Guardian links

I thought you might be interested in reading some of the Guardian articles that I’ve been reading over the last week or so.

Today I read that the new series of The Great British Bake Off begins next Tuesday and for the first time they’re going to have one week when the show goes vegan, to reflect the fact that Veganism has become so popular in the UK recently. You can read about it here. It’ll be an interesting episode – whatever.

Still on the subject of food, there was an article on The not so humble potato with lots of tattie recipes, some of which I’ll definitely be giving a go. You can see them here.

As a child I used to look longingly at a neighbour’s World War 2 Anderson shelter, still standing in their garden when we moved to Dumbarton from Glasgow in the 1960s. I really wanted one! If our garden had ever had one it had been removed post-war. I thought it would be a great place to play in, a cute wee house of my own – if we had had one. There’s an article about them here. I still want one.

There’s also an article on stone-stacking which you can read here. I first came across this modern craze for stone-stacking when we went for a walk by the Water of Leith in the Dean Village area. I absolutely hated all the silly looking stacked stones which some man pretending to be an artist (I think) had decided to ‘enhance’ the river with. I had no idea that it had been taken up by lots of other people with the result that popular natural beauty spots are being ruined. Leave no trace has always been the message for people who are keen to do things in the great outdoors. If I ever come across any more of these stone piles I’m going to make a point of kicking them over and restoring the place back to what it should be, for the sake of the wildlife as much as anything else.

It’s ages since I read an article in the Guardian about padlocks being affixed to a bridge in Paris, causing damage to the bridge, and that’s another daft thing which has spread around Europe anyway. I noticed that the stone bridge at Dunkeld has had padlocks attached to the metal lamp standards on it. I suppose the padlock manufacturers are happy about it though!