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? 

Spud Wars

I do my best to give my readers what they want - so how does two blogs in quick succession on the subject of potatoes sound?  In the immortal words of the creepy Fast Show tailors, "Suits you, Sir!"

My patience/tight-fistedness was rewarded on Sunday with the long-awaited announcement that Thompson and Morgan were doing free Postage and Packing for two days, and as I hadn't spotted my old faithful 'Kestrel' or blight-busting 'Sarpo Mira' at the garden centres locally, I promptly ordered them online, getting 20 of the Hungarian heroes for a mere £2.99 into the bargain.  These, with my purchases from Ryton, would do for this year. 
Or so I thought until college yesterday morning and the announcement from tutor Harry Delany that he had a 'feeling in his water' that it was time the RHS Practical groups had a go at growing First Early potatoes, that he intended to allocate us a different cultivar each, as far as possible, and that the master plan was for us to grow our potatoes with the aim of achieving competiton standard results for the first Potato Day the college had ever organised, intended for 22nd June.

And it would be us - 'The Monday Group' - versus 'The Friday Group'.  Being mild-mannered, eco-friendly, ethical gardeners, it took only seconds for mutterings about 'sabotage' to be heard.  For shame, colleagues!  I was all in favour of doing things fairly and squarely until I noticed that Harry's initial plan to allocate cultivars around the room in the order on the board would leave me with 'Rocket' - a nice spud, but slug-prone, in my experience - but luckily someone before me also disputed their allocation, and so there will be a draw once Harry has the spuds.  Unless we have a choice of our own we'd prefer...

On that basis, I have already secured what I trust will be my secret weapon.  Using the on-going T&M free P&P deal, I've ordered myself a bag of 'Ulster Sceptre', a cultivar not available from Bridgmere and a wee bit dearer than the rest, but regarded as a good 'doer' for many years and interestingly, also known as 'Cheshire potatoes' for their popularity in that county...

...which just so happens to be the county they're going to be grown in for this competition!

Apparently we'll also be taught the dark arts of selecting, cleaning and presenting our best spuds for exhibition, which will stand me in good stead if the Crown Bank boys decide that purple spuds aren't an abomination in the sight of the Lord after all, but our secret weapon in a few autumn Horticultural shows.

I'm also determined to make a decent effort at growing peas and beans this year, again stocking up on a few new ones to trial on the allotment.  I simply couldn't resist a packet of maincrop peas called 'Kenobi', though whether the Force will be strong enough with them to keep the slugs and flea-beetles at bay remains to be seen!

Mash

New Potatoes - this year's experimental cultivars

It's strange what picks up traffic on the Internet, and in what mysterious ways search engines must work.  Looking at the stats for my posts on this blog over the 18 or so months that it's been running, stories that I thought might be of great general interest, or even which contained references to topical or notorious issues, didn't necessary attract more views than more mundane matters.  But a pattern does emerge; a strange and mildly disturbing pattern. 

All of my most popular posts concern...

Potatoes!

Bags of seed potatoes selected at Ryton Organic Gardens

Perhaps I am not streetwise enough to realise that, in some grimy sub-culture, words like 'spud' or 'tater' have another meaning though if so, one hesitates to speculate what it might be.  Let's hope that the true reason is that a veritable army of closet 'spud geeks' is lurking out there, working to bring the virtues of this starchy staple to a wider public and counter years of negative propaganda from the cynical and self-serving diet industry. 

And of course my sworn foes at the 'Daily Mail' have added 'chips' to their list of 'everything-you-might-enjoy-especially-if-you're-working-class-that-causes-cancer'*, while only the up-market Sweet Potato (an imposter unworthy of the name: not even from the noble Solanum family, for heaven's sake!) is listed amongst the good guys as preventing it (even if fried in lard DM?  I doubt that!).

Come on you reds!  'Red Emmalie' early maincrop

So what horrors might befall you if you ate pink mash, or purple chips?  Strictly in the cause of advancing science and not in the least to get incredulous looks and suspicious glances from fellow allotmenteers (though I do enjoy seeing that raised eyebrow and hearing the immortal words 'what the bloody hell are those, duck?'), I hope to find out soon.  Of course I've done the pink mash thing and lived to tell the tale, but this year's reds are new kids on the block, a rather elogated tuber called 'Red Emmalie' which will be up against reigning red champions 'Highland Burgundy Red' for taste, yield and slug/disease resistence.

