Christmas Trees



We've been 'darn sarf' (as some of the locals up here like to pronounce it, in Mockney accents) over Christmas, and with all due respect to the dear friends and family who welcomed us over the Festive Season, I shall think twice before I plan anything similar again.

It's not just that I've got used to a quiet Christmas for two in the Potteries, usually with at least an attempt at snow if not a decent covering of the real thing for us to walk through between dinner and dessert (except last year, when we were on the narrowboat - and that was a brilliant Christmas with a difference!).  It's all the anxiety of how the house/garden/greenhouse/boat will cope with the winter weather while we're away for a week or more.  Previously, the risk has been of a 'Big Freeze' - indeed I seem to recall the usual hysterical headlines in the doom-and-gloom tabloids warning of just that a few months ago (before the weather turned unusually mild, and they got on with hating Romanians and Bulgarians), but this year it was more a case of hoping we still had a roof when we got home.

We shouldn't have worried - in fact, by a quirky twist of fate we managed to travel into the areas most under attack from the Yuletide weather - the South Coast and Home Counties, which got thoroughly battered by gales and drenched with rain a couple of days before Christmas, and not for the first time this month - while Staffordshire took considerably less of a pounding.  But I still think in future we'll plan for shorter visits away from the peak holiday times and aim to miss both the seasonal rush and any foul weather.

Under the circumstances, walking about under trees might seem an ill-advised way to spend some of our free time, but our first walk in the woods came about as a result of crossed wires with my Dad, who had made a mental note of our planned visit for lunch with him and step-mum Pat on 23rd December, despite me arranging it for the 22nd.  Sadly, this left us less time to catch up with them as that storm was building and we needed to get to our hosts in rural West Sussex while the roads were still passable (in fact the A29 through Pulborough was closed quite soon after we traversed it, after not so much driving as tacking along the M27), but gave us an unexpected free day with some very dear friends (and innocent growers of narcotics - see 'Pot Luck' from August 2012).

Sunday 22nd December was bright, though with a chilly wind, and a perfect day for a walk, so we all wandered around the Hillier Arboretum at Braishfield, near Romsey in Hampshire.  Despite having lived quite nearby before moving north, I hadn't visited since childhood and found it quite an inspiration.  Home to a collection of trees and shrubs from all over the world, it also has an area of Himalayan-themed planting and a small, tasteful memorial to the Gurkha regiments and a glorious Winter Garden established long before they got to be trendy.  The best of the photos are on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30634865@N03/sets/72157639205560426/

By contrast, my Boxing Day woodland walk was a solo expedition through, depending on your point of view, a woefully mis-managed patch of forestry or a romantic sylvan glade.  After the rain of previous days it was certainly squelchy underfoot but most of the fallen trees seemed to have been down for years, with one spectacular exception.

With indistinct paths disappearing into thickets or over sudden combes, had it not been a sunny morning I might have felt uncomfortable without an elven sword in case of giant spiders (plus the Hobbit to wield it), but the Hobbit was safely indoors waiting for his baby grandson to visit again, and I just had my trusty, battered Nikon D40 (New Years Resolution check - buy new lens for camera!).  Consequently, there is again a set on Flickr if you would like to see more, including some shots of the older fallen trees which look more like the skeletons of prehistoric animals (or dragons?).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30634865@N03/sets/72157639209873765/

I'm effectively grounded for the next couple of days while I try to shift the Christmas cold picked up somewhere on our travels (another good reason to go into quarantine next year, rather than socialising - bah humbug!) but if it isn't too windy I'll prune the apple trees and give them a quick blast of Bordeaux Mixture (contains no alcohol) and I have some writing projects to get on with too, which should keep me off the mince pies for a little while.  Actually, I don't think we've got any mince pies, though we did buy next years Christmas pudding in the sales at Sainsburys yesterday!

And a very Happy New Year to you all!

Whatever next?

RHS Level 2 Diploma

I've been putting together this year's Christmas letter today.  I know some people - notably 'Guardian' columnist Simon Hoggart - are distainful of 'round robins', but I generally enjoy those we receive from our friends, which are generally witty and not at all smug.  I would much rather receive a printed newsletter than no news at all, and have binned out of hand a card which contains only a sticky label to say who it's from and arrived in a sticky-labelled envelope for the second year running! 

I have to confess to some fear of getting nominated for a 'Hoggart' this year, though.  If I've managed to tell my friends about my husband's MBE and cute grandson, narrowboating to London and back, completing my RHS Diploma and self-publishing two novels without crossing the smugness line, I'll be pleasantly surprised.  I fear that Jon being asked to cut the ribbon to formally re-open our local B&Q store may be the final straw - but there aren't that many celebrities in this part of North Staffordshire, and with Robbie busy promoting his new album...

