In their own words

Hear what joining NWR has meant for some of Leighton Buzzard NWR’s newest members.

Leighton Buzzard NWR are very fortunate to have gained four new members during 2021, three of whom are new to the area. As you may imagine, relocating during these difficult Covid times was something of a challenge but, happily, NWR was there to help. Here are some of their reflections on the experience. Heather de Lacey, Leighton Buzzard NWR

Three months in, and completely sold

We moved house during Covid time When the rule of six applied Hard to build new friendships When you can’t often meet inside We joined the local croquet club— Well that is out of doors When the Register was mentioned, I had a quick explore Three months in, and completely sold So many things to do Discuss on Zoom, and learn new stuff And learn the area too

In summary—NWR Full of activities and games The biggest challenge left to me Is remembering all those names! Gwyn Grout

Resources for NWR volunteers

The National Office team have been busy updating the guides and handbooks for NWR volunteers. Full of tried and tested tips, you can find the Local Organiser’s Handbook, New Group Handbook and NWR Promotion Guide on the “Resources for NWR Volunteers” page at https://nwr. org.uk/about/resources-for-nwrvolunteers/ You’ll also find helpful guides about: ■ Programme planning; ■ Ensuring there are enough hosts for meetings; ■ Keeping meetings to their allotted time; as well as a handy FAQ, and guidance for web editors.

Image by Kranich17 from Pixabay

I was met with friendliness and warmth

After living in New Zealand for nearly 20 years, in 2020 I made the difficult decision to leave a full life of loving friends, two engrossing volunteer jobs, great weather and wonderful food and wine, to return to live near my family in the UK. Like so many others, my life had been turned upside down by the pandemic and my lifestyle, which had involved lots of trips backwards and forwards, had to be reassessed. I settled in Leighton Buzzard, an area which, in spite of it being close to my family, I barely knew, and within weeks we moved into full lockdown. Luckily I was in a bubble with my son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren aged two and six, but once I’d sorted out my new apartment I realised that I had to do something to bring some balance to my life—difficult when I couldn’t even meet my neighbours.

I remembered NHR, an organisation which had provided me with a readymade support group when I left work to have my sons in the late 70s, and I looked it up. The organisation had changed its name, housewives no more, but there was a large group in Leighton Buzzard and they seemed to have cheerfully moved into the 21st century, embracing email communication and Zoom meetings. I was met with friendliness and warmth and, as soon as lockdown allowed, a small social meeting for coffee—the first time I’d met anyone new since my move six months earlier. Since then I’ve joined in the regular discussion groups as well as sampling art appreciation and a reading group. I’ve been on outings, to coffee mornings, learned to play Canasta and struggled with the metamorphosis of Scrabble. I’ve had recommendations for hairdressers, lawyers and places for the best coffee and met fellow bridge players. In other words, Leighton Buzzard NWR has helped me settle into a new environment by providing help, support, interesting evenings and afternoons, new acquaintances who are becoming friends and lots of laughs.

It’s good to see that Maureen Nicol’s original aim of “a meeting point for lively minded women” has survived over the years by adapting to the many changes we’ve all had to deal with. Karen Cowley

The opportunity to meet like-minded women

I moved to Leighton Buzzard just before the Christmas 2020 lockdown kicked in. Initially I got to know parts of the area by taking long solitary walks, which also helped me to keep relatively fit. I had hoped to join some local groups but of course those plans had to be put on hold.

Then my daughter-in-law passed on details of the NWR, which she had found online and thought might interest me. I looked into the Leighton Buzzard branch and was immediately struck by how many of their activities appealed to me. I am a word person, so the idea of joining book clubs, playing Scrabble etc had me hooked. There was even Canasta, a card game I started playing a couple of years

ago, which had been put on the back burner during the various lockdowns and my move. One of the main benefits to me was the opportunity to meet like-minded women face to face in a Covid-aware way, knowing that they are vaccinated and have tested prior to events. For those not happy to take these steps, or who don’t yet feel comfortable in a face to face setting, there are Zoom options.

