terraforming

The small patch at the front of the greenhouse used to be a mess of metal poles, tin sheeting, carpet and seemed to have been used to dump just about anything that wasn't wanted and all covered by a dense layer of nettle and weed. It's much better now having been cleared and levelled and planted out with a few courgette plants and a bit of french lavender. The spare bit to the left of the path has been planted up with a few rocks, heathers and primrose. It would be nice to go up today but I have to go to work boo hoo.

the muck in my garden is now this high

I have no idea how we are going to get rid of this lot. The only clauses in the agreement between the council and the allotment association relating to garbage disposal refer to unlet plots, where it is clearly the responsibility of the committee to clear the site. When it comes to a let plot, it is the responsibility of the plot holder to clear it. But how does this cover taking on a derelict plot and turning it into a little piece of eden but in the process turning up this half a ton of shite? Gnn!

As for the asbestos, the council cleansing dept helpfully suggest that they will collect it at a cost of £58.95 for the first bag and £12.60 for each bag thereafter. They can offer no suggestions for the disposal of the rest. I am not willing to pay costs like this for clearing garbage I did not create.


This is the only interesting thing I found in a months worth of work. Its pretty rusted up allright but it can be yours for.....er £150?......ono

fall

Strange weekend. Some years ago, the guy who produced my first solo album, came round to my house and offloaded some software on me and asked me to sing a few songs from the album for him and next day committed suicide. Bloody cheek if you ask me. The songs weren't that bad!

Then on my doorstep appears this guy who says he is dave's son that nobody knew he even had. One look into the eyes is enough to know that he is who he says he is and thereafter we get on like a house on fire and I tell him as much as I can about his dad and we go out and get drunk together and hug each other. It feels like the hug I would've given his dad if he'd only bloody well asked me to and he could've offloaded whatever shit was going on inside his head that weekend and not some bloody useless software. That guy is gonna get thumped if there turns out to be life after death which there won't. Anyway R.....if you get to read this....you're welcome back anytime, there's a place here for you and by all the Harry's.....isn't english beer just tops?

fecund greenhouse

We got the second plot fairly well into the season and by the time the derelict greenhouse had been brought back to life it was really a bit late to be planting stuff. Never mind, ever the optimists we bunged in some tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and they are doing well. The cucumbers are lovely but there may not be enough hot sunshine left to ripen the tomotoes up; it may have to be another batch of green tomato chutney.

unseason

It's been a bit of a funny growing season to say the least. It hasn't all been doom and gloom up on clodhoppers by a long stretch but I confess to a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and unease about the year.

I'm sure a lot of plotholders have had it much worse in other parts of the country and I really feel for them, specially if they are gardening alone without much support which makes it so much harder to take the knocks.

home sweet home

Spiller and Chirpy's 3* mobile home up on the allotment. But they've also now got a 4* shed with built in nesting boxes and enclosure with hot and cold running.

ark ark

Spiller and Chirpy have grown so much now they are beginning to make a mess of the flower beds so we have started to build them a moveable ark ready to transfer them up to plot no2 on the allotments. We will re-jig the run so that it attaches on to the end of the ark so they can come and go as they please. While we were away they escaped for a few hours and were found in a neighbours garden surrounded by 3 cats but Spiller and Chirpy were holding their own in true teenage mutant ninja chicken fashion. But all in all, it will be better once they are ensconced in their new home up on the plots.

jerseyed

We decamped to Jersey to escape the interminable rain and it almost worked. Well, there was less off it anyway. I'd always suspected that I would find the channel islands rather insular and self obsessed and was not wrong. Some sort of victim mentality seems to have lodged in their souls, but dammit, it was NOT their fault that that shit-head hitler occupied them for five years was it?

Anyway, the two things I liked best about the Island in no particular order were Gerald Durrell's wildlife conservation centre and the remarkable Neolithic dolmen at La Hogue Bie.

I remember two thoughts when I first read Gerald's 'My Family and Other Animals' - lets just call it donkeys years ago - first was...You Lucky Lucky Sod! and the second was.... my mum's almost as mad as that, so why can't we go to Corfu too? But you can see why he devoted the rest of his life to wildlife conservation after a such a childhood can't you?

La Hougue Bie is one of those eerie places. Whoever the Neolithic bigwig was that built this one was definately bigger than my neolithic ancestor who built the one in our family name in Zennor in Cornwall which looks like a toilet by comparison. This one is 4 star bleedin luxury. 'Look at my Neolithic wad...losers.....all offshore dosh mateys!'

