Happy Feet... Happy Meat!

I am a little worried about how this thought of mine, which has started meandering around the channels of my mind, will be received. I am reluctant to share it because it touches on a subject about which many people feel passionate. These days free-range, Fair Trade, organic and, of course, vegetarian products are popular and widely available. They raise awareness of vital issues in our global society and they encourage a healthy consideration of our fellow beings, both human and non-human. The fine tuning of these questions and the deliberations that go on around them (concerning use of chemicals, carbon footprints, light pollution, healthy eating and so on) can become complex and labyrinthine. However, through them all, a healthier, juster way of living is placed before us for our consideration and action. Not everyone reacts in the same way and there are many varieties and shades of response.

One of the valid responses to this question has been the development in a number of countries of so-called 'happy meat'. One can consider all the issues and decide to become a vegan or vegetarian; some of us simply draw the line at eating veal, battery chickens or foie gras; others decide, after all, that life is too short, the issues too complex and plough doggedly on, enjoying their diet of steak, veal or cheap hamburgers, with no questions asked. Alternatively now one can choose a careful mid-way point along the line of argument and opt for happy meat, meat derived from animals whose albeit short lives have been deemed to be happy: well-fed, well cared for, free to roam in the fresh air and the green grass. A happy solution for all concerned. Or is it?

I am one of those people blessed with a rather quirky, inquisitive approach to things, an interest in linguistics and logistics and a penchant for pulling things apart and asking 'why?' I've always been like that. Some find it irritating, others endearing. Take your pick - I am at the mercy of my readers. Anyway, the question that keeps meandering around my head is a simple one really but it may have consequences. It may be flippant; it may be a touch politically incorrect, but I will ask it all the same - just to raise the question and keep us all on our toes, and if I make anyone cross with me then I apologise...

"Why?" I am asking. Why is it better to kill and eat the happy heifer who is busy minding its own business, chewing the cud, enjoying the open fields and the sunshine, than its neighbour, cooped up in indescribable conditions in a dark, cramped barn, miserable and waiting to die? Why kill and cook the blissfully happy pig, wallowing in soft mud and happy as a 'pig in clover', and not that other miserable specimen hurtling up the motorway in its overcrowded lorry, fighting for even a breath of air through its little pink nostrils? Euthanasia for pigs? A happy release for force-fed geese or turkeys? Why not? Why eat the happy pig and leave its miserable neighbour to suffer? Why not leave the free-range turkey gobbling in the farm yard this Christmas and gobble its unhappy relative from the factory farm?

I am missing the point, you all cry. You are right but I am loathe to spoil the fun of all those happy animals. The point, of course, is to encourage all farmers to strive for happy herds, delighted ducklings and cheery chickens. It's a fine cause and I'm all in favour. But it is a long process and, in the meantime, should I really choose to eat the happy ones and reject the rest? What sense does this apparently worthy choice make?

Not on the menu

People watching! I'm doing it again. I think I'm incurable - not that I'm looking for a cure - it's too much fun! The cafe has a double aspect so I get the best of both worlds: a view out the front to the market square with all its brightly coloured, canopied stalls, bustling with people on market day and, at the back, a view over the canal, the shopping street opposite and the rows of bikes leaned up against the railings.

There's a winter chill in the air, the first of the year really, which somehow inevitably turns my thoughts towards bright, crisp mornings, Sinterklaas and Christmas. The market stalls are so reminiscent of those colourful Christmas markets, so popular in northern Europe, their stalls overflowing with wooden decorations, toys, candles, hot chocolate and gluhwein! But for the moment I'm content with my mug of hot coffee - it's too early still for all that.

A couple of women are sitting by the back window, relaxing together over a cup of tea and catching up on the gossip. The conversation is animated and I do my best to eavesdrop. But they are speaking in Dutch and it's too difficult, so after a while I give up and let their words drift over my head, blending with the soft and innocuous music that fills the air, typical of cafes everywhere. Nothing to get excited about musically, but it covers the silence and provides the gently chilled-out atmosphere we're all looking for. 'Gezelligheid' (a kind of cosiness) the Dutch call it and for that there always have to be candles and soft lighting, together with the music.

