When we started this project we were expecting that there would be things that we were going to just have to live without, simply because they are not manufactured in the UK. It would appear, we have found our first hole in British manufacturing. We are unable to get British made household batteries. We have spent 2 weeks scouring the net, researching companies and speaking directly to industry experts. Even our mighty Twitter followers have been stumped. We are now ready to call off the search and admit that there are simply no UK battery manufactures.

There is still a small glimmer of hope concerning rechargeable and perhaps even USB charging batteries (still doubtful) but as far as the humble AA’s and AAA’s are concerned the Bradshaw’s are having to go without.

It is possible to make very simple batteries, you might have even done this at school, but without using rather scary chemicals I am not sure we are ever going to get enough voltage to power anything more than a pocket calculator for a few minutes.

We are now rationing batteries in the Bradshaw house at the moment and I am conscious that I cannot remember ever changing the AAA’s in the TV remote. Under sods-law I can envisage those being the first to go ( I will let you know when we are at battery rubbing stage). 

– James

We have hardly been in our house for 3 month, so garden design has not exactly been a top priority. It is, however, now becoming more important as we will look to supplement our diet with plenty of home grown goodies.

We are lucky to have been offered half an allotment by our neighbours which is where all the permanent fruit bushes etc and possibly some asparagus will go. This frees up the garden for a big area for Lucan to run and play as he gets bigger, and also for a long thin raised bed for the annual veggies to be put where they will be easy to tend. 

We have a LARGE shed for all of James’ man-stuff and I have a small greenhouse currently half built (which I am very excited about as it is my first ever). James would also like to try his hand at brick laying and would like to create an entertaining space complete a pizza oven, BBQ and maybe even a tandoor so we can really enjoy our British produce in the summer.

All this, you can imagine, is quite a lot to squeeze into a back garden. I have measured as much as I can and have done a quick design as an idea but I would really love any ideas that anyone else has to make the most of the space. The garden is South East facing with a giant oak tree at the end (which will contain a grand tree house for Lucan). There is also a very well established camellia plant and a magnolia between the shed and the greenhouse. The soil is pH neutral and very densely chalky where the old railway line used to run through our back garden 50 years ago.

Any and all help from the wacky to the sublime would be very gratefully received to make the most of the space and of course all the materials and plants will be properly British.

Thank you in advance, I will keep you posted how things progress.

– Emily

We are not even 3 weeks into our quest to live a normal family life on only British goods and services, but there has been one reoccurring question we get asked – Is it not going to be really expensive?

If you would have asked us just after our first supermarket shop we would have replied to this with a positive yes. However, things are starting to change. The more research we put in the more bargains we find.

Our weekly grocery shopping is now back to it’s usual average of about £100 per week. This is because we found Kent Veg Box who supply all of our fruit, veg, milk, bread and eggs. The variety, quality and cost is significantly better then the supermarkets and as such our weekly bills are going down.

But it is not just groceries. Small plastic items like Rainbow Trugs and Kent combs & toothbrushes are comparative in price to those manufactured abroad and, in our view, far better quality.

Unique Kids fleece range – funky and affordable

Clothes are indeed an area of difficultly as much of what is produced is very high-end, but we are actually finding great value items of clothing too. Take for instance Unique Kid. The Bradshaws have another photoshoot today with the Daily Mail and I wanted something British for Lucan to wear for the photos.   Like most parents, Emily and I are cost consious when buying kids clothes. For day to day wear, we don’t want to pay designer prices for clothes that will be used & abused and be grown out of in a couple of months. This is why Unique Kids was a fantastic find. All of their fleeces, hats, gloves and scarves are made in Wales at a price comparative to, dare I say, Primark. However, the quality is still exceptional! Plus Dr Jo, who owns this brand, is really passionate about what she is doing!

Now when someone asks me if living British is more expensive I would still have to answer yes. But now the reason is not that we cannot find the things we need at a great price but more that we are finding most of what we see utterly irresistible!

-James

What has become quickly apparent while only buying British is that the level of customer service we have received from the companies across the nation is fantastic. Almost without exception, the pleasure of dealing with the people we have come across out weighs the value if the items we are actually buying. Once you leave the sterile environment of the supermarket or the high street you find a wealth of people that really understand what they are selling. 

The pleasure of picking up the phone or receiving an email from somebody that actually cares about their products and, most of all, cares that you love the thing you are willing to purchase is a beautiful thing.