After the rather too tidy entrance, you have to lumber forward nervously and awkwardly into the darkness fighting off the claustrophobia and the oppressive weight of 5000 years of time and as many tons of stone, earth and rubble above your head, hoping the neolithic architects knew their stuff.


When you eventually reach the end chamber and can stand up straight once more and look back towards the light of the entrance you begin to get an inkling of just what a stupendous piece of work this is. The two side chambers when excavated in 1924/5 contained the remains of three women and five men along with some pottery fragments. There are some better pictures of the interior stonework here.


And a last one of the end chamber.

Slowly your eyes adjust more and more to the gloom but after a while, in the silence and the darkness, you start to feel a bit dreamy, a bit sleepy, and you're eyelids droop heavily and you think 'Wouldn't it be nice just to have a little lie down, just 40 little neolithic winks!'

polyagapanthus

down by the coldframe in the sqodgy sqodgy ground polyagapanthus has come out to play in an all too brief sunny spell.

damn this stupid stupid rain all the time. The spuds and onions are going to have to come out before they rot. The ground between the shed and one side of the greenhouse traps water and there's been so much off it, the waterlogged tomatoes are suffering and the foliage is looking all yellow and sickly.

....and what we ask is the weather forecast for the rest of the week.....yep....more rain. Gnnn!

pooped

Wake up Stupid....he's coming!




Look, I really don't mind if you want to perch on my favourite garden chair.. . . . . . . ............just so long as your arses are pointing the right way!




Oh....my.......I am just so sorry....It won't happen again. Oh, the shame....I think I may fall off my perch!

jj kale

All that rain was getting thoroughly depressing and it's so good to see some sunshine again. Here it is shining down on the purple podded pea flowers.




I couldn't resist taking a picture of the weekend harvest which consisted of black kale (as in the above pic), spuds, beets, onions, lettuce, courgette, broad beans, carrots etc, which we'll be eating all next week. SWMBO has been making redcurrent jelly and blackcurrant jam and goosegog something or other.


As predicted, there is absolutely no sign of anything happening to move the unwanted pigeon loft off our bottom plot and I am now ammending my estimate of 3 months to 3 years. What this means for Spiller and Chirpy's new home I don't quite know, but they are happy enough in our back garden for now.

goings and comings

We all said a tearful farewell to our beloved hammy who died in the night. Ben made him a last nesting box and as he buried him in the back garden he sobbed out 'you were my best friend...and I never told you'. Now there's a lesson we'd all better learn. Thanks hammy.




But say hello to Spiller and Chirpy. We love them to bits already as they rootle about in the garden, constantly chattering to one another.

I think they are hybrids, possibly of Rhody reds and something else. The farmer assures us they are from good laying stock anyway. They live in the bike shed at night and we even built them a little adventure playground in there. It's got this cute little ladder up to their perch....I know, I know....go on, say it.

INCENDIO!

"Beginning In early May we will be holding 24-hour prayer vigils and hourly book burnings outside the Freehold Iowa Multiplex Cinema. Bring your children for this exciting time of healing and cleansing as we witness for Jesus with picket signs and old fashioned bullhorn preaching. God wants us to prevent every unsaved person in Freehold, Iowa from from seeing the new Harry Potter movie, "The Order of the Phoenix." Our pastors already gave the movie a sin-screening and they tell us it is one of the most deceptively wicked pieces of Satanic filth to ever grace their Godly eyes. We expect over 2,000 church members to be on hand to block the theater entrance on the release date. If you feel God is calling you to stand with us and suffer public persecution and humiliation for His namesake, please visit the church secretary to let her know your schedule for the next month. And if the way into your heart is through your tummy, we're proud to announce that the Ladies of Landover will be preparing pot-luck dinners, and Chick-fil-A will be sponsoring the event and providing daily lunches. We hope to see you there!"

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1199/potter.html

Damn.....and there I was, quite looking forward to it *checks schedule for next week*. Double damn....can't go *sobs downheartedly*

Oh....if you do visit the site the pop up quotes are priceless!

'post neo-classical endogenous growth theory'

The man who came up with the above phrase has just been rewarded with the job of secretary of state for children, schools and families. So I guess he'll be making a lot of sense then. Do you think it has anything to do with allotments?