Snatches of conversation drift over to me and I catch the word 'lekker' repeated over and over. 'Gezellig' (cosy), 'lekker' (delicious, good) - such familiar words - just a few of those Dutch cliches we joke about. 'Hartstikke leuk!' (fantastic!), 'Uitstekend!' (outstanding!), 'Fijne dag verder!' (enjoy the rest of your day) they exclaim. I am building up a stock of these handy sayings; there is one for every situation. My Dutch is poor but my ever-growing treasure store of cliches ensures that I have something to say on every occasion!

I joke about it, but these are the things I shall miss when one day I return home to my native country. I shall also miss the coffee, the 'patats' (chips) and the cheese (I won't miss the windmills and the clogs). It's a game we play at home: "what will you miss when we go home?" I will miss the market. I will miss the way passers-by wish me 'eet smakelijk' (enjoy your meal) as I tuck into my picnic. I will miss my favourite bars and the cafes where the owners recognise me as 'the English lady who writes'.

The waitress has just arrived with a little tray full of flowers in simple glass vases. A white freesia and a purple iris for each table. She smiles and we exchange a few words. I'm a regular here. I shall miss that too. But, for now, I just drink it all in because there's so much to see and so many stories to invent about the people around me. People watching is not on the menu but it's free of charge.

The Refrigerator Fringed with Joy

My house is full of the smell of freshly baked bread! It's an intoxicating aroma. I haven't baked bread for years but a recent holiday in Wales, staying in a tiny rustic stone cottage with a bubbling stream running past the kitchen window, awakened memories of previous years and got me in the mood. In those days, living in a more laid-back country location, I had embraced the joys (and occasional disappointments) of home baking, arts and crafts and home grown veg. In Wales this last summer we bought home made Welsh cakes and Bara Brith (a mouthwatering, dark brown, fruity tea bread, sliced and spread thickly with butter). We visited craft workshops and admired the work of local potters, artists, weavers and jewellers. We enjoyed the slower pace of life and the more 'grass roots' life style that we found there and hankered after the past.

In my enthusiasm I returned home, armed with strong white bread flour, stone ground wholemeal wheat flour and little bags of yeast, ready to recover my lost skills and try my hand at 'country living'. For that's what it's all about really. Nothing like this is ever just about 'the thing in itself'. We're all such romantic dreamers. So the smell of fresh bread in my kitchen conjures up pictures in my mind of scrubbed pine tables in a big country kitchen, of bright, shiny pots and pans hanging from racks and freshly-picked herbs drying on hooks, suspended from the ceiling. All at once I am in one of those 'Escape to the Country' dream homes where the show's latest participants, a retired couple, are drooling over their ideal kitchen: gleaming white, Shaker-style cupoards, fitted from floor to ceiling, with a handy 'island' in the middle. It's the focal point, the hub of their home, where they are going to entertain family and friends to their mid-life experiment in community living. Everything in life has 'associations', capturing our imaginations and transporting us to places we would rather be.

One of my favourite books* opens with a scene in which Mrs. Ramsay, her husband and her youngest son, James, are together in the living room of the country house where each year they spend the summer months, close to the sea. At six years old, James is portrayed as a sensitive child. He is easily affected by moods and atmospheres and by the words and unspoken inferences of his parents. Virginia Woolf describes in careful detail how James belongs to 'that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand." James sits on the floor, cutting out pictures from a catalogue. He is busy with a refrigerator. His mother tells him of the proposed outing they will make tomorrow, in a little boat, to visit the lighthouse keeper, if the weather is fine. At this news, the refrigerator picture, for James, is endowed with heavenly bliss. It is 'fringed with joy'. "But it won't be fine" pronounces his more down-to-earth father. He was incapable of untruth, Woolf tells us, "never alterated a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all his own children." In his intense disappointment, James's world crumbles and he is filled with feelings of hatred. So the refrigerator becomes the target for the little boy's emotions, first joy, then hate and his mother quickly tries to find another picture for him to cut out to distract him from life's harsh realities.

