May 2008 Archives

I have just been chatting with Wayne in the office.  He is doing a sponsored walk of 60 miles for Guide Dogs for the Blind.

There are very few bad charities and I'm certainly not suggesting that GD 4 the B is a bad charity - it's just not the one that I would think of first.  Being the ignorant and unpleasant person that I am, I pointed this out to Wayne.

"Ah, but what could be worse than losing your sight, Mr Matthew?" he said with a degree of poignancy (He does ACTUALLY call me Mr Matthew - he's from South Africa). 

I was writing my next article for the magazine when he came in.  I looked at the computer screen and realised that I wouldn't be able to write them if I couldn't see. 

OK I could be like Dame Barbara Cartland (deceased) and lay on a chaise longue (I already have one) stroking my peek (or pekingese to you) and dictating to a secretary who could recite things back to me while a good-looking assistant applied more white emulsion to my wrinkly old face.  Hang on, I'll put you up a picture of deceased Dame Gorgeous herself.

So I said "Maybe you are right, Wayne."  Then I thought, no he bloomin' isn't.  A guide dog can't do shorthand.  A guide dog can't explain the hilarious visual comedy of "Some Mothers Do Have Them." (Irony - I bloomin' hate "Some Mothers Do Have Them.")  I seem to remember that years ago there was a guide dog on Blue Peter that could make a cup of tea but this could be my mind playing tricks on me.

I said that I prized hearing over sight which is quite an irony since I never listen to anything anyone says.  I like listening to the radio but then I like reading books and watching French films with subtitles (I've told you I'm a ponce already, so it's no good getting annoyed about it now). 

Then I realised that it would be an interesting decision for a blind person to travel to India to listen to the Taj Mahal. Would that be worth listening to the sound of your own dysentery for a week?  Let's take a look at a picture of Taj (as I call it) from a view that we don't normally see. 

So on reflection I put sight ahead of hearing.  "But what about touch, Wayne?" I asked.  Oh no.  He wanted sight before touch.  "But Wayne, you'd be able to look but not touch.  Wouldn't that bother you?"  He said that he wanted to look at what he was touching.  As a single man living in Lincolnshire, I wondered if the reverse wasn't preferable.  Wayne is married which probably affected his decision on that one.

Smell would certainly be the one that you would be prepared to lose first in a card game.  OK its nice to smell the flowers but there are more bad smells that good smells.  Taste is pretty important but we could let that one go next.  Then touch, hearing and sight.  We were both agreed.  That was the order of importance.

It was quite good to be thinking about senses just at the start of the weekend (even though I'm working for some of it).  I am going to now go and smell the fresh air, cut the lawns and then taste my first glass of Pimms for 2008.

I'll write a bit more about farming next week, I promise.  It's been a busy week but I can't tell you about it.

Have a good and sensual weekend 

Hey.  Us Matthew Naylors are a busy bunch you know.  When we are not wearing our braces and campaigning to be presidents of stuff that you have never heard of, there is nothing that we like more than to release an album.

Today's featured Matthew Naylor is a singer from California.  Check out his website at www.matthewnaylor.ca

Let him explain himself in his own words.

There is no where else to hide for Matt Naylor, and he's inviting anyone who'll listen to hear what he's been running from. March of the Henchmen is an aural confection wrapped in angst and longing. A sugaru pop melody centre dipped in dark reverberations. Ten songs are pro pelled by a wave urgent and jangley guitars that provide a perfect platform for Naylor's focused and nagnetic baritone. Smart song craft that occupies the sweet spot between today's artery new-wave revival and alternative rock is what makes Henchmen such a gem of indie cool. Inside a one-bedroom apartment in the sleepy Canadian town of Sarnia, Matt Naylor and Gonzo producer Adam Miner recorded an enthralling first effort that belies the fact that Naylor has just turned 22.

He sounds nearly as much of a pretentious tit as me.  An aural confection dipped in angst and longing, eh?

