Smoked and Uncut - Lime Wood
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All the fun<br />
of the Fair<br />
Reinventing Wheels<br />
<strong>Smoked</strong> & <strong>Uncut</strong><br />
ISSUE 3
02<br />
12<br />
As well as plenty of information <strong>and</strong> ideas to help<br />
you make the most of the glorious New Forest –<br />
even more glorious as autumn approaches <strong>and</strong> the<br />
leaves start to turn colour – this, the third edition<br />
of <strong>Lime</strong>wire, profiles several inspiring people: Wasfi<br />
Kani, for instance, the founder of Pimlico Opera,<br />
a company that stages operas <strong>and</strong> musicals inside prisons <strong>and</strong> has given<br />
hundreds of inmates the confidence to do something positive with their<br />
lives. And Nell Gifford, whose travelling circus is now a fixture of the<br />
summer scene in the West Country. We learn, too, about a remarkable<br />
scheme to help women with breast cancer by teaching them fly fishing.<br />
As well as the inspirational, we have the aspirational: William Asprey,<br />
whose family has been involved in luxury goods for centuries, tells us<br />
about his love of fishing, shooting <strong>and</strong> fine wine. And Nick Edmiston<br />
reminisces about sailing’s golden age, when classic six-metre yachts<br />
from both sides of the Atlantic fought it out for the America’s Cup.<br />
Like the guns <strong>and</strong> watches you can buy from Asprey’s shop, William<br />
& Son in Mayfair, <strong>and</strong> the yachts available for sale or charter from<br />
Edmiston, in St James’s, the beautifully crafted, custom-built motorcycles<br />
that Battistinis sell blur the lines between function <strong>and</strong> art: Mark<br />
Battistini tells us about the extraordinary pink motorbike he made<br />
for Grayson Perry.<br />
And, talking of art, we look back at the life <strong>and</strong> work of one of America’s<br />
finest <strong>and</strong> most popular artists, Keith Haring, whose fame started with<br />
drawings on the New York subway <strong>and</strong> ended with exhibitions all over<br />
the world.<br />
Plenty to nourish the soul... <strong>and</strong> plenty more tangible nourishment too,<br />
whether it’s a pint of craft cider <strong>and</strong> a sausage s<strong>and</strong>wich on the Jurassic<br />
Coast, or a box of something lovely for lunch from London’s splendid<br />
Street Kitchen!<br />
Published by: The <strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> Group, Beaulieu Rd, Lyndhurst, SO43 7FZ<br />
Publisher: David Elton<br />
Editor: Bill Knott (billknott43@googlemail.com)<br />
For advertising enquiries contact:<br />
Victoria Gibbs on: victoria.gibbs@limewoodgroup.com<br />
Emma Cripwell on: emma@angelpublicity.com<br />
Design <strong>and</strong> production: Strattons (www.strattons.com)<br />
© <strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> Group 2012<br />
16<br />
Contents<br />
02.<br />
04.<br />
06.<br />
07.<br />
09.<br />
10.<br />
12.<br />
13.<br />
15.<br />
16.<br />
19.<br />
21.<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 01<br />
All the fun of the fair<br />
The performers of Giffords Circus travel the village<br />
greens <strong>and</strong> commons of the West Country with their<br />
particular br<strong>and</strong> of exuberant showmanship.<br />
Cox <strong>and</strong> rocks<br />
Cider is staging a comeback, as the plethora of cider<br />
festivals around the south coast confirms, but just make<br />
sure it’s the real stuff! And look out for the fossils.<br />
Reinventing wheels<br />
The art of customising a motorbike, as demonstrated<br />
by Mark Battistini.<br />
Debate<br />
Are newspapers a thing of the past?<br />
Inside Story<br />
A profile of Pimlico Opera, the opera company teaching<br />
prisoners how to put on a show.<br />
<strong>Smoked</strong> & <strong>Uncut</strong><br />
JC Caddy talks about his new Live At... CD releases,<br />
<strong>and</strong> talks cooking <strong>and</strong> guilty pleasures with festival<br />
legend Rob Da Bank.<br />
In rod we trust<br />
The remarkable success of Casting For Recovery,<br />
a charity that teaches women suffering with breast<br />
cancer how to fly-fish.<br />
Pushing the boat out<br />
Nick Edmiston, whose family firm is one of the world’s<br />
leading yacht brokers, remembers the glorious races<br />
involving the classic six-metre class.<br />
The doodle bug<br />
From whimsical drawings on subway walls to exhibitions<br />
at the world’s great galleries: the short but brilliant career<br />
of Keith Haring.<br />
Meals on wheels<br />
Two London chefs take to the road in an attempt to<br />
brighten up the street food scene.<br />
Just William – Interview with<br />
William Asprey<br />
William Asprey talks about his passion for guns, watches,<br />
wine <strong>and</strong> fishing.<br />
Forest Bumf<br />
A round-up of what’s happening around the<br />
New Forest at this time of year.
02 <strong>Lime</strong>wire<br />
Photograph by Laurie Fletcher. www.lauriefletcher.com<br />
Should you be driving through the towns <strong>and</strong><br />
villages of the West Country this summer, you<br />
might well find yourself stuck behind a string of<br />
painted wagons. If you do, they probably belong<br />
to Giffords Circus, the phenomenally successful<br />
troupe set up by Toti <strong>and</strong> Nell Gifford in 2000.<br />
Maisie Bagley knows all about Giffords Circus. “Nell <strong>and</strong> I have<br />
known each other for ages: when I was a little girl, Nell <strong>and</strong><br />
her sister put on a circus together as a birthday party for me.<br />
Nell always had a thing about circuses.” Maisie now manages<br />
Circus Sauce, the Giffords’ travelling restaurant; her Californian<br />
husb<strong>and</strong> Shane is the chef.<br />
After graduating from Oxford, Nell’s love for the circus took<br />
her to the US <strong>and</strong> Europe, learning as much as she could about<br />
the circus. The other great love of her life, husb<strong>and</strong> Toti, had a<br />
flourishing l<strong>and</strong>scape gardening business in the West Country,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Nell’s peripatetic lifestyle would clearly make a successful<br />
marriage very difficult.<br />
And so they hatched the plan for a miniature village green circus:<br />
“packed, rowdy <strong>and</strong> glamorous”, as Nell describes it. “Birds <strong>and</strong><br />
horses <strong>and</strong> motorbikes bursting from a fluttering white tent.”<br />
The first show coincided with the launch of Nell’s book, Josser:<br />
The Secret Life of a Circus Girl. Nell had been invited to the<br />
Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival <strong>and</strong> suggested that she stage a small<br />
circus. She <strong>and</strong> Toti cobbled together a show, then took it around
several other venues that summer, building<br />
the template for subsequent shows, with<br />
Toti taking care of all the logistics <strong>and</strong> Nell<br />
concentrating on the artistic side.<br />
“It has all grown organically from there,”<br />
recalls Maisie. “Our big top now seats 500<br />
people. And the restaurant has grown, too: it<br />
started as a little café just for the performers,<br />
then we started selling teas, <strong>and</strong> now we<br />
have a proper restaurant. Shane buys his<br />
produce from local farm shops, we have a<br />
small market garden growing salads, <strong>and</strong> we<br />
even have a few Tamworth pigs.”<br />
This year’s show is called The Saturday Book,<br />
taking its name from the annual art-<strong>and</strong>literature<br />
miscellany published from 1941<br />
to 1975, its contributors including Philip<br />
Larkin <strong>and</strong> P. G. Wodehouse. Its pages were<br />
an enchanting mix of essays, verse, fiction,<br />
photography <strong>and</strong> woodcuts.<br />
“It’s a kind of vintage variety show,” says<br />
Maisie. “We have a Parisian wire walker,<br />
some Ukrainian acrobats, our jugglers Bibi<br />
<strong>and</strong> Bichu – who even juggle while st<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
on horseback at one point – <strong>and</strong> the<br />
ever-popular Tweedy the clown. And there’s<br />
Jan the German with his dogs, who do all<br />
sorts of fabulous tricks, including a bit of<br />
hat-catching.”<br />
The show is directed by Cal McCrystal, who<br />
was the Physical Comedy Director of the West<br />
End hit One Man, Two Guvnors, <strong>and</strong> it is,<br />
by all accounts, a very funny show: “it’s very<br />
light-hearted,” says Maisie, “<strong>and</strong> everyone has<br />
said how much fun it is.”<br />
One new string to the Giffords’ bow is the<br />
establishment of various workshops: day<br />
courses held at Folly Farm, in Bourton-on-the-<br />
Water, Gloucestershire. Folly Farm’s Cotswold<br />
barns are where each show is put together:<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 03<br />
routines rehearsed, scenery built, costumes<br />
stitched together. From late September to<br />
early November, participants can learn about<br />
equestrian circus skills; try their h<strong>and</strong>s (<strong>and</strong><br />
feet) at various kinds of dance; learn how to<br />
make cider bread, chutneys <strong>and</strong> game cookery;<br />
or spend a day with Nell, learning the secrets<br />
of costume design, set building, prop making<br />
<strong>and</strong> direction.<br />
Well, maybe not all her secrets. According to<br />
Maisie, “Nell always comes up with an idea<br />
for next year’s show the previous autumn,<br />
travelling in search of new acts <strong>and</strong> finding<br />
the best person to direct the show. But she<br />
keeps it secret! Then the tent goes up in<br />
March <strong>and</strong> the show starts all over again.”