And in the blue corner - 'Violetta', late maincrop

What will blow the minds of the allotment stalwarts, however, is the other funny-colour cultivar, 'Violetta' which, to no-one's great surprise I suspect, is a blue-purple shade all the way through!  Those will definitely cause some furrowed brows and either get me co-opted onto the committee or handed over to the Spanish Inquisition.

And for maximum blog traffic, I guess I could try crossing either of the above with 'Pink Fir Apple' to produce a potato with both an outrageously rude shape and a funny colour - if I succeed, there will have to be a competition to name it!

I've also got three different 'First Early' cultivars to test against each other - 'Swift', 'Cosmos' and 'Colleen' and a maincrop called 'Picasso' which is, against expectations with a name like that, perfectly regular and normal in shape and colour.  I can't help thinking someone's missed a trick there.  They're all sat out in the kitchen 'chitting' now. 

I still have to get some 'Kestrel' and 'Sarpo Mira' for my bulk crops, so I had better do that sooner rather than later or I'll miss the opportunity.  At Ryton, where I got my experimentals, they had already sold out of both of these but I imagine word got round about their usefulness during last year's slug-friendly, blighty summer and they will be much in demand.

Right, enough about potatoes for now.  On the basis that this post will be widely-read because it concerns taters, and in a shameless piece of self-publicity, here's the link to my novel again:

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

Unlikely as it might seem, the story does contain a couple of scenes with potatoes, both in their customary staring role in the 'main meal' test for lower rate DLA for care, and at a crucial point in a romantic sub-plot too! 

What more could you want, fellow spud geeks?


*Obligatory side-swipe at the Daily Mail newspaper.  Because it's got to be done!

Stranger than fiction?

Courtroom drama, humour, romance... and benefits? 

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was on the way to publishing my first novel.  Well, it's taking its first tentative steps into the wider world even as I write...

The funny thing is that when I started writing 'Severe Discomfort', the shrinking Social Security system and demonisation of claimants didn't seem a particularly topical subject.  Since then, 'Welfare Reform' has become one of the big issues and potentially a matter on which the Opposition can, if they're brave, put some really clear water between themselves and the 'Nasty Party'. 

But the real surprise, having set my tale in 'an unnamed railway town in south Hampshire' - but clearly one on Southampton's doorstep - is that for the next week or so, with Chris Huhne's downfall and the Eastleigh by-election, the railway town in south Hampshire that forms the backdrop to my tale is going to be the centre of the political universe and, with the kind of timing that I usually save for my infrequent attempts at surfing, I've faffed and farted about for just long enough to miss that particular wave of publicity since it'll be another two to six weeks before 'Severe Discomfort' is available from bookshops or Amazon.  Not that I want you to buy it from the tax-evading behemoth, of course - if you want a paper copy, support those nice people at Completelynovel: see below.

Still, no matter.  The 'Welfare Reform' debate isn't done by a long way, but there is the merest hint that the tide might be starting to turn with terrible tales of hardship from the 'Bedroom Tax' and hopefully David Cameron, George Osborne and despicable IDS are all heading for some 'severe discomfort' of their own. 

In the meantime, if you haven't had enough of my warped sense of humour and unashamedly Socialist views on social justice, you can get an extra large dose here, for free:

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

If you enjoy the story, give it a good review.  If you really enjoy the story, tell your friends and buy your Luddite friends who don't read books online a paper version.  And watch out for 'Continual Supervision' the sequel - currently at the final proof-reading stage with a trusted, eagle-eyed friend - because, as any football fan will tell you, it's a game of two halves!

Signs of Spring?

Snowdrops

If you're looking for an investment opportunity, here's a tip: Radox.  Buy shares in the soothing soak now, because it looks like I'm going to be needing industrial quantities of the stuff over the next few weeks.

At home, our garden is looking shockingly shipwrecked after the recent snow and weeks of neglect prior to that.  It's not exactly a great advert if any prospective clients walk past, though at least the Google Earth guys came by during the spring when the front garden was at its prettiest, so virtual visitors get a good impression! 

My excuse is that I don't disturb it during the winter because I don't want to unsettle or expose any hibernating garden friends like toads and ladybirds - there are usually some of the latter snuggled up in the crispy brown remnants of the crocosmia leaves.  But the downside of this strategy is that the slugs and snails also get an amnesty.  So I'll need to make a start before too much longer or the molluscs will steal a march on me.