I remember my grandmother talking about the gradual decline of good service from the 1940-50’s but never really understood what this meant. I would like to share with you a recent and particularly memorable example:

One of the first things that I bought when we embarked on our mission to buy only British goods was a pair of Marko John’s socks. I had some communication with the man himself before receiving my package but it was the content of that package which left a lasting memory.

Tucked just inside the neatly folded fuchsia tissue paper and  resting on my brand new lavender coloured socks was a letter. This letter, printed on slightly buff Conquer paper, was a personal message of thanks for my first order. This was not some generic corporate platitude produced by a overactive marketing department – this was a genuine message of appreciation that I had chosen to invest my hard-earned money in something they had made. Opening this package was no longer about buying a pair of socks, it was almost like discovering a time capsule to a level of customer service long forgotten. It suddenly made me understand what my Grandma was talking about.

It must be said that this is not an isolated incident. Once we began ordering more from smaller manufacturers and retailers the more we began to experience the passions of the individuals directly involved in the product they are selling.

Such interactions now make buying the mundane into something really pleasurable.

– James

Emily and I discussed this morning the whole horse meat story in the press over the last couple of days. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21054688.

I think the issue for us is not that the burgers contained horse meat, this is a perfectly accepted meat source for some cultures, but the fact that there has been some level of deceit. Food that we serve in good faith to our families, it would seem, is not necessarily always presented to us honestly and this is very worrying. 

The press have labeled this a contamination, suggesting that it was an accidental occurrence. But it begs the question – given the significant amount of production, has something more untoward been happening here? Are we really aware of the extent of similar such “ contamination”? My gut instinct tells me not.

Given the demand for cheaper and cheaper products, perhaps we have lost some perspective of what our groceries should cost if produced ethically?

If there is a demand for cheaper meat and horse is a viable alternative why should we not sell horse burgers – if they are clearly labelled? Of course we do not have a culture of eating this type of meat in this country but at least there would be an informed choice as a consumer.

I will point out that I have never eaten horse, (at least not knowingly) but as we happily eat cows and sheep, horse meat is not an unreasonable source of protein. However, I will also admit to being typically British and rather squeamish about the idea.

It is a very controversial area and I understand that it is not in our normal blog domain but while we are looking at British brands we need also to make sure that they are looking after us and representing us the way we would expect.

– James

Following our recent brush with the media we are truly humbled by the overwhelmingly positive feedback about our project. We are very much feeling part of a national community here in the Bradshaw home-stead and are deeply moved by the strength of feeling on the subject of British manufacturing.

As we saw last year – isn’t it great that we, as a country, can rally together (leaving behind all differences) to put our combined weight behind something great? There is a small home in Kent where a normal British family continue to feel a small part of this spirit. We thank you all for it!

While we have spent many late nights trying to respond individually to every email and Tweet that has come to us, we hope you appreciate that this is getting more and more difficult. We promise to read every single communication that you send to us but we apologise if we are unable to get back to you personally. Please do not let this stop you getting in touch though. It is important to us, throughout the next year (and beyond), to get your continued support – both emotional and practical.

– Yours a truly proud British family

James filming in our garden with Graham Satchell – from of the telly!

It has been a very busy week for us. As many of you have heard (or seen) the Bradshaws have been busy letting even more people know about what we are doing, and why. We started off with KentFM, moved on to The Mail on Sunday and finished off with the BBC. Not bad going!

We are personally surprised that anyone at all is interested in what we are doing and it is all very humbling.  I must admit that the whole media experience, while being rather daunting to start with, has been great fun for the whole family. We are very grateful to everyone involved.

The morning started with a stroll (at 8am) to the local news agents to get the Mail on Sunday. I raced home to find James still in bed and woke him by excitedly throwing a copy of the paper at him. The article was far better and bigger than we would have imagined. Despite Tabby (the truly outstanding reporter for the MoS) telling us it was a big deal, it never quite hit home until we saw it in the flesh. We are please that we were able to get some of the British manufactures who who have found so far also profiled. We are even more pleased to hear that, on the back of this publicity  some have had their best sales to date!

Anyway, after the initial excitement of our first brush with the national press we had a whole day filming with the BBC to come. James was excited to meet Graham Satchell, who he recognised from the TV. Graham arrived with Simon the camera-man and we headed off into Westerham high street to do some shopping/filming.

