Whenever I pick up a weekend paper, I often cringe at many of the "lifestyle" articles. I suppose the epithet is half-accurate: it is all about style, and very little about real life as she is lived by ordinary people like me. Food that costs more for a single meal than I spend in a week, outrageously expensive and hideously impractical clothes, wallpaper at £300 a roll - what planet do these people live on? Not mine, thank goodness.
Anyway, on to the main topic of this post. The Telegraph's last Shop Local column was all about Chelsea (home of the eponymous tractor, but one would think, few food producers). If you live in Chelsea, it seems that Kent is local - but even by these standards, I thnk it is stretching the point too far to include "Rainforest Creations (07985 235 219) [which] makes salads and cakes from raw foods that only grow in the tropics - a must-try."
I am fortunate enough to live close to Bridport in Dorset - where I can go on Saturdays and buy real local food - produced by farmers, market gardeners, cooks, apple and cider producers and the like, who all live a short drive away. Now that's what I call really local - but I'm not a London journalist - so what do I know?
(Locals are already up in arms about thowaway comments by other distant journos,as you can read on the local paper's web site. Bring on the pitchforks, I say!)
14/05/07 @ 09:46