The Beverage Report



Time for Tea?

In a few days time, I'll be back to work at Stoke-on-Trent CAB (actually, it's now Staffordshire North and Stoke CAB) as a part-time Training and Network Development Officer, rather than trying to make a living with fork, spade, paintbrush or pen/PC. 

Not that I will be quitting horticulture completely; I have several clients whose gardens I would be sorry not to return to, and they seem keen to keep me on the case.  'Uplander Designs' will also continue, as I've got things to paint for Christmas craft fairs, but apart from having to keep doing self-assessment forms and pay Class 2 NI, those enterprises will almost be back to being hobbies.  My new 'part-time' job is going to be very much to the fore.

There are also some ESA-themed adventures for my 'imaginary friends' at the fictional Solent Welfare Rights Project, now on a second edit and DIY proof-read, but before these hit the printed page even in prototype, I'd like to get the original tales out to a wider audience.   

What I did last summer...

Their purpose was always education - 'counter-propaganda' - rather than profit, but now I have an income lined up for the winter, it occurs to me that rather than contributing small change to my finances during the horticultural closed season, the fictional advisers could do something to help their real life counterparts. 

If you've read the books, you might have noticed a key theme running through them.  No, not the 'Atticus Finch principle' of not judging someone until you've stood in their shoes and walked about in them, or by appearances.  That's too obvious.  I mean the part that hot beverages play in the plot.  The kettle is rarely silent, either at the Walkers' house or within the Project's tatty kitchen.  Cups of tea and coffee play key supporting roles as characters take their first faltering steps along the road to romance, struggle to balance their shrinking budgets, or even as they consider whether life remains worth living. 

The fictional advisers find solace after fraught interviews with a reviving cuppa, unwind after tough tribunals with a refreshing brew, dream their dreams of a fairer society with mugs in hand, and in that respect art imitates life.  In fact, when I received my first meagre royalties recently, I remarked on Facebook that the sum would scarcely keep a self-respecting advice worker in tea for a week.  Though written flippantly, that's now given me an idea.  Since I couldn't have devoted so much time to writing without the remnants of my redundancy settlement to see me through the damp days of last summer, it would be great to be able to give something back to the CAB.  Something utterly vital, and yet easily overlooked. 

So the challenge I'm setting myself is to do a good enough job of promoting my books that the profits from sales of 'Severe Discomfort' and 'Continual Supervision' can fund my comrades' tea and coffee.  I'll need to do better than at present, when I'm probably running at the equivalent of a pint or two of milk per week!

With all the crises there are in the world and the hardship there is in our region, this might seem a poor use of a charitable ideal.  There must be more deserving cases; with foodbanks running empty, tenants facing eviction due to the 'Bedroom Tax', benefit caps and sanctions afflicting so many families, why aspire to give advisers free tea? 

My answer is, because when you've spent a morning having to tell client after despairing client that there really is nothing more they're entitled to, that there's no way to draft a budget  so they can both eat and pay rent, that you know nobody will employ them with their health as it is, but according to the law, they are fully fit for work, the best way to get your head together for an afternoon of the same is to get the kettle on.  And if you're lucky, that little bit of thinking time over tea is when the strategy to solve one or two of these problems suddenly drops into place.

So here are the links to the books yet again. 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Severe-Discomfort-Sarah-Honeysett/dp/1849143285
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Continual-Supervision-Sarah-Honeysett/dp/1849143374/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1

The Kindle version of 'Severe Discomfort' is available free for a few days from 31st July to mark my return to a 'proper' job, so ebook readers can try it for nothing.  If you enjoy it, please give it a review; if you can afford to buy one, you'll also give an adviser a cuppa! 

If you want real books, don't forget you can order paperbacks from real, tax-paying bookshops for no more than the Amazon price of £5.99.  Foyle's were advertising each online at £5.39 with free P&P for orders over £10, so that's a £1.20 saving for the pair over Amazon - and a round of hot beverages for one of our teams!

So this summer, why not put your feet up with a good book and a cuppa!

Revenge of the Weather Gods?