This said, his latest track "Bent up, crooked and alone" looks like it was made to be the signature tune for this blog.  I've downloaded it to my ipod. 

Oh my Lord.  I've just had a listen. 

The is the 300th entry.  So far we have had 254 comments.  I'm quite impressed with that.  It will be a momentous day if there are ever more comments than entries, surely that is the tipping point for a blog.

I've no idea how many people read this blog.  There are half a dozen or so regular correspondents; the hardcore readership.  Beyond that how many other people read this?  6 others?  200?  17 000 000?  My mum has never read it.  My sister once read it and said that it was ridiculous and full of lies.  My friend Stuart (his real name is Beef Stu) thinks that it is a sad thing to do, that the contents of it is sad and that I am a bad sastard.

I'm quite wired today.  I have had a lot of meetings and a strong, black filter coffee with each meeting (that's 5 altogether).  I prefer to limit myself to 2 coffees maximum and none after midday. 

We have had some customers here today which was good fun.  I love showing supermarket buyers around what we are doing.  This year's crop of delphiniums is pretty disastrous compared with last years, but it is good to share the story and to explain how you are dealing with the situation. 

This, in industry parlance, in called "managing expectations."  A good example would be, I have had too many coffees today, I will not be able to get to sleep and I will be tired tomorrow, Expect my blog entry to be very bad.  What worse than this one?  Yep.  Well I'm going to stop reading if it's half as bad as this one.  So what, there are 16,000,999 other readers.  Or 6.

http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/ made me laugh out loud (albeit quietly) for the first time in ages - not including polite, strained or nervous laughter, which I do all the time.

It appears that I could take on 9 five year olds in a fight.  I'm not convinced.  Normally if I get within ten feet of a child under the age of five I end up getting whacked (by accident?) in the privates with a little cricket bat or a baby sword.

Have a go, at the questionnaire, I mean, not at getting whacked in the privates with a baby sword (unless you want to, of course - they're your privates).  The questions in it are hilarious and I would love to know other peoples scores.

Oooo and I meant to tell you.  IP was in the Telegraph yesterday. Article here. 

I didn't get a paper today but I was steered towards this article in the Observer after reading the Relfster's blog (sorry, just how sad have my Bank Holiday Mondays become I ask myself.  Tea pot lid still off btw).

I was pretty annoyed by the hyperbole in the Observer article, you are going to have to read it to follow this entry but basically the article says that farmers are ripping out all the environmental features now that grain prices have risen.  I've written my first ever letter to a national newspaper (I once wrote one to our local newspaper when I was fourteen.  They had a headline "Man hit by lorry was lucky" say police.  I wrote to suggest that he was unlucky.  We digress) 

OK, I'm a hypocrite on the payments for environmental stuff.  I'm currently claiming a thousand or two a year from the Entry Level environmental stewardship scheme (I honestly don't know how much we get, It's a lot less than five grand a year.  You might be able to find out here www.farmsubsidy.org  - we trade as K.W. Naylor and Son, if that helps).

Anyway I'm a hypocrite because I argued here in an article that I wrote for the NFU a few years ago that putting a price on things like skylarks was crass and cruel because it subjected them to market forces.  It was unpopular at the time and I had a spat in print with Graham Wynne from the RSPB. 

I suggested that the consumer should take their responsibility seriously and could pay for these things through products if we communicated what we are doing for the environment through our brands.  Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, in the intervening period I have started dealing with Waitrose and become a LEAF Marque producer and I'm prouder of that than of anything else that I have done with the business in the last (ahem) fifteen years. 

The ELS money was a small but helpful and supportive nudge in the right direction with our transition to becoming officially sustainable and bio-diverse.  I appreciate the ELS money much more than than the Single Payment Scheme cheque (you can find out all you need to know about our cheque on www.farmsubsidy.org too: and anyone else's cheque for that matter.  My candour here is enough to tell you our SPS cheque it is barely enough to pay for the tyres on dad's menoPorsche).

