the original and the best

our puddings on the left are really cool… not just because they are made in the right way but because we designed them way back when in the middle of the desert in 52 degrees and explained to lots of muslims and hindus all about the history of the christmas pudding and about our big festival for the year…. in exchange we learnt lots about eid the big muslim festival for the year and diwali the big hindu festival for the year. we work together to make our products because we all benefit from them equally.

our christmas puddings are hand moulded from wool which takes about 20 minutes and although it looks quite easy its really hard work as quite a lot of pressure has to be applied. our chief ball moulder i call two balls because his party trick is making two balls at once, he has four children that all go to school. we make our christmas puddings like our flowers… by hand we do not use any electricity and we do not create any waste because we believe it is the right way to make things. we also don’t like to be greedy so everyone gets paid a fair price for what they do so that we can make sure that stuff made in the right way doesn’t have to cost lots more.
so why am i writing about it?
sometimes i get sad because we go to the trouble of making puddings in the right way as i have explained and then we find that our designs have been copied and produced in not quite the right way… and are selling online with postage for the same as ours…. heals… we are looking at you… please ask your suppliers how they produce their goods.

watch this space

preparations are well underway for our appearance on anthony gormley’s 4th plinth in trafalgar square … we know exactly what we are doing… so much so we will explain it in technicolour detail over the next few days here…. hopefully! *nerves*

well the day before yesterday we visited lots of our lovely friends and neighbours and asked them to turn out their cupboards and donate any old material to our fourth plinth appearance and as usual they came up trumps… we even managed to borrow a sewing machine after ours had gone on the blink! we set about a bit of pinking and created some strips of fabric that by sometime later today will become a grass like attraction that we can take onto the plinth… *fingers crossed*

after some frantic texting throughout the day after the lovely @oneoffstuff had said that we should get a microphone (we have still got to work out what we might say!) this weeks hero @martyngale rocked up in his old veg oil powered jeep to deliver a battery powered microphone.. he didn’t stay for tea because he was off to launch some rockets but he did promise he’d tell us all about it on tuesday!

still frantically rushing round trying to finish off… really don’t have a clue what to wear… will be back later!

well 12 meters of recycled grass later… i didn’t have time to finish sewing it all so it was infact entirely pinned together and i was petrified that it would all get tangled up and not unroll but it was too late to do anything else!!
i dyed the pink mermaid dress that the onion presented me with purple… in all the hurry i managed to catch it on the door handle so my lovely mum patched it for me at somewhere between 2 and 3 am on sunday morning!!

after about a whole hours sleep i left the house to pick up @oneoffstuff who came for yoga breathing and moral support which i am eternally grateful for! by the time we got to london i felt really quite sick… absolutely petrified and was ready not to go up but i knoew all my most favouritist people had ventured into london to see it live or through the wonders of the net were watching live from all over the world so in i went!

well the guys in the portacabin were absolutely lovely… really helpful getting a whole field of grass across trafalgar square wasn’t easy but everyone mucked in! I had to arrive an hour and a half before my time slot because there is masses to do when you get there… but the crew are old pros now!… as they have already seen 90% of the 2400 plinthees! I had to show photo id to prove who i was … check passed that one…. i then had to sign my life away well there were lots of forms… media release forms, check forms and health and safety forms and a questionaire. I then had 5 minutes to get changed before having to have my photo taken and be interviewed for the Wellcome
Trust who are documenting the project in a series of oral history interviews… fantastic great supporter of their work so chatted as usual for far too long which meant we had to do a quick dash across the square and onto the cherry picker!… everything was a bit out of sync because the square had been closed off for the diwali celebrations that we had organised especially… with the help of the mayor of london and a few others!
After a final security check for anything sharp… it was lucky the security guard said that i was allowed pins… i was slightly worried!! we set off across trafalgar square and into the cherry picker…
well one of the things i was really worried about was the height… heights are not my favourite things but on the way up i thought i’d better grab a photo for my collection and by the time i had done that i was up there bingo!

then i was on the plinth… finally….
i was still worried but had to get the grass out so that is what i did and luckily it didn’t get too tangled up… got the mic plugged in and then all i had to do was talk!… it made me far to nervous to think i was on the plinth in trafalgar square talking through a mic so after about 5 mins i thought i’d just pretend i was talking to my friends who i could see at the bottom… then i felt much happier and even started to enjoy it!!