Getting watered in...?  Planting at Tatton

It seems I won't need to do any watering in the garden for a few days - we woke to torrential rain and spectacular lightning, thunder booming all around yesterday morning (it's very loud when you live on top of a hill!), and although there are blue skies now, they're scattered with some pretty chunky clouds. 

The decision to help out on the Tatton Park project Monday rather than Tuesday looks to have been a good one!

I did get a brief session doing some planting, in between acting as 'runner' - fetching the better specimens for those nimbler souls who could squeeze into the flowerbeds - and watering those blasted tall orange helleniums again.  When I saw them still standing in rows, unplanted, an entire weekend after I had last lovingly watered them all, I could almost have given in to my inner serial-killer, but it transpired that I had arrived too late to see them tried in the garden, only to be expelled for being that bit too tall (I sympathise).  They are going to look spectacular arranged around our marquee, while their shorter cousins added some fiery colour to the planting.

A planter's eye view

Hopefully the decision to select some shorter specimens will have helped our garden to withstand whatever the Mancunian skies threw at it on Tuesday, although the meadow grasses on the mound will need some sunshine and a gentle breeze to fluff them up again.

The results of today's judging are now in, and it's a Silver for the St Luke's Hospice Garden, although our fellow Reaseheathers working on the oddly named Mu-No Thing Galaxy Garden bagged a Silver-Gilt.  The links to both are here:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Shows-Events/RHS-Show-Tatton-Park/2013/Gardens/Garden-directory/St-Luke’s-Hospice-Silver-Anniversary-Garden
http://www.rhs.org.uk/Shows-Events/RHS-Show-Tatton-Park/2013/Gardens/Garden-directory/Mu-No-Thing

It's faintly bizarre, of course, that as I count down the days to being plugged back into the Matrix, returning to the CAB and Social Security advice work, we finally get the sort of weather I'd hoped for during my two summers without regular work commitments.  I have long suspected that the Weather Gods have it in for me.  Colleagues avoided clashing their holidays with mine when I worked in Southampton on the basis that my annual leave inevitably meant grey skies.  To be fair, you could say the same for the Scaffolding Gods - I've lost count of the number of architectural wonders I've visited only to find them in the throes of major renovation.

So are the Weather Gods toying with me now, giving us this mini-heatwave to remind me that soon I won't be able to fit work around my plans and pleasures, but it'll be very much the other way round, or is this a sign that they are well-pleased with my choice?  Is it perhaps the case that they don't have it in for me at all, but that the true target of their wrath is the Con-Dems?  Do they have an income-redistribution agenda in which I am destined to play some part?  Do they, perchance, despise inherited privilege and inequality?  (After all, something seriously upset them in London late on Monday afternoon..!)

In short, are the Weather Gods actually Socialists?

Despite the odd downpour, the forecast ahead remains reasonably bright, with the prospect of blue skies over Tatton Park for Friday and Saturday.  If only things were looking so positive for our Social Security system.

You say potato...

First Early Potato Trial plot, 2013

This is a post specifically for spud geeks.  If you don't care deeply about taters, you might as well stop reading now.  There's no satirical political comment.  There's no shameless plugging of last summer's literary endeavours in lieu of gardening.  There isn't even a back-handed attack on the malevolent influence on society of the Daily Mail, or a raised eyebrow that the BBC can pitch 'claimants' against 'taxpayers' in a recent prime-time expose, while simultaneously doling out vast sums of public money to overpaid buffoons such as the charmless Jeremy Clarkson, and millions more to failed executives.  Okay, there's more than a raised eyebrow on that last point; I'm reaching for the proverbial pitchfork.  But for now, back to the taters...

Crown Bank Allotment plot 2 First Early Potato trial 2013:

Three 'new' cultivars were put through their paces this year, using a fairly worked-out patch of ground.  Six tubers each of 'Colleen', 'Cosmos' and 'Swift' were planted early in April and all three were lifted today, with the following results.

'Colleen' potatoes

First out were 'Colleen' - a clean-skinned, white potato with no sign of slug or other damage, most tubers being quite large (they have been lifted late, to be fair), but with no more than five or six potatoes per tuber.  Having cooked some for lunch today, they have a floury texture and pleasant flavour, but fall to bits rather too readily to make a good potato salad spud.