So far, I’ve gone out for a delicious Turkish lunch, played Canasta and attended a coffee morning. Next on the agenda is a Christmas lunch! Everyone I’ve met has been friendly and welcoming and I am confident that joining this group will help me settle into, and get the most out of, living in Leighton Buzzard. I’m really looking forward to the year ahead! Sharon Newey

Valerie joined the Luton and South Beds Villages NWR group in the early 1990s. She was an enthusiastic member of the group, contributing to meetings; serving the group for several years as Local Organiser and then taking on the role of Social Organiser, arranging regular group outings as well as meals at restaurants and dinners in members’ homes, where everyone contributed to the food. She also encouraged new members to join NWR.

In addition, Valerie supported NWR by attending local, regional and national events, including many area and national conferences. She was on the organising committees for the 2011 National Conference in Hatfield and the Precious Gems Diamond Anniversary Conference in Birmingham, which unfortunately had to be postponed due to the pandemic.

Valerie was a very keen quizzer; she was always part of the Luton and South Beds team for the annual area quizzes— which incidentally the group won six times—and was instrumental in setting the questions for the three quizzes which were hosted by the Luton and South Beds Villages group.

In 2018, NWR was asked to put a team forward for the TV quiz show Eggheads, which meant that Valerie had the opportunity to join with members from groups across the UK to form the Lively Minded Women team. They certainly gave the Eggheads a run for their money, and it subsequently sparked many enquiries about NWR.

As part of the Diamond celebrations, Valerie was a co-ordinator for the NWR Scrapbook, organising materials and collecting the pages for groups in the home counties.

Valerie will be sadly missed at all levels of NWR.

Beth Dallinger and Sue White Luton and South Beds Villages NWR

The final furlong

In 2020 Dorking NWR decided to walk the entire Surrey stretch of the Greensand Way, a long-distance footpath which passes through the town, and is 60 miles long. This seemed a good way of celebrating NWR’s Diamond Jubilee.

The walk was divided into 10 sections which were to be done over 10 months. The first stage from Haslemere was started valiantly in February 2020 with several members of other groups joining in on a beautiful crisp winter’s day. The March expedition was literally a wash out with such torrential rain that only a few soggy yet hardy ladies completed it. Then came the pandemic which put a stop to everything. A linear walk inevitably means sharing lifts to get from the finish back to the cars at the start, so it was with some imaginative transport that between lockdowns we were still able to complete two local sections through Dorking, but no more.

Eventually in the summer of 2021, as the restrictions were relaxed and people began to feel more confident about sharing lifts, the challenge was restarted. It was decided to keep the group small for Covid safety reasons, sadly without the wider invitation to other groups as was envisaged at the start, except for two determined ladies from Godalming who joined us for most of the sections. Members walked in all weathers but mostly dry, they enjoyed beautiful scenery and views, great company and especially the lunch in a pub at the end. The final leg of the challenge to the border with Kent was completed in November 2021, with some regret, so a new challenge will now have to be found.

Art alert!

Hats off to Marion Smith of Crosby NWR, who sent in this wonderful watercolour painting in response to our appeal for artwork to brighten up our Buntingford office walls. Marion told us that it is a depiction of “Hat night,” a fun and informative January meeting where members looked at a wide variety of hats and heard the stories behind them.

We would love you to add to our gallery! If there are more budding artists out there, do please send us your NWR related paintings or drawings, any medium, anything up to A4 size.

Thank you from the office!

Sue Jamieson Dorking NWR

Food, glorious food!

As might be expected of lively minded women, you have a wide range of opinions on this year’s theme ‘Our Evolving Relationship with Food’! Here are some members’ personal angles on the subject.

Perspectives on our British food: a personal view

Anne Garrick of Leicester South NWR reflects upon the impacts of changing farming methods.

