘To Dramatic Effect’. The picture is taken from Let’s Get Lost: The World’s Most Stunning Remote Locations curated by Finn Beales (White Lion Publishing). The March issue is in shops now or you can buy from our online store. 

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Think | Fresh, slow starts

We hope 2022 has been happy and healthy for you. As well as reflecting on the year just gone, we’re looking forward to all that 2023 might bring, as you’ll see from the back cover of our January issue, above. But we always think it’s a mistake to pile pressure on yourself with ambitious plans for resolutions and the like.

If you find five minutes free today, you could spend it writing down a few ‘one day at a time’ plans - simple things you’re hoping to do, enjoy, see or achieve in the coming year and put it away in an envelope to look at this time next year.

If you’d like to, why not listen to our Fresh Start playlist while you write to inspire you? You can listen to it here.

A very happy new year to you all. Here’s to enjoying the future slowly.

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Book Group | Jonathan Livingston, Seagull

Share with your book group, read alone and join us virtually on The Simple Things sofa, or simply find a bit of inspiration.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story by Richard Bach is a short but fascinating book all about how, if you strive for higher learning, you can achieve great things. Frankly, from an author who wrote a bestselling book with a cast made up entirely of seagulls, we’re listening. Jonathan Livingston Seagull is cast out by his fellow birds for reaching for the stars and sets off on his journey towards self-enlightenment.

Questions to ponder
What sets Jonathan apart from the other gulls? What does flight symbolise in the book?

Further reading
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho both offer life lessons with a little allegory that is good for the soul.

More from our November issue…

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Learn | Street Photography Tricks

All you need to be a street photographer is a camera (or even just a camera phone) and some free time. Here are five tricks to try that will help improve your pictures instantly

1. Get down low. Putting your camera actually on the pavement captures a whole new perspective that none of us usually sees. Seeing the world from a pigeon’s perspective (see above) adds a completely different dimension to your photographs. 

2. Try a tilt. This works particularly well with straight lines, such as buildings. Frame your focal object centrally and upright and then tilt your camera 45 degrees before taking the picture for a slightly more interesting shot. 

3. Find a setting and then wait for the subject. If you spot a fabulous backdrop, find a good place to stand to capture the photo in the best light and with the best composition and then wait… for the right person to walk into shot. This often makes for a much better photo than when you focus on looking for a subject primarily and let the background take care of itself. 

4. Get a grid. Most camera phones let you turn on a ‘grid’ on your camera in your settings and it’s really helpful for composing a picture. The grid gives you nine equal squares and you want to place your subject on any of the corners of the central square, leaving space in the rest of the image - this is known as the ‘rule of thirds’, as you’re filling one third of the grid, on the left or right, and leaving the other two thirds emptier. Try it and you’ll see.

5. Look for leading lines or patterns. Leading lines are lines in an image that draw the eye somewhere, so that could be a path, a river, a staircase, a telegraph wire… They can go in any direction or even be curved, but they’ll add depth to your picture. Patterns, particularly repetitive patterns such as those in floor tiles or on a table cloth, also create visual impact. They look great when they seem to have appeared accidentally, or when the pattern is just slightly broken, for example: five brown eggs in a bow and one white one. Just look out for the patterns and lines and have fun! 

Inspired to give it a go? First read our feature on Street Photography, ‘These Streets’, in our November issue, which is taken from the wonderful book Think Like a Street Photographer by Matt Stuart (Laurence King).

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Go gökotta | (wake up with the birds)

Summer means long evenings spent outdoors but don’t go to bed so late you miss out on the joy of an early summer’s morning. Make like the Swedes and go gökotta… 

The Scandinavians seem to have single-handedly cornered the wellbeing market in recent years, thanks in part to their knack for coining words for some fairly random activities. First there was hygge, then there was lykke and lagom and now there’s gökotta, a Swedish word that literally translates to “rising at dawn to listen to bird song.” 

But getting up early doesn’t have to <just> be about the dawn chorus. Here are a few more ways to go gökotta and make the most of early rising this summer.