Cox<br />
<strong>and</strong><br />
RoCks
There are few things that sum up Engl<strong>and</strong> at its<br />
bucolic best more than a late summer picnic in<br />
an orchard: hunks of cheese, thick slabs of ham,<br />
crusty bread, a few pickles, <strong>and</strong> a big, cool stone<br />
flagon of cider, made, perhaps, with the previous<br />
year’s fruit from the orchard itself. Rustic bliss:<br />
on a fine day, anyway. You can almost hear the<br />
Morris men’s bells jangling in the distance.<br />
Everyone knows what cider is. It’s fermented apple<br />
juice, isn’t it? Well, up to a point: for commercially<br />
produced cider, the actual juice content can be as<br />
low as a paltry 35%. The rest can be made up with<br />
anything fermentable, <strong>and</strong> even the juice can actually<br />
be imported apple concentrate. The “cider” can<br />
then be carbonated, pasteurised <strong>and</strong> micro-filtered<br />
before it reaches the bottle or the cask: remember<br />
that next time you turn on the TV <strong>and</strong> see ravenhaired<br />
colleens cavorting through orchards in<br />
traditional dress, advertising<br />
“authentic” cider.<br />
Real cider – or “craft cider”,<br />
as it is often known – is a very<br />
different beast. At its simplest, it<br />
is just milled apples, pressed to<br />
extract their juice in early<br />
autumn <strong>and</strong> left in barrels<br />
somewhere cool for the winter:<br />
the wild yeasts on the skins of<br />
the apples ferment the sugars,<br />
producing alcohol, which in turn<br />
stops the cider from freezing in all but the harshest<br />
of winters. Come springtime, it is dry, strong, still<br />
<strong>and</strong> ready to drink.<br />
This style of cider is something of an acquired taste.<br />
It can be mouth-puckeringly dry, <strong>and</strong> it can also have<br />
a distinct smell of vinegar. Some craft cidermakers,<br />
including Charlie Newman <strong>and</strong> l<strong>and</strong>lord Kevin Hunt<br />
of the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass in Dorset, prefer to use<br />
a cultivated yeast, which controls the fermentation<br />
more accurately than its wilder cousins, producing<br />
a more reliable brew.<br />
The Square <strong>and</strong> Compass sits in the little village of<br />
Worth Maltravers, a few miles west along the Jurassic<br />
Coast from Swanage. They have been making <strong>and</strong><br />
selling their own cider for the last six years, <strong>and</strong> were<br />
awarded the prestigious title of “Real Cider Pub<br />
of the Year” by CAMRA in 2008.<br />
“We sell three ‘expressions’ of cider,”<br />
explains Kevin,<br />
“Dry, medium <strong>and</strong> sweet. In the first year they<br />
have a bit of cloudiness in them, then they get<br />
clearer as they age. Charlie uses a mixture of<br />
traditional cider apples <strong>and</strong> eating apples. We made<br />
14,000 litres last year.”<br />
All of which is sold in the pub, where cider is starting<br />
to approach 50% of all the pints pulled. “We sell<br />
other ciders as well: Westons, from Herefordshire,<br />
Hecks, from Street in Somerset, <strong>and</strong> Cider By Rosie,<br />
made by Rose Grant in Mid Dorset.<br />
“We do have Stowford Press as well: it’s our only<br />
fizzy cider. I’m not here to upset the customers:<br />
anyway, often people will move from lager to the<br />
Stowford Press <strong>and</strong> then they’ll try a half of real<br />
cider. Lager consumption has dropped off<br />
big time.”<br />
You can find a fine pint of cider at the Square <strong>and</strong><br />
Compass any time of year, but perhaps the best time<br />
to visit is on the first Saturday in November (the<br />
3rd this year) when the pub hosts its annual Cider<br />
Festival. The festival features not only a wide range<br />
of local craft ciders, but there is freshly pressed apple<br />
juice, some very toothsome sausages, lessons in<br />
identifying different varieties of apples, <strong>and</strong> live<br />
music later in the evening.<br />
The Square <strong>and</strong> Compass also boasts another<br />
attraction, unusual (if not unique) for a pub: it has a<br />
small museum dedicated to fossils. The Jurassic Coast<br />
– the 95-mile stretch of coastline from Orcombe Bay,<br />
near Exmouth, in East Devon, to Old Harry Rocks,<br />
not far from the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass – is a World<br />
Heritage Site, <strong>and</strong> hugely popular both with walkers<br />
on the South West Coastal Park <strong>and</strong> with<br />
amateur paleontologists.<br />
The area was home to the 19th-century fossil hunter,<br />
Mary Anning, who famously discovered a fossil of an<br />
entire ichthyosaur: she was just 12-years-old at the<br />
time. Visitors these days may not be so fortunate, but<br />
there are plenty of ammonites to be found, as well as<br />
many other relics of prehistoric life.<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 05<br />
For a wealth of information<br />
about the Jurassic Coast, <strong>and</strong><br />
a comprehensive listing of<br />
organised walks (from easy to<br />
strenuous), talks, visitor centres<br />
<strong>and</strong> museums, visit the excellent<br />
www.jurassiccoast.com. Or you<br />
can simply admire the collection<br />
at the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass over<br />
a pint or two of craft cider.<br />
Not that the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass<br />
is the only place to drink proper<br />
cider in Hampshire or Dorset:<br />
far from it. The exhaustive<br />
website www.ukcider.co.uk lists every pub selling<br />
cider in the two counties, as well as upcoming<br />
festivals: real enthusiasts might try New Forest Cider’s<br />
annual steam-pressing weekend, on the 13th <strong>and</strong> 14th<br />
of October. The company’s “Workman” cider press is,<br />
so they claim, the only steam-driven press in Britain<br />
that is still working.<br />
CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, are also fans of<br />
real cider: most of their beer festivals feature several<br />
ciders as well as excellent local beers. Both the South<br />
Hampshire branch (www.shantscamra.org.uk) <strong>and</strong><br />
the West Dorset branch (www.camrawdorset.org.<br />
uk) have plenty of information on cider stockists <strong>and</strong><br />
festivals: you could try the beer <strong>and</strong> cider festival at<br />
the Gaggle of Geese in Buckl<strong>and</strong> Newton, Dorset,<br />
on 14th September (01300 345 249), where you<br />
might pick up a goose for a snip at their charity<br />
poultry auction.<br />
Whether you are a dedicated rambler, a music fan,<br />
a fossil fiend, or just someone keen to investigate in a<br />
practical fashion the happy marriage of the fermented<br />
apple <strong>and</strong> the cooked pig, the historic Jurassic Coast<br />
<strong>and</strong> its pub-strewn hinterl<strong>and</strong> has much to offer,<br />
<strong>and</strong> much to enjoy. And the world seems much<br />
rosier after a pint of proper cider.