A long time ago, I took a BEd (Hons) degree in Nutrition, Human Physiology, Food Science and Microbiology, and entered the teaching profession as a teacher of Home Economics. In our school, every pupil had spent 30 hours in a teaching kitchen by the end of Year 8, so had a basic knowledge of nutrition, food hygiene and cookery. How sad it makes me now to hear of mothers who skip their own meals to feed their children, knowing what a difference it would make if they knew how to use inexpensive, British produced staples. But these are unfashionable, and are not promoted by the supermarkets because they have no added value and low profit margins. Instead, we have all sorts of superfoods, flown in from across the globe, promoted by influencers, and little informed nutritional debate.

At the same time, concerns about the role of food production in climate change have led to demands for changes in farming, and an unprecedented demand for foods that are not part of the traditional British diet. The supermarkets now have aisles full of foods that would only have been found in the vegan section of health food shops a decade ago; most of these are grown in other countries, often other continents, and some contain

Sheep graze on ancient ridge and furrow pasture

Photo by Anne Garrick

constituents grown on cleared rain-forests. The shift towards a more plant-based diet has had a big impact on the global market, where food is a commodity.

But at what cost? As an example, 80% of the world’s almonds are produced in California; it is a multi-billion-dollar industry creating an industrial monoculture. According to the University of California San Francisco’s Sustainability Office1 it takes approximately 15 gallons of water to produce 16 almonds. Land has been converted from natural land or farms growing low water crops to supply the booming market for almonds, and the region has a serious drought problem. There is also a problem with pesticide residues, some of which are toxic to honey bees.

...the farmer only receives a fraction of the price on the supermarket shelf

Then there is the matter of economic inequality. For example, the cashew nut trade more than doubled between 2000 and 2018, to more than 2.1bn kilos, two thirds of which are grown by African producers, led by Côte d’Ivoire. However, 85% are exported to be deshelled, mainly in India and Vietnam, then processed—roasted, salted and packaged—mostly in Europe or North America. By this time the price is 8.5 times more than that paid to the estimated 3m small-hold farmers in Africa.2 In the UK too, the farmer only receives a fraction of the price on the supermarket shelf.

The economic disadvantage of the primary producer will always be a problem when the food industry involves huge sums of money, has complex supply chains and fierce competition at the retail end. The seeds, nuts, soya and other pulses needed to supply plant protein are mainly imported; China, India, the US, Brazil and Argentina are some of the biggest suppliers. Is it wise for us in the UK to be competing in what is a global commodities market against the world’s biggest consumers, when we live in a country that is climatically and geologically suited to rearing animals? Why has British animal husbandry become such a target when there are so many other factors contributing to climate change, not least, the great distances that many foodstuffs travel, and truly appalling levels of waste?

Meeting the demand for cheap food is one of the factors in the environmental damage that farming can cause. To produce meat and milk cheaply in industrial quantities requires feeding animals with arable crops which use oil-dependent heavy machinery, inorganic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, which are implicated in damaging soil structure, polluting water courses and destroying biodiversity.

The animals themselves are bred to be specialists. At an agricultural show a few years ago I was amazed at the size of the prize dairy cattle, far bigger than the traditional Ayrshires I knew, and learned to milk by hand, as a child. Even the beef cattle were much bigger. Traditional, often dual purpose, breeds of cattle used to be reared more slowly, fed on pastures that included a much richer variety of ground plants, and shrubs or trees for browsing. But traditional, mainly small, farms cannot compete in the race to the bottom on price. Unfortunately, not enough differentiation in the debate is made between industrialised farming of the worst kind, such as the stockyards used in the USA, and animals that are predominantly grass fed. Close to where we live in Leicestershire, sheep and beef cattle are grazed at low-intensity stock levels in fields, some bearing the ridge and furrow patterns that have existed for hundreds of years. How much carbon is captured in those pastures, bounded as they are with hedgerows, and enhanced with small copses?

Even high tech, large scale agriculture has depended on subsidies to be profitable. James Dyson, despite being one of the largest landowners in England, was unable to make a profit even in a recent year of bumper harvests.