1. Have a breakfast picnic somewhere beautiful. The beach, a nearby hill, someone’s garden… If you need any more inspiration, read our feature Morning Has Broken in the July issue of The Simple Things. 

2. Have a quiet chat with your garden. While there’s still dew on the grass, get out and enjoy your garden in a different light. It will thank you for watering it nice and early too, before the sun can scorch the leaves. 

3. Write morning pages. If you’ve not heard of this, it’s the practice of writing three sides of A4 (long hand not typed) each morning before you do anything else. The idea is that you catch yourself before you are fully conscious so you write without any filter, about what really matters to you. Give it a go - you could have a novel by next year!

4. Make overnight oats. A hearty and wholesome breakfast that is all ready for you in the fridge always makes us smile. Prepare the night before (the internet is full of recipe ideas or turn to page 9 of our July issue for our recipe for banoffee overnight oats) and then grab them from the fridge at 6am and eat them in your pyjamas in the garden. 

5. Read. With more of us working from home these days, many of us have lost the time we spent reading on a commute. And finding time in a busy day to sit down with a book is always hard. Set your alarm just half an hour earlier than you usually would and ringfence that time for reading. 

6. Exercise like nobody’s watching (because they’re all still in bed). If you’re just starting out as a runner or cyclist and feel a little self conscious, try going at 6am when the streets are quiet. Heck, why not go the whole hog and go rollerskating or Nordic walking? In the early morning, you have no one to answer to (and no one to laugh if you fall over). 

7. Be the first in the bakery queue. There’s nothing like the pleasure of a loaf, warm out of the oven. And is that an almond croissant you’re just getting out too? Yes, two of those please!

8. Start a secret hobby. When you’re up before everyone else, you can do all sorts of things no one knows about… spend an hour in the early hours learning a new language, taking an online art class or getting really good at yoga. In a few months you’ll have the pleasure of leaving friends and family open-mouthed as you order your dinner in Catalan/hang a painting on the wall you created/do an impressive headstand. 

9. Get serious about coffee. We never said early rising was easy, but caffeine always makes it a bit less of a wrench, and a fancy aeropress or cafetiere and a bag of really good coffee will make hearing your alarm go off a joy. Or you could try making your own tea blends with dried herbs and flowers from your garden. Whatever your morning tipple, you can make it a bit of a special event, and spend a while savouring it alone. 

10. Indulge in a bit of water therapy. Go for a swim as soon as the pool opens, have a long soak in the bath or take a cold shower and feel your skin zing. Immersing yourself in water is a wonderful ritual that benefits both body in mind as you wash away the day and the night before and begin the day feeling cleansed and new. 

If you’re feeling inspired to make the most of your early mornings, you might like to buy a copy of our new Everyday Anthology. Featuring good food, forgotten wisdom, mindfulness and microadventures, projects and pastimes, it’s a dip-in guide to dawn, day, dusk and dark.

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Think | Why we Love Tiny Stuff

Tiny things are cute, aren’t they? We don’t know why they make us squeal with delight, but they do.

Better yet, though, is the idea of being tiny ourselves. Which of us hasn’t, at some point, longed to eat at a table made from a cotton reel, or curl up in a matchbox bed? Our books, films and dreams are filled with characters that are either already diminutive in size or become tiny, from Alice to Tom Thumb and many more. Let’s crouch down very low, speak very quietly, and meet a few of them…

Mrs Pepperpot

Mrs Pepperpot is a charming Norwegian creation. She lives with her husband, Mr Pepperpot (obvs) in a country cottage and her dark secret is that occasionally she shrinks to the size of a Pepperpot and goes on adventures. We loved it for the gorgeous detail of the pickles Pepperpot gets into when her world suddenly becomes huge and pigeons become the size of T-Rexes.  Also, if you thought ‘Pepperpot’ was hard to say, just be glad you aren’t reading it in the original Norwegian in which she is called ‘Teskjekjerringa’ (Mrs Teaspoon). 