Meanwhile, Blair is off for some middle east envy and rumour has it he is about to join the Holy Roman Catholic Church of Apostolic Child Molestors who's Pontiff wined & dined and welcomed into the Vatican that Iraqi child mass murderer Tariq Aziz and even took him off for a private prayer vigil to Assisi. Obviously, as a member of the "one true faith" Tony should have no problems mediating between the militant islamic factions who would like to kill all jews, christians and secularists and torture all other moslems who practice the heretical 'wrong' version of islam. Catholisism, representing as it does, the one true God meanwhile needs to get rid of/destroy/undermine all other religions including islam and judy-ism. The Jews, who treat the Palestinians/Lebanese so nicely anyway, and who got the rocks straight from God in the first place and the nuclear weaponry from it's God-Fearing allies and have a wall to wail at as well will take on all comers. I think some poetic justice is about to come Tony's way.

Meanwhile I, infidel that I am, am off to buy some chickens in the firm knowledge that they will make more sense than all the politicians and theologians put together.

gnnn!

Will the persons who visited my blog by googling:

"army helicopter pilot eczema"

and

"wise guys exquisite malevolence"

please contact me and I'll do my best to help you.

Plenergy

Now that's a cheery sight! It's goosegogs all the way to the centre of the earth.

We harvested our first batch of Pentland Javelin earlies at the weekend and they are just delicious served with a nob of butter and a sprinkle of salt. MMmmm.

Ben was bouncing off the walls a bit this weekend and when I asked him what was up he invented a good new word for it; he said he was full of 'plenergy' which is what happens when he hasn't had a playmate to help burn of his sometimes rather manic energy. Wish I had half of it!

resistance is futile

Here are a few of the second plot. The derelict greenhouse has been given a makeover and fettled with new glass and a couple of coats of wood preserver on the timbers. It's now back in active production with tomatoes and peppers planted. When we got it, it was, like the rest of the plot, buried in the six foot hight growth you can see in the background. In fact, the whole plot was covered in this and the job of clearing is going to take some time but at least we've been let off the plot fee for this year.

The amount of garbage coming off the site is problematic as it is right at the bottom of the plots and thus a long long way (uphill dammit) from the gate. There is a liquorice allsorts of broken glass, twisted metal, asbestos sheet, plastic detritus and what else and the pile gets bigger and bigger as more of the plot gets strimmed back to reveal yet more garbage. We need to get a trailer as far down the plots as we can otherwise it's going to take forever to clear.


We've dug and planted out a couple of beds so there will be a bit of productivity out of the plot this year as well as what we get from the greenhouse of course.

The plot extends beyond the fence to the huts in the background. The big one on the left is a pigeon loft which has been sold and is to be taken away sometime in the next few weeks though I'll believe that when I see it. I reckon it'll more likely be there for three months. We'll see. The back bit is where the chooks will eventually live but I'm not planning to do any work on that until we're rid of the pigeon loft. Anyone got a spare weekend? We'll feed you, honest.

monday plot

T'was a very busy day with mrs blackbird hopping round our ankles as we planted out the sweetcorn, the sunflowers and the courgettes and pulled up as much horsetail as we could.

There is a chance we might be offered another plot further down on which we could keep chooks. It's wild and knee deep in grass at the moment and there are no chicken runs or hutches on it so they would have to be built. Still, we're very tempted. What slightly worries me is finding people willing to look after them while we go off on our musical jaunts from time to time. The time commitment is somewhat daunting as well. As you can imagine, Ben is hopping up and down with excitement at the idea at the moment. I'm not sure how he'll feel though when one of them gets to be the Sunday roast. Should we? Shouldn't we?

Asparagus

The asparagus bed, although not exactly prolific yet, has provided enough for a few meals so far and I must say it tastes heavenly. This is one that got away.

Our broad beans have been a complete disaster and we've given up and planted some more seed that Jack, our lotty neighbour, gave us.

kale

The flowering kale looks very pretty.

treepeony

We've had the tree peony in our back garden for five years and for the first time it has decided to flower. It was worth the wait.

Sambo's Grave

I still find it difficult to believe that this beautifully insignificant little city of ours was the fourth biggest slaving port in the UK. It is one (of many) uncomfortable historical facts that we must simply acknowledge and live with.

I don't though, really understand the current vogue for apologising for distantish historical events. Where would that logic take us? We would need a ministry of apologetics and a team of stuffed shirts with university degrees in sincerity working round the clock. Doesn't rattle my chain at all. Reparations though! Now that might actually be of use to someone. Is there anyone seriously offering to do this or is pious apology the order of the day?

