Off Air... with Jane and Fi - We hate each other really (with Kate Humble)

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Jane and Fi have snacked their way through the day and are ready to talk about matching chocolate to your mood, swanning about in a slip, and Fi's past life as a vicar...They're joined by Springwatch presenter Kate Humble to talk about her new book 'Where the Hearth Is'.And we've got a podcast exclusive interview with The Times' Lucy Bannerman about her recently taxidermied tortoise.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Kate Lee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm still on a little bit of a sugar high from Henry Bird's. What was it? Lemon curd and raspberry cupcake with a lemon Italian meringue topping. Yes, well remembered. I'm not a massive fan of lemon, but there's something delicious about a really sharp, tangy lemon flavour to a sponge I think there's just something about the setting You know, if you're in a radio studio and you are in there entirely of your own volition for two hours it doesn't really matter what food is brought in, I'll eat it

Yeah, it's a bit like how everything in a studio is often funnier and much more, everything's heightened. It is. I find you hilarious on there. Yeah, I know, but not IRL at all. I've got a tiny bit of cashew nut in my teeth. That's not true, we've really snacked our way through today. Oh, I know, God, it has been. Well, it's been a bit like that today, hasn't it? I still think that Henry Bird's cakes do look a little bit like Anglo-Saxon dwellings, but I think I might have been alone there, so it might be better just to move on.

Can I bring in another dull story? Yes, you may. It's from Stuart. I've been meaning to email you since you moved to the other side, but being a single gay man with two cats, Dorothy and George, I've got little interesting to say, as my dull story will confirm. I've been a big fan of you both. Oh, Fee, isn't that lovely?

He says he's been listening to you, Fee, all over the place, but his favourite was your Sunday service. That's a very long time ago. It's nice of you to remember. That's when Fee was a vicar. Unfortunately, she's been defrocked. And turned her hand to show... Yes to show we don't mention that because all of those results have been removed from google whenever you see that don't you always think oh god i really want to know what that is what has been removed anyway back to stewart he

says his story goes back to when he was in his 20s sharing a flat close to trendy lark lane in liverpool 17 and it is trendy lark lane um you might be able to help me with this stewart there was a lovely restaurant on lark lane which i used to go to with my parents can't remember the name of it anyway uh stewart's friends were chopper and mincemeat my nickname says stewart was and is hideous but that's a slightly interesting story so i won't tell you it my dull story is that one sunday afternoon i came home and sat down in the lounge and said to Chopper, I've just been in the petrol station. Oh, right, said Chopper.

Yes, I said, I was looking at the chocolate bars, but I didn't get one. Is that it, said Chopper? Is that all you have to say? I said, that was it. When Mincemeat arrived back from work in the evening, Chopper made me tell him the really interesting story. I've been ridiculed about this for years they even say i need to go on graham norton and tell my chocolate bar story on the red chair bit i think you should well stewart um that is certainly duller than the story from yesterday about the street whatsapp free couscous offer i'm very uneasy when i say

couscous because i never think i say i say couscous because i never think i say it right couscous what i don't know either couscous cows cows cows cows yeah it's a very peculiar thing that and i never cook it but sometimes have it in the canteen and i don't know how to say it so i always just point fair enough it is mildly interesting that you didn't choose a chocolate bar though i would have stuck with that conversation. Yeah, I don't know. Well, sometimes you want chocolate, but then you look at the selection on offer in any particular Emporium, and it just doesn't quite match the mood.

I'm with you on that. Do you know what I did the other night, and this will embarrass you? I spent about 45 minutes trying to find some dark chocolate bounties to buy you doesn't embarrass me at all i'm rather titillated by it well i saw uh actually a colleague from this building uh who usually demands the dark chocolate bounty in his dressing room uh had just got to the yeah they've got to the end of the line yep and there aren't any more left in the northern hemisphere so i thought because i know that you prefer them i thought oh gosh well i'll just go online and see if i can buy some before they do all run out for jane because that would be a nice thing to do and i just went down

a rabbit hole of confectioners and the only place that i could find to buy any was in i think it was one of those southern states in america but just to get a box of four with shipping was going to cost me about 54 and i didn't think it'd make it through customs anyway it probably wouldn't would it so i'm afraid i didn't buy any for you but there you go that's a dull story all of you contributed there yeah absolutely lovely but just back to the some results have been removed it is one of those incredibly frustrating modern things, isn't it? Because immediately you think, I'll Google that. Yeah, and can I ask, how do you get that done?

Well, you write to Google. You write to Google. You write to Google and you say, I think you have to, you do have to be able to prove that the reason you want the results removed is either because they're wrong or they are libelous slanderous or worse factually incorrect or deeply affecting somebody else in your life in your life okay so it's all almost all modern rules apply and then they will take down those results but i think it's quite a long and tortuous process now because obviously you're behind quite a few people in a queue. Right. I didn't even know that you could do it.