Life is all about associations. Some things are fringed with joy. Others have more upsetting connotations. We love home made bread because it embodies some perceived country idyll. We hate the name 'Eric' because of the little boy who sat next to us in class and pulled our plaits when we were five. "It is what it is" my ex-boss used to say. No it isn't! Things are rarely just themselves.

* To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. Published 1927.

Save it for a Rainy Day

I visited a friend the other day. We exchanged pleasantries. I asked about her new baby. She asked about my holiday. The baby was fine, except for the usual sleep problems and unpredictable bowel activity. Then it was my turn. After I'd waxed lyrical at some length about the lake, the mountains and the autumnal foliage in the vineyards she looked at me quizzically. "You two really are outdoors people, aren't you?" she asked. She's known me a while; she reads my blog; she edits my submissions to my column on an expat website. I thought about what she had said and had to agree. Sporty? No. Fit? No, not particularly. But outdoors - yes! "I guess you don't mind about the rain, then" she said "living here."

Actually I do mind. I'm not the hardy outdoors type - battling it out in all weathers. I don't ride my bike in the snow like the Dutch do - I don't even have a bike! But I love being out of doors. Keep me cooped up in the house for more than a day and I go crazy. I love to walk; I love to observe the passing seasons; I love to sit in cafes; I love just to see what's going on in the outside world and what my neighbours are up to. The first thing I do in anybody's home is go to the window and look out. The garden always seems more interesting than indoors; so does the street. I like to admire the trees and spy on the neighbours. The next stage would be to examine the bookshelf. You can tell such a lot about people from their books.

But on holiday we go out. We make contingency plans like everyone else - we take DVDs with us, or a jigsaw, we look up local museums and shopping malls and tell ourselves we'll go. We save them up 'for a rainy day'. But when the rainy day comes, what do we do? We go out! We walk. We go to the beach or the park - just in case the sun comes out - we don't want to miss it. We go to the beach or the park. We huddle under trees, we shelter in cafes, but we save all those other worthy occupations, those cultural indoor pursuits, for 'tomorrow' - in case the weather really gets bad.

Simply a matter of taste

We stopped the car in a tiny village, high above the lake, and stepped out into another little world. All around us the hillside glowed with variegated greens, browns and yellows in neat rows, like an experiment in Pointillism on a backgrond of regency stripe. The little vineyards ran in between low grey walls and imposing villas. Brown signposts announced the 'Domaine due Chateau' and 'Domaine de la Chasse', pointing the way to the slopes where landowners had been cultivating their special vintages for centuries in this warm sunshine along the shores of Lac Leman.

'Degustation et la vente' - first taste, then buy. No neon signs, no gaudy publicity, just a handful of ancient establishments with excellent but understated service and outstanding wine. In the local village 'auberge' Madame served us with a small carafe of sweet white wine 'de la region'. She made no comment as we helped ourselves to a pack of peanuts to ward off the worst effects of wine on an empty stomach in the middle of the day. Probably not the best of accompaniments to her fine wines, but needs must - we had left our lunch in the car and the opportunity to taste and see was too good to waste. We struggled with the peanuts - tried to pull the top apart in vain, tried to find the cunning spot the manufacturers had prepared for easy opening, battled with instructions in French, and failed. Mademoiselle appeared silently at our elbow with a little dish for the peanuts and a pair of scissors.

There was something about the wine, politely served in its carafe, so lovingly poured, that told us, even in our ignorance, that here was something you do not buy in your local supermarket. It was gentle, light, sweet and delicate and yet so wonderfully unassuming. The auberge, at first sight, had seemed expensive and we were doubtful whether we would be acceptable in our casual attire and just before lunch, tourists simply asking for something to drink. But for these people it was just ordinary life. On closer inspection, we discovered a room full of locals, eating, drinking and taking no notice of us beyond a cursory glance, accompanied by a friendly smile from Madame.

