Words: Sophie McKeand | Photography: Andy Garside The recipes in these OUTSIDER chapters are all created with Slow Food in mind. I’ve been obsessed with the idea of slow food since being part of Cittaslow (an international Slow Town movement) some years ago when we lived in yr Wyddgrug, north Wales. Here’s a quick quote from the Slow Food International website: Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions,…
Words & photography: Sophie McKeand I no longer experience time. Perhaps it is time that experiences me. Travelling is changing me at an almost atomic level. Slowly, I metamorphose into the water cycle, learning to precipitate, to tumble along as a river then gush out into the sea. There is a place in which time no longer exists, just the vast expanse of the ocean – a flat blue line in all directions. I dive down through dimensions. It is…
by Sophie McKeand control: when I see you in dreams / your grief is a moon harrying oceans / on black nights I am weather patterns stuttering across the sky / it is exhausting to be shifting in this way // I can no longer be the rivers of your tears / can no longer be the dam or funnel you towards beauty // I have built endless canopies as shelter from this lunar gaze / still, interference weeps like…
Words & photography: Andy Garside As we travel around Europe we witness the most beautiful, natural sites. From alpine peaks to unspoilt coastlines. But, there’s a certain beauty to be found in abandoned spaces that are slowly being reclaimed by nature. As we were back in north Croatia early this spring I had to take a detour to this well known ‘urban exploration’ spot – Haludovo Palace Hotel located on the island of Krk. Originally built in the early 1970s…
Words: Sophie McKeand | Photography: Andy Garside Walking the farmers markets in the south of France I cannot escape the mountains of apricots piled in plump furry pyramids of sunset-shades. Next to this, tables overflow, tumbling with shiny, fat cherries, their skins a deep wine-red promising to stain greedy fingers & lips. I’ve been honing this recipe over the past few weeks but finally it all comes together during a trip to the medieval French town of Mirepoix. Of course,…
Fat French apricots at the farmers market in Mirepoix this week – a table of tumbling sunsets, tasting as sweet as they look. New recipe lands tomorrow along with some thoughts on the slow food ethos that inspires these latest ideas. There’s a poetic piece on slow travel as well as a poem written to sum up my feelings on Brexit. After that I feel I cannot engage with the whole mess any longer. Along with all of this, an…
I’ve been so busy getting all the new work ready to drop on Patreon this Friday morning I forgot to do a blog for today. Anyway we were paid a visit by this glorious cream spot tiger moth recently, at one point it landed on my hand. What a beauty! Thanks to our daughter @rhi_mckeand for the identification. Learning the names of the plants & creatures makes complete sense through this organic process of being in nature instead of a…
Revisiting some earlier sections of OUTSIDER this week before the new Patreon chapter drops on Thursday morning. Back in March 2018 I wrote: I am mother, partner, daughter, step-mother, granddaughter & grandmother, (these last two seem impossible but the five of us span almost a century) and it has taken a long time to see past the guilt of needing more than this, of being more than this. I realise now that I am not solely these things, they are…
The price of freedom: We’ve been living in the van now for almost 18months & have met travellers of all ages & backgrounds. There’s millennials taking a year or two out of the ratrace, carving a different career for themselves through YouTube & social media channels; there’s early retirees who’ve got property back home they rent out, using that money to travel; there’s people like us working to disentangle themselves from the burnout of the more/faster/better capitalist competitive life, who…
There are so many ways to map a place. I do it with words & metaphor (& increasingly sound), Andy does it with photography & he has an amazing, innate sense of direction. As the months roll by into seasons we spend less time worrying about where to go because the places we need always seem to find us in the most serendipitous ways. We’re not adverse to using technology: on a practical level park4night is great for finding overnight…