I know that I've seen what you what you say. What is it? What's the wording of it? Some results have been removed. That's it. Some results have been removed. But I've been puzzling over that. OK, that's interesting.

I mean, there's nothing I'd want removed, really. I mean, shit happens, doesn't it, to everybody? I'm talking personally. I just have to take it. Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. I mean, I don't think there's anything. If you've been libelled or slandered or included in somebody's story wrongly, then you absolutely still should have the right to remove it

because it's where everybody goes for their facts. In my case, that thing about the Arctic role, it's still there. It's still there, I know. Glyn says, anybody with the remotest interest in the Magdalene laundries and the Catholic Church's role in forced adoptions in Ireland, this is in the light of the BBC series that I was talking about, The Woman in the Wall, should listen to your ex-colleague Becky Milligan's superb podcast series, The Home Babies.

I remember listening to one episode outrunning and I had to stop and have a sit down and a cry mid-run. That's a good point, isn't it? That was excellent. You're quite right, Glyn, thank you. She'd be a good guest, actually. She has a very disarming interview style and used to do some excellent stuff.

I'm sure she still does. Oh, he goes on to say she's also just brought out a new podcast called Hooked on Freddie about that case back in the 90s. Careful. I know. Well, this is awkward, isn't it? That case back in the 90s of a man who was falsely accused of something involving a dolphin in the North Sea.

It says here, this may be of special interest to Fee. What with her wild swimming proclivities. Thank you, Glyn. No, but not that wild. No, not that wild. Not that wild. Absolutely not. So Becky would make a very good guest.

Do you remember her series where she used to go out to lunch with politicians? And she was so disarming. She got an awful lot of very, very good exclusives and stories. Whilst appearing not to make much effort. Yep, a gentle sit down with politicians of all varieties and flavours. This one comes from Miranda Mulholland, which is just a lovely name, isn't it? I think my life would have been better if I'd been called Miranda.

And now, tied with Miranda Mulholland. Yes. Oh, Miranda, welcome aboard. Dear Jane and Fee, I'm a musician living in Toronto, but as a dual citizen of Canada and the UK, I feel closer to England just listening to your sparkling banter and warm repartee. We hate each other, really. I miss the UK very much, having spent a good deal of time

in the Miss Marple-esque village of Twyford in Hampshire. Goodness. Which is where I made my last album. I know Twyford very well. Do you? Yep. And? I used to cycle out to Twyford,

because there were a couple of boys out that way. What, they had boys there? Wow! Let's go! We didn't have any in Winchester. I used to go, I'm a red racer. Cycle all the way to Twyford. In the hope of seeing one.

One times. We didn't speak like that, Jane. Goodness sake, get a grip. One thing you don't get in Toronto, but I learned is quite popular in small villages such as Twyford, is the drop-by, which I'll come to in a minute. But you asked today on the podcast about changing into home clothes after work. And I giggled because my favourite thing to wear around the house is a silk slip cut on the bias. Very flattering on the figure.

And a kimono or long sweater. Hello. I know, Miranda. It started as a joke with a university roommate years ago because we decided that if you were having a rather blue day, you could put it on a slip and swan around like some sort of literary heroine and it would cheer you up it stuck i bet it did it works after a day of zooms or after a gig or a rehearsal it's extra soigné is that the right word yes lovely word anyway if you make yourself a cocktail or mocktail in a fancy glass

and put on some jazz it does however make you the talk of the village when you're seen from the windows, swanning around the house as such, when curious locals execute a drop-by on the visiting Canadians. Still, it's worth it. Kisses, Miranda. Well, I think we rather needed a picture, didn't we, to accompany that? We need to know what kind of music Miranda performs and writes. All of that, yes. Flavour of mocktail cocktail.

And we were having this conversation in the office. In fact, just before you came in, Jane, all of our younger colleagues change into something more comfortable when they get home from work. And they were appalled at the idea that you and I might stay in these clothes. And at one point, one of them was actually pointing at me, going, what, might stay in these clothes and at one point one of them was actually pointing at me going what you stay in that well it's the respect I I have it's Eve's dad he's out there with her dad it's bring your dad to work day yeah oh he's a lovely smiley man isn't he looks very

tolerant I think he's needed to be over the years I would have thought so yeah you know he's your age is he yeah wow he looks good on it. So we don't change, do we? Well, I realise I generally, it's partly because I'm so clumsy and as I've generally got some sort of splatting dish to prepare, you might loosely call it, I sort of do need to get into my tracky bums. So you do get changed?