06 <strong>Lime</strong>wire<br />
There are bikers, <strong>and</strong> there are Battistini bikers. The<br />
Battistini workshop, in Dorset, builds just a small h<strong>and</strong>ful<br />
of custom-made motorcycles each year, <strong>and</strong> they are truly<br />
distinctive. The phrase “work of art” is often overused,<br />
but in the case of at least one Battistini bike, it is literally correct.<br />
The company was founded in 1990 by Rikki <strong>and</strong> Dean Battistini,<br />
with the aim of bringing to Europe some of the specialist,<br />
custom-built bikes <strong>and</strong> parts they had discovered on their trips<br />
to the USA’s West Coast.<br />
Their passion for Californian bespoke creations turned into a<br />
thriving business in Europe, especially in the UK <strong>and</strong> Italy, <strong>and</strong><br />
brother Mark joined as Italian Sales Manager in 1994. A year later,<br />
Dean was tragically killed in a motorbike accident, leading the<br />
remaining two brothers to remodel the business.<br />
Nowadays, Rikki is based in the US, doing the circuit of motorcycle<br />
trade shows <strong>and</strong> doing business with dealers eager to secure some<br />
of Battistini’s custom-built “bolt-on” accessories – h<strong>and</strong>legrips, for<br />
example – while Mark looks after the UK business from his<br />
Dorset workshop.<br />
Mark’s main business is selling hard-to-find parts for Harley-<br />
Davidsons <strong>and</strong> other high-end bikes – he is also starting to sell<br />
some of his brother’s US accessories – <strong>and</strong> fulfilling orders for<br />
custom-made motorbikes.<br />
Hence the “work of art”. As Mark explains, “we were contacted<br />
by [Turner Prize-winning artist] Grayson Perry, who wanted us<br />
to build him a motorbike. He drew the design, <strong>and</strong> we built it: it<br />
was a great project to work on. He rode it to Germany <strong>and</strong> back,<br />
<strong>and</strong> now it’s insured as a work of art, for £250,000, I think.”<br />
Perry’s bike is, as one look will confirm, unlike any other. An<br />
extraordinary, custom-made bike, based on a Harley-Davidson<br />
Knucklehead <strong>and</strong> named the “Kenilworth AM1”, it also features a<br />
reliquary – a sort of saintly Wendy house – on the back, specifically<br />
to carry his 50-year old teddy bear, Alan Measles. The stretched<br />
petrol tank, painted in pink <strong>and</strong> blue, sports the words “Patience”<br />
<strong>and</strong> “Humility” on either side: not qualities usually associated<br />
with Harley riders. The bike was the star of the show at last year’s<br />
Grayson Perry-curated show at the British Museum, “Tomb of<br />
the Unknown Craftsman”, positioned at the top of the imposing<br />
staircase in the museum’s atrium.<br />
Mark has also built bikes for a variety of corporate clients, including<br />
the Hogs Back Brewery, in Tongham, Surrey. Another Harley-<br />
Davidson, this time a Panhead, the bike also featured a sidecar<br />
seemingly fashioned from a beer barrel. Battistini also built a bike<br />
to promote a show for the now defunct “Men & Motors” channel,<br />
<strong>and</strong> the royal blue, super-accessorised “Battistini Opex” for an<br />
exhibition comapny of the same name.<br />
How much does it cost to have your own bike custom built by<br />
Battistinis? “Upwards of £80,000,” says Mark, “<strong>and</strong> you can<br />
spend a lot more than that, depending on what you want.”<br />
And what bike does Mark ride himself? “Well, we used to<br />
have a showroom with about 20 different bikes in it, so I<br />
just used to pick out whichever one I fancied. Now, though,<br />
I mostly ride around on my 125cc Vespa!”<br />
www.battistinisusa.com
<strong>Lime</strong>wire<br />
Are newspapers a thing of the past?<br />
Around 1440 German inventor<br />
Johannes Gutenberg invented<br />
one of the most important <strong>and</strong><br />
influential inventions of the second<br />
millennium, the printing press, <strong>and</strong> it<br />
was from the advent of this technology<br />
that the newspaper was born. Newspapers<br />
went from strength to strength <strong>and</strong> they<br />
became an important part of democracy.<br />
George Washington in 1788 stated that:<br />
“For my part I entertain a high idea<br />
of the utility of periodical publications;<br />
insomuch as I could heartily desire,<br />
copies of... magazines, as well as<br />
common Gazettes, might be spread<br />
through every city, town, <strong>and</strong> village<br />
in the United States. I consider such<br />
vehicles of knowledge more happily<br />
calculated than any other to preserve<br />
the liberty, stimulate the industry, <strong>and</strong><br />
ameliorate the morals of a free <strong>and</strong><br />
enlightened people.” 1<br />
In the 21st Century, however, with the<br />
availability of other forms of media, such<br />
as TV <strong>and</strong> the Internet, the once highly<br />
important newspaper entered a state of<br />
significant <strong>and</strong> rapid decline in many<br />
places across the world with readerships<br />
entering a seemingly never-ending<br />
downward spiral. This has left many<br />
commentators to suggest that newspapers<br />
are a thing of the past, Phillip Meyer in<br />
The Vanishing Newspaper suggests, by<br />
extrapolation of current trends, that by<br />
the first quarter of 2043 the newspaper<br />
industry in the US will be completely<br />
extinct. Others suggest, however,<br />
that this is overstating the decline of<br />
newspapers, it could be suggested that<br />
there will always be a dem<strong>and</strong> for printed<br />
word despite the current decline, for<br />
example in the UK on the 26th October<br />
2010 the first daily newspaper to be<br />
launched for 24 years hit the shelves <strong>and</strong><br />
as of April 2011 the “I” newspaper had<br />
a regular readership of over 160,000 2<br />
suggesting that perhaps that some<br />
dem<strong>and</strong> still exists.<br />
What is most certainly true of newspapers<br />
today is that they are, in general, losing<br />
their readerships, however, does this<br />
necessarily mean that there is no longer<br />
a place for them in the modern media<br />
l<strong>and</strong>scape, are newspapers dead or are the<br />
rumors of their death greatly exaggerated?<br />
FOR AGAINST<br />
1. People no longer consume media in a linear way, people<br />
prefer to pick <strong>and</strong> choose what news they consume<br />
2. In the internet age immediacy is everything, newspapers<br />
can often contain out of date information by the time<br />
they hit the shelves<br />
3. Newspapers cannot be environmentally sustained<br />
4. Newspapers are financially unviable<br />
1. Barber, A Brief History of the Newspaper. 2011.<br />
2. ABC’s: National Daily Newspaper Circulation<br />
April 2011. The Guardian.<br />
1. Newspapers offer a better reading experience than<br />
digital alternatives<br />
2. Newspapers provide higher quality journalism than other media<br />
3. Newspapers are a more trustworthy source of information<br />
than independent bloggers<br />
4. The balance of analysis <strong>and</strong> relevancy is better struck<br />
by newspapers<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 07<br />
5. The internet edits what you can see without your knowledge<br />
This debate has been made avaialable by IDEA (www.idebate.org). See the full debate at: http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/culture/house-believes-newspapers-are-thing-past.<br />
‘THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT NEWSPAPERS ARE THING OF THE PAST’ Copyright © 2005 International Debate Education Association. All Rights Reserved.
