An unusual Hogmanay

No cheerful supper with good old friends, no fireworks, no first-footing, no glasses of fizz out in the street or exchanges of greetings with neighbours.  It rather sums up a kind of hermitic year, doesn’t it?  But we are alive, we have each other and the central heating hasn’t packed up (FLWs).  

2021 promises to be better, provided we make it until our turn for the jab comes round.  In one sense.  In another, of course, we have to look forward to the political and economic fallout from the misguided, jingoistic, falsehood-fuelled vote to leave the EU, and to the - frankly - well-deserved isolation that will result.

I’m not sure what to expect from the outcome of the US elections.  If anything, the senatorials in Georgia are more important, since they will determine how deliverable the President-elect’s programme will be.  The outgoing N°45 will continue to make mischief however he can, of course, so it’s all far from over.  Let’s just hope N°46 makes a better fist of it.

So it’s a good moment to celebrate little local successes.  I had a letter from a certain telephone company a week or so ago, pointing out that our mobile phone contracts had come to an end.  A spot of research showed that we could get a deal at less than a third of what we have been paying for the last two years.  On contacting said telephone company, I found that we could improve even on that.  We had taken one biggish monthly data contract and one smaller one, reasoning that when the smaller one ran out, we could use the other, eg so as to tether iPads to the mobile network while we were travelling.  We now have the same allowance on each phone, for £10/mth instead of £39.  The helpful fellow I spoke to then said ‘let’s have a look at your broadband.’  Cutting a long story short, we now have a much cheaper broadband, line rental and calls package, and expect a monthly bill almost exactly half of the old figure.  If you don’t ask, you don’t get.  (But I admit that I didn’t have the brass neck to ask for a pensioner discount.)  We also have a tv box, as the lever to a lower tariff.  It is quite useless, since we’d have to spend £90 on adaptors to couple it up to the router, and pay vast sums each month to subscribe to any interesting channels.  But as the fellow said, we can always use the box as a paperweight or doorstop.

While scribbling the above, an email flashed up, announcing the death of a fellow retired beak. A native of Fife, hence practically a neighbour, he had been rather frail for some years, so perhaps more susceptible to the Covid-19 that carried him off yesterday, at only 73.  I remember observing him while I was preparing to offer to serve in the job, and being impressed by his warmth and courtesy towards defendants who had neither pled nor been found guilty, though he could confidently change register when sentencing!  Sad day.

The way we live now

(For the annual ramblings, see entry for 1 December) 

We scarcely leave the house these days, save for essentials.  What has been our practice for many months is now codified indefinitely by the government, since a new and seemingly more transmissible strain of the lurgy has taken a hold in our neck of the woods.  Our European neighbours have closed their borders to traffic from the UK.  Shopping patterns seem to be returning to what we saw in March: I’ve been going once a week when the supermarket opens: today at 06:00, the queue ran all the way across the front of the building and along one side of the car park.

Other habits change too: our friends’ annual punch and carols bash took place last night using a mix of Zoom and Vimeo, with the carols sung by Voces8, a group of outstanding singers.  Richard presided at the piano, assigning singing roles according to his usual whimsical criteria: ‘next verse: people wearing anything from Marks & Spencer’, ‘next verse: anyone regretting the departure of the 45th president of the USA’, and lots more.  I have to say that the event was far more musical than the live event, which usually has all the finesse of a Millwall football crowd (OK: mild exaggeration!).  It was recorded in Voces8’s  home base, the church of St Anne and St Agnes in Gresham Street, near where I worked in my twenties.  The church, by Christopher Wren, and rebuilt after wartime bombing, was for some decades home to a Lutheran congregation of Estonian and Latvian expatriates.

The technology worked pretty well, which was a relief - our electricity supply went off for a while earlier in the day.  I tried to tether my iPad to the mobile phone, only to find that BT’s 4G service was also out of action.  Out of curiosity, I got steam up on my ancient Nokia handset, and got a big fat GSM signal from Vodafone.  The cut lasted only about half an hour anyway.

Well, I think we’re set up for the long holiday weekend, not that we’re entertaining or being entertained, of course.  Here’s hoping for a peaceful and healthy festive season.

Images of December at Forges-l’Evêque

(For the annual ramblings, see entry for 1 December) 

It ain’t all bad news, eh?

:

 

It’s just that easy!

(For the annual ramblings, see entry for 1 December)

I’ve been as circumspect as I can each time I’ve lowered the drawbridge, but I’ve still caught a cold (a related but much less newsworthy pandemic virus).  I shop at the quietest times (but Sainsbury’s is jumping with pickers ‘n packers at crack of dawn).  I scrupulously wear a mask, sanitise hands before and after shop visits, and disinfect basket and trolley handles.  I keep my distance as best I can, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to make the effort: notably, I have to say, supermarket staff.  