Anyhoo.  Below is the letter that I sent to the Observer/Guardian.  As a regular Guardian reader, I have finally tired of their constant carping at farmers.  Most farmers are doing their best for Christ's sake.  If they don't print the letter I will NEVER EVER buy the paper again (online reading doesn't count). 

David and Mary, who live just up the road from the farm, just dropped in for a cup of tea.  Mary's brother was clearing out his pond and they brought me two buckets of fish for mine.  Hopefully the fish that are already in there will not object to my policy on immigration.  The frog spawn all hatched out and there is an abundance of little frogs too.  Its a truly cosmopolitan place biodiversity-wise.  Rivers of blood, ha -  there's one in the eye for you, Enoch. 

This said the horny water snails have been less amorous lately.  I think that this is the cold weather rather than bashfulness.  Rumours that I tipped some bromide in the water out of spiteful jealousy are untrue.

We lowered the buckets of fish into the water to balance the temperatures.  "Any haddock in there, Mary?"  I said.  I love having a joke with Mary she's always a cross between hilarious and serious.  She started complaining about Golden Orfes.

I said Orfe, you cloth-eared 1970's time-warped, Tony Hart obsessive.  ORFE, OK? 

She said "I wouldn't have one of those bloomin' things in my pond.  They look like carrots."  Genius, everyone's a winner with Mary.

We had a cup of tea and Mary castigated me.  What was the castigation for, Matthew?  Well.  The castigation was on account of me leaving the lid off the teapot.

"You mustn't leave the lid off the teapot," she said.  "You'll have a stranger call."  Trust me, everything single thing that she says is classic - I bloomin' love Mary.  Alan Bennett would wet himself if he met her.

Anyway they've gone now.  This is as exciting as the afternoon got.  I've taken the lid off the teapot: I could do with some thrills in my life. 

It has rained at last.  I haven't been into work today and got my teeth into a bit of decorating instead.  I have got better at DIY stuff in the last few years.  There is little more displeasing than a bit of shoddy workmanship and so I take my time and try to use my skills as best as I can.

I kept glancing out of the window while I was painting.  The two blue tits were flying in and out of the nesting box with, what I assume was, food for their young.  They have been in there for a while now so I doubt that they are still building a nest.

One would assume that there must be some birds that are really crap at DIY, that build a nest which falls to bits when they sit in it.  Poor things, how are they going to get a mortgage on one of them?

Anyway.  I was discussing this with my mate Lins who runs an engineering business.  He said that a starling has been pinching the swarf from outside the workshop. When he went to investigate he saw a stainless steel nest high up in the apex of the building.  Now's that's a bit of craftmanship for you; built to last.  Unless it was trying to build a scouring pad. 

Well. Poor old Gordon Brown has taken a bit of a battering this week hasn't he?  I bet he's a bit gutted that the economy chose to collapse within seconds of him getting into Number 10.  Now it sounds like most of his cabinet want him to resign.  Goodness knows who they would choose to replace him, God forbid Alastair Darling. 

Ahem, did he do a leadership course earlier in the year?  No.  Did I?  Yes.  I think that you know what I'm saying.  I'm ready.  Come the hour, come the man.  When your country calls and all that.  The phone's on the hook. 

I just tried to buy the web domain www.votenaylor.com and it's taken.  Actually that's a fat lie, I just Googled myself and found the website (I know, I know - that's a fresh low isn't it?) That's where I really got the whole idea for this entry. 

It's been taken by a fellow Matthew Naylor

Check out www.votenaylor.com.  Look at his little brace, bless him.  Close your mouth, mate.  He looks like the son of Jaws (you know, in the 70's Bond films. Yes, you're right, Roger Moore was rubbish in them).  At least I'm not the least sexy Matthew Naylor ever made.