'Cosmos' - good-sized, disease-free tubers

'Cosmos' were similar in appearance but gave an appreciably higher yield, with fewer small potatoes.  All the tubers were disease-free and pretty clean of scab or other blemishes.  Subject to the all-important taste test, they seem to be the best of three.

'Swift' - frankly, a bit crap...

'Swift' failed miserably; two of the original six plants were nowhere to be seen and the yield barely exceeded the number of spuds originally planted.  They were also the only cultivar to show signs of scab.  I won't bother with them again. 

The plot is now in use for another trial - namely, to see whether 'Phaecelia' proves to be a good soil-improving green manure, as the ground here is thin and dusty, and desperately needs bulking up with some humus.  Expect a preliminary report in a month or so.

In the meanwhile, I'll be very surprised if the Daily Mail doesn't tell us all the taters give you cancer...

Tatton Revisited

This year, the weather has been hotter than the planting scheme colours!

One of the highlights of my early days as a proper, professional horticulturalist, way back in the summer of 2011, was the chance to take part in the building of a garden for the Tatton Park Flower Show, working with colleges from Reaseheath College.  By a nice trick of symmetry, as I stand on the brink of returning to welfare rights as my primary profession, the opportunity to work at Tatton has come round again.

Paving and planting - the garden starts to take shape

It's a smaller project this year, a circular garden commissioned by St Luke's Hospice to mark their Silver Anniversary.  I missed most of the messiest part of the build - constructing the wildflower meadow ramparts that will partly enclose the seating area and water feature - though did have lots of fun this morning mixing mud to coat a smaller mound prior to the application of turf.

Waiting for planting and gasping for water

As previously, it's been a treat to see imaginative design and skilled work combining with good plant selection to create what will hopefully be an inspiring garden.  Unfortunately, there has been one factor this year notably absent in 2011 - scorching temperatures.  While the plants for the Secret Garden project were bathed daily by the weather gods, while we mere mortals huddled for shelter under a couple of gazebos and tried desperately to prevent the mortar being washed out of our walls and paving, this year it has been a constant battle, with hose and watering can, to keep the plants from reaching permanent wilting point.

Resting my size 10s for a moment - safety boots are compulsory

It's been tough going to make sure us gardeners have stayed hydrated too.  Being so used to tap water being drinkable, it takes an effort to remember that the piped water on site isn't - it's drawn from the lakes in the grounds, so contains all manner of nasties and probably a high proportion of deer pee!  Not that this deterred the Eastern European contractor team erecting the marquee across the road from our site from showering themselves off with the standpipe water, but they did have a heavy job and no shelter.  I doubt if most of the patrons of the Champagne Bar their structure is destined to be will give a moment's thought to the guys who put it all up, and will take it down again. 

Drifts of 'chocolate' cosmos

It's hard to get a sense of the show this year.  There seem to be more exhibition tents and fewer gardens, although the organisers' office claims there are actually more gardens, but spread out across the site rather than clustered around 'The Clump'.  In previous years it's been amazing how many are built over the last weekend, so when I'm next on site (due to be Monday lunchtime), it'll be interesting to see what changes have taken place.  

End of work, Thursday.

I'm sure St Luke's garden will be fully planted by then, and it'll just be for whoever is on site then to tidy the edges and get the last patches of dirt off the granite sets and the last traces of cement dust off of the grass.  And, of course, to do the watering...




Facebook Follies

Simple pleasures - home-grown veg and a happy hubby - but Facebook thinks I should aspire to more than this!

It's strange to think that I owe my soon-to-be new job to 'Facebook'.  I wasn't specifically job-hunting, having finally secured a reasonable number of regular gardening clients, and obviously still hoping for literary fame and fortune.  But when I saw from a friend's Facebook status that there were vacancies back at my former workplace, I realised that despite the fun I was having writing adventures for imaginary welfare rights worker friends, it would be good to be back with my real ones.