A few miles up the coast at Sunderland point, we do have a rather poignant and permanent reminder of Lancaster's less than savoury involvement in the slave trade in the form of Sambo's Grave.

The story behind it (at least the one people like to tell), is a rather romanticised tale of a slave cabin boy, abandoned by his beloved ships master and pining away broken heartedly on the shore to be reunited with his captain. Bollocks. Not, I suppose, that some such couldn't happen, I just think the truth is much more likely to be a brutal and unpalatable one.

It's not a very sensible contribution to the debate just to feel crap about it all is it? Sometimes music helps pull me back a bit though, and I guess if anything remotely positive can be said to have arisen out of slavery then I guess 'the blues' might just come close. Not even sure of my ground there though either.

Anyway for what it's worth, here is my recording of Blind Willie McTell, a Dylan song about slaves, plantation owners, chaingangs, and fine fine blues singers, none of which apply to me; although I do of course work on a plantation of sorts and SWMBO likes to keep me in bondage ;-)

Blind Willie McTell mp3 4mgb

*May*

May already......how did that happen all of a sudden? It's that time of year when everything needs doing at once isn't it? And not just in the garden either. We spent most of Monday up on the plot catching up with the planting out and making another makeshift coldframe so that we could clear the greenhouse and make room for the tomatoes. They look good too, healthy and vigorous. Wonder which will be the tastier variety?

Weekend spent in Derbyshire at GG's 65th state pension party where we all met up at the Old Poets Corner in Ashover and attempted to drink the micro brewery dry. Well, some people did anyway. Tch!

primaeval grind

On reflection I think the required collective noun should be a 'grind' of gurdies.

The local EHO (environmental health Office) issued no health warnings and imposed no exclusion zone round the city and the whole weekend was a great success on lots of levels.

There is possibly a tendency towards anorakishness amongst the elder statesmen/women of the gurdy affliction but perhaps not much more so than for any other instrument. Anyway, it was nicely balanced by some highly frivolous and hugely enjoyable dancing during the evening concerts.

I drank far too much of this.









Cliff's band stopped with us and seemed totally unfazed by our degree of decorative disorder and domestic chaos and our only regret is that they couldn't stay long enough for us to get stuck into a session with them which we would love to have done. C'est la vie, tant pis, domage, ect ect......maybe next time. If they come round your way then go see them andro the night away. 'Primaeval' = Cliff Stapleton, gurdy: Sunny Davidson, guitar, accordeon, percussion: Jonathan Shoreland, pipes, flutes ect ect.

And best of all....it rained too......fantastic!

Hurdygurdyman

This weekend sees our beloved city hosting the UK's first Hurdy Gurdy festival. That should clear the decks a bit!

I have mixed feelings about the hurdy gurdy because although one of my all time favourite records** is by gilles chabenat (the best gurdy player ever), playing alongside frederick paris (one of the best clarinet players ever), and is a record I have fond memories of rocking ben off to sleep with when he was a babe in arms. That's right, I did say rocking a baby off to sleep to a hurdy gurdy record! Unbelievable no? It IS that good.

On the other hand, and after a while, (gilles excepting), listening to a gurdy can be like having someone slowly saw your neck off with a dado rail. The thought of a (insert preferred collective noun for a bunch of amateur gurdyists), churning away all weekend in my favourite pub may see me having to hack of some limbs and crawl to the door in order to escape.

Anyway, my job this weekend is to finish the wallpapering and put up the dado rail, not saw my neck off with one.

Unlike SWMBO, who is teaching some french dance workshops, I do not have any duties at this festival so I could probably ignore it but for the fact that we are putting up an unknown number of gurdyists in our house. I may be forced to take the air bed up to the allotment shed and hide!


One of them, however, will be the delightful Cliff Stapleton and it will be nice to see him again. Last time he stayed,we spent an entertaining and fairly surreal evening discussing the idiotsyncracies of a bunch of Steiner theatrical types with whom he toured for a while. If I remember rightly, there was much hilarity and drinking of red wine and I swear blind he said he was jacking it all in after that to go and become a spud farmer in New Zealand. Perhaps that's what everyone sais after spending time with Steiner type people.

Talking of allotments, which I wasn't, the ground is so dry now it looks like it does in July/August after a long heatwave; all cracked and parched. I can't remember when we last had a drop of rain here and it will be refreshing when if finally arrives. I've drained all the barrels dry already and we're having to make four or five trips up to water every week.

