Beautiful and Useful

October 18, 2009

I am on a no waste campaign after listening to Tristram Stuart at a Studioilse Kitchen Table Talk, about the shocking way in which we waste food. His book Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal reveals how much food gets chucked away right across the food supply system. Consider just this one fact: from the bread and other grain-based products that British households throw away each year, Stuart estimates it would be possible to alleviate the hunger of 30 million people. That sounds at first like an improbably large number ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ until one considers that British households chuck away 2.6bn slices of bread each year.

I was brought up with the concept of not wasting food because both my parents were world war 11 children, but my daughter sees little harm in binning a perfectly good but one day out of date yoghurt, “Mum, you’ll give us all food poisoning” she protests, sinking her teeth into a Big Mac.

Tristram would give the thumbs up, though, to my apple gathering in the garden. We have had three apple puddings and as many crumbles in the last fortnight. Not only have copious sheets of the Guardian been recycled, but the trays of newspaper wrapped apples in the cellar will last weeks.I’m planning to send a specimen – fruit and leaves – to the National Fruit Collection who for a tenner, will attempt to identify it. The tree’s pretty old so I’m hoping its some long lost variety.

The 19C architect and designer William Morris’s belief ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ is a resourceful, and anti-waste idea to embrace now. That doesn’t mean you have to buy exquisite and expensive: think of the humble pudding basin, it looks good and serves its function for very little money. Similarly, a useful junk piece with intrinsically good bones, can be given a facelifit with a lick of paint.

See my latest Youtube where I perk up a rather gloomy looking side table, rescued from a local skip. This is a good way, too, of using up paint that you might have left over- another way of reducing waste. Don’t worry if all you have is emulsion. I know that paint purists wouldn’t approve but I use it all the time to paint bits of furniture. A water based primer, and two top coats of colour is all that you need. Here I’ve used Little Greene’s Salix which is a pale greeny blue colour.

When I do get around to mending things, the relief and sense of purpose, and happy thoughts of money saving are so huge that I don’t know why I didn’t do it long before. For the last year or so, the dog has been regularly falling through the Salvation Army Ercol sofa because the webbing has worn through in the middle. Being lightweight, the cat doesn’t have this problem, and humans know how to avoid the caved in bit. So I am so excited to have come across the Upholstery Supply Man who is sending me replacements.All I have to do is fit them……

My last swim at the lido was two weeks ago: the day golden and still with maturing shadows; the air warm but with a chill; the water sparkling and fresh. Wistful, now that there won’t be any swims until spring. But to look on the bright side of things there are the dahlias: old English teatime flouncy petals that make me think of Erdem’s digital floral printed dresses, one of which to waft about in, top of my current wish list.