CLUB SANDWICH 59

LINDA MCCARTNEY'S IT'S 92 CALENDAR

            For almost two decades, Linda has produced a diary or calendar featuring some aspect of her photography. What started out as a small-scale gift idea for friends and associates has grown to the point where a typical annual print-run exceeds 10,000 and the result is mailed not only to friends and associates but to music industry contacts and fans worldwide.
            Ranging from a funky diary featuring Wings' 1974 Nashville trip, to this year's large-format production IT'S 92, many have been produced in support of causes close to Paul and Linda's hearts: in 1988 a calendar produced in association with the Council for the Protection of Rural England, with the focus on the English landscape; in 1989 a calendar in association with Lynx, the very effective action group campaigning to stop the fur trade; last year, featuring 12 pictures from her travels on the World Tour, the calendar was jointly published with Friends of the Earth.
            Featuring a dozen evocative shots taken by Linda over the past 20 years the 1992 offering anticipates the dramatic changes that will effect every single European from the end of next year, when all existing trade restrictions are lifted and so many non-trading barriers are dissolved.
            Always a collectors' item, IT'S 92 is available for a limited period only. Look out for details on the Club Offers sheet or contact the Fun Club.

IT'S 92

            As Europeans link arms for 'Auld Lang Syne' this coming 31 December, it won't just be any old new year they're greeting, but landmark 1992. Long a harmony vocal specialist, Linda now anticipates harmonisation of a quite different nature, as Roger Huggett notes

AND IN THE GREEN CORNER

            The McCartneys' recent purchase of 80 acres of Exmoor woodland at the request of the League Against Cruel Sports, to provide a haven for deer, was a necessary step against the widespread hunting in the area. Nonetheless, as Linda McCartney argues in this edition of And In The Green Corner, buying land is not the real solution to the problem

            Why don't we share this planet with our fellow creatures in a kinder way, and let the Earth run more naturally? Deer are peaceful and beautiful and were here long before us. But no, some people want to destroy them. We have domain over animals (or so we think) so therefore we could and should look after them. Deer-hunting is nothing but an old-fashioned bloodthirsty way for red-nosed brandy-drinking chauvinistic men and women to socialise. It's not a healthy way to run a life, it's barbaric.
            I don't even agree with the League Against Cruel Sports when it says that culling is necessary: I believe in select breeding, not select killing. We have sheep on our farm and we select breed - if we want a lot of sheep one year we put the ram to a lot of ewes. If we want less sheep we put it with fewer ewes. One can control what one breeds; if it's necessary, one can dart and castrate deer when they're young and let them go back into life, and my vet tells me that the hinds (or girls) could be given long-term contraceptive pills. This is the way to keep the numbers down. The stalking and killing of wild animals in their natural habitat, in remote areas, is particularly indefensible.
            One the one hand hunters are saying that if they don't kill them, deer will die out, on the other they say that deer cause damage and so must be killed. It's contradictory, hypocritical and unproven. For 22 years I've been living with deer that haven't been culled and we still have to mow the lawns and we still have a full yield of crops. In my opinion it's pollution and destruction and greed that's taking over our world - and not our wildlife, which seems to be diminishing in front of our eyes. Let them live! And then if they do start to take over, let's re-think.
            Now we hear that deer are starving. I wonder why! They've been fenced out of their natural habitat, the forestry, so where else can they go but stray onto arable land? And because farmers also don't want to share any of their land with them, they fence them out too. How can they survive?
            Farmers could let deer eat on their land and be financially compensated, as damage is usually minimal. The laws have to change - governments presently subsidise very destructive farming and it's about time they stopped and instead gave grants for encouraging organic farming, wildlife areas and hedgerows. We still have very old-fashioned thinking: giving grants for things that are destroying us. It's pure greed, and we're poisoning the planet at the same time.
            We must strive for a better world. This Earth could be heaven and we have the ability to make it so. We should teach quality of life, friendship and self-containment to our children, and greed should be considered a bad rather than a good thing. People have to change if we want to save this world, and the only way for this world to change is for each individual to change.

LINDA MCCARTNEY