Friends

I went out for dinner last night with three other mums from school. Our children have formed a close group with each other and so it is fairly natural that we should also have become friends, picking up each other's kids from school and helping each other out in various ways. Despite having known each other for a few years, though, last night was the first time the four of us had got together by ourselves, so I wasn't too sure quite what we'd talk about or whether the evening would go well.

As anyone who has studied female psychology could have told me though, I needn't have worried: we didn't stop talking from the moment we met till the moment we parted! It was amazing how many topics of conversation we could cover in two and a half hours: swimming, getting children dressed, recorder lessons, book groups, The Shack, money pressures, mortgages, periods, chickens, morning routines, what happened when it snowed, mooncups (if you're a woman find out more about these amazing things here), religion, India, Valentines Day, painting, friendship needs... oh yes, and of course how often our husbands want sex.

As I left, I noticed four other women who I knew sitting at another table. They were all instructors at my gym and no doubt were chatting about similar things (and their legs, bums and tums).

If I hadn't gone out with my friends last night I would've been in the pub with a dozen or so of us who meet once a month under the title of 'Green Drinks'. It's a social thing coming out of Transition Chichester and is a great opportunity to meet, drink, chat, dream, rant, engage and spark.

And the point of all this? Well, simply to say that we are designed to be with each other. We are made for community. We may be introvert or extrovert, doesn't matter. We all need friends.

Get chitting

Our seed potatoes have arrived today. Time to look out my empty egg boxes, work out which end of the potatoes have the most buds, and annoy Greg by filling our sitting room with little potatoes sitting in egg boxes doing this  near-superstitious thing called 'chitting'.

If you grow your own spuds and haven't got your order in yet then you'd better get on with it.

Has Jamie saved your bacon?

Well, I couldn't let Jamie's latest programme go by without comment now could I? After all, as a pig keeper myself I feel rather attached to its subject matter. I watched it with my two allotment friends, as we went through the catalogues choosing our seed potatoes and other goodies for the coming allotment year. Apparently unaware of the irony, one of my friends had cooked sausages for us to eat while we watched: sausages of the finest* variety but not free-range by a long shot. Hmmmm.

As always, Jamie (and Hugh too whose chicken programme was excellent) is to be congratulated in using his fame and money not simply to earn himself more of the same but to do some good with it. A number of excellent organisations have been raising the issue of pig welfare and the plight of British farming for some time, but it takes a big-name celebrity to bring it before the mainstream public.

So well done, Jamie. And yet I couldn't help but feel that the message was a bit muddled. One the one hand, yes, let's support British pork because they are at a disadvantage because of their better welfare conditions. And yet, on the other hand, let's also be in no doubt that the much of British pork is raised in conditions that we would still not be happy with if we wanted to see pigs doing what they're supposed to be doing, in the environment they're supposed to be in. And making an enemy out of Dutch Crown may be fair enough, but actually the real baddies in the game (US company Smithfield Foods who are the largest pork producers in the world) went unmentioned.

And of course the supermarkets have a huge responsibility in all of this. Jamie did bring them in, but his position within Sainsburys compromised him and meant that he couldn't deal with any of them too severely. I went into my local Tesco-express to see what they have on their shelves. The majority of their pre-packed bacon is Dutch with some British, but nearly all of their pre-packed ham was simply 'produced in the EU'. To all intents and purposes this is another way of saying, 'produced in Poland by Smithfield Foods'.

Let's hope Jamie does some good. Let's hope labelling gets clearer. Let's hope people actively support British pork producers. Let's hope people begin actually to think about what's behind the food that they're eating. If you're inspired enough you could even think about making your own bacon!

Read Felicity Lawrence's thoughts on the matter here.