Not that I take up most of the opportunities and products with which Facebook tempts me.  Sometimes, it clearly picks up on a comment I've made and advertises something relevant (polytunnels at present), but more often it's clearly working from assumptions and stereotypes based on my age and gender, or just making completely wild guesses.  Why, for example, would I 'like' a cat charity's site when all the stray cats in this dstrict use my front lawn as a toilet?  I would rather 'like' the paramilitary wing of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ('Continuity RSPB', anyone?)

You get some glorious contrasts and contradictions in Facebook adverts, though - like the juxtaposition of one of the many 'shocking weight-loss secret' ads (usually associated with a Z list, size zero celeb once derided as 'fat' because you couldn't count her ribs through her bikini) with one below it urging me to 'Bake Better Cupcakes!' while just beneath that was 'buy gorgeous corsets' or something to that effect.  So there you have it - get thin, pig out, then compress the consequences back into a socially acceptable figure!  Sorted!

And naturally, being a woman, I must care deeply about shoes, so hardly a login goes by without an ad for some implausibly extravagant footwear appearing alongside my friends' updates.  'Killer Heels' weren't kidding - the picture with the ad was definitely of something which, applied to my feet, would probably have punctured sheet steel, and when you're already pushing 6ft tall, you would really need to accessorise those towering red stilletos with a hard hat to save bashing your brains out on the doorframe whenever you entered a room.  If they even make shoes like that in a size nine-and-a-half. 

Actually, I bet they do.  And not for girls, either.

Since passing 50, the ratio of menopause remedies to life assurance schemes has shifted slightly in favour of the latter, with a sprinkling of funeral plans for good measure, while all manner of bizarre beauty tips are just a click away, or so I guess from those '60 year-old woman looks 30!' claims, next to a pic of a lady who's either 94, or has spent all of her shorter life sunbathing without the factor 25, while another 'shocking beauty secret' appears to involve a jar of lemon curd.  I think I'll put up with '50 year-old woman looks a bit older than that but still has all her own teeth and doesn't fritter her hard-earned cash away on pointless beauty products or quack 'remedies' for an entirely natural phase of life'.

I had thought, however, that Facebook had now decided I was officially 'past it', as many months had passed since they last advised me that there were men, of various specifications (and I hasten to add that by specifications I mean 'single', 'dads', 'sincere divorced' etc, rather than anything anatomical!), looking for 'lurve' in my area.  Either that, or someone (or some algorithm) had noticed the 'married' reference in my personal profile and the frequent affectionately-subtitled photos of dear Mr H that make it onto my status. 

But no - this post has been prompted by the news that 'in your area' (because I'd be too old to travel far?  Or too young for a free bus pass?) single men are looking for 'faithful women'.  So, you might wonder, why is Facebook telling this to a happily-married woman?  In order that I can let them know that 'faithful women' are indeed out there, and they shouldn't give up hope of one day finding one of their own, the poor lonely lads?  Or are Facebook's dating agency accomplices working on the premise that although these guys would prefer 'faithful' partners, someone else's cheating wife would do? 

While I usually allow myself a wry chuckle at this nonsense, sometimes I can only stare speechless at the poor aim and utter bluntness of Cupid Facebook's arrows.  The classic - bearing in mind that even a cursory glance at my 'likes', photos and comments gives me away as a bit of a Leftie - was the revelation that there were 'faithful policemen' looking for love in my area.  As opposed to the disgracefully shifty undercover ones with false names from the gravestones of dead children and fake lifestories who routinely sleep with unattached female activists, presumably? 

Still, it could be worse.  With all our online data apparently being routinely shared with the various US intelligence agencies, I suppose I should watch out for ads telling me that there are 'Sincere CIA Operatives' looking for 'faithful women' too?  Watch out for the Prism Dating Agency girls!  It's watching out for you...   

Foremost, but not First

'The Monday Group' display their best taters.