The much talked about alternative is to take land out of food production altogether and rewild it, particularly land that is marginally profitable. Indeed, it is one of the grant-aided options available under the government’s new Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMS) that will replace EU subsidies. It could be attractive to investment companies that buy up farmland. But could it undermine farmers who are already working to farm in environmentally friendly ways and improve soil and water quality? An excellent example of this is the Allerton Project3 here in Leicestershire, which has been working for the past 25 years to research and develop ways to improve soil and water quality whilst maintaining profitability for farmers. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has championed “resilience through diversity” by, for example, trialling agroforestry, where arable crops are interplanted with trees. This has many benefits— improving the soil quality, reducing erosion, improving biodiversity, producing two crops from the same land and

Cattle near Gumley in Leicestershire

Photo by Anne Garrick

You asked for my thoughts on food. No, I am definitely not doing vegan or even vegetarian January. I support local farmers and British seasonal produce—and I like meat and fish. I have been using markets rather than supermarkets whenever possible for the last 50+ years since I left home.

Clare Bense Peterborough NWR

diversifying income. Instead of rewilding, marginal grazing land could be enriched with native trees and shrubs, but still remain productive, supplying a top-end market for slowreared, high quality meat from traditional breeds.

The future of farming, and the people who know how to farm, is something that should concern us all. Covid-19 has demonstrated our dependence on the transportation of food and how much of it we import—48% and rising.4 In 2021 drought in numerous countries caused widespread crop failure, which is one of the factors in the recent increase in food prices. We live in an increasingly unstable world with the risk that action by hostile states could affect food supplies in the future; in the debate about land use, the UK’s self-sufficiency in food, and the farmers who produce it, should be higher on the agenda.

As consumers, we can influence UK food production through our buying choices. We can lobby against marketing practices that disadvantage farmers and encourage food waste. Each year, the supermarkets compete to sell the cheapest Christmas dinner; how much is bought because it costs so little, only to be thrown out when it reaches its sell-by date? How many people know the satisfaction of cutting the bottom off a slightly tired cabbage or stem of broccoli, putting it in an inch or two of cold water outside overnight, somewhere sheltered, and finding it fresh and crisp in the morning?5 And we can read the labels, to find out where food has come from and what is in it, both the ingredients and the nutritional value, particularly with processed foods, or vegan substitutes.

What else could we do, to make a difference? Perhaps we should have an exchange of favourite “using up left-overs” recipes; it’s surprising what can go into a sausage casserole! Get creative, and remember those good, cheap old-fashioned British staples: potatoes, good bread, oats, root and green vegetables, peas and beans, and use them well; buy good quality animal products of known, British origin, and most of all, enjoy it. © Anne Garrick

1 University of California San Francisco’s Office of

Sustainability UCSF Sustainability 2 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Cashing in on cashews: Africa must add value to its nuts |

UNCTAD 3 The Allerton Project | Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (allertontrust.org.uk) 4 Global Food Security UK threat - Global Food Security 5 This can be done with any green vegetable that has a stem. Temperature should be between 5C and 15C; if it is too cold, the vegetable will become flaccid, so avoid frost damage.

Win-win veggies

Ute O’Meara of Bury St Edmunds NWR shares her thoughts on our ever-growing consumption of animal products.

When you see those neatly plastic-wrapped meat portions on gleaming supermarket shelves, it’s easy to forget that the meat inside was once part of a living animal—a bird, a cow, a pig, a fish... Nowadays, meat production has become sanitized: we do not see, and maybe don’t want to know, how that meat arrived on those shelves, or in the butcher’s shop. Humans the world over eat a lot more meat and dairy products nowadays and, here in Britain, since the Second World War food prices have gone down relative to our income. Supermarkets exert ever more pressure on meat producers and the supply chain to keep prices down, resulting in intensive farming methods, to the detriment of animal welfare and the environment.

