Consolidating rant...

What follows is the first draft copy+paste of what I had intended to be a simple outline of my project. What it actually is is a load of meandering thought-trails, lists, non-sensical grammar and some probably quite rubbish ideas. But who cares? This is where I'm at right now:

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So I've been a bit stuck this week.

I've managed to produce a few bits and pieces, but the 'flow' has all but left me. I'm sure that this is more a reflection on me than on my subject matter.

Last night I sat down and tried to form some cohesion of my interests and themes that have manifested themselves in my little endeavours so far. I don't think that I'm analysing my motives hard enough.

The most important themes present in my work so far have been:

• -Nostalgia
• -Village Environment Aesthetics
• -Symbolism
• -Naivity/ Childishness

and my key points of research have been:

• -Projection and manifestation of Stereotypes (miniature villages etc)
• -Model and utopian Villages (Thorpeness)
• -Happiness and environment
• -Community identity
• -Personal Geographies and escapism

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My most recent and more specific statistical findings include:

• -People who have lived in the same place for more than 5 years are more likely to be happier. Thus, familiarity = happiness. (not just because you live in a village) (Source: The Happiness Formula, BBC 2008)

GFKNOP.com Consumer Trends: Nostalgia Report:

Recession provoking nostalgia: 62% consumers experienced a negative monetary experience in past year, 23% positive one. When things are crap in the now, we escape by looking forward to when times will be better, or by looking back to when times were better. Because nobody knows what the future holds, it is easier to look back. Evidence:

• Resurgence of nostalgic brands: Arctic Rolls, Wispa bars (hurrah!), Birds Custard
• Revival of bands and musical styles: Take That, 80s Synth: The Killers La Roux
• Movies and TV: Dr Who, Life on Mars, A-Team etc.
• 'Retro Styling, Modern Function': Beatle, Mini, Fiat
• Emphasis on heritage (trustworthiness): Persil "Tough but gentle for 100 years"; Hovis "As good today as it's ever been"; M&S "125 years since the penny bazaar"

*NOSTALGIA 2.0: Like the first time, but better!

(Reviving nostalgic images of Britain and evolving them for the modern one)

'Rusource', Commission for Rural Communities

• -The rural population of Britain is growing at a much faster rate than the urban due to in-migration. Perticularly in ages 0-9, 30-44 and 60+ age ranges. People still want to raise their kids and retire in the country.
• -The 15-29 age ranges are leaving rurality for urban environments at a much faster rate too, mostly through higher education.
• -The average age of the rural citizen is 5 years older than that of the city.
• -Current government development schemes discourage development in rural areas with emphasis on urban and town fringe areas.

State of the Countryside Summary Report 2010

• -23.5% of people in rural areas are over state retirement age, compared with 18.1% in the city. The South-West and East-Anglia have the highest 60+ populations in the country, at 121,900 and 92,600 respectively.
• -You are more likely to have a greater sense of well-being in your environment if you live in a rural community. 87% in rural compared with 76% in urban.
• -It is significantly more costly to live in a rural environment than in an urban one.
• -Greenhouse gas emissions are higher in rural areas for all sectors. Significantly more by transport because of greater distances travelled.

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This presents me with a few obvious points and dilemmas to focus on:

The population in rural areas is growing due to pensioners and families inmigrating from cities.

• -small, familiar communities are saturated with strangers, diluting community bonds and trust.
• -There aren't enough public services or housing to support this influx
• -Growth of non-independent and corporate commercial development in response to demand for more efficient amenities. Undermining independent business.
• -Age segregation: the older in villages, the younger in cities. Loss of integrated communities.

So basically, the problem is this: people would rather grow old or raise a family in the countryside, and this is messing quite a few things up. What i need to determine is:

• -WHY people want to in-migrate to rural areas.
• -WHAT are the benefits and qualities of the village environment.
• -HOW these perceived qualities are manifest; how they are visualised, enacted and reinforced.

I need to look at the perception of the chocolate-box Britain and its advantages, then somehow project this onto urban environments in order to tempt people to raise families and grow old there:

• -Prevent over-development in rural areas
• -Attract rural levels of contentment to urban areas
• -Promote a more evenly balanced mean age of population in both.

Trials and Tribulations of a Foodie with a Handicap...

I love food. Food food food food food. There is one difficulty: I can't eat any of it. I am lactose intolerant and have an insulin resistance, which means that I can't gain the nutritional benefit of any foods that cause my blood sugar to spike- foods that have a high Glicemic Index. This includes...

• Almost all carbohydrates: breads, potatoes, wheat products, rice, dried pasta, crackers and cereals. This includes gluten-free options. No joy.
• Sugars: including [obviously] sweets, cake, chocolates, and limiting my intake of some natural sugars like honey, dried fruit and juices.
• Saturated fats: Anything deep-fried or fried in excessive oils, and limiting intake of really fatty cuts of meat like patés, duck and goose, lamb and steak, or reconstituted meat products that contain rusk or breads like burgers and sausages.
• Dairy products: I haven't eaten dairy since I was 15, and I'm trying to work it back into my diet. Progress includes low-fat yoghurt, cottage cheese, low fat Philadelphia or a dash of semi-skim in my tea.

Easily the most difficult thing is eating out, or at friends houses. Although eating intolerances are becoming increasingly understood and catered for, you try asking for your meal to come dairy and carbohydrate-free with a low fat content. People look at you like you're totally nuts. Or have an eating disorder. It's just embarassing.

