Snow on St Patrick's Day

Top of the morning!  Talke Pits in the snow, with Mow Cop behind

As he pottered into the kitchen last night with our empty whiskey glasses, having celebrated 'Saints' unexpectedly convincing victory over Liverpool (not that I dislike the Reds of Merseyside - but we need the points!), Jon announced with some surprise, "It's snowing, sweetheart!" 

The odd flurry at this time of year on a cold night isn't unusual, but waking up to it still covering the ground in the morning is.  But it gave me an opportunity to get out with the camera to record some views that might not be there to be enjoyed for too much longer.

I've posted previously about the proposals to carry out open cast coal mining on a stretch of countryside roughly south-west of our village, and I've promised the organisers of the campaign against (CAGOO - Campaign Against Great Oak Opencast) that my photographic skills are at their disposal.  Keen not to miss what (hopefully) will be the last snow of the winter, I squelched through the fields this morning to record some stunning views, with only the song of skylarks for company. 

Threatened with excavation - looking north-west across the Great Oak site

I was squelching through the same fields yesterday too, and listening to the same larks, but in the company of quite a lot of other people, as it was the CAGOO protest march from Audley up to the Wedgwood Monument.  Luckily there wasn't snow, although I doubt it if would have taken the edge of the adult protesters' commitment or spoilt the day for the animals and children who came along with them.  In fact, if I were UK Coal, I'd be more worried about them than the grown-ups...

Continuity CAGOO?  Beware the boy in the balaclava!

There are lots more pictures of both the lovely location itself and the protest here:

http://flickr.com/gp/30634865@N03/Bum230/  And thanks immensely to the Flickr algorithms generator for that link name!

There was tea and buns to be had at the local cricket club afterwards, but being a hopeless old leftie I had another protest to attend, this time in Hanley, against the 'Bedroom Tax'.  It was a bit thinly supported, but started to look less so once the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers' Party members decided they could actually stand next to each other and co-operate, and I (neither of the above - tempted to describe myself as the Popular Front against the Bedroom Tax: do I hear the word 'splitter'?) was interviewed by a young woman who I mistakenly thought said she was from 'Staffs Hive', though a comrade later corrected me that it was 'Staffs Live'.

So it's just as well I didn't digress into talking about the threat to bees from pesticides... 

Whether either the bedroom tax or the open cast mining proposals can be defeated remains to be seen; despite organised opposition, many a wrong or unpopular measure has been inflicted on people because it suits the powers that be.  But I always find it encouraging to stand with people who care deeply about issues affecting the less well-off in society or the environment.  In which case, I should probably join the Green Party, as I see in Brighton, they've taken a policy decision not to evict tenants plunged into rent arrears by the Bedroom Tax.   Hopefully more principled councils and social landlords will follow suit.

That was the week that was...

"We'll need lots more bottles to edge all these plots, J."  "I'll just have to drink lots more beer then, sweetheart!"

So, that was spring, was it?  This time last week, the wee fella and myself were making great progress turning over some nicely warming soil on our allotment, planting out some garlic and onions that I'd started off in the greenhouse during the autumn, and even sowing some rows of broad beans on the promise of more mild weather.  And tucking in to home-grown salad with some fine-weather Mediterranean-style food.  Why, you could even think summer was just around the corner!

Slug-dodging salad leaves

I also put together a rather splendid spring hanging basket as a commission for a friend and former colleague, with complete disregard for the fact that the poor bloke was probably going to have to get it home on the bus!  I understand a lift was forthcoming in the event, but in future I probably need to factor in a small 'delivery charge' or cut down slightly on the polyanthus!

After a strenuous weekend digging our plot, it was college day on Monday and guess what?  Time to dig over our plots there too.  The allotment soil is light and silty, and gradually improving with regular doses of 'FYM' (farmyard manure - actually, horse muck as a rule).  Reaseheath's soil, surprisingly for an agricultural college on the flood plain of the River Weaver, is not so; I've more chance of making a replica of the Portland Vase from the college's 'soil' than of growing carrots in it, despite the eight barrows of compost now dug in.  But we did have our First Earlies to set out for chitting.

