So far all of the things that we have had to do without because they are not British have not really lead to any great discomfort. However, we always said that if there was going to be one thing that might test our resolve throughout our year it would be something mundane… and that predictions seems like it might be coming true. Our search for British made light bulbs have so far been fruitless. It would appear that the majority of bulbs, even for the promisingly named British Electric Lamps Limited (B.E.L.L) is drawing a blank. We understand that BELL moved most of its manufacturing about 5 years ago to the Far East.

So, what does this mean for the Bradshaw’s? Well unless we find what we are looking for we are going to be living a very Victorian existence.

Our current situation is getting a little alarming. We are currently down to about half of our household capacity for bulbs – in only 6 weeks!!!

We will keep you posted before the lights go out.

Monday 18th February was a very special day for me as it was my first loan British Family experience. I had been invited to visit Jimmy’s Farm owned and run by Jimmy Doherty. I was to join 3 other blogging families to learn more about the latest campaign by Red Tractor to encourage people to ‘Give a fork about your pork’. http://www.channel4.com/explore/giveafork/

The day started out rather badly as Southern Railway were, as always, having ‘issues’ and my train was cancelled. However with a lot of running and the odd elbow here and there I got onto the 11:38 train to Ipswich and I was off. The journey was uneventful and I was delighted to meet one of the organisers at the station and get off to the farm.

The farm is very well signposted (in case you were thinking of visiting) and we arrived to a lovely warm cup of tea and a delicious home baked biscuit. I was greeted by Jimmy and I was very glad to see that the really nice guy that you see on the telly is actually even nicer in person. He was very relaxed and seemed really pleased to meet all the different groups of people.

Wellies were donned by all and we were off to look around the farm and learn more about how Red Tractor works. We were shown the petting area and the playground first, something I know Lucan would have loved. Jimmy told us that to be part of Red Tractor pig farmers have to agree to 130 different specifications and be prepared to be inspected by a vet 4 times a year with another visit as a surprise. When the vets visit all the paperwork and traceability is checked, something that with the horse meat scandal in the fore of our minds at the moment is key for consumer to trust the meat.

The Red Tractor does not mean that the meat has to be farmed in a particular way and Jimmy specialises in rare breed, slow growing pigs that are low intensity farmed. Other farmers use the Red Tractor and farm in different ways. It absolutely depends on what you want from your pork but buying the Red Tractor means that you know exactly where your pork has come from.

Jimmy showed us some piglets with their mum and explained to the children how the Tamworth mummy had met a Gloucester Old Spot daddy and so the piglets have characteristics of both pigs. He explained to us about the system he uses to keep the pigs which allows him to move the pigs easily and quickly from one pen to another.

Once the walk was over it was time to go and meet Jimmy’s dad to watch him section up half a pig carcass. This is another part of the ‘Give a fork about your pork’ campaign. Most of us who eat pork know very little about the range of cuts that should be available at any good supermarket or butcher. The aim of the campaign is to show us how diverse a pig can be when it comes to cooking. We prize the sirloin in a cow but did you know that a pig too has a sirloin? I didn’t until yesterday. Did you know that 20 years ago the pork belly was only used in sausages and now the belly and the ribs are as valuable as the chops?

After all the chopping and walking it was time for lunch. What more could we ask for than beautifully roasted pork with apple sauce, new potatoes and braised red cabbage. It was simply fantastic and even the crackling had a proper crackle. Lunch provided a great opportunity to talk to Jimmy and the other bloggers about what they do and their thoughts about all things British. Jimmy asked us how often we all eat Sunday lunch and I must admit in the Bradshaw household it is not quite a weekly occurrence  I wonder if this is normal across Britain and maybe why we don’t seem to think about where our food comes from? Could the horse meat scandal be the turning point to get us back around the table on a Sunday?

Last thing of the day was a quick bit of shopping in the superb farm shop on the farm and then the photo call for us all.

It really was a fantastic day and I am very very grateful for the opportunity to share it with the great people I met. More than this I think it has given me something else to look for and back as the Red Tractor really seems to be an inclusive and well set up scheme. We are not huge pork eaters normally but I have to say this has really shown me so many benefits I would be dopey not to make it a regular part of our week.

Whether its bacon, sausages, gammon, chops, loin, leg, shoulder or anything else make sure your pork is Red Tractor so you know that what you are eating is safe and checked and more than anything really tasty 😀

– Emily

4 times a year and then have a surprise visit too

It has been a few weeks since we last visited the supermarket for a proper shop. It is becoming plainly obvious to us that buying food for our family is far cheaper if we avoid the supermarkets, and the quality of the fresh produce is far better. This means that a trip to to supermarket is a rare treat rather than a weekly headache.

We did, however, get suckered into buying far more than we originally went for (which was basically black bin bags). It was only when we got home with 5 bags full of stuff that we knew that we had fallen into their trap.

Emily did very nearly fall off the wagon though as having had no lunch the chocolate aisle called. However with nothing within easy reach the temptation had to be ignored, however frustrating it was!

Another things that we did notice while in Waitrose was these new labels denoting the county of origin. This seems like a step in the right direction to us!.