They're a friendly lot at B&Q and, as you might guess, Jon and I are regular customers for gardening supplies and bits and bobs for little DIY projects and the model railway, though our most recent purchase has been some replacement fence panels after another spell of stormy weather. 

It is odd looking back on this year's achievements, especially finishing the RHS course without any plans to sign up for another.  I would love to tackle the Level 3 theory course, and the practical too for that matter, but my CAB job really needs me to be quite flexible about the days I can work and the capacity to do some evenings, and while I could do the theory as an evening course, I don't think I would have the concentration for it after a busy day training or talking.  And I still have a handful of loyal customers who need their plots tended, before I think of taking on another patch at Reaseheath.  But it felt strange not starting back in September.

Snow in November

The other recent achievement was completing the task I set myself of polishing the second draft of 'Limited Capability', sequel Social Security saga to the earlier books, into a finished text and publishing it as a serial with an episode (roughly two chapters) available for free download by Friday every week - for fourteen consecutive weeks.  Only one - appropriately, episode 13 - was one day late: the rest came out on time, though a re-read has shown up some proof-reading errors which I can quietly correct, and a calculation error which I have uncharitably blamed on the character in the story responsible for the sum, rather than his careless author.  The next stage is to re-divide back into chapters and typeset for publication as a paperback, and then see if I can manage something slightly more akin to a proper 'launch' for the book than my previous efforts received. 

I have read a couple of 'how to...' articles on book launches which seem to involve i) being in London, ii) inviting large numbers of influential people and iii) plying critics and journalists with generous quantities of free food and champagne.  There seems to be no model based on being in Stoke-on-Trent, inviting a modest number of friends and work-mates and plying them with tea and oatcakes, which is about as far as my budget stretches!  Having said that, one generous colleague has splashed a recommendation for the whole series all over the front page of a CAB internal online magazine - doubtless the reason for a small spike in 'Severe Discomfort' sales at the end of last week - and while the ambition of shifting enough books to keep us all in tea and coffee at Stoke CAB has yet to be realised, there is now a respectable little fund which will provide the gang with a few Christmas treats and some goodies afterwards for those stressful months as we approach the end of the financial year, and the end of some financial support...

It will be a good time to take a break and take stock, and I certainly plan to do some gardening over Christmas - in fact I have promised a serious pruning session to one of our prospective hosts during the Festive Season - and with a clear week after Christmas before I'm back to work I ought to be able to catch up on some clients' work too, but I'll make sure I have my notebook to hand as I already have some notes for a new story taking one existing character and several new ones in a subtly different and quirky direction, before hopefully returning to the Solent Welfare Rights Project at some point in the not too distant future.  There will be politics, humour and suspense.

And yes, there will probably be kissing too...

In a Vicarage Garden

As God intended?  The front border before work began.

I can recall my parents taking a very dim view when a new headmaster was appointed at my Comprehensive school who openly stated that he was an atheist.  I have never figured out why this troubled them, since we never went to church - except for 'hatches, matches and dispatches' related services - never said 'grace' at meals or did anything else vaguely religious, but Mr Wilson's appointment was seemingly an irrevocable step down the slippery slope to 'progressive' teaching methids, the triumph of the 'permissive society' and complete educational and moral collapse.

I don't remember much about how Mr Wilson filled his non-religious assemblies, as I spent a disproportionate number of them in the Medical Room recovering from faints and dizzy spells, since my teenage circulatory system seemed ill-equipped for coping with my rapidly increasing height, but I do remember the story he told the school when he 'came out' as a godless heathen, as I was reminded of it when I began my major project of the last gardening year. 

Mr Wilson's tale went like this.  A country vicar leans on the wall of a cottage near his home, admiring the garden bursting with colourful flowers in pretty beds and healthy vegetables in neat rows.  Seeing an elderly gent tending the plot, he remarks 'With the help of the Good Lord you've made a glorious garden, sir!'   To which the canny old gardener replies, 'I don't know about the help of the Good Lord, Reverend - you should have seen the bloody state He'd let it get into when he was managing it on His own!'

I was reminded of this story when I popped across the road from one of my favourite gardens to consider a request to tackle the front garden of the local vicarage.  Clearly, the Lord had been left to manage that alone for some time, and it truly was in a dreadful state.  So bad, in fact, that I very nearly said 'no thanks'.

But I do like a challenge...

