British Expat Newsletter

30 November 2005

Hello, and welcome to those who have joined up since our last newsletter.

In this issue

This week: Salt
On the website
Virtual Snacks
Sponsor
Bizarre Searches
Joke and quotation

This week

I had never given much thought about salt until a few years ago when I read Roy Moxham's excellent book "The Great Hedge of India". The book tells of a chance discovery, in 1995, of a reference to a gigantic 1500-mile long hedge which the British grew across nineteenth-century India, and of the author's efforts to find its remains. What started as a whim became an obsession, as Moxham sought to unearth remains of the hedge and to discover its original purpose.

The hedge, which Moxham had first thought merely a piece of eccentricity, was actually an instrument of oppression used to collect a salt tax set so high that the Indians suffered from salt starvation. Hence Gandhi's famous Salt March in 1930, when he led nearly 80 men on a 240-mile trek to the coast and boiled seawater to make salt, urging his followers to do the same. "With this," he declared, "I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." Within a few weeks over 60,000 of his followers had been imprisoned for making salt illegally. But the Salt March has gone down as a turning-point in India's struggle for independence.

So why was salt so important? Simply, it is essential for life. But the number of uses it has and the history of salt is fascinating and surprising. Sodium chloride really has played a major role in human society. Salt has even been used instead of money - for instance, Roman soldiers were paid in salt, not coins. That's where the world "salary" comes from and the saying that someone is "worth their salt".

Anything you ever wanted to know, and more, about salt is contained in Mark Kurlansky's excellent book, "Salt - A World History". Funny to think that those white crystals on almost everyone's dining table should have had such a profound influence on politics, economics, religion, science, and, last but not least, culinary history.

Now, of course, the UK government's telling everybody to cut down on using it. Apparently we're all to consume no more than 6g - about a quarter of an ounce - a day. Gordon Ramsay obviously hasn't been listening; on a recent programme of his I saw him chucking salt into every dish as if there was no tomorrow. I wonder what his blood pressure's like? But I'm glad he, at least, isn't going to put up with Nanny telling him what to do.

I'm always on the lookout for interesting topics for our weekly newsletter. Believe me, you'd be hard pushed to find something more interesting than salt! Don't take it for granted.

Do you have anything to say about this topic, or do you have some suggestions for other issues we might discuss in our weekly email? Why not tell us about it on the forum?
British Expat Forum: BE Newsletter discussion

On the Website

This week we've added a message from the British War Memorial Project, which is working to document online the graves and memorials of British Service personnel from 1914 to the present day. They're considering organising a tour of the Somme in May next year - if you're interested in helping, please read the article. Meanwhile we've also added a new Pic of the Week - to celebrate our coming home, a photo of one of the amazing wooden sculptures in the Sanctuary of Truth next door to where we live - and an article about pension planning, particularly topical given the publication today of the Pensions Commission's report.

All the new articles and features are listed on our What's New page:
What's New on BE?

Each week I delve into the dark cavernous interior of the BE website to see what gems I can unearth - good things you may have missed first time around. Here are my picks for this week:

"Droves of cattle once made the strength-sapping journey from the Highlands of Scotland over the Eastern Cairngorms to the markets of Crieff and Falkirk. The Highland weather was just too severe for over-wintering cattle. They were sold in the autumn to lowland farmers with more sheltered pastures." Take a hike with Mike Clark along the old drovers' paths around Loch Muick in the Eastern Cairngorms.
We May Have Been Amused

Here's an interesting travel feature by Jon Bond about a trip to Monaco - "a place for those seriously in love with money".
Another Trip into Darkest Europe

And for the terminally bored, you might like to (re)visit our page of strange laws.
It's A Sin

If you're looking for travel features on the site, a good place to start is our Expat World page.
Expat World

Virtual Snacks

Roy Moxham's interesting website, which contains information about his books, the hedge, and an academic article about salt starvation.
www.roymoxham.com

The (American based) Salt Institute is a gold mine (or should that be salt mine?) of facts and figures about salt.
Salt Institute

And finally, a short biography on the Penguin (USA) site about Mark Kurlansky.
Penguin (USA): Mark Kurlansky

Sponsor

Offshore Companies House offer fast online registration of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize, Dominica and other tax havens, as well as quick and easy setting up of multicurrrency bank accounts. OCH, through their offshore services, will provide you with the full necessary support at each stage and will always try to offer the best possible prices. They offer attractive and inexpensive offshore packages, and their reliability and quality of offshore service say even more for them than their prices. Most of their new clients - over 15,000 in the last ten years - are referred by previous satisfied customers. However, if you can get the same service, or an offshore package which is a genuinely cheaper offer, they promise to match it!
Offshore Companies House

Bizarre Searches

Some strange search terms which have led people to visit British Expat recently:

mind things
kill neighbour s cat
daily mail harry potter turkey girl friend
the smurf houses
sarcastic number plates
breed from this officer
bonk that bitch
edem.a.k.a.jumbo
can i move to canada and not work
rupert grint salary
rock star job
hiding an arson

Till next time...
Happy surfing!

Kay
Editor
British Expat Magazine

Quotation

"Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousands of years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to labour to obtain, but also as a generator of poetic and of mythic meaning. The contradictions it embodies only intensify its power and its links with experience of the sacred."
Margaret Visser, Canadian author and broadcaster

Joke

So I was having dinner with Garry Kasparov and there was a checked tablecloth. It took him two hours to pass me the salt.
(Peter Kay)