I've also been pleasantly surprised to get a long-term project just over the border in Cheshire which involves the tidying and on-going maintenance of a large front garden.  Not only is my employer extremely pleasant, being generous with tea and certainly not the sort to quote stories from the Daily Mail at me (indeed, I suspect she wouldn't even sully her wellies with it), the garden itself seems to occupy a time zone several weeks further into spring than my own.  Perhaps it's the gorgeous sandy but humus-rich soil, perhaps the lower altitude, but the snowdrops are all in full bloom and there are primroses and crocus popping up all over the place and even an azalea on the brink of bursting into flower.  I also have the delightful company of a pair of bug-hunting robins as I turn over the soil and, despite their fierce reputation, these seem happy to tolerate the company of a wren who's almost as tame.  The robins do a particularly cute line in fork-handle perching, though probably only because they know I can't photograph them with my gardening gloves on!

There have been some tough battles with over-enthusiastic ground-cover ivy this week, but the worst of that seems to be behind us now.  But I'm not taking any chances; my vertebrae need some TLC, so its bathtime!

Putting the 'Pits' back in Talke?

Rugeley Power Station

Coal mining played an important part in the history of North Staffordshire, but I was more than a little taken-aback when a leaflet dropped through our door a few days ago suggesting that it might have a part to play in its future too, and rather close to home.  It seems that UK Coal have plans to surface mine if not literally 'in our back yard', certainly within a mile of our back garden.

I attended one of their public consultation events today and spent quite a long time talking to several UK Coal people about their proposals.  They were all thoroughly charming chaps, painfully conscious that they're perceived to be fire-breathing climate villains.  Had there been a tree handy, I got the distinct impression they would have been hugging it, as well as building deluxe bat-boxes, excavating ponds for natterjack toads, sowing wild-flower meadows and then skipping through them with the fluffy bunnies, they were at such great pains to reassure me on issues such as noise, dust and pollution, traffic density and the restoration of the site to its former glory.

And despite the spot of sarcasm there, I believe they were entirely sincere in all their replies.  No, this relatively small, relatively short-life scheme isn't a 'Trojan Horse' to get work on site, only for it to morph into a mega pit operating for years and scalping a vast scar across our green fields.  Yes, they are aware that the A34 is already a very busy road and they will plan truck movements to avoid busy times.  Yes, they are looking at reinstating the rail sidings so that there's minimal additional road traffic as a consequence of the extraction.  And no, they really won't need to bring in landfill materials in order to restore the site to its former contours at the end.

The last point seemed ridiculous when the proposal is to remove up to 450,000 tonnes of coal.  As a gardener, I know perfectly well that if you dig a hole or trench, then refill it, even if you do a pretty good job of tamping it down, you always end up with a higher profile at the end, unless you take some spoil away.  But 450,000 tonnes?

Ah, explained the very nice man from UK Coal, you have plenty of material to refill with because what you're excavating is very compacted indeed, and actually, the proportion of material you're removing from site is relatively small - perhaps one tonne for each sixteen or seventeen excavated.  So there's plenty of scope to remodel the terrain as you found it.

At that point, having been reassured on that matter, the absurdity of the entire situation hit me like a thunderbolt.  In order to extract one tonne of coal to burn for energy, we'll expend the fuel and power to move sixteen tonnes of other spoil, twice (once to dig it up, once to put it back) and then more still to ship the coal off site and away to the power station.  Despite the assurances that the coal from this site is very good quality, the energy expended in getting it out seems extraordinarily high.

But 450,000 tonnes is a lot, isn't it?  Well, the Office of National Statistics gives the UK's annual demand for coal in 2011 as 51,514,000 tonnes of which 41,857,000 is for power generation.  So our pit, at UK Coal's estimated production, potentially contributes 1.07% of the coal required for one year's electricity generation.  I can't help thinking some smart energy efficiency initiatives would deliver that far more efficiently, and sustainably rather than as a 'one off'.

The other thing that struck me as I looked back over our village from the community centre on the next hill south where the consultation was happening was the array of unobstructed south-facing roofs facing towards the proposed pit site.  I know I complain about the rain up here, and I know its been a dull summer, but you don't need blazing tropical sunshine to make photovoltaics work.  If UK Coal changed its name to UK Energy and offered to rent our roofs for some solar panels instead of digging up our fields, I for one would be much more comfortable with their proposals.  That would be my idea of power to the people!

And at this stage, a small add for an amazing book on the subject of solar energy and an extraordinary journey around the world by bicycle by some warm-hearted, funny and idealistic young people.  I gave up reading it on screen and bought a copy, which Jon's enjoyed so much he's read it in little more than a day, but if you're skint (or mean) you can read it on screen at:

  http://www.completelynovel.com/books/the-solarcycle-diaries