I was warned that a lot of old holly trees and bushes had been taken out of it some time before, but it was impossible to assess how much root and stalk might still lurk in the plot since most was smothered in meadow grasses practically my own height.  However, there were bluebells and foxgloves making a bright, brave display to one side and the prospect of half-decent soil under the scrub (on the basis of the well-loved garden across the road), so I set to work.

The grasses pulled out surprisingly easily, with some encouragement from my big stainless steel fork, and after a couple of gardening sessions a truly mighty compost heap had appeared in the far corner of the border.  Luckily they keep some chickens at the back, so there's no shortage of compost-accelerator, and the original 'Great Pyramid' has subsided well.  I won't try and turn it until the spring now, in case it's in use for hibernation.

There is still a lot to do but I have to say that, having transplanted a lot of my favourite spring and early summer perennials into the border, I really am looking forward to the next growing season.  The front border is almost clear of weeds and fully replanted, so the next task is to start working through the border at the side of the property which contains some lovely shrubs in dire need of pruning.  And then there's a bed under the front window which needs ridding of horsetail.

If I can manage that, it will indeed be a miracle!

All you need is love?



The romantic scent of Philadelphus plays a part in helping two characters find love in Severe Discomfort

'Sex sells', they say.  Well, it seems that whoever figured that out was definitely on to something...

As regular readers will know, in between the odd gardening project and my 'proper' job back at the CAB, I write fiction.  If you haven't already read 'Severe Discomfort' and its sequel, 'Continual Supervision', and haven't met the Walker family and the Solent Welfare Rights Project advisers who help them cope with a nightmare Social Security appeal, I hope you will; both are available as real paperbacks from real bookshops as well as virtual ones with any profits from sales earmarked for the Stoke-on-Trent Citizens Advice Bureau. 

Kindle owners can pick up both as ebooks on Amazon, along with weekly instalments of 'Limited Capability', a new story concerning the same characters, with at least a couple of episodes free to download every Friday.  It's the download stats for these that prove the old marketing maxim correct.

Logically, if you start a story at Episode One, state clearly in the blurb when it can be downloaded free, publish Episode Two the following week with similar guidance and so on, you might expect similar numbers to be downloaded week by week, unless you do a major marketing blitz to disrupt the pattern.  I don't have the resources for a major marketing blitz, but have popped the odd link on Facebook sites sympathetic to the cause of Social Security claimants around the first Friday of the month, when Episode One is always free. 

On that basis, you might expect the highest sales for the first instalment, with fewer for no.2 as the story won't appeal to all, a few less for no 3 (especially if folk enjoying the story haven't finished the previous episode yet, but know they can come back for a freebie in a month's time or spend 77p for it when they want it) and so on.  But this is not the pattern. 

While Episode One has reasonably good 'sales' (including freebies), it is currently being outpaced by Episodes Four, Six and Eight which, I'm sure you'll agree, is illogical.  Or it would be, if all the instalments were classified in the same way, but because there is no genre 'Social Security Benefit themed, left-leaning chick lit' to select from Amazon's menu (an unforgivable oversight, I'm sure you'll agree), I've varied the two options for genre available per episode.  No 1 therefore went out as 'Legal' and 'Family Saga' which is probably the closest match for the story as a whole.  Depending on the primary themes in each of them, other episodes have also been tagged as 'Contemporary Women', 'Political' and 'Romance'.

It's no coincidence that Episodes Four, Six and Eight have the 'Romance' tag!

But now I have a dilemma.  I want my story to be read.  I want people who wouldn't otherwise think sympathetically about benefit claimants to meet the Walkers and get to like them, and to empathise with their troubles.  I want them to share the frustrations of the advice workers battling with funding cuts and legal challenges.  I want them to stop believing the 'Daily Mail' and see Iain Duncan Smith for the vile little turd that he unquestionably is. 

And I now know that the best way to get readers is to classify my stories as 'romance'.  There is clearly a large audience for romantic fiction looking for a free read - I'm sure it's the mildly racy scene available early on in the preview pages of 'Continual Supervision' that keeps it outpacing its prequel when they're both on a free promotion!  I have a sneaking suspicion that classifying an episode or two as 'erotica' would be even more effective in drumming up downloads, but even the naughtiest of the 'naughty bits' aren't really naughty enough to get away with that without risking disappointment to frustrated readers, and we don't want bad reviews!

At which point, may I make a gentle plea for kind but honest reviews on the 'Amazon' site if you've read either of the original books or any of the new serial so far.