Maybe I could take all the hudygurdyists up to the allotment pretending it's a workshop venue and there surreptitiously turn all their instruments into serial water pumps which will not only water the garden but entertain the plants as well as driving off any Steinerists lurking locally *sighs* See how green one can be with a little imagination?

*picture of cliff stapleton eating a banana after eating a hurdygurdy which caused flatulence. ~They do that.

**Duo CHABENAT PARIS
De l'Eau et des Amandes (1995)

blackbird

So after work I go up to water all the seedlings in the greenhouse and contemplate planting out some of the lettuce in the cold frame. I have to stop because I notice a label stuck into the soil indicating that there might be carrots present. I am dubious but still it is a possibility as SWMBO was up yesterday and might just have planted some carrots in there. I go into the shed and sit on the chair to muse about this possibility and other things. A female blackbird hops on top of the shed door and looks in at me inquisitively. 'Hello', I say, 'what do you want?', and start chatting to her. I tell her all about my day and ask her if she is hungry. She hops down from the door and stands in the entrance to the shed. 'Look,' I say, 'I have nothing for you, all the hobnobs have gone.' She hops up onto a fork and then up onto the potting bench where she is now at eye level a few feet from me and better placed to interpret what this obvious nutter is trying to say. I continue to tell her the list of things we no longer have like cream crackers, bread crumbs, crisps ect ect. She is long and elegant and bright eyed and I think if I was a male blackbird I would fancy her like mad. She turns her head from side to side, evidently listening intently to what I have to say. I love her for this, even my own son will not do this for me. 'Look,' I say, 'the only thing we have that might conceivably interest you are some packets of seeds in the tray up on that top shelf.' She at once flies up to the top shelf and starts rootling around. I begin to wonder if I am speaking the ornithological equivalent of parceltounge. I am so enamoured of her I am prepared to let her peck away at our seed packets. My downfall is that I want to take her picture but the camera is outside in my coat pocket hung up on the greenhouse. 'Look, I'm just going to move a bit and I don't mean you any harm, I'm just going to get the camera and if you don't mind take a picture of you.' I hope the ornytounge is still working. She let's me too and stays on the shelf when I come back in with the camera. Oh, I knew it was a mistake, I would have to raise my arms to bring the camera up to her level to get the picture and it was just a little too threatening for her - sorry. She jumped off and flew out the door but not far away though, looking at me as if to say 'you blew it', as if I didn't know. I hope you'll come back, I'll be looking out for you.

Pilchardpower

After work I often sink into a semi-comatose state for an hour or so and yesterday it happened to be while GQT was on the radio. When I came to I could've sworn I heard Bob Flowerpower advising us to dibble a hole and put a pilchard in it prior to planting our sunflowers out. I wasn't sure if I had dreamt this or if it was a product of my sick imagination so this morning I had to go to Radio 4's listen again just to check it out. Seems I didn't dream it and the man really meant it. Waste of a pilchard if you ask me.

Talking of pilchard's,

I got a letter back from Clarence House thanking me for "bringing the plight (of Manor Garden Allotments) to Hrh's attention", written doubtless by a minion and more than likely consigned to the trash recycling bin shortly thereafter.

However, I note with great satisfaction that the matter is now going to court in a legal action supported by Friends of the Earth and that the closure date has been postponed until July and hopefully it will be put off forever and ever and ever, amen.

april come she will

We fell off the end of our assorted paint brushes, scrapers and plastering trowels long enough to get some serious seed sowing and bed preparation done at last.


It was a joy to be out in the fresh air, tilling this beautiful earth once more instead of breathing in wood dust, paint and varnish fumes.


The end of all that is hopefully not too far off now....well, maybe the end of this month will see it finished.


The seedlings all seem to be thriving and we've potted on all the tomatoes and have started giving them away as I don't see any reasonable way of fitting 60 plants in an 8x6 greenhouse.

hindsight

I now realise it is better not to fart while wearing a wetsuit

Bring The Sun To Me

Our Turkish friend Kamal asked us to team up with Nazli to play for an international society concert up at the Uni. Kamal plays the Baglama, a seven stringed instrument that looks for all the world like a big gourd with a long neck.

It was difficult at first for us to get our heads round the style of the Turkish rhythms and melodies but we got there in the end and managed to put four songs together.