Anyway.  Give the poor guy your vote.  We already know that Matthew Naylor is the most common name in the world.  How cool would it be to have a Matthew Naylor in No.10 and the White House. 

(C+ for that one)

The http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/farmingtoday/ has just devoted a whole programme to farmers complaining about rising costs.  The premise of the programme was that higher feed and fuel costs are eating up all of the extra revenue from increased sales costs. 

Have a listen to the programme.  Was it just me or were the presenters winking to the listeners as if to say "Farmers, eh? They never stop moaning."  Maybe I'm being sensitive - I'm not at my most rational at 5.45am - maybe the programme was balanced or possibly even sympathetic.  However it was interesting that the final word went to Jack Thurston from www.farmsubsidy.org with a bit about the need to abolish farm payments.

A pretty good pun in the title there.  I'm going to award myself a B+ for that one.

Marks and Spencers have just announced a profit of a cool billion.  A slight increase in profit despite a slight fall in overall sales.

We grow potatoes for M&S and have supply them with flowers occasionally.  Should I be happy or sad at this announcement?  Clearly they are making efficiencies in their business to counteract the cool down on the high-street.

They will be sharing out nearly £13 million in staff bonuses.  The Silver Fox, Stuart Rose, said that "Tight stock control and management of costs are a priority."

So I have to ask myself, as a supplier to them, am I staff or am I a cost to be managed? 

Happy Birthday to us.  It is our first birthday today.

I was hoping to wake up to find a heap of cards and presents.  Only Caroline, the official Longer View muse, actually remembered.  Although obviously its still not too late for you to leave a message saying how great, intelligent, witty, handsome and tall you think that I have been throughout the last year.

Anyway.  Champagne all round I think.

We are installing some irrigation and want a very water-efficient system.  This morning I had a meeting with someone to discuss the options.  After a few minutes of talking to him I suddenly realised that I urgently fancied a wee.  Since it was just me and the person advising me, there didn't seem to be a suitable opportunity to say "Can I just stop you there - I need a piddle"

I realised that I would have to get all the information that I needed from him before I got my wee.  So I had to sit there for fifteen minutes while he talked passionately about water pressure, pipes, trickle tape, drip feed, stop taps, spray jets, nozzles, and ballcocks.

Oooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Did you hear about Macca?  Old Macca?  Paul Macca?

He was GIVEN a car by Toyota.  One of these so-called green Lexus things.  And they flew the bloody thing from Japan to give it to him. Here is the story and here is Macca.  He can't be happy about the situation because he's not giving a thumbs up today.

Just look at that face on Steel Magnolia - it looks like a slapped bum in a wig, doesn't it? She clearly doesn't like wasteful air miles.  Either that or she's just seen Heather approaching with a jug of water.

I don't like bashing anyone who is trying to reduce the environmental impact of their life (in fact I have just got the results back from an assessment of our carbon emissions and proposals for our carbon stewardship - I'll tell you about that when I'm feeling boring) but blimey Macca doesn't half get on my pip.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  I'm fed up with the green agenda being exploited by celebrities who don't know what they are talking about and by companies trying to increase sales.  Most of the ills and issues that the population curently faces are symptoms of excessive and selfish consumption. 

If Macca genuinely cares about the environment, there are much better ways for him to demonstrate it than by accepting a free car. 

We had that nice weather at the weekend and I thought that it was time to dust down the old legs and get them out for an airing.  I had a pair of shorts on in the garden on Sunday as a trial run.  On Monday I decided that I was ready to get my legs out in a work context.

Blow me, I ended up in the office in meetings most of the day.  The old pins weren't going to catch many rays tucked under my desk, were they?  I wonder if you can get the tubes from a sunbed fastened to the underneath of a desk.

Anyway.  By the time I got out of the office, it had turned cool.  To tell you the truth, I was pretty cold.  The shorts were no longer appropriate.  I was covered in goosebums (don't correct that, it's not a spelling mistake).