my favourite bit was throwing lots of naked flowers off and watching people do silly things with them.. and starting to talk about where they had come from and how they were made… that made it all worthwhile!! i even managed to persuade a policeman with a flower to have his photograph taken for the collection!! have a watch here

my second favourite bit was walking through trafalgar square afterwards and looking up at the plinth to see that a couple of naked flowers had decided to stay up there!!

a huge thank you to everyone that helped and supported me with the plinth mission… i really hope you enjoyed it! and don’t forget you can now send someone you love a naked flower…. just choose the naked flower delivery option!

packaging experiment take #1

packaging does literally cost the earth… we are constantly trying to work out what packaging we should use but actually we just like naked flowers so that prompted us to question exactly how much packaging we need and what exactly do we need it for… so we teamed up with carla who also has a naughty mutt and decided to send her a flower with just an address label via royal mail to see what happens…

well the story continues in our local post office… a flower with no packaging caused much hilarity and debate… i wasn’t sure to begin with if i was going to be allowed to post it at all. I managed to persuade them to at least weigh it so that if I decided to send it anyway then at least it would have the right postage on! £1.08 a bargain normally when we send a single stem in packaging it costs £1.41 so by not packaging the flower not only have we not used the earth precious resources but we have also saved £0.33 on the postage and the time to pack and collect the materials we use to pack age with at the moment *brain starts chugging into action* this is good!

meanwhile in the post office we start discussing all the things we could possibly use to wrap the flower in (I have a list! this experiment is not over yet!) and end up deciding that even if its gets a little bit dirty its worth trying as an experiment and actually what a shame that postman charlie isn’t on today because he’d love to deliver one! (well charlie…. watch and see….)

bon voyage little flower… have fun!

well it started to get exciting…. postie richard was spotted in shropshire carrying our precious goods for delivery to naughty mutt

not only did it arrive but richard gave us loads of advice…. (i have a plan…. come back in a few days a see if it worked!)

“The lovely flower arrived safely this morning and I had a conversation with Richard the nice postie about it. He was really interested and said:
The flower doesn’t go through a machine at any point
Reinforce the hole you make on the card – and put it about 5mm further into the card (you can see on the pic it’s a bit frayed)
Use coir or a twisted natural type of string through the hole as the weakest part was the way the label is attached.
Don’t cut the label to a V shape as it weakens it – if you cut it then make a rounded shape” naughtymutt

in 24 hours without a scratch our little flower courtesy of royal mail reached shropshire and put a smile on our friend carla’s face and a cheeky grin on the naughty mutt!

This was good! now we want to do it again using reinforced holes and natural type string (thank you again richard!)… would you like to take part in packaging experiment take 1 and receive a free naked flower? all you have to do is promise to send us a picture of the condition in which it arrives… leave a comment here and email liz@henryandjayne.co.uk with your address

well new labels made and natural string located…. this morning i went to see bee in our local post office to send your flowers on their way…. everything crossed!!

and this one is going international… is it too much to soon? check back and find out!

well the rest of the naked flowers started their journey yesterday, bee weighed and stamped them as well as checking my labels!! she also remembered that we hadn’t put a customs declaration on the international ones… it was quite funny because we couldn’t decide if we actually needed a customs declaration if the package was packaged!… but we decided to put one on just for fun… she asked me if the flower had any value and i looked up and said it priceless… it’s handmade!

whilst i was causing havoc in the post office the first naked flower arrived at its destination… in wait for it *drum roll please* perfect condition! hooray and this is what sara had to say…

“Here it is and in perfect condition – lovely to find it on top of all the other post outside my front door and I prefer it like this than being packaged although I am not sure about the re-use of Xmas cards. I think I’d prefer a basic brown parcel label made from recycled materials or paper.”

really very pleased that no2 has landed safely and now we will work on improving the labels…. we will use what we have first as this is what we usually do and i really hate waste and i will ask the boys if we can come up with something. we try and use natural materials that have been made in the right way first of all and if possible ones that have been made by hand like our paper products handmade from upcycled cotton waste more often than not recycling uses more energy to to its job than starting from scratch… if the resources are available. we’ll let you know what we come up with!

latest news on no3 to land is it may have been stuck at the post office to collect because of underpaid postage?…. bee weighed each one….? lets see what happens!

well so far so good… most of the naked flowers have now reached their new homes in perfect condition… we’ve made a set on flickr with them all in save having a never ending blog post!…. almost time to think about how we can implement these fantastic results!…. we’re just waiting with our fingers very crossed about the naked flowers that we sent across the pond… as usual we’ll keep you posted!

its landed! and guess what…..

now we’re off to the drawing board…. we’ll be back soon!

hedge veg

Whilst on holiday we discovered a phenomenon that is pure, unadulterated Guernsey and – more than any other – sums up islanders’ approach to life. It’s nothing to do with politics, religion or philosophy. Rather, it’s all about vegetables and the way islanders love to buy and sell them from makeshift stalls at the side of the road. Welcome to the world of hedge veg.