Stuart Little

Stuart Little (nominative determinism in action right there) is the main protagonist from the 1945 novel of the same name by EB White (most famous for Charlotte’s Web). Stuart is born to an ordinary couple living in New York and is completely ordinary himself… other than being 5cm tall and looking like a mouse. Round of applause for EB White for having the brass neck to style out a human couple simply giving birth to a mouse and it drawing no comment. Our favourite thing about Stuart Little though, was probably his motorised toy car that he zipped around the United States in. That’s what we’d do if we were mice. 

The Kids from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Some siblings and their neighbours’ kids are shrunk to a quarter of an inch apiece when they accidentally set off their inventor father’s ray gun shrinking machine. Once shrunk only the dog can hear them and they battle to let their father (Rick Moranis) know what has befallen them. Includes many iconic moments - you are not a child of the 1980s if you haven’t checked your spoonful of Cheerios for tiny children before conveying it to your mouth. 

The Borrowers

Perhaps the most famous of shrinkers. Which of us can honestly say they didn’t fall in love with the teeny tiny lifestyle of Homily, Pod and Arietty, under the floorboards, borrowing everyday domestic items from the ‘human beans’ to make themselves furniture, tools and more. You’ll never discard an empty matchbox thoughtlessly again.

Ant Man

Mild-mannered scientist Hank Pym develops a technology that enables him to shrink to the size of an ant. But unlike other shrinkers he can also communicate with and control the ants, using them as his private army. An excellent superpower we all wish we had come the middle of summer when no pot of jam left unattended is safe…

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

In this 1981 film parody of The Incredible Shrinking Man, suburban housewife Pat Kramer is exposed to an experimental perfume made by her husband’s company. This is why we never let our husbands choose perfume for us. She has to move into a doll’s house and is then kidnapped by a group of scientists who plan to experiment on her in order to shrink everyone in the world. We reckon Pat herself might have preferred the more peaceful shrinking life of Mrs Pepperpot, but it’s an exciting watch.

Kay Harker

The main protagonist from John Masefield’s The Box of Delights is able to ‘go swift’ and fly and ‘go small’ and shrink. Sometimes he even does both at the same time, in order to rescue the country’s clergy in time for Christmas. Best shrinking moment? Escaping down a river in a tiny model boat.

The Lilliputians 

It’s during Gulliver’s first voyage that he is shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, where the inhabitants are less than six inches tall and also rather small in mind, seeming to care about insignificant things enormously. They once had a disagreement, we learn, with the inhabitants of a neighbouring island about whether to break an egg at ‘the small end’ or ‘the big end’, which gave rise to six rebellions. Gulliver helps the Lilliputians but eventually falls from favour after urinating on a fire to put it out for them. There’s no helping some Lilliputians, is there?

The Whos

Perhaps the tiniest of the all the tiny people in our rundown, the Whos are the creation of Dr Seuss. They live in Whoville, a city which exists within a speck of dust, which is eventually placed on a clover flower by Horton the Elephant. They are warm, welcoming furry beings, with dog-shaped noses and twelve toes each. The Whos made their debut in Horton Hears A Who but are best known for their part in teaching the Grinch the true meaning of the festive season in How The Grinch Stole Christmas…
“Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!”

Terry Pratchett’s Carpet People

“In the beginning there was nothing but endless flatness,” we are told. “Then came the carpet.” The carpet is now inhabited by many different tribes and peoples and this is the story of their adventures. A wonderful, escapist read for anyone who spent hours as a child laying on the carpet contemplating the crumbs, the dust and anything else that might be inhabiting the wool pile. 

If you love all things tiny, don’t miss our feature on why love miniatures. It’s called ‘Tiny Happy People’ and it starts on page 66 of our July issue, in shops now. Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

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Rain | The real Dr Foster

Who was that mysterious man in the puddle?

April is known for its showers of rain, but it doesn’t stop us occasionally forgetting and getting caught out with no umbrella. One man who got very much caught out by the April weather was Dr Foster, of nursery rhyme fame, who went to Gloucester in a shower of rain, stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and never went there again. 

But did you know the tale of Dr Foster was not just a nursery rhyme but an actual historical event? Well, ‘event’ might be a bit strong. Perhaps a historical anecdote. 