Inside<br />
Story<br />
There cannot be many opera<br />
singers, theatre directors or stage<br />
managers – or, indeed, other<br />
members of the public – who<br />
would willingly spend seven<br />
weeks of each year in prison.<br />
And yet that is what the dedicated bunch of<br />
professionals involved with Pimlico Opera do<br />
every year. They do get to go home at night,<br />
of course, but during the day their aim is to<br />
turn prisoners, some of them convicted of the<br />
most serious offences, into performers. Their<br />
“residency” at various prisons all over southern<br />
Engl<strong>and</strong> – <strong>and</strong> one in Dublin – culminates in<br />
a full-scale performance of whichever opera<br />
or musical they have rehearsed: in the prison<br />
itself, with an audience of 200 or so visitors.<br />
If this sounds like a stunt prompted by too<br />
many TV reality shows, it isn’t. Wasfi Kani,<br />
who founded Pimlico Opera 25 years ago,<br />
grew up in Wormwood Scrubs, near the jail<br />
of the same name in West London. “I always<br />
thought ‘you know, that could be me in there,<br />
or any of us.’ It’s to do with circumstances,<br />
upbringing, all sorts of factors... but everyone<br />
has talents, <strong>and</strong> I wanted to nurture them.”<br />
Kani is a talented musician – she was a violinist<br />
in the National Youth Orchestra <strong>and</strong> is a<br />
professional conductor – so “putting on a<br />
show” seemed like a natural development. In<br />
1990, the newly-formed Pimlico Opera staged<br />
The Marriage of Figaro <strong>and</strong> Walton’s The<br />
Bear for the prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs;<br />
the following year, they staged their first<br />
collaboration, a production of Sweeney Todd.<br />
Subsequent annual productions, like the<br />
first, have hardly shied away from the themes<br />
of crime, punishment <strong>and</strong> social justice:<br />
Chicago, Assassins, Threepenny Opera <strong>and</strong> Les<br />
Misérables have all been popular productions<br />
in their repertoire.<br />
The process of rehearsing <strong>and</strong> staging a<br />
production is inevitably disruptive to the<br />
routine of prison life – movement within the<br />
prison needs to be relaxed, <strong>and</strong> banned items<br />
like power tools, ladders <strong>and</strong> costumes are<br />
permitted - but is welcomed by the governors<br />
of the prisons in which they work. Ian<br />
Mulholl<strong>and</strong>, Governor of HMP W<strong>and</strong>sworth,<br />
is one of them: “My job is to send people out<br />
of prison less likely to offend than when they<br />
came in. The effect of programmes like the<br />
Pimlico Opera’s productions is huge.”<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 09<br />
And what of the audience? “More than<br />
50,000 people have come to see one of our<br />
shows,” says Kani. “For many of them, it is<br />
their first time inside a prison. The immediate<br />
reaction is sheer astonishment at the quality<br />
of the performance they see.”<br />
It is the prisoners who benefit most, however,<br />
picking up the skills <strong>and</strong> the confidence that<br />
give them a fighting chance of a successful life<br />
once they are released. “One of our potential<br />
actors was asked if he had ever performed<br />
before,” recalls Kani. “Yes,’ he replied, ‘in the<br />
dock of No.1 Court at the Old Bailey.” His<br />
future appearances, one hopes, will be for an<br />
audience of more than a dozen.<br />
Erlstoke Prison <strong>and</strong> Pimlico Opera<br />
perform West Side Story in March next<br />
year: visit www.pimlicoopera.co.uk<br />
for more details.
10 <strong>Lime</strong>wire<br />
Music Manager at <strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> Group<br />
We are excited to have recently launched<br />
<strong>Smoked</strong> & <strong>Uncut</strong>, a label with a unique<br />
twist. We pick the music to reflect the<br />
atmosphere of each hotel, <strong>and</strong> have just<br />
released our 3 CD box set: <strong>Smoked</strong><br />
& <strong>Uncut</strong>.<br />
We launched the series of gigs in May,<br />
welcoming BBC Radio 2 <strong>and</strong> 6 Music<br />
favourites The Slow Show, then the<br />
soulful chill-out sounds of Stereofixx <strong>and</strong><br />
Capitol K in June, with many more b<strong>and</strong>s<br />
scheduled for the rest of the year.<br />
Music at <strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong>, The Pig <strong>and</strong> Le<br />
Portetta has had a major restyle over the<br />
last year: all bedroom iPods <strong>and</strong> hotel<br />
music systems are now loaded with cool<br />
new musical discoveries from emerging<br />
<strong>and</strong> established artists from cinematic,<br />
indie-folk to chill-out.<br />
All the music is refreshed every six<br />
months, creating new playlists to<br />
make sure we have interesting new<br />
sounds playing.<br />
Nowadays, music festivals sum up the<br />
magic of the British summer for many,<br />
ranging from the intimate farmyard<br />
festival (Truck Festival, Secret Garden<br />
Party) to the major festivals (Isle of<br />
Wight, V Festival, Glastonbury, Bestival).<br />
More are appearing each year, aiming<br />
to meet the growing dem<strong>and</strong> from both<br />
musicians <strong>and</strong> the public.<br />
The live sector is where artist <strong>and</strong> b<strong>and</strong>s<br />
generate the majority of their income:<br />
because of downloads <strong>and</strong> streaming,<br />
record sales are severely depleted. The<br />
revenue produced by these festivals is<br />
crucial to the future of music, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
UK does festivals best!<br />
Photograph by Dominic Marley<br />
SMOKED
UNCUT<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 11<br />
Rob Da Bank<br />
I got a few answers from one of the UK’s<br />
coolest festival founders, Radio 1 DJ<br />
Rob Da Bank, founder of Bestival, Camp<br />
Bestival <strong>and</strong> the ‘Sunday Best’ label.<br />
Tell me how it all started, Rob?<br />
I started Sunday Best as a club night in<br />
1995. Playing boardgames <strong>and</strong> chatting<br />
to mates was quite a novelty in a club<br />
<strong>and</strong> it lasted seven years week in, week<br />
out. Eventually I thought why don’t we<br />
try this in a field <strong>and</strong> Bestival was born.<br />
The magic of Bestival is mostly in the<br />
people who come – the most amazing<br />
mix of everyone imaginable but all up<br />
for some fun <strong>and</strong> exposure to new <strong>and</strong><br />
exciting music.<br />
What’s your favourite film music?<br />
Until recently, I’d have said Love Theme<br />
by Vangelis from Blade Runner but I’ve<br />
just watched Drive <strong>and</strong> fallen for its<br />
excellent score <strong>and</strong> soundtrack in a<br />
big way.<br />
What are your guilty musical<br />
pleasures?<br />
I have many! Dolly Parton <strong>and</strong> Tears<br />
For Fears are just two of them.<br />
Are you good in the kitchen?<br />
I’m terrible in the kitchen, as my wife <strong>and</strong><br />
kids will attest! Luckily, Mrs Da Bank is a<br />
gourmet chef so I get away with it. I have<br />
many other duties around the house, but<br />
I get steered away from the kitchen.<br />
What’s your favourite town in<br />
Britain?<br />
Has to be jolly old Yarmouth, one of the<br />
smallest towns in the UK. We spend about<br />
a third of our year on the Isle of Wight,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Yarmouth has the best mix of posh<br />
delis <strong>and</strong> hotels, with regular pubs <strong>and</strong><br />
a classic ch<strong>and</strong>lery.<br />
What are your musical inspirations?<br />
John Peel, Lee Scratch Perry, Michael<br />
Eavis <strong>and</strong> Thom Yorke, to name just a few.<br />
What will it say on your gravestone?<br />
Rob Da Bank – he lived to the ripe old age<br />
of 143.<br />
The <strong>Smoked</strong> & <strong>Uncut</strong> 3 CD box<br />
set is available to purchase from<br />
<strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> <strong>and</strong> The Pig, <strong>and</strong> online<br />
at www.limewoodhotel.co.uk or<br />
www.thepighotel.co.uk
12 <strong>Lime</strong>wire<br />
In Rod<br />
We Trust<br />
As Jill Grieve, Casting For Recovery’s chairman,<br />
explains: “It all came about when our<br />
Executive Director Sue Hunter, who had<br />
suffered from breast cancer, was invited<br />
fishing by a male friend. She wasn’t sure<br />
about going, but eventually said ‘why not?’...<br />
<strong>and</strong> she loved it!”<br />
“Then she found out about fly-fishing schemes to help women<br />
in the USA <strong>and</strong> Canada who had been affected by breast<br />
cancer, <strong>and</strong> decided to bring it over to Britain <strong>and</strong> Irel<strong>and</strong>. She<br />
approached the Countryside Alliance, who wrote out a cheque<br />
to get the idea off the ground, <strong>and</strong> the charity has been growing<br />
steadily ever since.”<br />
The idea is quite simple. Casting For Recovery funds weekend<br />
retreats in a number of locations around Britain <strong>and</strong> Irel<strong>and</strong> –<br />
“they need to be high-end, beautiful locations, with suitable<br />
residential accommodation” – at which groups of women meet to<br />
try their h<strong>and</strong> at casting flies. Most have little or no experience of<br />
fishing, but are guided through every step by a team of dedicated,<br />
voluntary tutors.<br />
“Just getting out in the countryside is part of the therapy for<br />
many women”, says Jill. “We have ladies from Clapham Junction,<br />
or the middle of Manchester, who tell us that they just wouldn’t<br />
get the chance to do something like this normally. Many of them<br />