Barcodes have many uses, however, did you know that if your barcode begins with the number  50 that it is supposed to mean that the product that you are holding in your hand was manufactured in the UK? No – well, neither did we until recently.

I suspect that you might now be waving your hands in the air, whooping and giving communal high fives to strangers at this very interesting news… no? Then perhaps you were not as excited as we were to find this out.

However, this is still not an accurate distinguisher of British origin as it also covers the broader remit of ‘packed in the UK’.  As we have discussed before, this just is not cricket as far as we are concerned.

For example – We have had reports of ham both cured and packed in the UK but using EU meat. For the purposes of what we are doing that is not British enough for us, and what with the recent horse meat scandal we suspect that we are all a bit more concerned about the origin of our meat products at the moment.

Ultimately, ‘Packed in the UK’ does not support British manufacture and so for us the 50 barcode rule only serves to further confuse an already difficult labelling issue.

For more information on barcodes or as an antidote to too much Red Bull (or the British equivalent) follow this link: http://www.computalabel.com/aboutean.htm

It is me or is the Union Jack now being banded about on products more than ever? In many ways the increased presence of this symbol of national pride is heart-warming but also to us, at the moment, it is causing great confusion in our ability to buy British.

As there is no consistent labeling for the origin of goods, one of the signs that we automatically look for is the presence of the Union Jack. However, this is regularly a red herring. All too often we pick up something in store on the basis of the flag being clearly part of the branding only to find that is has very little, if anything, to do with being of British origin. A clear example of this was a suit that we found recently with a Union Jack on the swing tag and the hanger. We were very excited about this as a possible British made off the peg suit but when we dug around for certain proof we found the words ‘Made in Romania’ (on a very small tag contained inside the breast pocket). There was nothing about this suit that was British, as far as we could see, but they were quite happy to use the Union Jack as an integral part of the branding. We are still confused as to why.

The use of the the national flag aside – then there is the confusing small print, denoting origin, to contend with. This is also often illogically positioned or misleading, if present at all.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a nationally/internationally recognised kite mark denoting British manufacture? It could be used by manufacturers as a symbol of their pride to have made their goods in this country and would highlight to consumers what this country is capable of producing.

I wonder how we make this happen?

Almost as soon as we started our project to live on only British goods and services we were inundated by people suggesting that what we were starting was something similar to the ‘ I’m Backing Britain’ campaign of the late 1960’s. The more people that have continued to say this to us the more we felt that it was possible. Indeed it would seem the timing is right; we are in economic dire straits as a country, people are genuinely concerned by the decline of our manufacturing heritage and we are, as a country, motivated by a re-energised sense of Britishness following the Olympics and Royal Jubilee last year.

However, we have recently hit a rather substantial bump in our efforts to get the country celebrating the things we are still able to produce.

We are sorry if the next bit is rather cryptic but we hope that you understand why. We recently wrote a letter to a very high profile minister tasked with helping to get British business back on track. This letter was delivered directly into his hands by a reliable intermediary. The feedback we were given was that an EU directive forces the UK government to not support one EU counties produce over another. This same directive forces retailers away from overly favouring one EU country over another in point of sale advertising or promotions. Basically, he was not willing to help us!

This means that such a celebratory campaign as some people remember from the swinging 60’s would be difficult, if not impossible to do again.

However, this will not stop us trying. If there is one trait that the British have in spades it is our ability to face adversity against the odds.

Is there anyone within our fantastic followers with an expert legal background that would be willing to advise us (Pro-Bono I am afraid) on the background of this situation and how we may overcome such adversity?

I must add an important caveat to this post; we are not politicians and do not want to take any particular stance on the UK’s involvement with Europe or other political matters. We will not be drawn into comment on our own beliefs in this regard, as we feel that it detracts from the intended celebratory and inclusive nature of what we are trying to achieve.

We have just had an interesting trip to Bluewater and there was one aspect of the trip that we felt deserved a post all of its own. That is the issue of a lack of British made children’s toys.

It would seem that buying British made toys is an impossible task. We visited Hawkins Bazaar, which was filled to the rafters with noisy, flapping and brightly coloured gadgets, non of which are made in the UK (or at least that we could see). Lucan inevitably picked up a load of stuff all produced in China which,when we had to escape this sensory overload, we had to wrestle off him. As you can imagine this ended in Lucan screaming and kicking as we fought our way through the far too narrow isles.

We next went John Lewis, which we felt might be a better bet to find British made toys. However, this was not to be the case. Having turned over every box  it seemed like every country was represented but the UK. There were small plastic toys made in Germany, novelty items made in Poland and well known favorites made in the Scandinavian counties. But the overwhelming majority were made in China – even the John Lewis own brand stuff. Rather depressingly even the old British favorites, like Corgi cars and Hornby trains, are now produced in the Far East.

Lucan picked up a toy tractor and a stuffed Paddington bear, both of which were not British. We were desperate to find something to negotiate these two items away from him. We did find one saving grace, Orchard Toys, who produce books and jigsaw puzzles. Using all of our parental negotiation skills and some slight-of-hand we got him to the till with just the Orchard Toys tractor puzzle.