Dr Foster was likely to have actually been the Plantagenat king , Edward I. He was apparently on his way to Wales, passing through Gloucester, when he fell into a a large, muddy puddle (or got stuck on his horse in a stream and had to be hauled out). Either way, it was a humiliating moment and as a result he never set foot in the town again. It must have been quite a puddle to have come up to his middle, too, because Edward was fondly known as ‘Longshanks’ and stood 6 foot 2 inches tall, quite a height for that period.

So if you must go to Gloucester this April, take a brolly and some wellies and don’t go puddle-jumping.

If you’d like to know more about April showers, read Right as Rain in our April issue, which is all about the words for rain we use in various parts of the UK. Learn to tell your ‘dinge’ from your ‘henting’ from page 22.

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Brain fog | And how to beat it

Concentration becoming clouded and a mind fug descending? Try some of these ways to a clearer head

• Eat a healthy diet – what you eat directly effects your brain and how it functions. The best diet to follow to keep your brain and body in good shape is a Mediterraneanstyle diet. Eat plenty of daily veg, wholegrains, nuts, seeds, fruit and olive oil as well as fish, eggs, beans, poultry and limited red meat. And don’t forget to keep hydrated – your brain is a thirsty organ.

• Prioritise sleep – sleep deprivation can make you forgetful, clumsy, irritable, moody, depressed, demotivated – and hungry! Aim for seven to nine hours and no less than six or more than ten. This can be broken up into a night-time sleep and a daytime nap if that suits you better.

• Go with your natural rhythms – your circadian rhythm works best with regular sleep habits so try to go to bed and get up at roughly the same time every day, even at weekends.

• Get organised – make life easier for yourself by setting some systems in place. If you keep forgetting to make payments, set up some direct debits, book in a regular weekly shop, add reminders on your phone, and stick to a bedtime routine. And make lists of everything!

• Avoid multi-tasking – focus on one thing at a time and you’re less likely to make mistakes, and feel stressed or overwhelmed.

• Try mindfulness instead of autopilot – consciously give things more of your attention rather than doing things without thinking.

• Slow down – relaxation techniques such as yoga, deep breathing, self-massage and meditation can all help you to put the brakes on a bit.

• Know your limits – taking on more than you can handle is a recipe for stress. This might seem impossible when you’re overloaded with work and responsibilities, but you have the power to make different choices when it comes to your responses and thoughts.

• Do activities that challenge the brain – learning a language, a new skill or an instrument is linked with changes in the brain. Increased cognitive activity helps preserve the volume of your whole brain and the size of the hippocampus, the part of your brain involved in memory and learning.

  Adapted from Beating Brain Fog: Your 30-day Plan to Think Faster, Sharper, Better by Dr Sabina Brennan (Orion Spring). Read more about beating brain fog in our February issue, which is in shops now. Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

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Primer | Spy Gadgets

At the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, some of the world’s most intriguing and ingenious gadgets can be found. Here are just a few…

An unassuming lump of explosive coal was issued with its own dinky camouflage kit so that spies could colourmatch it to local coal.

America’s dog poo homing beacon directed planes to missile strikes in the 1970s. It doesn’t look very convincing, truth be told, but who’s going to be staring that intently at it, really?

The trees have ears! During the Cold War, a solar-powered tree stump listening device was placed near a Soviet airbase to eavesdrop for the CIA.

Pigeons are the world’s most decorated birds, and for good reason – 95% of wartime pigeons successfully completed their missions. Some even wore a tiny camera to spy on the enemy.

The KGB’s lipstick pistol could dispense the kiss of death in a flash. Not one to be fished out of a make-up bag by mistake on a bleary morning, though.

Closer to home, the Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick has a rather nifty deception device of its own. In 1942, Charles Fraser-Smith – the man who inspired Ian Fleming’s character of Q – asked the Cumberland Pencil Factory to design a special hollowed-out pencil that could house a secret map, to be given to Lancaster Bomber pilots. A compass was hidden under the rubber, something we’d be bound to lose within about three minutes.

These gadgets were collated for our Looking Back feature on spies from our January issue. Read all about some of the world’s most famous spies (and their gadgets) from page 84.