The facts are well known, and in the months leading up to COP26 the media have reported a great deal more on the causes of the global climate crisis, biodiversity loss and the impact of agriculture on global greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock farming accounts for around 14% of the world’s total CO2 emissions, roughly the same as the transportation sector. A staggering 75% of agricultural land is used for rearing animals. 80% of deforested land in the Amazon rainforest is used for cattle grazing, and huge soya and maize plantations in many

Maize plantation

parts of the world, often adjacent to grazing land, displace original habitats in order to provide animal feed. Projections are that by 2050 livestock numbers will significantly increase due to a growing world population and an even fastergrowing demand on meat and dairy products. Resulting in ever-increasing intensification of farming methods, evergrowing river and coastal waters pollution with nitrogen and phosphates, ever-growing biodiversity loss, ever-growing CO2 and methane emissions.

My short contribution is not meant to scare everyone with figures—we can all check those out ourselves—but to encourage you to join the many people who have already begun to change their shopping and eating habits from full-time carnivore to eating a bit less meat and fish, and replacing dairy products with plant-based ones—if only to benefit their health by avoiding high-cholesterol foods. Chances are that you do this already, but maybe you think you’d like to go a step further by exploring the growing range of vegan foods and recipes that are available now. And I would say: don’t be shy to chat with your friends about this hugely important topic. They are probably also worried about the frightening news of our threatened planet.

We should also reinspect some of the myths and objections that are often raised when discussing the very emotive subject of food, for instance animal welfare.

Is the UK really a nation of animal lovers? Not as long as factory farming of animals is allowed. There are cows who never see the light of day, who cannot graze, who have their babies taken away from them so that they produce a neverending stream of milk. Sentient, social animals suffering for years! There are pigs, kept behind iron bars in tiny cages, who try to suckle their piglets through those bars, and who will eventually suffer a horrible death suffocating in carbon dioxide. Live animals are transported to other countries for slaughter, long, stressful journeys which some don’t survive. There is mutilation and castration. Not to mention what happens on salmon farms and to lobsters boiled alive... No, the UK is not a nation of animal lovers as long as we turn a blind eye to all this.

But, even if we are not activists, we can do so much now to help animals and to support new sustainable and ethical ways of farming, be it of livestock or crops—by making choices as consumers. We can buy organic, Soil Association certified products, we can eat less meat and fish, and maybe eventually none, and we can cut down our dairy consumption, again, in time, perhaps to zero.

A myth that was around when we were young: “We need to eat animals for their protein,” is of course not true. Humans, as omnivores, can live very well on plant proteins, the only proviso being that we then need to supplement our diets with Vitamin B12, since animal-derived foods provide the only reliable natural source of this. And a plant-based diet will provide us with a huge range of micronutrients and fibre, essential for our gut health and well-functioning immune system.

Another belief, that we need to consume dairy products to provide us with calcium, is also inaccurate. Many plants such as broccoli are very high in calcium, and don’t have the harmful fats that you find in dairy products.

So, whether we want to make a start with one or two vegetarian days a week, or change our diet to a vegan one, it has become much easier now. Every supermarket is selling a fast-increasing range of ready-meals, vegan burgers, sausages or mince, and even vegan cheeses have become very good. Vegan desserts are also available. Try some—you will find foods that you like and, even if you have to make a few compromises, is it not worth it when you know that you are supporting your own good health, whilst helping to give a future to coming generations? It’s a win-win veggie situation! Sources: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-agriculture/ issues/meat/ https://wayback.archive-it.org/9650/20200406114352/http:// p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/ publications/agriculture/2013/Ecological-Livestock.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935116/ A useful source of information on how to make your choices in the complex world of food and other industries is ethicalconsumer.org

Our changing relationship with food

War, poverty, affluence, travel, cultural expectations—all these and more have influenced our attitudes to food over the last century, as Margaret K Green of Odiham NWR observes.

