Creature Candy

Fancy a dangling brown long-eared bat on your tea towel or mug? Yep, so do we...

The brainchild of ecologist and entrepreneur Lizzie Barker, Creature Candy was created to help raise awareness of Britain’s declining and protected wildlife. Focusing on a trio of compelling species (the buff-tailed bumblebee, the brown long-eared bat and the privet hawk-moth) the products are simple yet stunning. We are particularly taken by the bat design, which adorns notebooks, prints, mugs and tea towels.

Having studied endangered species and worked alongside charities such as the Bat Conservation Trust, Lizzie donates 10% of every purchase to help British wildlife and each online purchase comes with additional information on the relevant species. Surely you need no further reason to go out and treat yourself to something special, and feel very good about helping a worthy cause at the same time.

A4 prints £10, soap £6.50, creaturecandy.co.uk

Words by contributing editor Duncan Haskell.

Play the game

From Cold War strategy and gold-mining to railway building and crop harvesting, board game aficionado Henry Ward recommends six classic eurogames to play long into the summer evenings

I have a guilty teenage past; a misspent youth. From the age of 10, I devoted my time to battling giants, exploring castles and seeking treasure. I played Dungeons & Dragons. I was geekily excited by the paraphernalia: I meticulously painted miniature models, painstakingly recorded my alter-ego’s character traits and covered my bedroom walls with maps of other worlds. I barely existed in the here and now. The collective name for gamers is a stink. And I think there’s good reason for this.

When I was 16, I discovered other things to be interested in; namely music, films and girls. I packed my dragons away. But 30 years later I find myself, once again, obsessed with board games. Not Monopoly and Cluedo. These are actually fairly shit. Games like Stone Age, in which a tribe of Neolithic people build a civilisation, breaking stones and washing their gold in the river. It comes complete with a leather cup that smells really nice. Power Grid, a game in which you build an infrastructure of power stations across Germany. Agricola, where you take on the role of a farmer struggling to feed his family in post-plague Europe. And my current favourite, Twilight Struggle, a faithful reenactment of the Cold War between 1945 and 1989, played out over four hours. Go on, give one of these classics a go...

Twilight Struggle
Ananda Gupta & Jason Matthews; £36.99
A strategic reenactment of the Cold War from the end of WWII to 1989. The game uses cards printed with historic events and a world map on which players place influence points as they try to secure victory. If it goes to 1989 you can be playing for four hours!

Ticket to Ride: Europe
Alan R Moon; £31.49
This game holds a distinct memory for me. We had a rainy family holiday in Yorkshire a few years ago and ended up playing Ticket to Ride for hours. The aim is to build rail routes across Europe – either to finish secret mission routes, which players have on cards dealt at the beginning, or be the builder of the longest railway. A great family game; it may well have inspired us to go Interrailing a few years down the line!

7 Wonders
Antoine Bauza; £28.99
A quick 20-minute game for 2-7 players, and yet fantastically rich thematically. Everyone plays simultaneously, so there’s no tiring waiting around for that one person who takes ages over a go. Each player attempts to build one of the original 7 Wonders and a civilisation to go with it. You can focus on building an army, creating an economy, constructing monuments or encouraging science. It sounds much more complex than it actually is. Well worth a go.

Agricola
Uwe Rosenberg; £42.99
Another ‘worker placement’ game where players start with a farm and two pieces to place on it. You can play solo or with up to 5 players. As the game progresses you develop your farm: creating fields and pastures, raising animals, planting and reaping crops. With each harvest you have to ensure there’s enough food to feed your growing family. It’s a game I return to time and time again. It looks frighteningly complicated but it is well worth it.

Lost Valley: the Yukon Goldrush 1896
Tobias, Roland & Johannes Goslar; £44.99
A recent acquisition, which was first published in 2004. Each player takes the role of a prospector. As you explore the valley by placing tiles, you choose to mine for gold, hunt for furs or gather clues to buried treasure. You can return to the general store to trade in nuggets for tools but you must watch out for the coming of winter, which ends the game.

Caylus
William Attia; £27.99
A wonderful example of a pure strategy game. It’s for 2-5 players but I like it as a 2-player chess-like battle. Players use their workers to build a castle and gather resources. One of my favourite gaming memories is spending hours playing this with my gaming buddy Joe on holiday in Wales. We sat outside and drank pints of Reverend James ale and ate pork scratchings. Gaming bliss.