More from our January issue…

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How To | Shear a Sheep

Because you never know when you may be called upon to perform a skilled piece of animal husbandry

Just in case you ever find yourself, clippers in hand, being asked to give a sheep a short back and sides, here’s how to do it step by step. The Simple Things takes no responsibility for any mis-sheared sheep or injuries that befall you while shearing a sheep while following our instructions. Sorry.

1. First, catch your sheep

Approach the animal slowly and calmly but with a determined look in your eye that lets the sheep know who’s boss. We’ll assume you have chosen a dry day (you can’t shear wet wool) and that the sheep has fasted for a day, too; those things aren’t your concern. Herd the sheep to your shearing site with your arms and legs, then gently tip the sheep onto her back, holding her right leg in your right hand and the woolly top of the brisket with your left hand. She should have all four feet in the air, belly exposed, head turned to one side and be leaning back into your body with your legs supporting her shoulders. We never said this was a dignified process. 

2. Start shearing

Begin with the belly piece as this is dirtiest and worth the least money. You’re aiming to get the whole fleece off in one piece with the belly piece wrapped in the middle but it’s a bit like peeling an orange in one go - it takes practice - so just do your best. If you’re right handed, hold the shears in your right hand and use your left to pull the skin taut to avoid nicks. Start each blow (that’s the technical term for each ‘go’ with the shears) at the brisket (neck) end, and shear down to the flank (back legs). Take a blow down the left side, then the right side, then do the middle - like you do with painting your nails. 

3. Do the delicate bits

Shear around the crotch and down the inside of each hind leg by leaning right over the sheep, with her head still resting on your leg. Be very careful of her teats - cover them with your hand as you shear as it is possible to cut them right off and that won’t be a relaxing experience for you or the sheep. 

4. Mind the hind

Turn the sheep onto its right side and shear the outside of the left hind leg. Four blows should take you from the foot up to near the back bone. 

5. Tails you win

If the sheep has a tail, do it at this stage, shearing from tip to top and finishing with a short blow up the back at the base of the tail. 

6. More familiar ground: chest, neck and chin

Turn her side on to you, your right foot in between her hind legs and the left behind her back supporting her bottom. We hope you wore some old shoes for this… Hold her head under the chin with her head facing up at you. Try not to let her sad look make you feel awkward. Take the clippers from the brisket to just below the chin, ‘unzipping’ the fleece, and then up the face in short strokes, ending at the bottom of the ear and eye. 

7. Show a bit of leg

Again, shift her slightly onto her right side and lean over her to shear up her left leg and onto the left shoulder. Do inside the left foreleg while you’re here. 

8. The big mow

You’re on the home strait now and are about to shear the back. Lie her on her right side across your shin with your right foot placed between her back legs and your left foot under her shoulder. Starting at the tail, take long, steady blows up the back down her left side, beginning at the outside edge and working across to just past the spine. 

9. Home and hosed

Shift the sheep onto her left side and shear the rest of the neck and shoulders, then the right foreleg, from the shoulder, downwards.  Finally, shear the wool down her left back and side, from the neck towards her rear end, finishing with the right hind leg. Ta da! You’re done!

10. You should now skirt (clean) and roll the fleece ready for sale, but we think you’ve done enough. Give your hands a thorough wash, sit down for a well-deserved cuppa and reflect upon the fact that a pro shearer can do all that in under two minutes. We’re more at home with a knit one, purl one sort of endeavour if we’re honest. 

We were inspired to find out more about sheep-shearing after we read the Know A Thing or Two feature on wool in our November issue.

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A could-do list for October

Here’s our ‘Humble’ could-do list for this month. The idea behind a could-do list is that you can pick and choose which bits you want, do them all if you like, or just read and enjoy the idea. Or if you have your own ideas for a could-do list, get started on one of your own.

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Etymology | Scrumping

Good words and what they mean. This month: the etymology (or ate-‘em-ology) of scrumping

It’s apple harvest time. But if you have a tree, make sure you get there before the scrumpers do. The practice of ‘scrumping’ for apples is as old as apple trees themselves but interestingly the term ‘scrumping’ doesn’t appear until 1886. 