The maid who waits at table should be neatly dressed in a plain black frock, with a white apron, collar, cuffs and a simple cap. So run the instructions in Florence Jack’s Cookery for Every Household, published in 1919. Then, as now, the buying, preparing and serving of a decent meal occupied a nation’s time. In one hundred years we may have come from ‘making a nourishing soup from scraps and scrag ends’ to YouTube demos of Wagyu steaks, but the principle holds. We all like decent food at a suitable cost to give nourishment and pleasure—in other words, a good supper.

Our changing relationship with food mirrors society in so many ways. When in 1919, just after the First World War, serious hunger—food poverty—was still endemic in the UK, in Europe, in Russia and in Turkey, many starved. Although hundreds of tonnes of tinned meat had been sent to the trenches, after the war ended many civilians and returning soldiers faced years of malnourishment. However, as farmlands became productive again and factories returned, the grim dayto-day living of the twenties and thirties bloomed occasionally into cocktails and laughter. People were hungry, literally, for brightness, jazz and excess. The nightlife in Berlin became extravagantly decadent, and a British Pathé newsreel shows crowded restaurants with menus offering wurst, schnitzel and beers. To share food and entertain friends became a symbol of returning confidence and growing prosperity.

In our own childhoods, we can probably all remember a birthday, a religious celebration, even a picnic, where the food reflected more than the event. A rich iced fruit cake, a bowl of chicken soup, a cucumber sandwich—the layers of cultural understanding that lift the ordinary into the symbolic—begun by the preparation, the giving, the sharing, and finally the appreciation. So many religions have the sharing of a meal at the heart of their celebration. As children we perhaps learned to follow a recipe, create a dish, share it and be praised—or not—and so to contribute to family wellbeing. To grow from taker to giver, from child to adult.

But, and it is a massive but, many of us do not have that easy, celebratory relationship with food. There have always been those who make cultural food choices, eating or not eating certain things. But many are caught by aspirational bodyperfection, taught by social media and airbrushed supermodels. It is a hard and weary road to survive, and society has much which needs forgiveness for the relentless pressure imposed on its impressionable members. We are what we eat, says the cliché. Or not. Food began to change families. Perhaps we have memories of the first Vesta Beef curry, in a box (1960s)? The first Fray Bentos steak pie, in a tin (1961)? The first pre-packed sandwich (Marks and Spencer, 1980, cost 43p)? The term “convenience food”? We were becoming time-poor, wanting frozen peas, Smash dried potato, little pots of Ski yogurt: “the full of fitness food”. The housewife had to keep her man happy with modern suppers, served on a TV tray, and she had to look alluring too. Because a more affluent society was developing, many of whom remember being abroad when young during the war, foreign travel was taking off as a social expectation. Spain, Italy, France—a week in the sun, with the obligatory Ambre Solaire. We began to experience foreign food: spaghetti not from a Heinz tin, meatballs ditto, croissants, pâtés, pizzas, strange vegetables, puddings other than steamed sponge or tinned fruit. Meals became a yardstick of social achievement: if you knew that spaghetti with sauce could be eaten just with a fork, you’d been to Italy. The examples may be trivial but the Image by Pexels from Pixabayunderlying social uplift was seismic.

We all have a strange relationship with food. We use it to control, to coerce, to reward, to show love and to withhold treats until deserved. We share socially, religiously or, unkindly, not. Bonobos use sharing food to cement the tribe together, and withhold it from outsiders. Humans may have learned civilised behaviour from the need to feed, with and without others, to succeed in breeding and to ensure the failure of others. But as Florence Jack’s cookery book showed, good soup is good soup, whether in 1920 or 2022. Sainsbury’s now advertises that we should ‘make soup to save the planet, one bowl at a time’. Florence knew a thing or two in her time, too. References: Jacks, F.B., 1919 Cookery for Every Household, TC and E C Jack, Edinburgh. Imperial War Museum, Rationing and Food Shortages accessed 22/1/22. British Pathé News, Fotostrasse, 1930, Berlin, Tofani, P. accessed 22/1/22. NPR, 2020 What’s Mine is Yours, Sort of, Bonobos and the Tricky Roots of Sharing, accessed 22/1/22.