Alastair Sawday Publishing wins environmental award at the IPG

Hi everybody. I can’t believe I have waited over a week to announce to you all that Sawday’s won an Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) award at a ceremony held at the Grand Hotel in Brighton on Saturday 8 March. We scooped the Environmental Award for our continuing contribution to greener publishing!

At the risk of shamelessly blowing our own trumpet, here’s what the IPG say about us winning the award:

With green issues currently at the forefront of publishers’ minds, Alastair Sawday Publishing was singled out in this category as a model for all independents to follow. Its efforts to reduce waste in its office and supply chain have reduced the company’s environmental impact, and it works closely with staff to identify more areas of improvement. “Here is a publisher who lives and breathes green,” said the panel of judges. “Alastair Sawday has all the right principles and is clearly committed to improving its practice further.”

And here’s Alastair’s response:

Winning this award gives us a terrific boost! I admire the IPG for having the foresight to create it, thus bringing the urgent need for environmental awareness to so many small publishing companies. And our staff have been hugely encouraged by the award to make further efforts. In fact they will be even more ready, now, to challenge me when I don’t come up to scratch. The die is now fully cast.

For more information about the other awards and nominations visit the The Independent Publishing Awards 2008 page on the IPG website.

In other news, Alastair will be doing Go Slow England presentations and book signings in Bristol and Bath next week. Check out the author tour dates pages for details. Alastair has also written a new post on his personal blog so head over there to have a look at what he has to say about the future of UK tourism.

Cheers, Thomas

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The Griffin Inn

Hello and sorry about the two day absence. I’ve been away with the rest of the Sawday’s gang on our annual overnight gathering out of the office. We had a wonderful time doing lots of fun get-to-know-you type activities and even one or two things that resembled productive work. More about that later. 

We got back yesterday in time for Alastair to make his first promotional appearance at Stanfords in Bristol. The event had already sold out earlier in the week and was a big success. If you want to see Alastair at his second Bristol appearance or catch him in either London or Bath then check the author tour dates page for more information. 

For now I will leave you with another set of sample pages from Go Slow England. I haven’t uploaded anything from the South East before so I hope you enjoy reading these pages about The Griffin Inn in Sussex.

Cheers, Thomas

 Buy Go Slow England 

See other sample pages

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Last day to pre-register for Go Slow England (and more Hog Blog!)

Hi everybody and yes indeed, today is the last day that we will be taking pre-registrations for Go Slow England. If all goes to plan (fingers crossed!) it will be available to buy from the Alastair Sawday Publishing online bookshop tomorrow and I’ll be emailing everybody who pre-registered a special code for a 45% discount. Today will also be the last day you can vote in our poll on the best place in England to go slow.

Click here to pre-register and vote.

Also, in one week Go Slow England publisher and author Alastair Sawday makes his first promotional appearance at Stanfords in Bristol. Click here for details and click here for a full list of Alastair’s appearances.

Until then, I’ll leave you with the next instalment of The Hog Blog.

Cheers, Thomas

The Hog Blog – September 2007

 

Back from a week’s holiday to find two enormously enlarged pigs and what was a dry, pretty meadow now like the Somme. It must have been raining here, then. Still no shed, no sign of a shed, all the straw under a tarpaulin (soaking wet) and the food in a dustbin (rather damp). Pigs standing in ankle deep mud, is this okay? Cleared the hard standing at least, which was covered in sopping sods of earth – bloody heavy to shift – used the fork in the end and then swept and swept. We have a hard standing again to feed them on (they’ve learned to go to the hard standing to be fed which is good – saving the fence from too much hysterical pressure). Other problem is all the straw and poo – not really ‘manuring’ the way I hoped, just sitting there looking larger and larger in pileage each day. How can we deal with it? Got my overalls out for the first time today. V. smart with ‘Dickie’s’ written down the side and padded knees. It’s enormous and navy blue and has all sorts of tremendously useful pockets and zips. I look dreadful in it, nobody will want to marry me now.

Tom coming down this weekend to meet them, Mum was down last week and fell in love with them I think. She bought them a frightfully expensive honeydew melon from Reg the Veg in Clifton and gave them most of it. They very much appreciated it judging by the snorting and squelching and chomping that went on. I surprised them really early on Saturday morning and they were still asleep, wrapped in each other and a straw nest – must be rather cosy, It cheers me that they’re are so deeply companionable. They are still a bit clingy with me, especially when I’m holding the blue bucket (the one they get their nuts in) but when I let them out into the big field now (at weekends and in my lunch hour) they run off, sometimes separately, and I worry that they won’t come back. I just have to move in the direction of the feed dustbin and they are there, streaking across the field like lightning. They feel warm and completely solid, with bristly long hairs and smooth skin. Porker still has a little cut on the back of one of her ears, not getting better, or seeming to get better and then appearing again. Could Mabel be nibbling on her? They are just eating machines really. Fantastic, evolved, omniverous survivors. Stopped worrying about sending Porker to the abattoir, when I suddenly realised that if I fell over and died in their pen they would have absolutely no hesitation in eating me. What a way to go! Anyway, if I am to carry on keeping pigs and learning more about it, I need to send some to the chop or I can’t afford it. Sad fact but there you go. Just hoping the meat will be good.