are worried about holding their families together during their<br />
illness, <strong>and</strong> they really appreciate having everything done for<br />
This September will see the fifth anniversary of<br />
one of Britain <strong>and</strong> Irel<strong>and</strong>’s most extraordinary<br />
charities. Casting For Recovery, which<br />
organises fly-fishing retreats for women who<br />
have suffered – or are suffering – from breast<br />
cancer, held its first retreat in West Sussex,<br />
in September 2007.<br />
them for a change: coming back from the river to a cream tea,<br />
for instance.”<br />
“There are many types of cancer, <strong>and</strong> many different surgeries,<br />
but casting is always possible, <strong>and</strong> the weekends offer the chance<br />
to talk to other women who are at different stages in the recovery<br />
process, <strong>and</strong> realise that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”<br />
Counselling sessions are available to guests, too, <strong>and</strong>, as Jill puts<br />
it, “the focus is definitely on wellness, not illness. The American<br />
retreats are a bit more touchy-feely: we’ve anglicised them<br />
a bit, but there is a real feeling of togetherness. And a bit<br />
of competitiveness usually creeps in! One of our ladies from<br />
Irel<strong>and</strong>, who had never fished before, is now an international<br />
fly-fisherman.”<br />
The charity has attracted a remarkable response from people all<br />
over the UK <strong>and</strong> Irel<strong>and</strong>: Clay Brendish, owner of the superb<br />
Kimbridge on the Test fishery in Hampshire, is Patron of Casting<br />
For Recovery, <strong>and</strong> many of the other venues for retreats have<br />
become actively involved in fundraising.<br />
Casting For Recovery now holds half a dozen retreats a year, <strong>and</strong>,<br />
according to Jill, many more are planned. “Our eventual aim is<br />
to hold a retreat every weekend, but in the meantime we’re just<br />
building slowly each year.” As they say in fly-fishing, more power<br />
to their elbows.<br />
www.castingforrecovery.org.uk
pushing<br />
the boat out<br />
A gentleman could spend an entire day in St James’s Street without missing the capital’s other<br />
attractions in the slightest. He might start by nipping in to Lock & Co. for a Montecristi<br />
Panama hat; choose a new pair of brogues at Lobb; restock the claret cellar at Berry Bros &<br />
Rudd, or Justerini & Brooks; top up the humidor at J. J. Fox or Davidoff; <strong>and</strong> then potter off<br />
for lunch at the Carlton Club, White’s or Brooks’s, whichever takes his mood.<br />
Should his post-pr<strong>and</strong>ial thoughts turn to thoughts<br />
of the ocean, he could do worse than stop at<br />
Edmiston, at 62 St James’s Street, opposite J. J. Fox<br />
<strong>and</strong> next door to Justerini & Brooks. Chairman<br />
Nick Edmiston founded the company in Monte<br />
Carlo, in 1996; since then, the company has grown<br />
to include offices in New York, Antibes <strong>and</strong> Mexico<br />
City, as well as London <strong>and</strong> Monaco. Edmiston<br />
are world leaders in the chartering of large yachts<br />
– “superyachts”, as they are known – <strong>and</strong> the<br />
company now employs more than 80 people<br />
around the world.<br />
Nick Edmiston seems thoroughly at home in St<br />
James’s: his taste for fine wine <strong>and</strong> cigars may have<br />
something to do with that. He has another great<br />
passion, however: yachts, of course, but specifically<br />
J-Class yachts. Ten of these great boats were<br />
designed <strong>and</strong> built between 1930 <strong>and</strong> 1937 – six in<br />
the United States, four in Great Britain – <strong>and</strong> they<br />
raced three times for the America’s Cup, perhaps<br />
the greatest prize in international yachting.<br />
“Yachts should be elegant,” says Edmiston, “<strong>and</strong><br />
the J-Class yachts were the most elegant ever<br />
built. I admire modern yachts a great deal, but<br />
there is something special about the J-Class. They<br />
have tremendous power <strong>and</strong> they are so exciting to<br />
sail: you can do 16 or 17 knots downwind, which<br />
may not sound a lot but it certainly feels it.”<br />
The development of the J-Class yacht would not<br />
have happened without the additional spur of the<br />
prestigious America’s Cup. Wealthy industrialists on<br />
both sides of the Atlantic – tea magnate Sir Thomas<br />
Lipton, from Irel<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong> aviation tycoon Sir<br />
Thomas Sopwith, from Britain; Harold V<strong>and</strong>erbilt,<br />
of the shipping <strong>and</strong> railroad dynasty, <strong>and</strong> Gerard<br />
Lambert, heir to the Listerine fortune, from the<br />
USA, as well as various well-heeled syndicates –<br />
competed for the trophy.<br />
Despite strong British challenges, however, the New<br />
York Yacht Club (<strong>and</strong> hence the USA) triumphed<br />
each time, although they had the rules on their side,<br />
as Edmiston points out. “The rules stated that the<br />
British yachts had to be constructed in Britain<br />
<strong>and</strong> sailed to New York, so they had to be built<br />
to cope with the Atlantic crossing as well as the<br />
races themselves. The American boats could just<br />
be built for speed, which was a great advantage.”<br />
The seaworthiness <strong>and</strong> high specification build of<br />
the British yachts may be part of the reason that<br />
the only three original J-Class boats that survive –<br />
Shamrock V, Endeavour <strong>and</strong> Velsheda – are British,<br />
all designed by Charles Ernest Nicholson <strong>and</strong> built<br />
at his yard at Gosport, in Portsmouth harbour.<br />
Velsheda never challenged for the America’s Cup,<br />
while Shamrock V was defeated in Sir Thomas<br />
Lipton’s last challenge for the trophy, in 1930, <strong>and</strong><br />
Sir Thomas Sopwith’s Endeavour narrowly lost out<br />
four years later, to V<strong>and</strong>erbilt’s Rainbow.<br />
Many J-Class yachts were sold for scrap during or<br />
after World War II, <strong>and</strong> the class was deemed too<br />
expensive for the America’s Cup. A new class of<br />
yacht, the Twelve-Metre, was introduced, <strong>and</strong> a<br />
Golden Age of sailing had come to an end.<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 13<br />
Happily, that is by no means the end of the story for<br />
the aristocratic J-Class yachts. In 1984, Elizabeth<br />
Meyer, a yachting enthusiast from a wealthy East<br />
Coast family – her ancestors had founded the World<br />
Bank <strong>and</strong> owned the Washington Post – started<br />
the restoration of Endeavour, <strong>and</strong> then turned her<br />
attention to Shamrock V. Endeavour sailed again<br />
for the first time in 52 years on 22nd June 1989.<br />
Nick Emiston was delighted to present the<br />
trophy the following year, when Endeavour raced<br />
Shamrock V once more, <strong>and</strong> media mogul – <strong>and</strong>,<br />
according to Emiston, “a fine sailor, one of the<br />
great amateur yachtsmen” – Ted Turner triumphed<br />
on two-time America’s Cup winner Intrepid.<br />
The resurgence of interest in the J-Class sparked by<br />
the enthusiasm of Elizabeth Meyer has now led to<br />
several more J-Class yachts being built, including<br />
replicas of Ranger, Rainbow <strong>and</strong> Endeavour II, the<br />
only one of the British J-Class yachts to be scrapped.<br />
Several more J-Boats are under construction.<br />
The great news for J-Class lovers is that these boats,<br />
along with the surviving boats from the 1930s, are<br />
now regularly to be seen racing each other once<br />
more. Between the 18th to 21st July this year,<br />
several J-Class yachts – Velsheda, Lionheart, Ranger<br />
<strong>and</strong> Rainbow – competed on the Solent, over the<br />
round-the-isl<strong>and</strong> course originally used for the<br />
first ever America’s Cup (then known as the 100<br />
Guineas Cup) in 1851. There will also be races in<br />
the last week of September in St-Tropez, but the<br />
Solent is the spiritual home of the British J-Class<br />
yacht, <strong>and</strong> Nick Emiston, in particular, is delighted<br />
to see them back.<br />
“It’s a great thing that they are back in the water.<br />
I remember seeing Endeavour, Endeavour II <strong>and</strong><br />
Velsheda lying in the mud on the Hamble river:<br />
it was very sad. As a company <strong>and</strong> a family,<br />
Edmiston are passionate about these beautiful old<br />
boats, <strong>and</strong> restoring them has been so worthwhile.<br />
“I’ve been sailing for 63 years, since I was fouryears-old:<br />
I suppose I should be on an allotment<br />
somewhere, but I love yachting at this level.<br />
Whatever the money in sailing these days, there<br />
is still a Corinthian spirit to be found: I’ve never<br />
been paid for sailing.”<br />
Owning a boat, it must be said, is not cheap: as<br />
J. P. Morgan famously pointed out, “if you have to<br />
ask the price, you can’t afford it.” Nick Edmiston<br />
recommends that you “never spend more than<br />
10% of your net worth on boats. Somebody once<br />
said that owning a yacht was like st<strong>and</strong>ing under<br />
a shower, tearing up £20 notes: these days it’s<br />
more like €500 notes, <strong>and</strong> I’m not sure you could<br />
tear them up fast enough!”<br />
“Mind you, if you want to try J-Class boats,<br />
you can charter Shamrock V from us, or you can<br />
buy Ranger.”<br />
And what would be Edmiston’s cigar <strong>and</strong> wine<br />
of choice for sailing? “I think I’d have a box of<br />
Partagas Serie D No. 4s, <strong>and</strong> then a case of<br />
Château Lafite 1982 would do very nicely.”<br />
And the yacht? A J-Class, naturally.