Well, more often than not, I would do, yeah. It's just me then. I don't want any stains. No. Any more stains. You wouldn't just put an apron on or something like that? I do have aprons, and I probably could wear one, but I just like to feel I'm at home.

And that's actually the subject of our interview, which we'll get to in a moment. But we also need to move seamlessly to the topic of stuffing tortoises, don't we? Oh, we do, don't we? We certainly do. Well remembered, sister. So we've been talking to Times journalist Lucy Bannerman. Now, Lucy has a dark secret.

Well, I mean, it's not that dark and it's not really a secret anymore, but she has. Well, she stuffed her tortoise. dark and it's not really a secret anymore but she has well she stuffed her tortoise so she had a tortoise called togi that she had toji that she'd had for a very very long time but nobody really knew how old he was when he arrived and he died obviously and she decided that she wanted we're not that cruel to stuff him so she went on a taxidermy course in leith and she's written about it in the time saturday magazine and we thought it would make a fantastic interview because of this podcast's consideration of taxidermy over the last couple of weeks so what you've got this week or this thursday it's a bumper bundle edition of off-air that might see you across the weekend after a

fashion because we've still got kate humble to come so here is lucy bannerman on well first of all she just tells us a little bit about her late tortoise i mean i'll have to be honest he wasn't the biggest of personalities but um it was a present i got when i was 18 months old and already he'd been owned by someone before that for at least 20 years and that guy had grown up and he sold him on and then when he when he died a few months ago you know i'd had him for 40 odd years he was at least 60 years old so he wasn't just a family pet he was like an artifact he was this kind of um sort of thing that fascinated me since i was a kid so um it just seemed like a perfectly natural decision to make sure he

was preserved for posterity. What did he do? Not much. He ate some lettuce. He was just, poor thing. He was one of these tortoises that before the 1984 import ban came in, one of those hundreds of thousands

of tortoises that were scooped up off a mediterranean hillside somewhere and then taken to britain and flogged so cheaply which is why so many of like my gran's generation had all these tortoises in their garden um and then he came to us and he stayed and led a long and fairly uneventful life in a suburban garden in dundee would it be fair to say that uh you might have imagined uh that he would be an easy taxidermy project simply because he didn't move all that much in life? Therefore, it wouldn't be hard to preserve that kind of immobility? Possibly. In my naivety, I thought he just called up a taxidermist and they would do anything.

But as I've learned, tortoise taxidermy is quite a specialist thing apparently if you want to start off you start off with birds and mammals because they're quite easy if you make a mistake you can cover it up with a bit of fur or feathers but not many people not many taxidermists will touch reptiles because as i've learned those skin folds that delicate reptile skin is quite tricky so very few people actually take it on but thankfully i met a man who was up for the job drew bain a taxidermist in edinburgh who's one of the best and possibly only taxidermists in the country who are willing to take on a tortoise did they does he did he remove the shell to do the the other work this is the clever bit. So I thought, for journalistic purposes only, obviously,

I thought it'd be quite interesting to go up and watch Drew as he did the taxidermy up in Edinburgh. So I went there imagining some beautiful, you know, wood-panelled studio, Phileas Fogg style, and it was obviously a much more modern warehouse in Leith near the docks in Edinburgh. And I thought I'd just watched drew do it and i ended up accidentally sort of participating in the dismemberment of my own childhood pet

and it was quite something to to witness yeah so i mean in all seriousness was it a little bit too emotionally connected for you it was a bit squeamish but it wasn't a connection with your with a reptile it's like a cold cerebral connection isn't it it's not the same as a mammal i mean i think i would have been a bit more emotional had it been my dog but um but he's managed to take off the whole front piece in one go of the shell of not of the he took off the head attached to the neck attached to the two front legs all in one piece without getting too icky about it and kept the shell intact just looking after the back bit yes and then did the back bit and that's the point where i had to sort of yank on a stiff half defrosted tortoise leg as

he sort of did his thing but i think old taxidermy they would have just chiseled open the shell and like opened up the whole thing but he imagined he managed somehow because he's very skilled to do it without with completely preserving the shell as it is so there's yeah there's no joint you do say in the piece that you were briefly tempted uh to have him on water skis or playing the bagpipes a friend had suggested a coquettish glance over the shoulder but drew was having none of that he wasn't he um he was taking it very seriously and he thought no this is all about respect to the animal and it's all about sort of replicating it in its natural state although he did have an alligator standing up upright holding a cocktail tray you know it's a fine one to talk about but