Nicola

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The Hog Blog – August 2007, part 3

It’s Friday so time for…

The Hog Blog – August 2007, part 3

 

I arrive at 7.30am and they are asleep, curled up next to each other in a tight little ball with a huge wad of straw around them. They get a shock when I poke my head through the ark, so I feel guilty for disturbing them. Must make more noise in future. Spent an hour or so outside with them, trying to take photographs, but it’s pretty hopeless, they’re always on the move or with their snouts in the ground. As soon as I kneel down to get closer to them they rush at me and try to eat my wellies. They are not so unhappy about being handled now, even Mabel allowing us to scratch her sides and her ears.

For the first week I keep them inside the ark unless I’m with them. Alastair, my boss, thinks this cruel but I don’t know how easily they could escape until I’ve watched them for a while and I can see any weak spots in the fencing that need reinforcing.

Jules and Joe are my piggy partners at work. They invested money in the fencing and will help with feeding and looking after in exchange for meat when Porker goes. Jules grew up with pigs and has an unsentimental approach to animals, Joe is an ex-chef. For some reason they think Porker is called Rilette.

Porker is still more affectionate than Mabel and I am growing hugely fond of her which may or may not be a problem eventually. I keep thinking I’ve got my head around the idea of eating her, but the thought of it is one I swerve from.

So here I am now, committed to most of the feeding times myself – with just a bit of help from others now and then. It’s a strange new life getting up far too early, but sleeping has been tricky since they came – I keep dreaming about them. They have taken over my life even at work. Yesterday I let them out at lunch time and instead of putting them away again until I went back in the evening I decided to let them stay out and see what happened. Nothing happened! They were still there and the fencing is, so far, intact. So, their new routine is a joy to them – they run around skittering and sliding all over the place and are so happy to be outside. They love their pig nuts, they adore apples, they both hate green and red peppers. But Porker has started on the watermelon that Andreea and Jan brought them as a football food! Mabel thinks it isn’t food. She really is quite standoffish still, but I love her heavy jowls and fat pants.

The tree surgeon, whose yard I have to cross to get to the pigs, the objector, the pig hater, the chap who doesn’t own the field but thinks he does, has been thumping around this week in a real paddy. I don’t think he can quite believe that the pigs have actually come – even though he objected to it. The other guys at the yard – Alastair and Mike – are lovely. Every morning they pop their heads over the fence and chat and admire. Having my girls here is not ideal. We face the ground-fill tip at one end and the yards at the other, so during the week it is noisy with tractors, saws and booming from the tip. The pigs don’t seem to mind it really, but I do!

The noise usually starts at about eight o’clock, so I try to get up there about seven so we can have a bit of peace together first. It’s a great time and even that view over to Long Ashton and Bristol is green and leafy. The weather has been marvellous this last week, sunny and dry and of course it’s still light for so long. I wonder how the whole thing will feel in the dead of winter? Does one feed them later in the morning and earlier in the afternoon or do you stick to the same times and do it in the dark?

Nicola

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The Hog Blog – August 2007, part 2

Hello everybody and welcome to the next instalment of The Hog Blog, by the editor of Special Places to Stay – British Bed & Breakfast, Nicola Crosse:

The Hog Blog – August 2007, part 2

I collected the long-awaited pigs from a farm in Devon and drove back to Bristol as slowly as if I were carrying rare bird eggs in the back. In fact they fell asleep in their straw-covered dog cage and only woke when I stopped. I drove into the hot and sunny field and there were friends and some of my children to welcome us. We took photographs and had champagne – in brilliant sunshine; it was a happy afternoon. Later, when all the fuss was over and it was quiet, I sat in the ark with my youngest daughter Minnie (19) and the two new arrivals. We watched them quietly as they snuffled about, pushing the straw hither and thither, making their snuffly noises and grunts, coming up to sniff our hands now and then, occasionally Porker letting us scratch and stroke him. Mabel a bit stand-offish. But it is a wondrous thing, getting to know your pigs.

We left. I had worries and Minnie (even more neurotic) had big worries. Will they be safe? Could somebody steal them? What if they knocked their water bowl over in the night and then got thirsty?

Needless to say I slept badly – pigmares again. But much more vivid than the vague fear of the unknown before they arrived – now it’s serious. I can’t wait to see them again and leap out of bed by six. They are shy when I open the ark door; like startled lovers they jerk onto their feet, straw hanging from their ears. But breakfast goes down well, including some apples and a few blackberries from the hedgerows. I am so relieved to see them safely through their first night, it increases my confidence. I can do this! I can look after pigs. I go happily home for my own breakfast.

By 10am I am itching to get out to them again. Great that it’s a bank holiday so I have Monday to play with them too. Can’t imagine having to sit back at my desk all day again. Feel like a pig farmer instead of an editor. Minnie, who hasn’t got up early at a weekend for about five years is waiting by the front door wearing wellies. Good grief.

Mabel and Porker had three hours or so out of the ark and in the nursery area. In that time they created a mud pool beside the water trough, their strong little snouts digging up huge clots of earth and hurling it into the air. They are the perfect rotivators and manure comes out the other end. They then started on another dig at the other side of the pen. It will look like a mud scene in weeks, I know. But that is what they like. Locked them in the ark at 1.45 and will return this afternoon at about half past five for a bit more play. They are rather a waste of time I have to say: the house looks neglected, my garden worse. Hey ho.

Nicola

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