Etymologists aren’t sure of its history but it’s thought to come either from a dialectical term meaning ‘something shrivelled or withered’ (which probably comes from the Middle Dutch, schrimpen) or from the adjective ‘scrimp’ which meant thrifty, and later morphed into the verb ‘to scrimp and save’ that we use today. 

Both theories are supported by the earliest meaning of ‘scrumping’ which referred not to actual stealing but simply to taking either windfalls or the smallest apples which were left on the trees after the apple harvest was over. So they’d be the slightly shrivelled apples no one wanted, and you’d save yourself money by taking them. 

Scrumping is, strictly speaking, illegal and one of those things that is charming and scampish when you are eight years old but tends to be frowned upon once you hit 28 years old. So if you’re going to do it, either take a child with you as cover, or do it on common land and call it ‘foraging’ instead. 

Oh, and one last word of caution: if you’re outside the UK, scrumping has a very different and slightly lewder meaning, so proceed with caution. Ask someone to scrumping with you and you might get invited in for more than apple crumble. 

Core values: Apple recipes for your illegal wares

If you’ve been scrumping (or just been to the farm shop) here are a few apple recipes from our blog that will soon see off a glut. 

Bircher Muesli with Cinnamon and Grated Apple

Barbecue Baked Apples

French Apple Tart

Crab Apple and Fennel Seed Leather

Apple Doughnuts

Crab Apple Whisky

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Inspiration | In The Bath

Rub a dub dub, ideas from the tub

Many of us find inspiration hits us when we’re soaking in the bath. In our busy lives, we don’t often get the chance to enjoy a few moments of quiet relaxation, and that’s often when ideas have the chance to bubble to the surface, along with the loofah. 

Here are a few notable people for whom the bath has been a place of inspiration. Have a read and perhaps you’ll be inspired to run a bath yourself and have a soak. 

Archimedes

The Greek scholar allegedly discovered displacement when he stepped in the bath and noted that the water level rose as he entered it, meaning the volume of water displaced must be the same as the volume of the object submerged. He was apparently so excited that (after shouting ‘Eureka!’) he ran naked through the streets of Syracuse. 

Sylvia Plath

The American poet found deep inspiration in the bath. Here she is writing in ‘The Bell Jar’ about how a bath solves everything. 

“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say : “I’ll go take a hot bath.”

I remember the ceiling over every bathtub I’ve stretched out in. I remember the texture of the ceilings and the cracks and the colors and the damp spots and the light fixtures. I remember the tubs, too : the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs, and the fancy pink marble tubs overlooking indoor lily ponds, and I remember the shape and sizes of the water taps and the different sort of soap holders. I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath…

The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft white hotel bath towels I felt pure and sweet as a baby.”

Shigeru Miyamoto

The legendary games designer had a vintage bath tub as a perk at his office at Nintendo. During a highly stressful work period for him in the 1980s when he was under pressure to come up with a game, his bath inspired him to design Donkey Kong. We’re not sure what the links between baths and donkeys is, but we can see how it might have inspired his next great game, featuring two plumbers now known to the world as Mario and Luigi. 

Agatha Christie

Is said to have found inspiration for her crime novels while soaking in the tub and eating apples. She’d often be there so long she’d end up surrounded by a ring of apple cores discarded around the edge of the bath. 

Douglas Adams

The author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy loved a bath and often found ideas there. His old flatmate has often reminisced about Adams’ hour-and-a-half-long baths, and the fact that if he wasn’t in one, he was just out of one, or about to get into one. 

Winston Churchill

The former Prime Minister was a lover of long and frequent baths and is said to have strategised for World War Two from the bath. 

Benjamin Britten

Composer Benjamin Britten is said to have religiously taken a freezing cold bath in the mornings and a scalding hot one at night. We can’t say it <definitely> helped with his Piano Concerto, but it surely can’t have done any harm?

Steve Jobs

Ok, it’s not strictly a bath but needs must when you’re launching Apple Inc. Steve Jobs is said to have found a little quiet and relaxation in the loos at Apple, dangling his feet into the toilet bowl to give them a soak. 

