THE ANSWER TO FAST FOOD - SLOE GIN IN A SLOW TOWN

Last weekend was wet. I know this because last weekend was also the weekend of the Cowbridge Food Festival and it always rains then. Though always is perhaps pessimistic; the festival has only been running for three years.

Nevertheless, 18,000 visitors - 15 per cent of them apparently from the distant horizons of England or West Wales - braved the weather and turned up to shop in the marquees. And not only in the marquees for vendors who cannot find a place under the canvas take whatever space they can find around the town. Everywhere, from improbable corners and odd wheeled contraptions, the aroma of sweet Belgian waffles, oriental spice or sizzling Monmouthshire sausages floats out on the damp air.

I bought honey-coated Turkish sweetmeats with unpronounceable names, smoked pumpkin seeds and apricots dipped in dark chocolate. Others bought Sloe Gin or Potcheen to accompany vegetables grown to organic perfection and picked that morning. Outside the Town Hall friendly persons from the Vale Council handed out canvas bags for free, begging us all to recycle, in both English and Welsh.

Despite such unexpected largesse, the Festival is somewhat of a victim of its own success. One can only buy what one can carry, there being no room inside, or even outside for anything like a trolley. With your bags full and your shoulders aching, the desire to meander home becomes overwhelming. There are only so many sweet waffles, you can eat in one day.

Still to find 18,000 people these days with sufficient interest in food to invade our small town en masse is an encouraging sign. Confirmation that the fight back against the burger kings of fast food has begun and is growing stronger everyday. The idea of preparing meals from raw ingredients is being promoted again, while Nigella Lawson and her capable cookery clones are devising ever more ingenious ways of speeding the process.

Indeed, I recently discovered that a whole movement now exists devoted to reversing the principles of fast food. It is called with commendable plainness, 'Slow Food' and you can join the movement on their website http://www.slowfood.org.uk/ "Our defence should start at the table with Slow Food," they say. "Let us rediscover the flavours and savours of regional cooking and banish the degrading effect of Fast Food." Hear hear!

The Slow Food movement started in 1989 and now claims 80,000 members in 90 countries all over the world. In the UK the members are grouped geographically into 40 autonomous 'convivia,' the word being an ample description of the purpose of such groups - think of eating good food, drinking and conversing in the company of like minded people and you won't go far wrong. According to their website, members join with the purpose of caring about, enjoying and retaining our diverse heritage of regional food and drink, and protecting it from globalisation. They also try to show an awareness of the associated environmental issues.

The Slow Food Movement is closely allied to a rather bigger brother - something that might have been called 'Slow Towns' if its founder hadn't been Italian and chosen to call it Cittaslow instead.

Cittaslow began life in October 1999, during the food festival in Orvieto, Italy. While Slow Food is for individuals, membership of Cittaslow is for small towns with a population of less than 50,000. There are Cittaslow National Networks in England, Wales, Germany, Norway, Poland and Portugal. Other countries are working towards their own national networks. In the UK Cittaslow is 'led' by Ludlow, the first town in the UK to be admitted to a network, which now includes Alysham and Diss in Norfolk and Mold in Wales.

The organisers say that Cittaslow is a way of thinking. It is about caring for your town and the people who live and work in it or visit it. It is about protecting the environment, about promoting local goods and produce, and about avoiding the ‘sameness’ that afflicts too many towns in the modern world. To be a member of the network a town needs to sign-up to working towards a set of goals that aim to improve quality of life. It also has to pass a detailed assessment on some fifty criteria before being admitted as a member.

You can find more details of Cittaslow at http://www.cittaslow.org.uk/ but it strikes me that here is a movement that should be known about more widely. We all need to slow down, to get out more, to enjoy good food and good company. Hasn't that sense of slowness always been one of the main principles of country life?