'Foremost' - my 'lucky dip' taters for the trials.  No sign of my Ulster Sceptre' batch yet so they'll have to go on the allotment when they arrive.

Tuesday it was time to scrub the dirt from under my fingernails and stick some of my less scruffy clothes on, as I was in 'training mercenary' mode, helping the CAB explain the miriad of changes to the benefits system coming up in the next few weeks and months to their staff and some partner organisations.  While it's fun to be back amongst friends and scrawling flow-charts and diagrams all over a 'Luddites' Powerpoint' (flipchart) to try and explain what the bloody hell is going on, when you actually step back and look at what IS going on, it's about as depressing as the prospect of frost with the plum blossom about to burst.

As it was World Book Day on Thursday, I'm going to slip in another sneaky plug for mine.  I need to use all sorts of tactics to promote it as it occured to me, as I sent off my press release to the 'Sentinel' on Friday, that if the odds of a Northcliffe Press owned paper giving a mention to a book with a couple accused of benefit fraud as its heroes was pretty slim for starters, describing the arch villain of the piece as 'essentially the Daily Mail newspaper in human form' in the preface might have fatally damaged its marketability in their eyes.  (But he is - in so many ways!).  A free read still available at:

http://www.completelynovel.com/books/severe-discomfort--1

Friday was still being spring-like if soggy, so I put in another shift for a client with this lovely 'Winter Garden', for which I can take no credit whatsoever, though the patch to the left where the ground has been turned over and foxgloves and forget-me-nots planted is my handiwork.

But they'll be no gardening today - the snow is back, there's an icy wind blowing and anyway, I have notes on Employment and Support Allowance to put in order for a training session on Thursday.  But at least it's cosy indoors: the fire's lit and Jon's doing lunch. 

I might even let him have a beer with it!

Not all beastly in Eastleigh...

The view from Netley Beach, Eastleigh Constituency.  It's prettier at night...

If I didn't know this was going to be the sort of post where the jokes almost write themselves, I'd be tempted to put it in 'the other blog'.  It's going to be almost completely plantless and riddled with more political references than there are slugs in a typical hosta bed, but it's simply not the style for the sombre Suffragette time-traveller who writes http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/

The author of that was an earnest young woman who took her politics extremely seriously and, in the days leading up to her 24th birthday in the late spring of 1987, could have been found trudging the streets of the Southern Parishes of an obscure Hampshire town with bundles of Labour Party leaflets in a big satchel, stuffing them through the letter-boxes of prospective voters, boldly knocking on doors and checking voting intentions, wincing with embarrassment when those doors were opened by sitting Tory councillors (supporters' address list just a trifle out-of-date there, Eastleigh CLP - thanks, comrades!).  Because that was my home constituency for the first 24 years of my life, excepting the term-time parts of my three years as a student in Red Sheffield - Beastly Eastleigh. 

I was even allocated the thankless task that same year of running for a Parish Council seat in yachty Hamble (which subsequently went even further up itself by adding 'le-Rice' to its title).  Despite the marvellously efficient Eastleigh CLP printing a leaflet describing me as belonging to the 'Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament', when naturally I supported quite the opposite cause - and so did the Party as a whole, officially, back then - I managed to come second (with about 150 votes) to the Tory, who had a mere 600 more, and still beat the Libdem into third by about three votes.  Whether my 'success' might have got me a winnable seat next time round, I'll never know - at a Labour Party meeting later that year, the guest speaker (invited by his colleague in the ambulance service, who was also my driving instructor) was a chap discussing the merits of Regional Government.  I wasn't totally convinced by his ideas, but got on quite well with the little man himself.  His name was Jon Honeysett.  The rest, as the saying goes, is history...