I nipped to see Pen, Jules and Theo on the way home.  Theo's other god parent, Rebecca, was there too.  She took one look at the legs, arched her brows and said "That reminds me, I need to pick up some milk on the way home."  WHAT. A. BITCH. 

I started writing something about the Single Farm Payment yesterday.  It was ever so boring.  Then I deleted it by accident.  Anyway, you already know that I hate taxpayers money being given to farmers for no good reason.  You also know that I hate filling forms in.  I have long expressed my view that the Single Farm Payment is completely out of date and no longer serves consumers in the correct way.

However - and to simplify what I put yesterday before the boredom fairies came and destroyed it - if the government think that they can persuade the rest of the European community to scrap the CAP (as reported here in the FT) then they are as big a bunch of lemons as we suspected.  I think that they are just trying to stir up the debate to get some movement from the other member states. 

I won't write anymore today, it will end up as dull as the last bit I wrote. 

The one thing that I learnt from my recent visit to the European Parliament and the European Commission is that Brussels is a very slow moving machine.  It will always react too late and do too much when it does. 

I heard some of the bEUROcrats describe European decision making as a tanker that takes a long while to turn around.  I thought that a better analogy was a toilet cistern that took a long while to fill up with water  before it would flush again.

You won't notice any difference at all. Me, however, well I'm completely bewildered. The software that we use to write these blogs has all changed. Reader, it's like being in another world. There are all sorts of new features. It's called a dashboard.

I'll come back to this. You know how I hate having to learn about new technology. Presumably if you are reading this everything has worked out just fine. There looks as though there are some good features which we will both benefit from once I understand how to use them.

This is why I couldn't do you an entry yesterday because we had workmen inside the system getting all this ready.

Now I know how people feel when they become a parent for the first time. I'm not a man who uses many exclamation marks. You know this already. It will tell you how I feel when I say that,

Our podcast has finally arrived!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can listen to it at www.puretilth.com

Listen to it please. Get your family to listen to it with you (a bit of quality time). Tell all your friends to listen to it and then talk about it afterwards in the pub. Tell all your enemies to listen to it (it might help you to patch up your differences).

Tell us what you think here or email the show at podcast@puretilth.com. We could do with some questions, comments and suggestions to read out in the next podcast.

Oh. And don't bother listening to the first one, it's quite crappy - we were nervous and a bit wooden. The others are quite funny.

I meant to pick up on this sooner for anyone who didn't spot it, it made me laugh.

Fellow columnist "Adam" Boy Bedford left this message

I had a basking moment in my new found celebrity status in a pub in Worcestshire the other day. It was very embarassing. I was chatting away when suddemly the girl shrieked a very shrill noise, put her hand over her mouth, started waving a hand in front of her like an oriental fan and then said she couldn't believe it was me, that chap (she did say chap Matthew, she was wearing tweed) from FW. Obviously I had to calm her down by purchasing a drink from the bar.

How cool is that? You go Boy. I love the "waving of the hand" to cool herself down. I have just found out that Boy also writes a column in New Zealand (read it here) so his celebrity reaches much farther than mine.

I think that the race is on to see which one of us ends up in the Spotted section of Heat magazine first. Which columnist is your money on? Boy, "Alan" Carr, Heidi High (no link I'm afraid, she hasn't got a web presence yet, bless her- come on FWi), "New" Broom or "The Guv'nor" David Richardson?

Bring on the celebrity stalkers.

The YFC AGM coverage on the FWi site made me feel very nostalgic. Obviously I still think that Young Farmers are deeply uncool but I went to several AGMs and they were great fun.

Each year you hear a bunch of people say

Where else would you get 5000 young people in one place without a single bit of trouble? ...

Whew, it's warm. Everything is finally starting to grow...

Squatting, eh? It's proving quite a popular subject, isn't it.

I counted precisely three men down in this weeks magazine. The Relfster is performing a particularly fine squat on page 3.

There are a few other photographic cliches which I had forgotten about. The "leaning on a gate" is a very popular one.

