Whitby was wheezing with tourists. Thousands of us clattered down the narrow streets and into the cafes. Breakfast – a bright red pot of strong Yorkshire tea and dark orange Whitby kippers, cooked to perfection and served on generous slabs of granary bread. We climbed the 199 steps to the Abbey, brought strawberry ice-creams and stared at the sea as if we had never seen it before. Children shrieked, fishing boats chugged, buskers sang and an ancient black steam engine hissed into the station, pulling a late summer excursion of cream and red carriages. Whitby is an unforgettable audio-visual experience. We soaked up the last of the August sun before the long drive south to a world of apples, filming, editing and cool autumn mists.

...it cheap

When Jack Cohen set up his barrow stall to sell surplus groceries in the East End of London in 1919, he might not have believed that a new unit of measurement would be coined ninety years later.  The ‘Tesco’ is equivalent to £40billion.  Or to put it another way, Tescos is now worth  1/24th of the UK’s GDP.  Jack Cohen’s business motto was “pile it high and sell it cheap”, although this was quickly replaced with the saying “You Can’t Do Business Sitting On Your Arse”. He distributed items bearing the acronym “YCDBSOYA” to his sales force.  Add the square footage of their UK stores together and Tescos is larger than the State of Monaco.

An interesting report from the BBC on the sheer scale of Tescos.  Some good local news.  Despite receiving planning permission they decided not to proceed with a store (on stilts) in Glastonbury, where many small local retailers thrive. We have an excellent butcher, baker, delicatessen, a lively weekly market and a whole-food store that has taken over the old Woolworths store.  Exactly the sort of retail environment that Jack Cohen would have been familiar with in 1919. Long may it continue.

Westbury Sub Mendip Cider House Gang

After several months of quiet fermentation, our cider is finally ready! Last November we gathered thirty-one bags of apples from our Meeting House orchard at Street and took them over to a friend’s farm at Westbury-sub-Mendip for a communal cider day. About thirty people turned up to help with the harvest and at lunch we broke off to sit round a communal table sharing local cheese, bread, apple cake and tea. The apples were washed and carefully fed into a Victorian scratter. The pulp was layered into a huge cheese and the oak press squeezed to extract the rich sweet apple juice. The juice was poured into old Rum barrels and allowed to ferment over the winter. On Good Friday we carefully turned the wooden taps on the three barrels and allowed the cider to flow into beakers. Lots of sampling and quiet nods of approval as we compared tasting notes and worked out the best blend. There is something deeply satisfying about working hard communally, sharing resources and drinking something that is so intimately connected to this land. It is a million miles away from the crude taste of commercial cider and something to treasure. The great writer, James Crowden, captured the magic of West Country cider in his brilliant book – Ciderland.