There is nothing understated about the Turkish style; it is all about passion and emotional intensity, as Kamal says to us 'you have to feel it in your heart.' Here is one of the songs we performed called Günes topla benim için which means 'bring the sun to me'.

Seher yeli çik daglara
Günes topla benim için
Haber ilet dört diyara canim
Günes topla benim için

Umutlarin arasindan
Kirpiklerin karasindan
Döste biçak yarasindan canim
Günes topla benim için

Seher yeli yar gözünden
Havadaki kus izinden
Geceleyin gök yüzünden canim
Günes topla benim için

roughly translates as:

Twilight wind climb the mountains
Bring the sun to me
Let everyone know everywhere
Bring the sun to me

From the hopes
From the black eyebrows
From the knife bruises collect the sun
Bring the sun to me

From the eye of my lover
From the trace of the birds in the sky
From the sky at night
Darling, collect and bring the sun to me.

I'm happy to go along with that as spring is coming on although I suspect our lovestruck young Turk has it in mind to find light, love and prosperity in the dark eyebrows of beautiful young women. Well, looking at Nazli, who could blame him.... really?

Won't, Can't

I'm not going to make it this morning.

i'm a civil servant - get me out of here!

Tonights shift is just wall to wall loonys tosspots and con-men. I want out.

It feels like this.

tell it like it is clod.mp3 (4mgb)

tomorrow will be better.....won't it?

No Sferatus Here

We planted some elephant garlic as those flat-capped lancashire nosferatu just laugh at the ordinary stuff. Probably take an elephant to crush it too.
The reason crushing garlic is a good idea is because it breaks open the cell membranes allowing the enzyme allinase to start making those lovely anti-clotting compounds allicin and thiosulphinate. Ideally one should leave it to stand for a bit and then eat the crushed garlic raw. Oh come on! Yep, no kidding, cook it for longer than 6 minutes and the enzymes disappear quicker than a (insert preferred collective noun) of vampires in a sun parlour.

Meercat Manners

‘Well me lud, at the time the greenhouse was getting totalled I wuz busy looking for scorpions and consequently saw nufink and noone in that order guv, honest to God, would I lie to you?’
Ben must be desperate for some fresh eggs as he’s taken to hand feeding the chooks through the fence now.

All this paint stripping has aged me somewhat but yesterday we abandoned our scrapers and went up to the plot and built a nice big bonfire and cleared out the shed and sowed some leek seeds in trays in the greenhouse.

At home I sowed two trays of tomato seeds but isn’t it funny that always, when this time of year comes round and you’re looking for suitable window sill space, they’re every one of them chokkablok with rubbish. This is what I removed to find space for my trays of toms:-

1 pot full of chalk
1 basket of miscellaneous pens and pencils
7 cassette tapes
1 camera obscura
1 tin of Zigity cards
1 Dr Who sonic screwdriver
1 pod for Thunderbird 2 filled with snooker balls
4 paint brushes
2 pots of (mostly useless) felt tips
1 A4 pad
2 address books
3 jack plugs
3 pads of post-it notes (yellow)
1 pad post-it notes (white)
1 capo
…….and a variety of other bits and pieces. Is anyone else like this? I think it’s in the genes; we’re all as bad as each other. You don’t want to come round our house. I tell you.

Who's Got The Conch?

I keep saying to myself... 'must sow the tomato seeds and put em on the window sill'.... and nothing seems to happen. Well, not nothing exactly. We decided that before spring sprung properly we would set to and redecorate the hall stairs and landing and so I find myself every spare or not so spare hour stuck on the end of a paint scraper with an overblown hair dryer in the other hand trying to strip this horrible cream gloss off architraves and banisters and skirting boards. Once the scraper has clogged up with a molten glutinous mess of vile smelling paint it seems to set instantly to concrete with the adhesive powers of a limpet. Then there's the wallpaper. I thought I might get lucky but no, underneath the woodchip there's a layer of plasticised mock wood panelling and underneath that there's another layer of mock wood panelling and underneath that there is, or was, some plaster. I do not see this project ending anytime soon so at some point, possibly the next available sunny day, I will have to decamp to the allotment to restore some semblance of sanity.

Must spare a thought for the less fortunate amongst us though. Victoria's major problem seems to be how to find her way from Malibu to Santa Monica. Gosh, don't some people have it rough!