no i get his point i completely agree so it's much better to go down the natural route. Where is he now? He's pride of place on my piano. It is a very popular current thing to do, though, isn't it taxidermy, especially as you found out amongst the young? Yeah, and particularly younger women. So obviously, there's this old school sort of cliche about what a taxidermist might look like, and you might think of an older male. But one young woman, I was speaking to Becky Dick, who's a taxidermist in Gloucestershire. She's a typical example of a sort of new generation of young females or artists, art graduates who are interested in it. of young females or artists art graduates who are interested in it and she said a lot of it was down to a lot of the information now being easily accessible there's lots of like how-to videos on youtube if you want to spend your time doing that um and lots of people like sharing information and so when you know she did get involved she was quite surprised pleasantly surprised to see there's many other young women like ourselves who was interested in it the stuffed elephant in the room um is i mean how close are we to preserving humans uh in this

way oh goodness oh there's a question i would like to think not very but well i'd like to think so too but i don't know well i think the embalming techniques have come on in leaps and bounds recently haven't they? And there's a huge thing in America for the beauty mortician, isn't there? I mean, there are prizes you can win for best beauty mortician because people want to have an open casket. They do want to see a very beautiful, lifelike corpse. But then the funeral and possibly the cremation happens. I'm talking

about keeping things going a bit longer. What do you mean? Well, you know, stuffing a dead person. Just having them sitting there in the room might be a bit disconcerting. Or holding a cocktail. Why not?

You can write into the podcast. With all the reasons, why not? Were you pleased with the finished article? He has done an astonishing job. I can't believe how... Yeah, what he's done. It's amazing. And, I mean, I did feel a bit robbed

at the UK Guild of Taxidermy Annual Awards, though. I was delighted to see that when we entered TOGI for the competition, which is a competition for all of the country's most dedicated professional and amateur taxidermists, they all get judged by an international panel of experts. And I was delighted to see that TOGI won best fish and reptile in the professional category. And then that's when Drew delivered the devastating news that it was the only fish and reptile in the category. So he was best and worst. Why did he have to tell you? I know.

But then he was marked down by these judges because he didn't put on a fake head. He didn't replace the real head with a fiberglass head. And I just thought that was outrageous and do you still feel any affection for stuffed toji as you did for real life absolutely you do although he does smell a bit funny i have to say what does he smell of apparently he put some preservative in nail varnish remover so it's quite a chemical smell it did freak out the kids a little bit but i think they'll get used to it so he smells smell it did freak out the kids a little bit but i think they'll get used to it so he smells a bit like a nail bar yeah a little bit a little bit but yeah

definitely a good thing to do i think you know people thought it was admittedly a bit strange but it would have been a waste to waste such a beautiful shell and now he's there for posterity so no regrets i'd like to think it's what he would have wanted he's got no choice in it now though um we can't let you go uh i just wanted to ask you one question about tabitha and homer who were they and what did they get up to tabitha and homer were the tortoises that belonged to my great aunt winifred and they came to stay one weekend and told you he loud, raucous sex with both of them and it must have been

the best weekend of his life. Lucy Bannerman, I thought that was a really because that was a very affectionate telling of that story and I think it was also, I said to you, it's just lovely to get a really lovely, beautiful Scottish accent. Yeah. It would be one of those things

that you might sign up for which then in the moment you realize is completely beyond your emotional landscape uh you know very much i felt like that sometimes in craft classes that i've joined jamer i've turned up there i thought it was a very good idea and then it's gone very wrong but seriously i mean if you see someone sawing the front off your tortoise i thought the detail of the shell and everything was yes it was very graphic actually but i'm intrigued by this new craze for taxidermy because there is something very visceral about it there is and what concerns me if i could be semi-serious remote is if it goes out of fashion all these objects what will happen to them when they're not wanted by the next generation down?

They're just going to end up in landfill, aren't they? That's really sad. Well, it is, and they'll be covered in forever chemicals, won't they? Because you must have a forever chemical to make your tortoise last forever. Yeah, exactly. So that is a little element of concern. Many, many years ago, I did an interview about there'd been a spate of owl dumping after Harry Potter.

People had got owls, they couldn't keep them, and then they'd started to dump them by the roadside. And that's awful, genuinely. I mean, don't get an owl. If you're not able to look after it, what are you thinking of? And people were just...

There are some lowlif low lives around aren't there absolute idiots so don't go dumping your stuffed pets if you've had them efficiently and properly done could I squeeze a quick email in from Mock before we go to Kate Humble I'm one of your loyal male listeners

says Mock, originally from the other place but now on the Times Radio app well done as my blood boiled last night over the Home Secretary's speech in Washington, I was delighted to have your calm and dulcet tones to calm me down. And on the subject of celebrity dreams,

I dreamt I was delayed on an easy jet flight and my luggage was mislaid. I had to visit customer services where I was helped by a smiling Victoria Beckham, who managed to retrieve my belongings for me interesting detail she had a lilac pen that matched her nail varnish oh gosh i mean she would though wouldn't she yeah i think that's just lovely and uh i'm heartened to know that there's

somebody dreaming about a smiling victoria beckham because sometimes she doesn't look very happy actually she's the luckiest lady alive isn't she just got a lovely david he's still ever so fit and healthy she's got all the lovely kiddies 1700 of them and she's got frocks a go-go yes what's she got to complain about right um okay we did actually briefly reference the new beckham netflix series available next week which neither of us will be watching much, much. I'm going to be watching it on 0.5. Right, do you want to go into Kate Humble? Wouldn't I?