The beautiful bath (and dog) pictured above are one of the bathrooms featured on our My Place feature in our September issue. Find more inspirational places to soak starting on p112 of the issue.

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Lists | Famous Penfriends

In our June issue we celebrate the joy of penpal letters. Here are a few famous penpals whose correspondence we’d love to sneak a look at…

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis

Tolkien and Lewis were great mates and kept up the friendship via letters, too. Though both rather serious literary figures, apparently their letters were full of fun. 

Catherine The Great and Voltaire

Even rulers and philosophers need to unburden themselves sometimes. This pair corresponded for some 15 years. 

PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie

Showing it’s never too late to get a penpal, Wodehouse and Christie began their correspondence when he was 88 and she was 79. They were both huge fans of the other’s work. 

Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker

Darwin wrote to botanist, Hooker, for many years, even setting out his early idea that animal species ‘might not be immutable’ years before he wrote about evolution fully in On The Origin of Species. 

Henry James and Edith Wharton

These two great novelists corresponded for most of their adult lives, unburdening themselves about their personal troubles in letters (Wharton had an unhappy marriage and James suffered with depression). 

Vincent and Theo Van Gogh

The artist was a prolific letter writer, but the person he wrote to most frequently was his brother Theo, who kept them all carefully, and many of them can still be read today. Sadly, his less careful brother Vincent destroyed most of Theo’s letters back to him. There’s brotherly love for you.

Read more about penfriends, how to find them, what to write to them and more in our June issue, on sale now.

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Design | characters who rock a stripe

How a Breton top gives anyone a bit of an edge

Striped tops have become a wardrobe staple for many of us in recent years, but no matter how ubiquitous they become, they always make us think of a few famous stripes wearers.

Funnily enough, despite stripes being fairly commonplace now, there’s always something about a fictional character who rocks a stripe. They tend towards the unorthodox and rebellious. In Medieval Europe a stripe was a symbol of disorder and also difference, worn only by societal outcasts such as lepers, hangmen and clowns. So perhaps that’s one reason why characters who are a little ‘outside’ the bounds of normal are often portrayed in stripes. That, and the fact that we all know they just look cool, of course. 

Here are a few characters from fiction, film and television, who must have earned their stripes in the stripes-wearing stakes. 

Dennis the Menace

Dennis’s stripes have a long history. When he was first drawn in 1951 he had plain clothes and just a striped tie. Just a few months later the black-and-white tie became a black-and-white jumper and only a few months after that did the jumper become the signature black and red Dennis is famous for.  

Pippi Longstocking

Astrid Lindgren’s curious, kind and superhumanly strong nine year old character, Pippi Longstocking has become sort of synonymous with stripes, though we remember her most for her knee-length, mismatched stripy socks. 

Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street

Rocking a stripe in completely opposite ways, Ernie’s stripes are horizontal like his big wide smile, while Bert’s are vertical, like his long face. But they complement each other perfectly. 

Where’s Wally?

Known for his red-and-white-striped jumper, as well as his red-and-white beanie and round specs, Wally is drawn by Martin Handford, usually tiny and surrounded by other red-and-white-striped things so as to make finding Wally trickier. 

The Cat in the Hat

Also sporting red and white stripes but far more ostentatious is Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, a six-foot-tall cat wearing a red-and-white-striped top hat. As if a massive, rhyming cat with a paunch might otherwise go unobserved...

Bee from Ant and Bee

Another character from children’s fiction who must be mentioned for their stripes is Angela Banner’s Bee from the Ant and Bee books. Although we’re not sure whether or not Bee counts as rocking a stripe, since he is stark naked and his stripes are all natural. Does that make him <more> stripy for being striped to his very core? Or less stripy because he didn’t choose his stripes? These are the sorts of big questions we are unafraid to ask here at The Simple Things. 

The chaps from O Brother Where Art Thou?

Literally rocking a stripe are Ulysses, Delmar and Pete, who escape in their prison stripes from a chain gang, head off in search of buried treasure and have an accidental hit record as The Soggy Bottom Boys. There’s something about those stripy prison slacks that looks a bit cooler in O Brother Where Art Thou’s faded sepia tones, too. 