My RHS Level 2 Practical course at Reaseheath College came to its conclusion yesterday, with a handful of odd tasks we needed to complete in order to finish the syllabus fitted in between the showers.  We thinned out the parsnips on our plots, took out a drill to sow lettuce seeds, weeded our peas and beans and tested the temperature of the fast-decaying compost heap.  We made an insect house out of a polystyrene cup, sawed wood to make a log stack (again for wildlife to shelter in over the winter - they spoil their bugs at Reaseheath), and finally took cuttings of Berberis.  And we had a final dig through of our potato patches, rounding up the handful of stragglers that had evaded us on Saturday morning, when the rest were lifted for the First Early Potato Show.

It's often said (especially, as I recall well, to the non-athletic kid on School Sports Day) that what matters in any competition isn't the winning, it's the taking part.  No-one who has ever witnessed a vegetable show, be it at a major RHS-accredited event or at their local village hall or allotment hut is under any such delusion.  To hell with 'play up, play up and play the game!': the ethos of the Reaseheath First Early Potato Show, in common with all horticultural competitions, was the thoroughly Spartan 'come back with your shield or on it!'  There was no room for failure.   From the moment we drew the name of our selected spud out of the bag back in March, victory was all.

Baskets of spuds, including Foremost, in all its many forms...

The laurels would go to whoever could present a plate of the best four potatoes.  The chosen taters needed to match each other as closely as possible, be of a good size, of a shape correct for their variety, perfectly clean of mud or dirt and yet without damage to their frail skins.  At the beginning of the week, we had seen four potatoes chosen from just two roots clean up nicely and make a perfectly satisfactory exhibit.  With two entire rows to choose from, how difficult could it possibly be to select four matching spuds? 

I had high hopes that if I started at the well-watered end of the row I had spaced widely, I would find good-sized near-perfect examples of my 'Foremost' taters from the first two or three roots.  But having planted the other row closer together, and having deliberately not watered the eastern end of each row to find out how much difference that made, I would need to lift them all that morning, just to assess the experiment.

Show-stoppers - prize winners from our group (well done Maz and Crispin)

To my surprise, failing to water and close spacing seemed to have made virtually no difference to the number or quality of potatoes lifted from each row, or from either end of the row.  The result of the experiment was clear - potatoes are apparently completely impervious to how you treat them!  There was a slightly higher yield from the ones planted close together, though of course that row had more tubers in to start with.  But regarding size and quality, the pattern was roughly the same across the whole site: a good mixture of 'baby' new potatoes and a fair number of medium-sized tubers, none of which resembed each other to any appreciable extent. 

I carefully washed off those from the 'spaced at 30cm centres' row.  It's amazing how many different forms a potato from a single cultivar can take!  There were longish tubers, round ones, knobbly ones and smooth ones, but finding any four that had more in common than membership of the species Solanum Tuberosum was surprisingly tricky.  I had planned to leave the dirt on the others, to help them store for a little longer, but in the end washed all of them too.  The selection before me remained an impressive illustration of mashable diversity, and now time was running out to select and prepare any of them for the show.

With high hopes of clinching victory - before I uncovered the disappointing truth - I had brought a soft paintbrush with me to help clean off every last spec of dirt without scraping the skin, but no amount of archaeologist-like attention to detail was going to save the day.  Victory would surely go to another...

Luckily, the 'other' in question was Marion, celebrating her 'twenty-first' birthday (though not for absolutely the first time...!), and accepting her prize most graciously.  That the Friday Group managed the actual 'Best in Show' plate of spuds was mildly galling.  There were mutterings in the Monday group that they had been favoured with more show-friendly cultivars; clearly, we ought to have resorted to proper allotmenteers' sabotage techniques after all, and blasted their plots with 'Roundup'.

No prizes for rude spuds...!

Alas, there will be no opportunity for revenge; 'school's out' for summer now, and although some of us may be sneaking back to harvest our peas and beans, that may be the end of formal study at Reaseheath for me for some time.  After two wonderfully enjoyable years as a part-time student there, I'm not sure that there will be time to fit in another course, my home and commercial gardening commitments, and my forthcoming new job.  Because, after two years away from the fray, I'm rejoining Citizens Advice in a new role.  The official job title is 'Training and Network Development Officer', though 'Counter-propaganda and Resistence Support Officer' seems equally apt! 

But before that gets underway, there might be the chance to help on another Tatton Park show garden for the college.  Watch this space!