5 Fake Meats For The Next Decade
If you’re a vegetarian, or if you eat “proper” meats, you might laugh at tales of tumours and lips found in low quality meats. But what exactly goes in to fake meats? Those waxy strips of plasticine, spongy blobs and weird flexible patties. Perhaps they pile parsnip anuses into these things?
Three Years Later: An Allotment
Three years ago I joined a list. The infamous Allotment List. If, like many urban Tiny Gardeners, you too have entertained ideas of growing your own vegetables on one of these hallowed sites, chances are your dreams crashed back down to earth with a wet thud.
Apparently, for every allotment plot in the UK, there are 30 people (or 300 eager green fingers) waiting to grab it. The waiting list for some Central London plots can be up to 10 years. In Camden, it’s 40 years. FORTY YEARS! You could grow another limb in that time.
Trash talk
AMSTERDAM - Long before the ‘plastic soup’, the huge floating rubbish dump in the Pacific, hit the headlines, I had an odd fascination with litter. As a kid, while my friends were doing sponsored walks to raise money for charity, I was doing sponsored litter picks. On a three-kilometre stretch of road near my house, I could fill 10 bin bags with refuse that passing motorists had thrown out of their windows.
Say nuts to soap?
LONDON - Have you heard of soap nuts? The natural alternative to detergents? We decided to put them to the test.
Honestly, the last thing that comes to mind when you see the little brown pellets is soap. They grow on the branches of the tropical sapindus shrub. But, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they’ve been squeezed direct from the buttocks of jungle beasts.
Nazi courgette
LONDEN - Als er een duif in je tuin landt, raakt ie dan bekneld? Of zou een rietje dienst kunnen doen als tuinslang voor je balkongewassen? Als je je eigen groenten wil kweken, maar niet veel ruimte hebt, lees dan door. Ik stel voor om een soort hulpgroepje op te richten, gewoon, om de zaken openbaar te maken. We noemen het De Kleine Tuin Club. Ik begin wel: “Mijn naam is Paul en ik heb een kleine tuin. Ik zei TUIN”.
Paint like poo
AMSTERDAM - The earth’s natural resources are running out but more and more people are cutting the crap and changing their lifestyles to do their bit for the planet. In order to ‘walk the talk’ I’m trying to do my part, one step at a time. This week: paint like poo!
Sir Dave, saviour of the universe
“Sir Dave, Gentle Voice
Calmly Explaining the Fact
That we’re all doomed”
There, that’s my David Attenborough haiku. I’m sorry to put you through it.
You see, I saw the great man speak last night at the Brighton Festival. Frankly, I would happily listen to him read the instructions to a flat-pack wardrobe.
Photo by: Slimmer Jimmer
‘Geleende’ fiesten in Parijs
Laatst was ik in Parijs. Terwijl ik keek naar verticale tuinen, langzaam genietend van biertjes van tien euro, moest ik mijn best doen om de “Velib” huurfietsen te ontwijken. Ken je ze? Ze zijn fantastisch.
Je koopt een soort strippenkaart voor je fiets. Daarna maak je een keuze uit het assortiment van 20 duizend stuks, die verspreid staan in de duizend stallingen van de stad. Als je klaar bent lever je ze gewoon weer in.