On May 4th this year, visitors<br />
to Google – in other words,<br />
almost every computer user<br />
on the planet – would have seen,<br />
in place of Google’s normal logo,<br />
a series of exuberantly colourful,<br />
cartoon-like men.<br />
The artist for whom this was the<br />
most modern of accolades, Keith<br />
Haring, did not live long enough<br />
to witness the global spread of the<br />
Internet: he died in 1990, aged just<br />
31. He would have appreciated<br />
the tribute, though: Haring was an<br />
artist who rose to fame in the New<br />
York street art scene, <strong>and</strong> had little<br />
time for the cliquey, stuffy world<br />
of art galleries <strong>and</strong> private views.<br />
The Google Doodle is the logical<br />
extension of his quest to make art<br />
available to the many, not the few.<br />
He described it as “breaking down<br />
the barriers between high <strong>and</strong><br />
low art.”<br />
Haring was born in Reading,<br />
Pennsylvania, on May 4th, 1958.<br />
The young Haring briefly studied<br />
commercial art in Pittsburgh before<br />
deciding on Fine Art, moving to<br />
New York when he was 19 <strong>and</strong><br />
enrolling at the School of Visual<br />
Arts. As he puts it in the first lines<br />
of The Universe of Keith Haring,<br />
Christina Clausen’s exhaustive <strong>and</strong><br />
fascinating 2008 documentary,<br />
“I was in exactly the right place<br />
at exactly the right time.”<br />
Influenced by the graffiti around<br />
him, Haring’s first forays into pop art<br />
were chalk drawings on the blank,<br />
black spaces awaiting advertisements<br />
on the New York subway: “Radiant<br />
Baby”, a crawling infant surrounded<br />
by a starburst of lines, was an<br />
early motif.<br />
His drawings chimed neatly both<br />
with the Warhol-influenced street<br />
art scene <strong>and</strong> with the emerging<br />
dance <strong>and</strong> street music scene of the<br />
early 1980s: it was Warhol, in fact,<br />
who helped Haring develop his art<br />
further, later encouraging him to<br />
open his SoHo boutique, Pop Shop,<br />
in 1986. On sale were Haring’s<br />
thoughtful, cheerful designs in a<br />
huge variety of formats: everything<br />
from key fobs to badges, posters to<br />
Untitled, 1982 © Keith Haring Foundation Used by permission<br />
Self-portrait Polaroid, circa 1980 © Keith Haring Foundation Used by permission<br />
toys. His simple, life-affirming art<br />
was open to all; as he said himself,<br />
it was a place where “not only<br />
collectors could come, but also<br />
kids from the Bronx.”<br />
As Haring’s fame grew, commissions<br />
started to arrive from all over the<br />
world, often for large murals: the<br />
mural at Collingwood College in<br />
Victoria, Australia, for instance,<br />
painted with the help of local<br />
children in 1984. Over the next four<br />
years, he worked in Rio de Janeiro,<br />
Minneapolis, Manhattan <strong>and</strong> Paris,<br />
painted a mural on the Berlin Wall,<br />
<strong>and</strong> held exhibitions in Antwerp,<br />
Helsinki <strong>and</strong> Bordeaux. Bordeaux<br />
was the source of another honour,<br />
too: in 1988, Haring joined the<br />
select group of artists (including<br />
Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Pablo<br />
Picasso <strong>and</strong> Andy Warhol) who<br />
have been asked to design the label<br />
for Château Mouton Rothschild.<br />
His unique fusion of art <strong>and</strong> pop<br />
continued, too: designing a jacket<br />
for Madonna, painting Grace Jones’s<br />
body for her music video “I’m Not<br />
Perfect”, <strong>and</strong> painting the set for<br />
an MTV programme hosted by his<br />
friend Nick Rhodes, of<br />
Duran Duran.<br />
Haring’s art was always fun, but<br />
never trivial. From 1986 onwards,<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 15<br />
his work started to reflect social<br />
issues more strongly; in particular,<br />
the menace of crack cocaine, the<br />
anti-apartheid struggle in South<br />
Africa, <strong>and</strong> the AIDS epidemic.<br />
Openly gay, Haring was a keen<br />
promoter of the “safe sex” message:<br />
in 1988, however, he was himself<br />
diagnosed with HIV. The following<br />
year saw the launch of the Keith<br />
Haring Foundation, established by<br />
Haring to raise funds through the<br />
licensing of his images, with the<br />
proceeds to be spent on activism <strong>and</strong><br />
awareness-raising programmes about<br />
HIV <strong>and</strong> AIDS, <strong>and</strong> on programmes<br />
to help disadvantaged children.<br />
Haring died the following year, but<br />
his philanthropic work continues<br />
to this day: you can even visit the<br />
virtual Pop Shop – the original<br />
shop closed in 2005 – at<br />
www.haring.com <strong>and</strong> buy<br />
Haring-designed merch<strong>and</strong>ise from<br />
fridge magnets to condoms. The<br />
Foundation also loans his works to<br />
exhibitions around the world, as<br />
well as continuing to fund projects<br />
related to children <strong>and</strong> AIDS, <strong>and</strong><br />
new generations will no doubt<br />
discover the ebullient, accessible,<br />
colourful art of Keith Haring just as,<br />
forty years ago, passengers on the<br />
New York subway saw his whimsical<br />
drawings <strong>and</strong> smiled.
16 <strong>Lime</strong>wire<br />
MEALS ON WHEELS<br />
Not so very long ago, the British idea of what<br />
consitituted street food was simple: ice cream,<br />
basically, or – at festivals <strong>and</strong> seaside resorts –<br />
hamburgers <strong>and</strong> hot dogs of distinctly dubious<br />
provenance. Maybe a tub of whelks if you<br />
were lucky.<br />
Contrast this with the USA, where freshly-cooked, restaurant-st<strong>and</strong>ard<br />
meals served from a van are all the rage: known as “gourmet food<br />
trucks”, specialities include cupcakes, tacos, grass-fed burgers, schnitzels,<br />
dim sum <strong>and</strong> waffles, each cooked <strong>and</strong> served from a customised van.<br />
You might ask why nobody has done it over here: which is exactly<br />
what chefs Jun Tanaka, from Pearl on High Holborn, <strong>and</strong> Mark Jankel,<br />
formerly head chef at Notting Hill Brasserie, wondered. “You can’t<br />
really blame it on the weather,” says Jun, “New York gets much<br />
harsher winters than us. Anyway, Mark <strong>and</strong> I thought it was<br />
worth trying in London.”<br />
And so, for the London Restaurant Festival two years ago, the<br />
two chefs kitted out a rather sleek Airstream van <strong>and</strong> served up<br />
meals to hungry <strong>and</strong> grateful City workers.