Oh, yes, you do. Okay, here we go. We know Kate Humble for her devotion to the great outdoors as a presenter on nature programmes like Spring Watch and Autumn Watch and Animal Park. She's also a former president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, so she would have thoughts on owls. She's the author of several books, and her latest is an exploration of how we all feel about home.

It's called Where the Hearth Is, and we started by asking her to tell us a bit more about the concept behind the book. Maybe if I explain why I even thought about the question, what is home? And I thought about it because I've had this long held dream of building my own house, physically building it, which is obviously ridiculous, because I can't even put a shelf up. But I quite like the idea of building a house. And I've always been interested in kind of off grid and the kind of the ways that different ways that people can live, that we can live. So this really was a kind of exploration of what it is that makes a place.

And it's not necessarily a house. It might be a, you know, it might be completely yourself, completely liberated and unfettered by being polite? Where, I mean, I say it at the beginning of the book. For me, the epitome of home is being able to sit with a jar of peanut butter and eat it with your finger without anyone caring. And that's a glorious position to be in. It is. You do start, though, with your home, your childhood home. And maybe people think that you were brought up in the woods. Is that a reflection on the fact that I do look like I live in a hedge?

No, but we know you for your love of the countryside, don't we? So actually, the fact that you were brought up in a pebble-dash house, snails play a big part in this story too, and I'm hoping we can get to that. I was quite surprised, actually. I assumed that you had had a far more kind of rural upbringing. Maybe you were just born in a canoe or something like that, Kate? No, I mean, it was rural.

It was just that pebble-dash was obviously a thing. I think it was a Victorian house surrounded by a farm. I don't think it had ever been the farmhouse. There was another house, but it was just a house that happened to be on a bit of land surrounded by farmland. So it was still very rural, but it just happened to be Pebbledash as well. And it was a wonderful place to grow up. I mean, it probably does sound, mean it does it probably does sound uh my description of it probably does sound a little bit enid blyton i mean it was because it was the 70s

and the wonderful thing about growing up in the 70s is that no one really had thought about health and safety um you know it was a badge of honor to have really as many plasters as you could fit on both knees you know if you had if you didn't have lots of plasters, you hadn't had a proper childhood. And it was, you know, I grew up at a time and in a place where your parents literally did say, go outside and don't come back until it's dark. And so it was an amazingly bucolic, safe, secure childhood. And what I wondered when I was sort of thinking about this idea of home was whether that start in life, first of all, gave me

the courage to then, and the kind of impetus to have the wanderlust that I then had for years afterwards and kind of hasn't really gone away um but the thing that was confusing was why I was so happy to leave it as well because when I was 18 I left home and my parents sold that house about three years later because my dad's job moved and I felt no emotional kind of pangs at all when I left it. You travel into so many other people's homes throughout this book is the one that you think of where you think actually that is the place that really nails this whole concept of a home being such a kind of spiritual part of yourself and you being the spiritual part of the home it's it was what I worried about when I when I started on this

on this sort of on the research I suppose was would everyone just look at me and go what are you talking about it's really obvious you know home is where you have your photograph album and the people that you love, and that would be it. And actually, what was extraordinary was how different it is. Everybody wants that same feeling. Safety was a word that came up a lot, a place to feel safe. I talked to an incredible Syrian woman called Jana, and she was born in Aleppo, she was brought up in Aleppo, her whole family, you know, her whole life was in the street in

Aleppo, where she was born and grew up. And then she married quite young when she was a teenager to a, you know, a young man who lived just down the road and all the families knew each other and supported each other. And then the war started. And it's a very long, complex story, her story. But she ended up having to leave Aleppo. There's no taking the easy route. She's not somebody who just went, oh, life's a bit tough.

I'm going to go and see if I can go somewhere else. She had to leave behind everything that constitutes home, not just your physical building, but your language and your culture and your community and your support network and everything. She had to leave everything behind. And she then had to do it again. Because she got to Turkey, and things didn't really work out there. She has a profoundly disabled son, who, by the way, is going to be president of the world one day if there is any

justice, because he's the most extraordinary boy. He's just brilliant. But she came to the UK, extraordinary boy he's just brilliant but she came to the UK having had this two terrible distraught years in Turkey where she was desperately trying to find medical help for her son and trying to learn a language where people had no patience with her wouldn't you know wouldn't help her because she didn't speak the language and the the only reason and she was, you know, she was just getting there. She was just sort of getting a toe under the door. The language was just coming when this opportunity came for her to go somewhere that her son could get better treatment. And she came to the UK. And she's been here for five years. The family have been here for five years now. And I mean, I think it's remarkable.