This is the first one of that type ever taken. It was considered pretty ground-breaking at the time.

My favourite pose is the "one foot on a tractor step - "I'm going tractor driving (in my best clothes) as soon as this photo session is over" look. The photo of James Peck here is the finest example of its type. James is normally so shy and unassuming but in this photo he looks like Saint George with his foot on the dragon's tummy.

It's a gorgeous evening. I have just been out in the garden for an hour. The birdsong here is amazing from the crack of dawn until the sun sets and it's a very relaxing end to the day.

The birds sound particularly cheerful tonight. In the pond there were fish and tadpoles darting about near the surface and the water snails were getting a bit amorous. I am pretty sure that two of the snails were "doing it"....

Ow. That punny title has a pain factor of 90%.

Right, straight down to business. Look

That, my feathered friends, is a picture from Tim Relf's blog, Field Day. It's nuts, the cat I mean. It's Nuts the cat. I apologise for printing the picture again.

Tim said that he published it to annoy me and I instantly spotted an opportunity for another pretend fight and a bit of cross-referencing blog promotion. It's a glorious day and I'm in a good mood but I can't let the opportunity pass by. Here it comes...

Presumably the poor cat had been reading Field Day and was trying to slit its wrists.

I was in Norfolk for supper (I daren't call it dinner any more after the debate that it sparked among our Northern readership) last night with Toby and Teresa Mermagen. I was on the Worshipful Company of Farmers thing (which I'm always going on about) with Toby a few years ago. Toby is a real star and I make far too little effort to catch up with him considering how close by he is. If you have ever eaten Walkers crisps, there's a good chance that he grew the potatoes. (Hey don't leave that green one, it won't hurt you)

I was telling Teresa about my recent photographic assignments and bemoaning the fact that I'm always getting asked to squat down in fields of flowers by photographers. I think that I've grissled here before that if future generations look back at photos of me, they will think that I spent most of my life squatting down.

Teresa starting laughing and grabbed a collage that was hanging up by their Aga. (Can you imagine one of those gorgeous, homely, farmhouse kitchens with children's paintings and things around it - yeh, like that) This collage was a sort of montage that had been made by a friend of theirs and it consisted entirely of farmers squatting in crops. It had the title "Men Squatting In Fields, 2002." The creator worked in advertising and was tickled pink by our convention (or cliche) of farmers always being photographed in the squatting position. He thinks we are an industry of squatters.

I recognised quite a few squattees in the collage; Ian P and Mike Tucker from Yara were mixed in there. I'm not convinced that any farmer has ever asked to be photographed in this way. It's pretty bloody undignified. Short of dropping your trousers around your ankles, it's hard to think how you could make the image much worse.

You don't see the Chancellor of the Exchequer squatting down to deliver the Budget. The Queen doesn't squat down to open Parliament. Would Alan Sugar seem so "big" if he had to squat down before he did his whole "You're Fired" schtick?

The FW will have gone to print for this week. I dare bet you that there will be at least three people having a little squat in there on Friday. Count them.

Join with me for the CAMPAIGN TO END THE SQUATTING.

Jusst recieved a tecst from Kit Papworth mokking a tipeing erra on the last entree. It seams as tho the speeling misstakes are thee most popuelar bitts on this bllog.

Whoo hoo. We have passed our LEAF Marque audit with no non-compliances (that means 100%). Get in.

This is like top marks in a nature exam. I was thinking of having a beer with the lapwings to celebrate but instead came home to cut the lawn. If the farm has got to look charmingly overgrown in the name of biodiversity, at least my garden can stay managed and manicured. Ironically there are are stacks of birds in the graden here because of all the trees. There were two collared doves helping me with gardening tonight.

We have starting ploughing in the clover that I told you about last year. Keep up. The idea was to try using a cover crop on this light field to fix the nitrogen ahead of the vegetable crop that will be planted next week.