It goes to show just how easily a virus can be caught.  It also reminds us that masks will help to stop us passing on a virus in exhaled droplets, but they won’t stop an airborne virus getting in.  Oh well, let’s look forward to having arms like pin cushions.  We’ve both had flu jabs this year, Martyn had a pneumonia vaccination on the same day (and had a nasty reaction), and I’m still aching slightly from Monday’s shingles jab.  Small price to pay.

Most of the greetings cards are away now, and we’ll get the last of them on their way today if it stays fine. It becomes an expensive business, now that stamps are becoming ever more expensive, but it gives us pleasure to knock up a card each year, and more to send and receive greetings.  

Annual Ramblings

Greetings, All!

What a bloody year!  We’ve made it thus far in no worse health than usual, thank goodness, but continue to be very careful: no visiting, no visitors, no eating out, as few trips to the shops as we can get away with, and of course masks whenever we’re in close proximity to others outdoors as well as in. 

Fortunately, my sister-in-law Margaret was able to have her grandchildren nearby during her last days: she died at home in early July, 15 months from diagnosis (I gather that the typical prognosis is 12-18 months with the kind of brain tumour she had).  Her funeral was a thinly attended affair, not for lack of people wanting to go, of course: she had hordes of friends and lots of family.  She was able to spend her last days at home.  We have good memories of her kindness, good sense and creativity, and tangible reminders of her talents in the form of two superb quilts.

Before the courts were largely closed down by the pandemic, I decided that court attendance was an infection risk that I could and should avoid, so I retired from the hobby a few months early.  I’m bound to say I don’t miss it.  Years of austerity had taken their toll in many ways, and my last few dozen sittings had become more and more frustrating.  I’d hoped to have a final sitting in my preferred courthouse with my choice of wingers and clerk, but my last sitting turned out to be at the Crown Court.  The judge we were listed to sit with phoned in sick on the day, and another judge kindly agreed to take one of our cases after we’d sat waiting for a couple of hours.  The appellant failed to attend, so it was over and done with in twenty minutes, and I was back home by lunchtime.  My second career went out with the merest whimper.

The art group stopped meeting early on in the pandemic, as did my German conversation group, though the latter has started to meet again on Zoom, and the two sessions I’ve so far managed to join were pretty good. 

As for the world of politics, things seemed at the time of writing to be taking a turn for the better, at least in the Untied [sic: Ed] States of America.  Here at home, HMG is singularly failing to cover itself in glory, but rather in … something else.  The PM’s failure to sack his guru following the latter’s flagrant breach of lockdown only underlines the former’s weakness: he’ll be out before this parliament reaches half-time.  At least Labour has chosen a competent and credible leader at long last.  As for the Lib Dems, I couldn’t pick their leader out of an ID parade.

Garden

It has been a good year in the garden, partly, of course, because we’ve been at home to look after it.  We had a good crop of charlotte potatoes in the early summer, and were cropping runner and dwarf French beans well into November.  We again grew Sweet Olive tomatoes, and as I write the last of them are ripening in a tray on the sitooterie window ledge.  Though we got exactly six seeds in the packet, they all germinated, and by rooting the side shoots we finished up with a couple of dozen highly productive plants, a few of which we gave away.  The penstemons we grew from seed last year gave us an excellent display in the spring, but are less keen to stay in flower than the older varieties, some of which are cuttings taken from my mother’s decades ago.  That said, the latter have done less well this year, so maybe it just hasn't been a good year for them.  Quite a lot of subjects suffered from the heat and drought of the summer, so maybe that's it.

In summer 2019 we bought a packet of cosmos seed in a hypermarket in Avignon, and sowed them this spring.  They have grown well but flowered sparingly.  The summer’s drought didn’t help, but perversely enough, they have begun flowering rather better just as we await the first hard frosts.  Much of the planting done by the landscapers in 2018 turns out to have been pretty dismal.  The viburnum, granted, flowered beautifully this spring, but the roses are poor specimens.  We have dug up one, A Shropshire Lad, and stuck it in a container with a view to replanting it elsewhere in the spring.  We replaced it – in Margaret’s memory - with a Compassion, which we know to be a vigorous plant that flowers well. 

We finally decided to have most of the leylandii cut down.  The cold frame and my birthday present mini-greenhouse now get much more light, and the removal of the hedge from the back of the garden gives us a little more light and a lot more space.  We have big plans, but shall report on that next year, if we’re spared.

Arrivals

Our hospitality this year has been limited to tea and biscuits for sundry tradesmen, and some sharing of baking with neighbours.  And the occasional brief visits from friends to exchange seedlings and cuttings (Pat), and to trade a bag of tomatoes for a pot of damson jam (Jane).

Departures

Few.  We did another cruise last December to Madeira, the Canaries and Lisbon, this time on the Queen Victoria.  We spent our first night on board alongside in Southampton: the weather was too bad for us to sail as scheduled.)   The good thing was that we sailed round the IoW in daylight rather than after sunset, and our arrival in Madeira was also in daylight, with good views of Porto Santo as we approached.