She's 33 years old, this woman. She had to run across the Turkish border illegally with a disabled child and another one when she was almost gave birth. I mean, she literally gave birth two weeks later after she'd run across that border. She'd seen people shot and killed who didn't make it across the border.

She'd had this two traumatic years in Turkey. She came to the UK. I sat on her sofa with her. She's been here five years, as I say. We talked for two and a half hours in English. Occasionally we had to do a Google Translate, but she has been to college every day to learn English. And she said, when I came here, I thought that all I would do was make sure that I had the medical

treatment for my son. And then we would get our passports. And as soon as we got our passports, we'd go back to Turkey, because at least I could start to speak the language there. And I knew nobody in England, and I just didn't know what I was going to do. And she said, and then I came here and I found out how kind everyone is. Can I just ask, would you have included that story if in fact she hadn't enjoyed being in the UK and if the UK had been a colder place than she might have expected? Possibly because it was, I suppose she was was she was giving another example of how you find a home when you've lost everything and um and it's it's a it's a it's a really difficult

question because in a way it would have been it would it would have depended whether her story demonstrated what makes a home by either not having it or by having it, if you see what I mean. Yeah, I mean, when she did have a good reception here, I was profoundly relieved. And it's actually because immigration has been very much in the news. Absolutely. And I appreciate she didn't have the greatest time in Turkey, but Turkey takes so many more people than we do.

Perhaps if we knew more stories like that, the whole thing in Britain would be less toxic what do you think well I what I was delighted by by her story and indeed the wonderful Ukrainian woman that I spoke to who similarly when she came here and her story was really interesting because she didn't want to leave Ukraine and her great kind of conflict in her head was I don't want to abandon my country and I don't want to leave Ukraine. And her great kind of conflict in her head was, I don't want to abandon my country. And I don't want to abandon my parents. And I don't want to abandon the people who are here and fighting. But I've got a little girl and every shred of me is

saying I've got to protect her. So she had this really conflicted view of coming to the UK. But the first thing that she did when she got here, and she said, I couldn't believe it, Kate. She said, I texted my friends. And I said, why are people being so kind to us? Why are people giving us their houses? And I hate to say this about the news, given where we're sitting. But the news doesn't like good stories. You know, perhaps kindness isn't good news or doesn't make news. It's too kind of, oh, yeah, wishy-washy. Our guest this afternoon is Kate Humble,

and we asked her to share with us some of the stories from the book that had moved her the most. So this was, I've done quite a lot of work in Shetland over the years. And when I was starting to kind of write the endless lists, which is the way I always start a book, I've got literally notebooks everywhere, just full of lists of who am I going to talk to? How's this going to work? How am I going to, I want to include animals? How do I include, you know, all this sort of stuff. And I was croft sitting for somebody on Shetland, I was looking after their sheep on the island of Walser, which was a perfect place to kind of do this sort of thing, because you're, you know, there's basically nobody there, apart from birds flying overhead. And, and I wanted to interview somebody who had been born in the house that they

were still living in. because I'd read this statistic that the average number of homes that people in the UK live in throughout their lifetimes is 14 I was quite surprised by that's a lot isn't it is quite a lot but then I suppose if you think about you know I think about I add up my houses yeah student houses and all that sort of thing. Squats in my case. But yeah, so I love the idea of talking to somebody who had never moved. And Shetland was quite a good place to do that because I don't know why it might be, but perhaps it's a very strong sense of identity and belonging that feels like it percolates the people of those islands and I did indeed find somebody very easily who was still living in the house he just turned 70 and he he had physically been born in the house that he still lived in and when I was sitting around the kitchen table with him and his family they said oh who else do you want to talk to and I said well I'm I'm I I

want to talk to people who've lost their homes you know maybe in in a in a fire and they said oh you need to go and see Ruby and Willie Brown. Ruby and Willie are brother and sister and their parents had been crofters they'd moved onto this croft in 1922 and Ruby and Willie again were both born there and in February 1922 so exactly a hundred years after their parents had first moved in um Willie they were there was a big storm um raging and these houses you know they're solid stone houses they look like they grow out of the earth you know they're absolutely and and and this particular house was sort of nestled in these kind of in amongst the crags with this beautiful view but you you know it was probably i don't know the building's probably a couple of hundred years old and it looks like one