So I suppose I had better not cheat and stick the 'romance' label where it doesn't belong.  On the other hand, if 'sex sells' perhaps the trick is actually to write a few extra 'naughty bits'?

Battening down the hatches

There's a storm coming.

Looking out of the window next to the computer desk, the sun of our last light evening of the year is setting into a sullen mass of slate-grey cloud building over Snowdonia and spreading east towards us.  This isn't the 'St Jude Storm' promised for Sunday night and the early hours of Monday, but a warm-up act rattling in tonight with the promise of heavy rain and high winds.

Neither used to worry me a great deal, and I'm still fairly relaxed about the rain, but living on top of a hill makes high winds much more of a worry.  During the 1987 hurricane, I was living in Southampton and, despite the fact that the South Coast bore the brunt of it, I managed to sleep right through the storm, even with my father and our next-door neighbour making emergency repairs to the flat roof above my bedroom at one point, only becoming aware that something had happened when I switched the radio on and heard a list of school closures being read out.  'Funny,' I thought, 'I don't remember anything about a teachers' strike on the news.'  And then I drew the curtains and realised I could see a great deal more of the Solent than I used to be able to from my window, because there was a bloody great oaktree missing between our house and the waterfront. 

There was another mighty storm in 1990, but I dozed through that as well, being mildly sedated still after having my wisdom teeth removed.

Since moving north, high winds have been more worrying.  We had a pretty hefty storm during our first winter up here, and consequently found ourselves scurrying round the garden in the wee small hours, wellies and water-proofs on over pyjamas, rounding up the panels from our recently-erected polycarbonate greenhouse.  One of them was never found, in fact, despite house-to-house enquiries along the street, so there are a couple of panes of horticultural glass in a section of the roof instead.  After this episode, Jon re-engineered the original structure to include additional bracing to an impressive level of over-engineering, and with the hedgerow behind it now mature, the 'polycarb' should now be safe.

I'm more concerned about the lean-to greenhouse on the back of the house this year, having pruned out a section of the shrubbery along the west side of the garden to restore our view of the Long Mynd during the summer.  While the tall Philadelphus may have looked scraggy during the winter, the bare stems still offered a bit of a windbreak, and although the extra light has enabled the herb garden to flourish, a trashed lean-to will be a high price to pay for that.  So it's fingers crossed that after all the build-up and the hype, it all turns out to be a storm in a teacup after all.

Technicolour Taters

Snicked or slugged - random collection of crazy spuds.

So, loyal spud geeks, it's that time of the year when I take stock of this year's experimental crops, you get some information about cultivars you may not have tried before, and everyone else gets to chortle at the bizarre and rude shapes of the Pink Fir Apple ones.

Alien lifeform?  Nope - it's a tater!

Having got that out of the way, on to this year's trial crops, first of which was Red Emmelie, sold as an early maincrop with red skin and flesh.  The tubers are elongated and the yield per plant seemed good, with tolerably low levels of slug damage and the tops dying back naturally with no signs of blight, but with such a dry high summer, it's not possible to promise that would always be the case.  The rough outer skin scraped off easily, leaving a glossy ruby-red layer beneath, and they held their shape well during boiling, although the colour became paler.

Red Emmelie after cooking

They have a good salad-potato texture and a rather smooth, buttery taste.

The other unusual one this year was Violetta, sold as a late maincrop but harvested now as tubers left too long in the ground on our allotment have been susceptible to millipede attack in the last couple of years.  Despite this, the tubers were still of a good size and quite regular oval or teardrop shape, again without undue signs of damage or disease for organic growing.

Violetta before cooking.

Like Red Emmelie, they cleaned up quite easily to reveal a very deep amethyst layer under the flaky outer skin and an astonishing purple interior.  What they would look (and taste) like when cooked remained to be seen.

There is a truly classic Billy Connolly sketch from about fifteen to twenty years ago in which he rails against the menus in fancy restaurants that don't actually tell you what's available to eat, but instead hide behind 'Catch of the Day' or 'Vegetables in Season' descriptions.  This reached it's nadir, according to the Glaswegian comic, with a menu in Ireland which informed him that the meals would be accompanied by 'Potatoes of the Night'.  Connolly goes on to speculate about what the **** this means, and whether 'Potatoes of the Night' have to be harvested in the dark by farmers wearing mining-style helmets with a lamp on the front or hunted only by the brave, like dangerous noctural creatures.

Potatoes of the Night?