It's sad (but no great surprise) that the UK is way at the bottom of the list in the child well-being stakes. Somehow it seems that Brits have almost abdicated parental responsibility now. We gave up the conch years ago and now the kids won't give it back and they seem to despise us. We, in turn, look on them (youth) with a mix of fear and suspicion and dare hardly say boo to a goose for fear of getting bladed. I know it's more complicated than that but we'd better put some effort in where it counts or it really will be Lord of the Flies territory before we know it.

We're All Domed......again!

Looby is right. We're heading for another gigantic, farcical, incompetent and idiotic and yet somehow typically epic British fuck up aka the 2012 Olympics. How do we do it? Is it something in our psyche? Is it all horribly inevitable? If it does happen, the concreting over of the Manor Garden allotments will be the saddest part of the whole sorry tale. The initial estimate of £2.375 billion for the games has already risen to an estimated £8 billion with no budget ceiling in sight yet. £400 million in the revised budget is to pay for consultants to help keep the costs down!!!

Manor Garden Allotments

While answering a query from Lois about growing achocha I was alerted to the plight of the 100 year old Manor Garden allotments in London which are in danger of being buldozed to make way for a footpath leading into the 2012 olympic games area. Can I urge my readers to visit their site and sign the petition and do whatever else you feel is possible for you to do to help stop such monumental insanity. Thanks.

Cyberid

Elsewhere in the blogosphere there is a discussion taking place about virtual as opposed to 'real' identity. I find this quite interesting from a number of angles. In some cases people worry around what they write and who they are becoming public knowledge and in some cases they are right to be worried as I imagine it is not that technically difficult to out a bloggers real idendity with unhappy consequences.

Probably for the majority of allotment bloggers there is no real problem here; we tend to write mostly about how our tomato seeds are doing and how crap was our garlic last year and about the clarty soil and the sun and the wind and the couch grass and the club 18-30 root. In most cases our blog does exactly what it sais on the tin and that's fine. Some of us (me included), follow our whimsical natures and from time to time go off on one. This amuses some, annoys others and probably most don't really care one way or the other. Sometimes there is a bit of political sniping here and there but nothing to get too excited about. By and large we stick to plants and seeds and spuds and weeds and we inhabit our own polite parochial backwater of the blogosphere quite happily thank you very much.

This does not make us in any sense 'better' than the Let It All Hang Out Blood Guts & Thunder Boardroom or Bedroom bloggers who publish every nuance of their inner lives for all to read. That's fine too. All bloggers just need to bear in mind that if it's an open blog then it's public domain full stop and really so is your identity, even if you delude yourself into believing that you are blogging annonymously behind a stuffed muppet in a tutu called desmond.

Actually, the best of these blogs are fabulous. Well, sometimes beautifully written, witty, insightful, gritty and startlingly honest accounts of personal lives or perceptive comments on culture or society that should (possibly do) leave the professional commentators and lifestyle columnists green. Your blog is what you want it to be. It's your tin, fill it however you like and if it doesn't do exactly what it sais on the tin then so what exactly? I think the whole blogosphere should be celebrated BIGTIME in all its gloriously insane messy entirety. The notion of blog 'awards' is a meaningless anathema. PEOPLE are writing again! YIPPEE! Expressing themselves as freely or as guardedly as they see fit, free of the agendas set by media moghuls, spin doctors, celebrity gossipers or whatever.

They can present themselves with as many cyber identities as they want. They can put out or shut out and I don't give a fiddlers fart who they really are and don't most of us have some sort of filter to sift the real from the contrived anyway? Oh well, clearly I'm running out of steam now, but can I just leave you with this little muse....If Anne Frank had had a laptop and a blog in her silent tiny attic hideaway instead of just a lonely diary with which to share her quiet desperation.....well, maybe the outcome would not have been different but I don't need to spell out what it might have meant to her.

Three Sheets

Three sheets to the wind again. No, not me... the greenhouse. Still, I suppose I got off relatively lightly losing only three sheets from a side panel. The winds on Thursday and Friday were tremendous and caused a fair amount of damage on the allotments including blowing a whole greenhouse over a few plots further down. I am so glad now that I invested a lot of time building good foundations for both the shed and the greenhouse last winter.