Hit the islands’ country roads and you will soon spot it. The telltale signs are easy to detect – the car in front weaves around some hasty parking, a gaggle of locals are chatting on the verge next to some homespun ‘retail outlet’, fashioned from a table, crate or even driftwood. There will also be a hand written sign, promoting today’s offering. But what is most significant is that there will also be a small tin, box or even a milk churn – for shoppers to pay for their purchases. It all relies on honesty and it works. In an age of locks, security cameras and rising crime it’s reassuring to know that there is still somewhere where the people prefer to work on trust.

And there is certainly no shortage of stock. Anything from tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots and potatoes to roses, carnations, freesias and even felt flowers. Aside from the occasional crustacean, much of it originates from commercially sized greenhouses, which are still commonplace, whilst the remainder is pulled from kitchen gardens. Whatever its origins, Hedge Veg is the modern equivalent of bartering surplus home-grown produce with your neighbours. In Guernsey, that means the whole island. Long may it continue and spread!

after a bit of discussion on twitter we thought we’d see if we could find and share uk hedge veg hotspots! have a look at our map and see if there is one near you!! if you know of any comment and we’ll add them!

food for thought – a community cafe

We used to eat in the Bonnington lots!! and it was a real pleasure to go back and visit the other evening. It is a fantastic model of how a community can work together…. remembering evenings when you could just pay what you could afford or if you brought a bottle and shared a glass with the cook and helped the cook wash up you didn’t have to pay at all!…

“The Bonnington Café is a co-operatively run vegetarian and vegan restaurant in the Bonnington Square Community Centre in the heart of Vauxhall.One of South London’s best-kept secrets tucked amidst the beautiful community gardens of the square,the Café has been open since the early 80′s when it was started as a squat Café to provide a good cheap meal for the community.

Much has changed in the years since we opened,but not the sense of community.No single person runs the restaurant,rather it’s maintained by an active collective of member cooks who also contribute to the overall running of the venue and who are still committed to providing excellent vegetarian home-cooking at great prices in a laid back and friendly bohemian atmosphere.

The Café’s regulars have been coming back for years, they love dinner by candlelight, a burning fire on a winter night, and the sense that they are part of a community. Our cooks are from all over the world, so the menu will be different on any given night. From Japanese to Medieval inspired; and from new Italian and French to new American…each cook brings their own style and background to the Café’s veggie fare.

Please note that unless you receive a reply from the cook a booking is NOT confirmed. We would also like to point out that we do not include a service charge and rely solely on the generosity of our customers, but individual cooks may make a minimum order or a service charge on large bookings.

We are an unlicensed premises so remember to bring a bottle with you (We don’t charge corkage).

If you are interested in cooking at the Café, please come to one of our cafe users group meetings which are held on the 1st of every month at 6pm sharp”

follow the flowers…

you are invited to come and help us find our new home on sunday 1st march from 10am and have loads of fun on the way! this is the link for lots more details! 

sometimes you just have to believe!

i first met Pankaj when he was four years old, i was visiting a colony of homes whilst on holiday in India. Pankaj has quite a posh house compared to some, it has mud walls and a tin roof. I don’t think the colony was often visited by tourists, so many children came up to see this novelty! i said hello to everyone… Pankaj appeared from under the bed with his school book, signalled to me to sit down and proceeded to show me his work. he didn’t learn english at his school but he was really proud because he knew one, two and three in english. he made me sit until I had learnt my name and one two and three in hindi! I find it very difficult to decide which one of us has everything and which one of us has nothing in our relationship, but i do know that he is one clever boy – he saw an opportunity and grabbed it!
whats this got to do with flowers then?
well the sale of flowers, you can buy them in our fabulous boutique has supported pankaj through school, because he has worked so hard, last year we went to see his headmaster and agreed to transfer him to an english school. recently he told me in english he had achieved his first ever 1st class pass, so excited he dived under his mattress to find the certificate to show me… all i managed to do was burst into tears because he had told me in english, that totally confused him but luckily the international language of laughter got me out of that hole!