of those things that's totally immovable you know you just it's this great solid kind of little secure safety blanket tucked in the nook of the hills um and so the storm was raging around them and um and there was this tremendous bang in the night uh or in the early morning and you know just the thunder and Willie thought well it's it's just a thunder crack and then he smelled a smell like like a hot wire like a burning wire smell and he said he had an old heater plugged in in his room and he thought well it's probably the fuse or something so he got up and put his trousers and his shirt on and his slippers and by force of habit put his truck keys in his pocket because you know that's what he would normally do first thing in the

morning and he went downstairs and the fuse box was in the porch of the cottage and it was on fire they got in his truck and they had to drive three miles to the main road to get a phone signal to alert the fire brigade which they did and by the time they were driving back they said they came over the rise and they knew their house was lost and the whole thing was on fire the flames were coming out through the roof but it was very strange being in that cottage and they'd been there wasn't that many months but maybe four or five months when I went to see them and what was so interesting was going in and thinking this isn't a home it's it's missing something and it's an intangible something and there is a German word for it and

which I'm probably sorry to anyone who's German shall I I? I think it's Stumming. Stumming. And the translation is a sort of an atmosphere of home. It's that kind of feeling. We all know it. You know, you kind of walk into a room and you either feel comfortable or you don't, or you feel kind of warm. And Willie and Ruby were so welcoming,

but it was very odd to go into a kitchen that felt, it felt temporary. It felt kind of like a stopgap. It really did feel like that. It's the same sort of feeling that you have when you're kind of sitting in a departure lounge somewhere. And this is nothing to do with taste or so-called good taste. No, nothing to do with that. It's just this feeling of there's no emotional, there's no emotion in there. There's no emotional attachment in there. It was purely a practical solution, but neither of them had clearly, and why would they, invested any sort of emotional, you kind of need love within your walls you know some of these people that I went to see live in incredibly basic um sort of circumstances I mean Matt and Keris who built their own house

out of basically plywood and a kind of broken down trailer you go in there it's the coziest warmest happiest I mean it's literally plywood walls and bits of bunting and, you know, kids' pictures. But it's glorious in there. It's nicer than any mansion. What you also do, sorry to interrupt. No, I was just going to say it's stimmung. Thank you. Stimmung.

Thank you. Just because we don't want our very, very wide German scholar audience to rise up. And there'll be a word for that. Goodness for you. Yeah,'ll be a word for that. Phoning a radio station. Now, you do weave in throughout the book some lovely stories about natural habitat and wildlife. There's a lovely bit on homing pigeons.

I'd never thought about them before. We do think of them as vermin. They do a great job. Well, they have in the past. They have in the past. But I mean, for people listening and watching who are very keen on the environment and who associate you with the environment,

who do you vote for? Oh, blimey, there's a question. I have no idea anymore. Absolutely no idea who to vote for anymore. When the news came about Rosebank yesterday, and then I was listening to the government's justification for doing it, and then Labour's response, which was, we're not going to overturn it.

But we wouldn't have done it, I think that's what they said. Yeah, but that doesn't make any difference now. It's what you call a nuanced position, I guess. Maybe. You're much politer than I am. I'm not sure how you'd have called it very nuanced. But, do you know, Jane, I don't know. And I think this is the, I think this is the great issue now with our political landscape is that it feels like, who, who are the, who are the grownups? Who are the people who,

who are looking at the bigger picture? Why is everyone, I know it sounds naive and slightly studenty to say, why is it that everyone's just obsessed with power and not obsessed with the long-term big picture? Do you know the awful thing? My first thought when I heard it was, I'm so pleased I don't have children. And it just, you just think, why these mixed messages? You know, in the same news bulletin, you've got them saying, oh, we need 40% of electric cars by, you know, 2030.

Hang on, you know, Shetland, Shetland, they're building this massive, and I feel very conflicted, but also don't feel like i really deserve to have a place because it's not my home and i love going there and it's very easy to go in and say well they've ruined it because they've put a great big wind farm right across the main spine of the main island which they have and none of the shetlanders are going to get any benefit from it at all but why why aren't they because all the power is going to be exported um so they just get to deal with the wind farm and the you know unsightliness do they feel that they had any say in the placing um again it's never a black white a black and white um issue because some people

support it and some people don't um and and and there are politics involved and you know perhaps the deal that was done for the shetlanders could have been done better and wasn't and there might be all sorts of reasons for that that i don't understand and and as i say i feel um nervous about about shouting about something that isn't really my business sure but i do find it extraordinary that so much investment should be put in you know renewables on an island that they're then opening up another oil field as well what who you know as i mean i'm i'm apparently a grown up and relatively intelligent. And I don't, I feel like what message am I being told? What are we supposed to be doing?