Worse than that is that the information you can find on a foods' glycaemic index is patchy at best, and extremely variable. Sometimes I read that spaghetti is perfectly ok, other times that only fresh egg-pasta is acceptably slow-burning. Pules and Legumés like beans are great, but commercially tinned baked beans aren't cool because of the sugar content of the sauce. A mash potato has a higher GI than a boiled one. Go figure.

Labelling is also a problem. Tesco [as far as I'm aware] are the only vendor that give an indication of the Glycaemic values of their foods. Others, like Sainsburys operate on the nutrition wheel system which although useful isn't that helpful when applied to the low GI diet.

But some good has come from having to monitor my diet so strictly. I am absolutely astounded at the amount of crap we perpetually put into our bodies. Most British households will consume wheat products 2-3 times a day, red-meats 4-5 times a week, and our daily calorie consumption has rocketed from an average 2000-2500 calories to a whopping 3000-3500 per day, exceeding our recommended intake by 1000. (Source: Food Standards Agency National Diet and Nutrition Survey 2008-2009)

My Dad recently had some pretty hardcore Gallstones, and needed to completely cut out fat from his diet in the lead-up to his operation. He's an educated man of 55, but had absolutely NO CLUE what was in the food he ate. Who knew there was that much fat in a something as healthy-seeming as a bowl of meusli, or a spaghetti carbonara? Dad has a pretty healthy diet anyway, but the fact he just had no concept of the amount of fat in his food and how much or it he was consuming was shocking to me. But then, I am a nutrition geek.

But that's the thing: people just don't know what's in their food, and they don't think about it either. And it's started to really piss me off. Living in South London, we have A LOT of takeaways. And I for one am absolutely sick of seeing school-kids in their uniforms strolling down the road at 3pm munching chicken and chips. Recently, a bus-stop on Old Kent Road was displaying an advert for Coco Pops that scared the crap out of me: how can we let them get away with it? WHY aren't we EDUCATING people about their food? Why are such poor standards of commercially distributed foodstuffs allowed? Jamie Oliver- I am with you on this one.

I think about food all the time, and I notice food in the world around me constantly. Now that I'm living with the culinarily-extraordinary Ms. Dipa Patel, I only expect the obsession to grow.

Something to believe in

Britain was recently described by the Pope's aide Cardinal Walter Kasper as a "third-world country". An amusingly provocative statement, and a rather poor analogy for our country's famine of faith. He subsequently was dropped from the Pope's widely-publicised trip to the UK, 'for health-reasons'. Was he was referring to the fact that we are a secularly-governed society? I wonder if he would then consider India, arguably still considered 'third-world' (if we're using the outdated terminology) the same way?

What I find interesting is the way Cardinal Kasper phrased his poorly-considered aspersion on Britain. The way he so directly compared the value of faith to material wealth.

In the age and culture of unbelief that we find ourselves occupying, how else can we   comprehensively descibe an intangiable thing's worth but to compare it with something monetary or material?

Last year, I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. You've got to read it, it's flipping brilliant.

We follow the protagonist known only as 'Shadow', who has been released from prison to find that his wife has died in a car-accident. Whilst sucking his best friend's cock. Left with nothing, when he's offered a job by a mysterious dude known as Mr. Wednesday he takes it.

I can't be bothered to write a full plot summary, so SPOILER ALERT! Here is the jist of it:

Mr. Wednesday is Odin. And Odin is preparing for war. Old gods vs. new. The old gods are all that you could possibly imagine, from the Egyptian sun-god Ra to the Caribbean trickster Ananse. They have arrived and are sustained in the 'new land' by the fading trickles of belief that still comes from human minds. If someone- anyone- is still praying then the old gods exist, occupying both this world (where they live amongst us in disguise) and the dimension alongside it. Mythology overflowing into our familiar reality.

What makes American Gods truly fascinating however, is the New Gods. The god of television- with her perfect pin-stripe suit and dazzling smile, and Tech Boy- pale and covered in spots, but greedy and murderous. It goes on and on- from the god of Freeways to the Internet- set to become the New Gods' head-hancho.

It's his comparison of religious and corporate iconography that gets me. It's fucking genius. It's human recourse to turn to something beyond ourselves for comfort, distraction, purpose and meaning. It's just that nowadays we do it with Heat magazine instead.

Will Self says it pretty well in The Book of Dave. Set 500 years A.D. (After Dave). Dave is a schizophrenic cab driver in London whose wife buggers off with his child. We follow as he goes slowly mad, eventually creating his own religion based on the London cabbing 'Knowledge'. He has his religion engraved into a metal book and buries it at the end of his ex-wife's garden. Hundreds or thousands (we never know- but pigs have evloved) of years later, his book has been dug up and Davism adapted as the primary religion of the mostly submerged principality of 'Ing'. Everyone chats Mockney (the generic term for a hot meal is "curry" and for breakfast, "Starbucks") and Mummies and Daddies share custody of children, the 'Changeover' reflecting the ritualistic aspects of Dave Rudman's 21st century life.

A parody of modern religion and blind faith, Self "challenges the assumption of whether people should follow something just because it is written in an old book."

Personally, I am agnostic. Or a "fucking fence-sitter" if described by Professor Richard Dawkins.

Just a meandering little thought. Not really sure where this one is going.