Having cooked the first of my Violetta spuds, I think I have authentic 'Potatoes of the Night' which, despite their somewhat gothic appearance, are remarkably tasty.  They have a floury texture and good flavour, and didn't prove as prone to disintegration as I feared since I left them to cook while I cleared the Pink Fir Apples that would complete the trio of odd taters to be served to Jon's unsuspecting cousin Steve visiting from New Zealand and he was a good enough sport to give these a try.  Sadly, his country of residence is a stickler for bio-security, so he won't be able to take any back for the family.

Nor will he be able to take home any examples of the notorious Pink Fir Apple, but readers can have a good chuckle at some examples from this year's crop here...

So who still thinks vegetable growing is boring?

"Are you Hilary?"

Would you buy a used book from this woman?

Apologies to the spud geeks who were expecting a post on the subject of this year's especially colourful new additions to the tater plot, but another 'plot' entirely has stolen their thunder, as I've unexpectedly won a useful little bit of publicity for my books, with an impending article on the 'Big Book, Little Book' review site, as this link will show...

http://www.completelynovel.com/articles/selfpubsunday-promotion

A big 'thank you' to the Completelynovel team for giving me this chance!

I say 'unexpectedly' advisedly, as I'm actually pretty hopeless at conventional self-promotion.  Okay, so I'm on Facebook and Linkedin, and I write a blog or two, but what 'image' do I present?  On here, I celebrate my failures as much as my successes - crap carrots, saucy-shaped rather than prizewinning potatoes, crops ravaged by caterpillars and slugs, while my most read post isn't about anything I've grown at all, but the accidental narcotics that sprouted up in a friend's garden.  While other people select professional smart-suited head and shoulders shots for their Linkedin pic, I've been using the one above of me in tatty overalls scraping peeling paint and rust off of the roof of a narrowboat.  It's a nice photo of me, with a bright, cheery smile, but when it comes to promoting that professional image, I'm wondering if it's ideal for someone not specifically seeking work renovating canal boats! 

And I'd be surprised if it works that well as the public image of an author, which is a shame as it's the one I've been using for CompletelyNovel and Amazon.  To be fair, I do have the outline of a narrowboat-based drama sketched out (with my Stoke-based Geordie feminist Daphne Randall taking the helm), but until that's more than the scrawly contents of a notebook, the current 'image' is an epic fail, and that day is some way off as I haven't finished with the Solent Welfare Rights Project gang just yet (though I do have a 'cunning plan' for releasing their next adventures sooner rather than later).

The original stories are picking up a small but select fanbase at work, which is both encouraging and occasionally disconcerting.  A couple of days ago a colleague asked me quietly, "Are you Hilary?".  I didn't know whether to be flattered as Hilary is intelligent, assertive and 'really rather' glamorous or to 'Plead the Fifth' as they say in the USA, on account of her - ahem! - inappropriate use of National Trust membership.  In fact, I've had a quite a few raised eyebrows on account of the 'naughty bits' in the second book, which isn't what anyone expects from me, but isn't not judging people by appearances a key theme of the books?

But no, I'm not Hilary, though as we're both 'ladies of a certain age' who've worked in benefits advice for the same amount of time and were students in coalfield cities during the Miners' Strike, we do share a few opinions and a little bit of history, though I share a lot more studied 'history' with fellow medievalist Tom Appleby.  There's common ground between me and some of my other characters too: when I stood on the Milton Road End terraces at the old Dell cheering on the Saints, a young Toby Novak could easily have been at my side, while the way Vaughan James' garden quietly invades his kitchen is something we share. 

A little more literary.  Sarah at Tate Modern (with tea, and Jon's hat)

The closest match, and the one I own up to in the preface, is Sally Archer, who has a great deal in common with my younger self, including spectacular clumsiness, an interest in everything and a knack for passing exams, awkwardness about her height, a truly dreadful singing voice and a carbon footprint significantly smaller than her actual footprint: I do indeed possess a pair of size 10 safety boots!  But my Dad was a train driver not a builder, and has great financial sense too.

 

There are times when the truth is stranger than fiction, though.  A west country newspaper recently told of a man wrongly taken to court by the DWP for benefit fraud when a medical report showed his right leg had recovered from an injury, and they took this as evidence he had lied about his mobility difficulties - completely overlooking the fact that his left leg had been amputated! 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-23771631

Meanwhile, in a real advice centre somewhere in North Staffordshire, I wandered into one of the staff loos yesterday and found the previous occupant had left a book called 'Quiet Enjoyment' sitting by the pan!  It's a housing law book, in case you didn't guess, though if anyone is after a title for a book set in a Housing Advice Centre...? 

Still, better 'Quiet Enjoyment' in the WC than 'Severe Discomfort', I think we can all agree!