How are we supposed to be behaving? What does net zero now mean? Where are we headed? What is our focal point? What is our goal? I don't know anymore. The government's, the Conservative government's defence would be we were making much better progress than almost anybody else we can afford to slow down a little

bit because making that level of progress was costing some people dear and those people frankly feel they've got other priorities rent nhs um keeping track of their mortgage there's all sorts of and i mean there's so many concerns on the average voter's mind. The government clearly believe that the decision they've made is a risk worth taking and might actually win them votes. Yes, but why is opening up an oil field going to save people, you know, reduce somebody's rent? How's it going to help the normal person?

Well, I mean, what was the line the government came up with? We're not going to save the planet by bankrupting Britain. But do you feel... But maybe they're only bankrupting Britain because of the way they're running it. And do you feel that the Conservative Party has lost its right to claim to be the party that represents rural communities and do people in rural communities who you meet much more than we do

possibly feel that way? In a way, I'm not sure that this is a party politics question. I think it's a general politics question. I think a lot of people, and I would include myself in this, feel very let down and very kind of worn down by the political agenda, which never seems to be actually for the greater good and always seems to be about being in power and just trotting out terms that they think people want to hear and they think are vote winning. And, you know, if we are to have a world that is fair

and viable for people to live in, we can't make decisions, seems to me based on popular news headlines i mean it feels like to me and i'm i mean who knows and i you know i'm very conscious i don't do some of those social medias where everyone gets on and shouts about things when they actually only know about a millimeter of the story. I don't want to indulge in that because it's not helpful to anybody. But it feels like to me when that by-election was lost in North London over the... Uxbridge. Uxbridge, West London.

Yes. Over the, you know, the car. Euless. Thank you. When that was lost, it felt like the Conservative government thought, well, if we do any green policies at all, we're not going to win.

It just feels like a kind of slightly childish, knee-jerk reaction to losing or not doing very well. Frustratingly, had the people who voted green in Uxbridge voted Labour, then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I know. So there's got to be more sophisticated thinking, hasn't there, around how you cast your vote? Well, yes, but yes, probably. But you know, it's...

But wouldn't those voters who voted green have voted green because they didn't find the green policies of either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party appealing to them? And therein lies the issue. So, you know, do you have to be tactical or do you have to be, I mean, it is, it's a minefield. Kate Humble, it was really, I mean, she is, she writes about nature. She broadcasts about nature. Fee, I'm going to say it. She's a force of nature. Well done. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. Really beautiful. i sometimes think i peak on a thursday i think you should write cards you know those hallmark cards yeah i think

you've got a rare talent there i just want to say hello to lisa who's in brighton um long-time listener first time emailer here i thought i'd share with you what i change into when i get home um i'm not sure what you'd call them is it it hippie trousers? Yes, I think that we could call them that. Can you see that? There she is. Yeah. I bought them because my 19 year old daughter has a pair and I really rather envied them. So I'm not sure if I'm reliving my youth or I've just completely given up. My husband ran away with an Irish novelist last year and I certainly wouldn't have worn such garments when he was in the house. Hey-ho, I'm off to buy myself a camper van next week. That certainly wouldn't have been approved of by the erstwhile hubby.

Right, Lisa, you roam free in your trousers and get behind the wheel of that camper van and go wherever the hell you like. I would entirely concur sister and i think there's a little something in the way that you've told us that that suggests that sadness will pass lisa and great things are going to come your way and i think you should embrace whatever you want to wear around your house uh yep and i'm with jane just get in the camper van head off we're always here for you and she does say as well doesn't she jane further to the above i'm finding the number of novelists

you have on the show rather triggering well you'll be glad to know that not everybody next week has written a novel we've got kevin mcleod haven't we we've got esther ranson yeah and we have got a novelist on monday victoria hisl Hislop so maybe on Monday take the van in for its MOT well maybe go and look at the van on the Monday join us on the Tuesday yes you can come back to us on Tuesday it'll be safe then

and look Irish novelists we don't know that the we're assuming it's a lady novelist that he went off with well the best Irish writer was Maeve Binchy she's no longer with us. So it's not Maeve. So it won't be anybody good.

All right, don't worry about it. Okay, move on. You are so deserving of so much better. Okay, we should probably stop there. Otherwise, we're going to become some results may have been removed. Yes, see you Monday. But not you, Lisa.

We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us every Monday to Thursday afternoon here on Times Radio. We start at 3pm and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car or on the Times Radio app

whilst you're out and about being extremely busy. And you can follow all our tosh behind the mic and elsewhere on our Instagram account. Just go onto Insta and search for Jane and Fee and give us a follow. So in other words, we're everywhere, aren't we, Jane? Pretty much everywhere. Thank you for joining us.

And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.