We visited 3 shops in town; Chocs on the Green, The Ivy House and Zebra Zebra. We were filmed buying some chocolates from Chocs on the Green and a beautiful woolen blanket from The Ivy house (all British). We then filmed some interview bits with the large statue of Churchill who sits pride of place on the green – how fitting.

Then we all headed off home to do some filming around the house. James was filmed pottering in his shed, more interviews to camera and I was filmed in the kitchen talking about the food we eat (talk about stereotyping). Graham was really cruel and had bought some French Brie and Belgium Chocolates to try and tempt us away from our British produce. You will be glad to know we resisted.

They left our house at around 4pm, so we had been filming for well over 5 hours by that point. All this for just 2-3 minutes of film! It was a really enjoyable process though, helped by Graham and Simon’s very easy manner. Two truly nice guys! The film will be on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday and repeated on BBC South East News in the evening.

The blanket we bought while filming with the BBC

We have now been dealing with the piles of emails and Twitter comments. This is going to take a couple of days to get back to everyone but we love the feedback, which has been overwhelmingly positive. Please keep it up as it really is very much appreciated!

– Emily

Proof of our truly British shop (The French Fancies are Baked in the UK by a British company, we promise.)

Even with the phenomenal offerings from Kent Veg Box this week the need arose for us to go to the supermarket (and eventually 2 supermarkets in order to get all that we needed). It is normally something that I do on my own and wiz round as fast as possible, getting all the things that we always need. However as we are now an all British family the shopping inevitably takes quite a bit longer. Also as we are still at the beginning of the project James is very interested in seeing how easy the weekly shop is, or not as the case may be.

Our destination at 8am this morning was Tesco, Riverhead. This branch of Tesco is a very large one so I thought that I would naturally find everything we needed, and probably more. We started on a real high as I discovered that Rimel make up is manufactured in England and is proud to state this clearly on the packaging. One mascara and nail vanish later we were ready to move on. Next was soap and on to Pears, which is a particular favorite for James (he loves the smell). Alas here we were not so lucky, as something that you might associate with a British bygone era is actually manufactured in India.

As we made our way into food we came first to the butter where I immediately grabbed what I normally do (out of habit, I must admit), the Tesco everyday value Salted Butter. Interestingly the salted butter stated that it was produced in England and Ireland while the Unsalted was produced in just England. This seemed a little strange! We bought another brand in the end which did not have this same confusion, even if it was 40p more expensive.

Cheese was much easier and thankfully Tesco have a simple and relatively clear policy of putting the flag of the country of origin on the front of the cheese packaging. This led me away from the Parmasan and towards a hard goats cheese and a Somerset Brie, both of which look delicious. I will try to remember to let you know how they fair in a later blog.

The next triumph was oil.  A delicious looking bottle of cold pressed Hill Farm rapeseed oil (who we know about through Twitter). There was even a choice of different UK produced oils and so I have had my faith restored that this year is certainly not going to be boring in culinary terms. We did however have a disappointment in the very next shelf with vinegars. The Aspall vinegars were what we had hoped would carry us through but sadly they are not produced in the UK, or rather are very ambiguous as to where the vinegar is produced. As such we had to move on with a trolley empty of vinegar.

A general problem we came across in Tesco was a label on the packaging saying ‘Packed in the UK’. We debated this one quickly and decided that it did not score very highly at all on our Britishness scale at all. Packed in Britain seemed to us to be a bit of a rubbish non-statement about the good provenance.

Last but not least we made it to the wine. Knowing little about English wine I thought that there might be a small section dedicated to this recent but brilliant trend. We were very disappointed to find only one English wine in a whole aisle of wines from every other continent. There was nothing in either the red or the sparkling sections, despite the fact that there are super wines made within 40 miles of the store. Needless to say I was not impressed, and even less so that I now had to make a separate trek to Waitrose to buy the elusive English wine.

The wine was finally found in Waitrose although there was still a disappointing show.  That said, we now had a yummy white in the form of Chapel Downs ‘Baccus’ and hopefully an equally good fizz and red for tomorrow to toast our first proper dive into the UK media (More information tomorrows blog).

It must be said that dragging a 2 year old around 2 supermarkets in one day in order to ensure that our weekly shop was entirely British was no fun at all.

-Emily