It has to be said that this made us both feel really rubbish. We knew that there were things on offer that Lucan would have loved but could not have because of our self imposed rules. It was really hard not to relent when he was fawning over these, perfectly nice toys.

Moving forward, the concern for us is that Britain just might not make fun toys for kids anymore. More generally you can find plenty of twee wooden trains, and the Orchard Toys puzzles are great, but where is the proper toy manufacturing in this country?

We have already seen in our search for all things British this year that we can make molded plastic items, electrical components and of course we know we are good at traditional wooden items. Why then are there not companies making toys for the children of the UK to play with? Why are companies like John Lewis outsourcing even their production of wooden toys to Indonesia and China, a mainstay of traditional British toy manufacturing? We would love to know.

We always knew that were unlikely to find disposable nappies made in Britain. However, we hung on to hope, far beyond the point at which we realistically knew that all hope was indeed lost. The alternative, a far too scary a proposition for us to fully admit to – the reusable nappy!

Reusable nappies seem to have such a devout following, and generate such passionate advocacy from the parents that use them, that you cannot simply dismiss the concept as hippy nonsense. It seems that those that use them come from a broad spectrum of society and are not all eco-warriors, earth mothers or smell overwhelmingly of patchouli oil. Many of them, in our experience, seem quite reasonable people who live squarely in the modern world. So, it would be unfair for us to be totally dismissive of their virtues. But in short, if you were to ask us if we would be using them if there was any other British made disposable alternative, we would have no hesitation in saying no. We also fully accept that this standpoint may indeed change as we get used to the concept of waking up and scraping poo every morning.

Lucan only uses nappies at night and occasionally when we make a long journey out. This means that most days we are down to 1 nappy a day, which in itself is a small mercy. We bought the Tots Bots Bamboozle stretch nappies about 2 weeks ago now. We have had a brief period, of a couple of nights, when we dug into our disposable reserves. This was because Lucan was ill but apart from that we have used the Tots Bots for about 10 days.

It must be pointed out that Tots Bots are one of the nicest companies that we have dealt with and they are obviously passionate about their products. Upon ordering I was a little confused as to what I needed and they took the time to explain everything to me. They also admitted that some of their stock of the neutral coloured Bamboozles are made abroad (so be careful with these if you are being strict on buying British). They also have a wealth of information and videos on their website, which despite how simple you think strapping your sprog into one of these things looks, you definitely need to watch!

The first night did not bode well for us. Lucan woke up at about 3am and was wet through. He had  also done a rather substantial number 2. My inexperience at trying to change these things, was compounded by the half light of his Thomas the Tank night light, and resulted in a complete poo-smeared disaster area.

At this point lesser families might have given up, and indeed we did leave it a couple of days before trying again (mainly due to Lucan being ill). I must admit that since that first night we have not had a repeat performance to rival the first and the process is getting a little easier.

What I can see is that if we had started with these types of nappies, we (Lucan included) could have got used to them from the start. Changing to this style of nappy just as he is potentially coming out of nappies is not possibly a wise move. It must also be said that there is quite a large initial outlay of expense which I am not convinced we will see back. Again, had we used them from the start we can see how there would be an eventual cost saving.

The Tots Bots nappies themselves are impeccably constructed and once you get the hang of using them they are a viable alternative to disposables. The question is whether they are right for us at the stage we are at? They certainly allow us to continue living British with pride, but having now had a number of 5am wake up calls, as Lucan shouts he has done a wee and is ‘wet wet’, they are perhaps not ideal for this British family.

This being said we have just ordered some more.

– James & Emily

We have done pretty well recently at finding all sorts of fun and unusual things to do with our glut of apples and pears. Twitter followers and those posting on the blog have been great at helping us to be inventive and make sure that we don’t get bored.

You can imagine then my delight at getting home tonight and finding that along with the fabulous produce that we always get from Kent Veg Box there was a glint of pink stalks hiding in the box with the apples and pears. The first rhubarb is upon us and I am so excited that a thousand recipes come to mind. Needless to say the first is a scrummy rhubarb crumble but with the inventiveness from the apples and pears still fresh in my mind, I wonder what else I could do with the beautiful pink stalks?? Watch this space and I’ll let you know 😉

– Emily

British boffins are the best in the world… we all know that. However, if you ever have the misfortune of being on the wrong side of their genius (evil genius, if you will) then you, like us, will be quickly prompted into remedial action. This was the set of circumstances under which we recently found ourselves.

Long story short; our site (with a certain degree of self confessed irony) was hosted on foreign servers. This was because I originally plonked the site on an unused server which I had already paid for  and was a little loathed to pay out a second time. This, according to our own rules, was ok, but not to the geeks of the United Kingdom. They contacted us in their hundreds stating (quite rightly) that this was just not cricket!

So, a plea went out to find a truly British host to ‘please make these emails stop’. In step Namesco to our rescue. They undertook all of the technical work to move the site with little fuss and great tech support. As a result of their fantastic effort, today Britishfamily.co.uk is now proudly hosted on British servers by a great British hosting company. Hoorah!

– James