Henry Ward is an artist, writer and educator based in London. He paints, draws, takes photographs, plays board games and attempts to make music on a growing collection of string instruments.

henryhward.com

 

 

 

You can read Henry's exploration of the psychology of board games in the third print issue of Ernest Journal, on sale now, or listen to his podcast at oddpodcast.com

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Pictures of the floating world

Traditional scenes of Japanese life and culture, captured in silk. Yes, we rather like these new pocket squares from Cravat Club, hand-crafted in Britain

Uyiko-e means 'pictures of the floating world' in Japanese. The traditional art form consists of woodblock prints and paintings usually depicting beautiful women, landscapes and scenes from history and folklore.

Cravat Club founder Jenny Meguro has strong connections to Japan: "I lived in the country for five years, and I have a Japanese husband. I love the traditional art of Ukiyo-e and I thought it would work really well printed on silk pocket squares.

"Instead of being a repeat pattern on a pocket square, they're more aesthetically pleasing as a whole picture, and you can show different parts of the design and colours of the square each time you fold it and put it in your blazer or waistcoat pocket."

There are three Ukiyo-e designs to choose from: Maiko, Koi Carp and Mount Fuji, each of which come in a choice of colours. They were designed by London-based Japanese artist Yusuke Aoki. Find out more about the collection here.

This is a sponsored blog post, created in collaboration with Cravat Club. For more information on partnerships and joining our directory please email advertise@ernestjournal.co.uk.

John Bigg: The Dinton Hermit (1629-1696)

In Oxford's Ashmolean Museum you will find a pair of rather cumbersome looking shoes, the result of hundreds of separate pieces of leather being nailed on top of one another. They tell the story of one John Bigg, the 'Dinton Hermit', who was once the executioner of the King and took to living in a cave for his remaining forty years

We all know what it’s like to work really hard in your job only to see the fruits of your labour ruined by somebody else. Sometimes it’s enough to make you want to turn your back on life and head for the closest hole. Such was the case with John Bigg from Dinton, Buckinghamshire, a hardworking clerk to Simon Mayne, one of the judges responsible for sentencing King Charles I to death in 1649. With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 undoing all of his previous endeavours, Bigg spiralled into a depression and took to living in a nearby cave.

This reclusive lifestyle was only made possible due to the kindness of strangers. Bigg, previously a man of tolerable wealth, relied on the charity of the local people who provided him with food, drink and leather scraps. It is said that round his girdle hung three bottles, two of which held beer and the other milk.

He nailed these scraps to his clothes, the original material having long ago perished within the hostile cave air. One of his shoes can still be seen in the British Collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It is a bulky and cumbersome looking thing, the result of hundreds of separate pieces being nailed on top of one another, a constantly morphing reminder of almost forty years spent in isolation.

See John Bigg's shoes in Gallery 27, First Floor of the Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH

Duncan Haskell is a writer living in Bristol. Having fallen through the cracks in the pavement, despite doing all he could as a child to avoid them, Duncan has been working his way back to the surface, writing down all he’s heard along the way. 

 

Pemmican: for men and dogs

Pimekan, or pemmican as we’ve come to know it, is a high-fat, high-protein snack that was eaten as a travel food in pre-colonial America. The word comes from the Cree language, and means “manufactured grease”. Try out the recipe for this essential snack eaten by fur traders, Antarctic explorers and sled dogs


Its ingredients consisted of ground-up dried meat and, on special occasions, berries, which were held together with animal fat and packed into rawhide bags for long journeys. It could be eaten raw, cooked in a vegetable stew (rubaboo in Métis French) or fried with onions and potatoes (rechaud).

The food was traded with European voyageurs in the Canadian fur trade, then found its way back to Europe, where it became part of the provisions of early Polar explorers. Recently, it has become popular with Paleo dieters as a high-energy ‘superfood’

Recipes changed with the climate and what was available,and the ratio of meat to fat rose from 2:1 to 1:1 in the winter. Adjust the recipe based on how and when you will eat it.

Method

  • Firstly, grind the meat (use beef, venison, lamb or buffalo), spread on a baking sheet then cook at 80°C for eight hours or until crispy. Let it cool, then grind into a powder.

  • To render the fat (suet or lard), melt it in a pan until it becomes a golden-brown liquid. Strain to remove the solids and allow to cool. Repeat the process if you want your pimekan to really last.

  • Grind up dried seedless berries such as cranberries, currants, blueberries or raisins, and mix with the meat, then pour in the fat. In warm climes, use just enough to moisten the mixture; if it’s very cold, use equal amounts of meat and fat. 

  • Mix well and press into bars or balls, then pop in the fridge to cool. When solid, wrap the pimekan in waxed paper (or rawhide!) and put aside for your next adventure.

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Guy Lochhead is a primary school teacher living in Bristol. He is currently gathering sources via the British Whybrary, putting on gory am-dram classical tragedies and starting Bristol's first co-op gym.