French B&Bs

Two of our France inspectors dropped by for lunch a couple of weeks ago. They are English, living in France and addicted to the work. Part of me would love to be out there with them. It was 'news from the front line' and one of their most interesting, and depressing, revelations was that the old French B&B is slowly dying.

Our French Bed and Breakfast was our first book, filled with farming families opening their rooms to make ends meet. The book opened doors all over France, to English travellers who were unused to the idea that the French would welcome them. Thousands of relationships and friendships have been forged over the years. It is sad to hear that this wonderfully tatterdemalion community is gradually wearing away, replaced by families - equally interesting in their own way - with more money and pandering to travellers with higher expectations. Houses are converted to be little businesses. Rooms are ripped apart and bathrooms and wet-rooms installed. That old farmer's wife whose sense of colour was execrable but whose warmth and humanity were touching, who opened her doors to boost a meagre income, may be about to retire.

So if there are any of you out there who share my sense of woe, do go and spend your time and money with the people who most need it. The same applies, of course, to the UK, though perhaps less dramatically. Let us know if there are B&B providers whom we should support.

The Big Earth Book launch

Last Wednesday we officially 'launched' our Big Earth Book, at Stanfords book shop in Bristol.

Why the launch? Why the excitement? Well, this has been a giant project for us. We were told by one publisher that we couldn't possibly get it out on time, so the launch was something of a cathartic exercise. But, more to the point, we think that this is an important book. It is, as far as I know, the only serious environmental book that brings together such a vast array of subjects and then links them. You can learn about Energy, Trees, Biofuels, Worgl (sic), Bhutan and gross national happiness, Poverty, Free Trade, War, the US Empire, Bees, Mammals, Microbes and Honest Scientists - and much much more.

No chapter is more than five minutes' read, each one is stuffed either with unusual ideas or with old ideas put into a fresh perspective. It is very far from dull, and leaves you with that 'Ah - I am beginning to get it' feeling. There are lavish photos, easy graphs, great ideas and a lot of solutions. It is designed not to depress you but to make you angry - and then, perhaps, active.

Yeo Valley Organic, a local family-owned company and fellow Queen's Award winner, has been massively supportive. Look out for their half-price offer on organic yogurt pots and milk cartons, an offer so generous that some of you will take up yogurt-eating just to get hold of the book. We will be biting our cheeks and praying that some of you nevertheless go to the bookshops to buy it.

Tales from a proud father

Ever heard of Slam Poetry? I hadn't, until my son Rowan took it up and started entering Slam Poetry competitions. It is performance poetry - where the poet stands up in front of a crowd and, in competition with other poets, delivers his stuff as he thinks fit. He may be wry, ironic, triumphant, sly, witty, funny, anarchic - whatever mood is right. He is judged for his delivery, content, style, and audience reaction. It makes for exhilarating entertainment and I am hooked.

Rowan has been performing in odd places for a while, and won a national championship last year. There are several of them, however, and we could never quite get a hook on how he was doing. But this year he entered for the new Radio 4 Slam Poetry competition and got through to the semi-finals in London a month or so ago. The family piled in to see it all and were caught up in the atmosphere. Young poets, old poets, housewives, mothers, rebels, students - they all gave their best in front of an audience that wanted them all to win. Rowan slipped through to the finals with a performance of his satire on Little Englanders and another one about Politicians.

Last Saturday the Finals were held in Bristol, three finalists from the North and three from the South. Sara Davies of the BBC held it all together with consummate skill and a delightfully easy way with the audience. We worked ourselves up into open-hearted enthusiasm for them all, willing them to do their best. The scoring seemed slightly chaotic but worked fairly enough. Three poets were eliminated, unfairly - it felt to us. One told a symbolic story of the Central Line. Another amused us with statistics about ourselves, and another spoke in Pam Ayres tones of a dreadful holiday. The three who emerged into the light for the last fling were Rowan, with musings on bewilderment after a friend's death, and two Northerners, both accomplished and slightly older. The man scored 28, the woman 28.4 and Rowan 28.5.

Hear it on radio 4 at 11.00pm this Thursday 13th. You, too, may be hooked.

Bristol's Organic Food Fair

We had a stall there last weekend and enjoyed it hugely. So much so that I have wondered why.

Everyone who came by seemed to be in a good mood. They were open and friendly in a way not common in the UK, curious about what each stall offered, willing to learn. Many who came to our stand knew our books well and had tales to tell - most of them delightful. The one that touched me most was of the man who tried to put down a deposit by credit card with a little French chateau, and was politely refused: "We always trust Sawday readers."

The main excitement for us was that this was the first day we could sell our new The Big Earth Book. The piles of them looked impressive - and they generated a lot of interest and a lot of helium-filled balloons advertising the book. The book is beautiful, perhaps disarmingly so for it packs a terrific punch. It is the biggest project we have ever done and has the backing of Yeo Valley Organic Yoghurts, generous and supportive to a remarkable degree. This week they are beginnning a massive promotion of the book on their yoghurt and milk pots.

Back to the Fair. Perhaps the organic world really does have its own culture, for the Fair passed in a glow of 'decency'. Every stall-holder had a tale to tell; the food is the product, for the most part, of commitment - and even passion. I bought a tweed waist-coat from a farmer on the Isle of Mull whom I have known for a while as a dedicated and inspiring farmer of rare-breed cattle but who has now rescued the Mull weaving industry too. Hearing that the last looms were off to the scrap heap he begged the old weaver to sell them to him and to show him how to weave. He now employs 6 weavers and is producing the finest tweed from the wool of Hebridean sheep, wool that otherwise would have almost no value. You could wander from stall to stall hearing similar stories: the Cornish farmers who have created a Cornish wool business, the ice-cream makers working on a shoe-string - and so on. All the food was of the highest quality.

No wonder the crowds were in a good mood, and I hardly saw any litter. British culture is not, after all, impermeable.

One of those traveller’s moments

High up on the Mendips is an ugly building above Charterhouse on Mendip, rather like a grim family house. I drove past it on Sunday and was intrigued to see a sign outside saying ‘St Hugh’s Chapel. Welcome’. It was an irresistible invitation. Inside, there was an oak-panelled chapel of pure beauty, the Arts and Crafts creation of an architect called Caroe for a well-heeled London vicar who had fallen for the Mendips. The rood screen carried the rood – so unexpected if you have seen very few such screens and even fewer with the rood intact. Beyond it stands the reredos, exquisitely and intricately carved in the same wood. One can imagine the wind-swept congregations gathering to be inspired by such a place.

These spontaneous ‘discoveries’ are a joy – like entering the nearly-destroyed church of St James in Bristol, to find a Norman church of unaffected and ravishing beauty. It is by the bus station, a monument to modern banality.