STREET<br />
KITCHEN<br />
The experiment was a great success, <strong>and</strong> the bus’s<br />
distinctive aluminium curves have spent most of<br />
this summer parked at Finsbury Avenue Square,<br />
near Liverpool Street, doling out decidedly superior<br />
lunches to office folk. The bus moved east for the<br />
Olympics, another advantage for a restaurant with<br />
mobile premises.<br />
The bus may hail from Ohio, but Jun <strong>and</strong> Mark’s<br />
ingredients come from considerably closer to home:<br />
nothing, in fact, is from outside the UK. Rapeseed oil<br />
replaces olive oil; garlic, salt <strong>and</strong> sugar are all British;<br />
black peppercorns are nowhere to be found. It is an<br />
extreme philosophy, but the chefs want to make the<br />
point that good, fast food can be entirely British <strong>and</strong><br />
sustainable. Typical dishes include soft poached eggs<br />
with broad beans, pickled red onions, warm crushed<br />
potatoes, mixed leaves, tarragon mayo <strong>and</strong> rosemary<br />
breadcrumbs, or slow roast lamb with tomato, cucumber<br />
<strong>and</strong> pickled onion salad. Customers can expect to pay<br />
less than half of what they might pay in a restaurant:<br />
around £7.<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 17<br />
There is no skimping on ingredients. For the lamb dish,<br />
Elwy Valley supplies top quality meat from the hill<br />
farms of North Wales, the shoulders of which Jun <strong>and</strong><br />
Mark patiently brine <strong>and</strong> then confit, giving meltingly<br />
tender lamb which keeps a rosy hue even after 36 hours<br />
of preparation, done in their Battersea production<br />
kitchen.<br />
“We use a combi oven, <strong>and</strong> we cook four shoulders at<br />
a time: it might seem like a lengthy process – <strong>and</strong> it is<br />
– but it doesn’t take a lot of work, <strong>and</strong> the lamb comes<br />
out appetisingly pink at the end of it all,” says Jun.<br />
If you still hanker after something a bit plainer, like a<br />
hamburger, Jun <strong>and</strong> Mark can sort that out for you, too:<br />
just head down to their Battersea offshoot, The Hatch,<br />
for Burger Night on Fridays. And keep an eye on the<br />
Street Kitchen website: as Jun points out, “even we<br />
don’t know exactly what we’ll be cooking tomorrow.”<br />
www.streetkitchen.co.uk
Born into the famous Asprey luxury<br />
goods dynasty, William Asprey<br />
started his own business, William<br />
& Son, on Mount Street, Mayfair<br />
in 1999, four years after the family<br />
business was sold to the brother of<br />
the Sultan of Brunei.<br />
William & Son specialises in bespoke<br />
watches <strong>and</strong>, two doors down in<br />
Mayfair, bespoke sporting guns:<br />
Asprey has a keen interest in both.<br />
Jewellery, luxury leather goods <strong>and</strong><br />
country clothing are other specialities.<br />
BREGUET MARINE ROYALE ALARM<br />
Available at William & Son<br />
Price – £30,700.00<br />
When did you first work<br />
for the family firm?<br />
When I was still at school:<br />
I worked as a porter <strong>and</strong> packer<br />
in the holidays. It was great fun.<br />
And you originally<br />
wanted to be a chef?<br />
I wanted to try my h<strong>and</strong> at hospitality,<br />
yes, but I eventually decided on the<br />
Army, <strong>and</strong> I spent four years in the<br />
Royal Green Jackets.<br />
The Army must have prompted<br />
an interest in guns...<br />
Actually, I got more into guns after<br />
I left. I grew up with it all: my family<br />
were all shooting people.<br />
Do you have a favourite gun?<br />
A side-by-side shotgun, I suppose, but<br />
I’ve shot with different guns all over<br />
the world: Berettas, shooting for doves<br />
in Argentina, <strong>and</strong> rifles, of course: I<br />
was once shooting in Russia <strong>and</strong> was<br />
rather alarmed to be h<strong>and</strong>ed a sniper’s<br />
rifle complete with night sight. But<br />
“have gun, will travel” is<br />
my motto!<br />
Who buys guns from<br />
William & Son?<br />
We have a lot of overseas clients,<br />
especially Americans. The British<br />
tend to inherit their guns, so it’s more<br />
difficult to get them to buy a pair.<br />
Our guns take a year <strong>and</strong> a half, on<br />
average, to complete: we have a team<br />
of highly skilled outworkers who make<br />
them. You’re looking at £45,000<br />
plus VAT per gun, but they are<br />
very beautiful.<br />
Where is your favourite shoot?<br />
I like the Well Barn Estate in<br />
Oxfordshire, for partridge <strong>and</strong><br />
pheasant, <strong>and</strong> Reeth’s estate in North<br />
Yorkshire, for grouse: grouse are<br />
the most exciting, the most difficult<br />
birds to shoot. You can’t be entirely<br />
certain of shooting anything in a<br />
day. And I’ve shot woodcock on the<br />
Pembrokeshire coast, <strong>and</strong> snipe<br />
in Scotl<strong>and</strong>.<br />
What’s the perfect size<br />
for a shoot?<br />
I think eight guns, <strong>and</strong> maybe 200<br />
good, high birds. A good shoot should<br />
be challenging <strong>and</strong> exhilarating.<br />
One of my favourite places is the<br />
Angmering Estate near Arundel,<br />
West Sussex, run by Nigel Clutton...<br />
although you have to watch out<br />
for his fairly lethal vodka <strong>and</strong><br />
gin concoctions!<br />
They’re delicious, so they’re hard<br />
to turn down: there’s one he makes<br />
called “Cat’s Piss”, which is<br />
flavoured with gooseberry. Definitely<br />
not to be sampled if you’re driving.<br />
You’re a keen fisherman: have<br />
you ever thought of selling rods<br />
as well as guns?<br />
As with shooting, I’ve been lucky<br />
enough to travel the world fishing:<br />
from the Kennet for trout to Alaska<br />
for wild salmon, Arctic char <strong>and</strong><br />
rainbow trout, <strong>and</strong> Mexico<br />
for sailfish.<br />
It’s a very different science, though,<br />
making fishing rods. I have a rod<br />
custom-made in America by an<br />
amazing guy called Ira Stutzman<br />
at Hell’s Canyon Custom Rods, in<br />
Oregon – motto “Because you only<br />
have one life to fish” – <strong>and</strong> it’s a<br />
thing of beauty.<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 19<br />
Just William<br />
INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM ASPREY<br />
Watches are another passion of<br />
yours: do you collect them as well<br />
as sell them from the shop?<br />
Yes, although I do own a Swatch as<br />
well! I have 60 or so classic watches,<br />
though, <strong>and</strong> they all have proper<br />
Swiss movements. Once you start<br />
collecting them, it’s very hard to stop.<br />
Now everyone has a mobile phone,<br />
they’re not essential for telling the time<br />
anymore, but some of them are great<br />
works of art. Also, what jewellery can<br />
a man wear? Just cufflinks, maybe<br />
a St Christopher, <strong>and</strong> a watch.<br />
And you have a well-stocked<br />
cellar, too?<br />
I do love good food <strong>and</strong> fine wine:<br />
I’m a bit of a traditionalist, I suppose.<br />
I was brought up on Bordeaux <strong>and</strong><br />
Burgundy <strong>and</strong> I rarely stray too far<br />
from that. The Château Figeac 2000<br />
is drinking very well at the moment<br />
– I tend to drink claret fairly young,<br />
partly out of curiosity or impatience,<br />
but mainly because I like it when it<br />
still has plenty of fruit. And I visited<br />
Château Pontet-Canet recently: the<br />
owner, Alfred Tesseron, is such<br />
a gentleman.<br />
Do you have a<br />
favourite restaurant?<br />
I love The Ledbury, in Notting Hill:<br />
Brett Graham is a great chef, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
food seems to get better <strong>and</strong> better<br />
each time I visit. He made a dish of<br />
frozen foie gras on green beans with<br />
white peaches <strong>and</strong> almonds last time I<br />
was there: wonderful. And Brett is a<br />
very keen shot, too!<br />
I’ve thought about owning my own<br />
restaurant occasionally, but if I did<br />
then it would have to be with someone<br />
who could run it properly. Never say<br />
never, though.<br />
How has Mayfair changed in the<br />
dozen years you’ve been there?<br />
There’s a lot of building work these<br />
days! Other than that, though, it’s<br />
definitely still the place to be, <strong>and</strong><br />
people from all over the world make<br />
their way here. It’s a wonderful area.<br />
<strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> has a selection of<br />
William & Son’s country clothing<br />
available for purchase.