Yet to us the occasion was steeped in history: a whole community whose life revolved around those neat little rows of vines with their gnarled trunks and autumn leaves. Here and there a little tractor drove by; amongst the vines men wandered along the rows, checking this and that. The main harvest was over but a few last bunches of grapes still hung from the lower branches. Small areas of the vineyard had already been cut down, their twisted black branches lying in heaps and their trunks roughly hacked off, close to the ground. Another world where a community lived and worked, centred on the planting, the pruning, the harvesting, the bottling and the final, all-important 'degustation'. To us it was fascinating, novel, exotic; to them simply 'vin ordinaire'.

More than one way of killing a moggy

Actually, I like moggies. Growing up with a cat-doting mother, I soon learned to love these cuddly bundles of fluff and vividly remember attending another little girl's birthday party, where I stubbornly refused to join in any of the party games, preferring instead to spend the entire party cradling a tiny black and white kitten in my arms. The kitten subsequently came home with us, being almost ready for being parted with its mother, and spent the rest of its spoilt, happy life with us, under the name of Badger, a name chosen to reflect the elegant white stripe down the centre of its tiny nose and its sleek black fur.

So I wouldn't dream of killing a cat. However, I was reflecting today how times have moved on and how, in many areas, our views of life and our ways of going on have become so much more varied and diverse. A friend came to lunch with me yesterday. On entering our living room (for the first time), she exclaimed on how tidy it was - and indeed our whole house and garden. It's true - I like things tidy. I also find it difficult to work in a cluttered environment and feel constrained always to tidy things up before embarking on any new task. This can be a curse, as it means I achieve less than others whose tolerance for mess and chaos is higher than mine, but at least it means I get to live my life in the kind of surroundings I enjoy and feel comfortable in.

My friend is different to me. Leaving me, after lunch, she announced that she was going shopping. Her husband was returning home from abroad; the book club were visiting that evening and it was her turn to entertain and to provide drinks and snacks; she was playing tennis at 5 o-clock. Her lifestyle is different to mine. She confesses that she is always in a hurry, always late for everything, that her house is muddley and untidy. But her agenda is full and her life hectic. Why not? My early upbringing had a huge focus on 'right' and 'wrong' - there were rules for everything. So in those days one of these options would have to be 'the right way' of doing things. These days there is room for all points of view. Well, no, (let's be honest) for many of them, although current fashions in British politics may have a decreasing list of what is considered to be 'the right thing'. However, one of us is untidy and a bit disorganised and achieves a lot, the other is tidy and enjoys the resulting peace and calm. No problem, we're all different.

Last week we visited family: two days' drive to stay with our daughter and son-in-law. Times have changed since the days when my own mother used to come to stay. For days before her visit I would torture myself with a hectic round of cleaning and tidying - if I didn't she would run her finger along the surfaces with a look of disapproval on her face when she found the hidden corners of dirt! She was no dragon, just a normal, caring mother of her generation - houses must be clean and tidy: it was just an accepted fact of life. Another non-negotiable fact was that the cake tin must always be full and meals on time. Again, her dutiful daughter did her best to oblige and still does - old habits die hard!

However, my daughter and son-in-law work very hard at their jobs. There is little time for extra housework in their busy schedules. Abandoning my mother's traditions, I told them in my very best 21st century enlightened mother's role: 'Don't you dare clean the house before we come - we can help with that if necessary when we arrive - you have enough to do already. Don't worry about special meals - we can help cook.' Hurrah! The age of tolerance has come and we are not all expected to live in the same way! There is more than one way of killing the poor mog!

When we arrived, we found - guess what! A spotless house, homemade cakes, a fridge full of our favourite things and a pre-planned menu for the week! My daughter is even tidier than I am! The only difference was the meal times - son-in-law now works so hard that dinner is served just before bedtime (well, ours anyway). But these days who cares?