The town of Eastleigh is probably hoping to slip quietly back into obscurity now the political band-waggon and media circus is packing up and moving on, especially now that the rest of the civilised world thinks all its UKIP-voting xenophobic citizens care about is the mathematically impossible prospect of more Bulgarians than the entire population of Bulgaria heading their way in the next wave of EU migration.  That's an entirely unfair reflection on the good people of Eastleigh - I can think of a couple of friends who would be only to welcoming to strangers from anywhere in the world, just as long as the immigrants were willing to share the coolest tracks from their record collection and any particularly tasty vegetarian recipes.

But then we do know all four of the Democrats living in Texas too...

Unless you're a railway enthusiast, and a steam buff at that, or (God forbid) a fan of ghastly 1970s 'comedian' Benny Hill who was born there, you probably hadn't heard of Eastleigh until all the shenanigans with Chris Huhne and his motoring misdemeanors hit the press.  But the position of Eastleigh MP has a track record of misfortune not far better than the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts tutor at Hogwarts.  For many years, the MP was a genteel old Tory by the name of Sir David Price, who didn't seem to get particularly upset about anything until his pet dog was bitten by an adder in the New Forest, at which point he got all riled and started calling for the reptiles to be culled en masse (clearly all a dastardly plot to oust him by Slytherin).  His successor, elected in the 1992 General Election, took a safe seat and was tipped for great things, but became infamous for the manner of his untimely death.  I will discreetly refer my readers with curious minds who are not too easily shocked by kinky goings-on to Wikipedia for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Milligan

Suffice to say, that didn't help the Tories with their 'Victorian values' morality-heavy strategy at the time, though was the gift that kept on giving to political satirists for years to come.  The Libdems swept in at the by-election on a tide of moral outrage and much of their famous grass-roots electioneering, heavily based on promising to do something about dog poo on pavements (not, however, 'kill the adders so dog-walkers can take their pets out to the New Foest in safety', which even those in the blue corner had disgarded by then).  I understand dog poo is still an issue on the doorstep.

Poor Mr Milligan's fruity fatality was quite handy from my perspective, as I was working for Eastleigh Council in their housing advice team at the time.  We often had to contact other local authorities when checking the back-stories of some of our applicants for housing, and invariably when you called them and said where you were calling from, they'd ask 'Where?' and you'd have to explain it was a town in south Hampshire, just north of Southampton, just south of Winchester...  After what should have been, but never was called 'Orangegate', EVERYBODY knew where Eastleigh was!*

And then they forgot again.  Eastleigh settled down with an obscure Libdem MP called David Chidgey (wasn't that a village near Camberwick Green?) and local politics went off the scale of absurdity with a Conservative/Labour coalition holding the Libdems at bay in the Town Hall at one one point.  No one old enough to remember was going to buy 'Don't vote for the Libdems - they've made a pact with the Devil!', when Eastleigh Labour Party didn't always remember to bring their own long spoons to the feast.

So if there's one thing I'd urge Ed Milliband and the policy guys at Labour HQ, it would be don't try to draw conclusions from anything that happens in Eastleigh, because it's weird with a frankly bonkers political history.  And don't drift to the right to try and snap up those UKIP voters either, because if you do, you'll lose even more of those earnest young activists who thought nothing of leafleting an entire village single-handed in a day for 'the Party', until the Party dropped Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament, and Clause 4, went to war in Iraq, and introduced Employment and Support Allowance.  We've heard muffled regrets about the illegal war, but it's been a bit quiet on where 'we' stand on plans for squandering billions on son-of-Trident, some potentially popular renationalisations (railways, anybody - that would go down well in Eastleigh!), and so far nobody's apologised for those nasty new descriptors and letting Atos loose on the sick and disabled, have they?   You need us old-fashioned, idealistic activists back on board; those leaflets aren't going to deliver themselves, you know! 

And once you've got the policies worked out, sort your 'supporters' address lists out too!

*whoops - is that my John O'Farrell moment, the sick remark that will come back to haunt any future political life I might aspire to?