Forest Fit<br />
We’re launching a br<strong>and</strong> new Boot Camp for<br />
women on October 14th, in collaboration with<br />
Tim Weeks.<br />
What is it?<br />
We have taken the traditional boot camp <strong>and</strong><br />
given it a twist. This isn’t a 3-day military regime.<br />
It is the ultimate women only lavish health<br />
<strong>and</strong> fitness experience – 3 days of physical <strong>and</strong><br />
mental invigoration, which is tailor made to your<br />
wishes, needs <strong>and</strong> goals. In the natural setting of<br />
the New Forest, we have a full range of outdoor<br />
activities so that clients absorb the surroundings<br />
both inside <strong>and</strong> outside the spa. Designed by our<br />
Farmers’ Markets<br />
Forest<br />
As you will have noticed from the menus at<br />
<strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> <strong>and</strong> The Pig, we are lucky to have<br />
an abundance of splendid produce right on<br />
our doorstep. The New Forest is, of course, a<br />
fabulously unspoilt treasure trove for foragers:<br />
mushrooms, wild herbs <strong>and</strong> vegetables, nuts <strong>and</strong><br />
berries; <strong>and</strong> the nearby coastline provides sea<br />
vegetables, wild mussels <strong>and</strong> seaweeds. Just ask<br />
Garry Eveleigh, The Pig’s forager, who regularly<br />
returns from shore <strong>and</strong> forest with baskets full<br />
of greenery: three-cornered garlic, ramsons,<br />
alex<strong>and</strong>ers, moon daisies (ox-eye daisies, as they<br />
are also known), <strong>and</strong> trugs full of claytonia, a<br />
fleshy-leafed relative of purslane also known<br />
evocatively as “streambank springbeauty”.<br />
But the area also has a plethora of small farmers<br />
<strong>and</strong> producers, rearing or growing everything<br />
from rare breeds of pigs <strong>and</strong> cattle to heritage<br />
varieties of apples <strong>and</strong> pears. The best places to<br />
track down some of this wonderful produce are<br />
local farmers’ markets: some may have just a few<br />
stalls, but they offer the chance not just to touch,<br />
smell <strong>and</strong> feel the produce, but also to meet<br />
the people who produced it: shopping over the<br />
internet just isn’t quite the same.<br />
One of the biggest farmer’s markets in the<br />
region is Sunnyfields Market, at Totton, on<br />
the edge of the New Forest, just three or four<br />
miles from Lyndhurst. What’s on offer changes,<br />
of course, with the seasons, but you can be<br />
assured of finding a huge range of fresh, locally<br />
grown fruit <strong>and</strong> vegetables, as well as local jams,<br />
preserves, honeys, breads <strong>and</strong> cheeses: look out<br />
for Loosehanger’s cheeses from their dairy at<br />
Redlynch, in the north of the New Forest. Their<br />
prize-winning cheeses include nettle <strong>and</strong> wild<br />
garlic <strong>and</strong> goat’s curd with tarragon.<br />
in-house team in consultation with top women’s<br />
fitness, health <strong>and</strong> wellness consultant <strong>and</strong><br />
trainer Tim Weeks. Visit our website to find<br />
out more www.limewoodhotel.co.uk/pamper<br />
What does it cost?<br />
£2,200 per person single occupancy, £1,750<br />
per person double occupancy including room,<br />
fitness sessions, spa facilities <strong>and</strong> bespoke<br />
treatment package.<br />
When?<br />
Our first camp will run from 14th – 17th October.<br />
Camps will also run in November <strong>and</strong> January.<br />
Sunnyfields Farm Shop, open 9.30am – 6pm<br />
Mon-Fri, 9am – 5pm Sat, 10am – 4pm Sun.<br />
Sunnyfields Market open every Saturday,<br />
9am – 2pm<br />
More local markets can be found at<br />
www.thenewforest.co.uk: you might also<br />
try these monthly markets:<br />
New Forest Local Producers’ Market, Everton<br />
Nurseries Farmers Walk, Everton, near<br />
Lymington, SO41 0JZ. Open from 9am to<br />
3pm on the first Saturday of each month.<br />
Offers a range of products: honey, bread, cakes,<br />
eggs, wool, beef, local game, pork <strong>and</strong> bacon,<br />
cheese, vegetables <strong>and</strong> specialist plants.<br />
East Boldre Farmers’ Market, East Boldre<br />
Village Hall, Main Road, East Boldre,<br />
Brockenhurst, SO42 7WL, open on the<br />
fourth Saturday of each month.<br />
Sixteen stalls selling a wide variety of local<br />
produce, plus the Kitchen Café for tea, cakes<br />
<strong>and</strong> other refreshments.<br />
The New<br />
Forest Centre<br />
For anyone unfamiliar with the area,<br />
perhaps the best place is the New Forest<br />
Centre. H<strong>and</strong>ily located in the middle of<br />
Lyndhurst, in the heart of the National<br />
Park, the Centre has much to engage,<br />
inform <strong>and</strong> entertain, including an<br />
interactive museum, a reference library,<br />
an information centre <strong>and</strong> a well-stocked<br />
gift shop.<br />
It also boasts a gallery, staging several<br />
different exhibitions each year. This<br />
summer is dedicated to the winners of<br />
The Olympics Open Art Competition,<br />
jointly sponsored by the National Park<br />
Authority <strong>and</strong> the Forestry Commission.<br />
Entrants were allowed to choose their<br />
medium – photography, painting <strong>and</strong><br />
sculpture are all represented – <strong>and</strong> asked to<br />
follow the Olympic theme of “gold, silver<br />
<strong>and</strong> bronze” in their work. Expect plenty<br />
of images of the New Forest at its most<br />
colourful <strong>and</strong> beautiful, at sunrise, sunset<br />
<strong>and</strong> covered in frost.<br />
The New Forest Centre, High Street,<br />
Lyndhurst, SO43 7NY, 023 8028 3444,<br />
www.thenewforest.co.uk. Open daily<br />
from 9am – 5pm: last entry to the<br />
Gallery at 4pm.<br />
Giffords Circus<br />
The rowdy <strong>and</strong> glamorous village green<br />
circus that has been entertaining audiences<br />
in the rural southwest for more than<br />
a decade, returns with its 2012 show<br />
“The Saturday Book”. See article on<br />
pages 2 <strong>and</strong> 3.<br />
Stratton Meadows, Cirencester,<br />
Gloucestershire, from 6 th – 16 th September<br />
More details at www.giffordscircus.com<br />
<strong>Lime</strong>wire 21<br />
<strong>Smoked</strong><br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>Uncut</strong><br />
<strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> <strong>and</strong> The<br />
Pig’s high-spirited<br />
monthly live music<br />
sessions, in aid of chosen<br />
charities, Action Against<br />
Hunger <strong>and</strong> The ARK<br />
Foundation, continue<br />
until November.<br />
23rd September:<br />
<strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> – Police Dog<br />
Hogan <strong>and</strong> The Voodoo<br />
Trombone<br />
14th October:<br />
The Pig – The<br />
Miserable Rich<br />
11th November:<br />
<strong>Lime</strong> <strong>Wood</strong> – Shake<br />
Tiger Shake<br />
On the water<br />
Southampton Boat Show,<br />
14 th – 23 rd September<br />
The biggest water-based<br />
boat show in Europe,<br />
featuring a massive range<br />
of nautical-themed<br />
attractions <strong>and</strong> boats of<br />
every shape <strong>and</strong> size – you<br />
can even try your h<strong>and</strong> at<br />
sailing – as well as food<br />
villages <strong>and</strong> a fish-themed<br />
cookery theatre hosted by<br />
chef Mark Sargeant.<br />
www.southamptonboatshow.com<br />
Beer Festival<br />
5th – 7th October<br />
The Red Shoot are proud<br />
to host their Autumn Beer<br />
Festival with over 30 real<br />
ales <strong>and</strong> 10 traditional<br />
ciders available over the<br />
weekend. This is a popular<br />
event, with live b<strong>and</strong>s<br />
playing each night.<br />
www.redshoot.co.uk