Monday on the other hand was glorious sunshine and we spent a couple of hours on the plot putting the new glass in and pottering about and then we went off to the Mammoth Onion where we bought:

Pink Fir Apple (salad potatoes)
Pentland Javelin (earlies)
Sante (main crop)
Elephant Garlic
Spaghetti Marrow
Hysam onion sets
Jolant leeks
Robinsons giant cabbage
Igor brussel sprouts
Show Perfection peas
Robinsons lettuce
Parella green/red lettuce mix
Mammoth Long beets
Exhibition Long parsnips
Marian swede
White Dream radish
Big Max pumpkin
Genovese courgette
Squash onions

The seeds we requested from the Heritage Seed Library have also arrived and I think we got everything we requested:

Arany Alma tomato
Szechuan aubergine
Devoy beetroot
King of the Ridge cucumber
Egmont Gold carrot
Soror Sarek pepper

Now all we need to do is find space to put everything. Ideally, we now need another plot as this one is pretty much in order and we will be full to overflowing when everything is planted out.

I thought I might keep a vague sort of record of how much the plot costs us this year and so far the tally is:

57.60 for seeds
10.50 for glass

It would also be good to value the crops we take off it but I know I won't get aroundtuit.

5 Things Then

Ok then.......
1. My real name (in the old Cornish language) means
head or top of a valley. (they were tin miners there
back in the 17th century).

2. I used to work for Marconi Marine and am a black
belt in morse code (honestly) dah de dah de dah.

3. My dad died when I was four as did his brother. I
have been a complete barmpot ever since.

4. When I was little, a wild bird 'adopted' me and
used to sit on my shoulder and follow me everywhere I
went. You can just see him in the picture sitting on
my left. I don't really remember it.

5. Likes: Dogs, Marmalade, Brinjal Pickle, People Who Call A Spade A Spade And Use One, Dr Who, Anything by Joanne Harris, Misfits & Eccentrics, Full Moons, Snow Patrol, The fact that the first word in my dictionary is 'a' and the last word is 'beer' (in a foregn language of course, can't remember which one), Jimi Hendrix, Tin Tin.....etc

Dislikes: Cats, Celebrities, Horseradish sauce Yechhk, The Tweenies, Passive Agressives, Chavs & Bling, Country Music, TV Soaps, Soap, Religion, Margarine, Horsetail, Anything Made Out Of Plastic, Capitalism, America, Spam....etc etc

A Question: Does this tagging meme thingy have to go to allotment bloggers or anyone?

Tag Wrestling

Now Paula's, (from Petunias Garden), gone and done it. She's tagged me and it hurts. Now I am supposed to reveal 5 things about myself that nobody knows. So why is that hard when there are millions of things about me that nobody knows? Actually, not quite true coz Jane over at Horticultural knows who I really am because she asked me! It's that easy. She wanted to use a quote from my blog in her book which should be on my bookshelf by now but isn't coz I want a signed copy and Amazon don't do that sort of thing. Allotment Lady is kindly enticing me back away from my holiday over at the Chasms of the Earth where we are having and engaging discussion on the merits or otherwise of Dan Brown's novel 'The Da Vinci Code', a ghastly, terrible book (so why is it so successful)?. But this, of course is just me being a black belt procrastinator and avoiding the ghastly truth that I have just not written a mote worth reading for a long time. This usually changes when the long shadows of winter begin to depart and the black dog takes himself off for a walk somewhere - who cares where? And the sun starts to creep into the bottom of the garden once more and slowly work it's way up towards the house as spring draws near. Anyway I have been spreading muck for England this winter and it's got to stop I tell you.

See how good I am at avoiding the five things.....I can go on for hours like this honestly.

Well anyway, we've got a bit of a busy weekend ahead as we're playing for a Swedish dance thingy over in Derbyshire and have to leave tonight so I will think about the five things and reveal all when I'm back next week. Now what do you want? Sauce.....Raunch......Cultural Embarrassment (you've never died till you've died onstage).....Hottest Fantasies (Phew!).......An IQ rating (don't go there)......Professional Disasters.......(no, my boss might read this blog, I don't know).......Relationship ***k ups...(Plenty to choose from).........Most Embarrassing Moment(s) in a Co-Education Playground Setting......What Did I Eat For Dinner Last Night?......Have You REALLY Lost Your Camera Again?

What. what, what.....you choose and don't be nosey you Allotment Devils You!

Vacation

Happy New Year Everyone. Clodhopper is currently on vacation mostly over at Cultural Snow and The Chasms of the Earth where the weather is fine, the going good to moderate and the language fruity. Anyway, I'm still waiting for my seeds from the seed library and otherwise I'm just spreading muck.....you know me. Tchhh! Roll on Spring......but is this REALLY a winter?