Betelgeuse

In his vertical black and white striped suit there’s no mistaking Tim Burton’s obnoxious poltergeist. He might not have got away with that outfit in life, but he certainly cuts a dash in those stripes now he’s dead. Which just goes to show how a stripe really can lift any outfit. 

You can read more about the stripy Breton top in our Wearing Well series on page 83 of the May issue.

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Music appreciation | The Flight of the Bumblebee

Join us for a brief music lesson on Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1900 composition The Flight of the Bumblebee and find out what all the buzz was about

The fast and frenetic Flight of the Bumblebee is probably one of the most loved and recognised pieces of music in the classical canon. Obviously, it’s intended to imitate the noise and flight pattern of a bee. But here are a few more facts about it so that if it’s ever played in your presence you can nonchalantly comment on it and look very clever indeed. 

Why was it written?

It’s actually just a very small part of an opera called The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Flight is an interlude between scenes one and two of Act Three. 

What’s it all about, then?

At this point in the opera, Gvidon has been separated from his father, but an enchanted swan, whose life he once saved, turns him into a bumblebee so he can fly to find him. 

Which instruments can I hear?

It’s been played by many different ensembles, but chances are you can hear a lot of strings (mainly violins) and a flute and piccolo. Originally it was written for a symphonic orchestra. 

What should I be listening for?

Note the unusually fast tempo, which never slows, and actually becomes more frenetic as the piece moves towards its end. It’s made up of running chromatic semiquavers (sixteenths of a note), which give the buzzing, humming effect. 

Have I heard this somewhere else?

Definitely. Artists of all kinds have sampled and referenced it over the years. It’s appeared in the computer game Tetris, in a Bob Dylan track, and it even appeared in the pilot episode of The Muppets. 

Do say… “Rimsky-Korsakov’s composition really is a stunning piece of violin virtuosity. Doesn’t it just lift the soul?”

Don’t say… “Oh. LOVE a bit of Rip Your Corsets Off. Pass the fiddle, I can play a passable version myself, I reckon.”

The beautiful bumblebee picture above was used on our subscriptions page this month, which you can find out more about by clicking the subscription link below. .
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Why collecting is self caring

Thought yoga and meditation were the way to happiness, health and enlightenment? You might find your collection of Cornishware or coins is just as effective

Collecting often gets a bad name psychologically, with many believing that people collect in order to fill a hole that is missing in their lives, perhaps things they weren’t able to have as a child, or were unable to afford previously. There’s also a school of thought that collecting is something built deep within us, as a way of displaying to potential mates all our many and glorious possessions. And don’t ask Freud about his theory on collecting, unless you have a strong stomach. 

But psychologists now believe that there may be many positive benefits to collecting. And we’ve collected a few of them here:

Collecting can make you happy
Hunting for something and finding it, whether it’s a rare stamp, part of a coffee set, or a teddy bear, gives us a sense of joy. And having something new and beautiful in our homes is always a pleasure. We tend to collect things we love so having those things around us increases our happiness. 

Collecting can create community
Whether you’re attending conferences and collectors’ fairs in person or simply talking to others online about your collection, a collection can give you a link to others with the same passion and perhaps even create new friendships. It also gives us a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves.

Collecting can reduce anxiety
Spending time absorbed in any activity, such as arranging your collection or searching out new finds is a stress reducer. It allows you to escape from everyday life and focus completely on something else. 

Collecting allows us to be childlike
Children tend to be more natural collectors than adults, and peak ‘collector’ age is about 10. It’s something we tend to do more when we have lots of time on our hands, so children, people who have retired and, let’s face it, quite a lot of us in lockdown, are bigger collectors, and it’s lovely to rediscover that pleasure and pride we took in collections as children; like stepping back to a simpler time. 

Collecting improves our knowledge and brain function
As well as the obvious increase in knowledge about your subject area, being a collector helps with memory function and brain power, as you stretch your grey cells, remembering facts, dates and where you put that Penny Black...

You can meet more collectors in this month’s My Place pages which feature some beautiful collections from Instagram. such as the one by Nicky Guymer @somedaystuidio.co.uk pictured above.

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