The poor weather did us out of our day in La Palma, but instead we got to spend a night in Funchal, where the Christmas lights were superb.  Santa Cruz de Tenerife, like Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, may keep itself, though the Calatrava auditorium is pretty impressive (from the outside, at least). We called at Lanzarote, a first visit for me.  We liked it once we were away from the 'Lanzagrotty' tourist developments.  Lisbon, of course, was a delight as always.  We eventually found the bus up to the castle for familiar views (this time not spoiled by thundery showers), had lunch in the Pastéis de Belém café, and dropped in at the Ribeira market for a glass of wine and some people watching before heading back to the ship.  I don’t know how reliable the weather is in Lisbon in December, but it was certainly sunny and warm the day we were there.

Our travel plans this year included a fjords cruise in the spring up as far as Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle.  That was the first to be cancelled.  In early autumn, we were to have joined friends Janet and John from Wakefield for a Mediterranean and Adriatic cruise to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary.  That too was cancelled, of course, fortunately just before we were due to pay the final balance.  We were all disappointed but rather relieved: a cruise ship is no place to be during a pandemic.   

We’ve booked a shorter fjords cruise for next summer, by which time we might be out of the woods (though I rather doubt it).  Meanwhile, Cunard is sitting on fair old wedge of our cash. But when enhanced future cruise credit is taken into account, the money is probably better there than in the bank (provided the company doesn’t go tits-up in the meantime).  We have to say that we're less wild about cruising now.  It looks as if solo exploring in ports of call won't be allowed, and masks will have to be worn on board in enclosed spaces.  The fjords cruise might be bearable, since that's about the scenery one sees from on board.  But the rest of the package seems fatally compromised.

We've had to content ourselves with occasional days out when non-essential travel has been allowed, usually taking sandwiches with us.  Old favourites like Birling Gap and Dungeness, and one or two less familiar, like lovely Gravesend, whence we peered across at the idle cruise ships at Tilbury.  For our wedding anniversary we took a local heritage steam train ride, booking a compartment to ourselves so as to avoid Other People.  Exercise has largely been confined to a stroll down to see the doctor, or to collect prescriptions in the village High Street.

Wheels

Few excitements since last year.  The Opel Mokka we rented in Lanzarote was competent, if uninspiring: quite lively and responsive, with a petrol engine and a 6-speed automatic box, but hopeless rear visibility and a tendency to roll.  We still have our two SEATs, neither of which is putting on much mileage.  It’s a moot point whether we need two cars now that I’ve retired (again), and we’re toying with chopping the pair of them in for something electric.  Range is not an issue: we’re no longer likely to do long distances by road, and in any case, most electric cars now do comfortably over 200 miles on a single charge. 

Food and drink

Not only have we not eaten out this year; we haven’t entertained either.  No sooner had we found a decent butcher in the town than he took ill and retired.  There are a couple of good sources of meat on the edges of town (where it’s easier to park), so we are not reliant on mediocre supermarket offerings.  When we’re allowed out of the county, that is: the most convenient butcher, though close to home, is in the next county, in a district, ironically, that has a far worse infection rate than ours.  We get quite good steaks and charcuterie from Lidl (also now out of bounds) but are less impressed by most of their raw meat. 

Arts

Our last concert visit was right at the end of last year, when we went to a Fascinating Aïda performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.  Fantastic performance, but I hadn’t realised before how terrible the acoustic is in there!  We’d planned to go to a Festival Hall concert later in the winter, but one or other of us was unwell on the day, so we have some credit balance to draw on there too!  

Yshani, whom we had the great pleasure of hosting twice in Lagrasse, has been busy this year, despite the closure of concert venues.  She had three Radio 3 midnight slots, introducing an interesting collection of lesser known works she'd found, linking them in a sort of stream of consciousness style.  More recently, she has given a recital at the Bishopsgate Institute, broadcast on Facebook Live.  Kate's plans to launch her new play about the Pilgrim Fathers have of course  been stymied by the closure of theatres, but premièred on Zoom: unfortunately we couldn’t persuade the machinery to let us join.

After a busy production line of water colours, Martyn hasn’t painted much lately, devoting his energies instead to railway modelling: his latest creation, Grenztobel, is made of very light materials, and sits on the desk in his study.  My study is a disaster area: it is full of paintings and prints, along with all the household files, freebie stamp albums and goodness knows what else.  

I’ve been unproductive by and large, but have had some more fun with Brusho crystals, and built up a modest stock of greetings cards.  It's great fun as a medium, and quite versatile: you can make up a wash with it, or wet the paper and sprinkle on the powder, or scatter it on dry paper and get in there with a brush and/or a spray bottle.  My latest experiment has been with masking fluid over a background wash followed by scatter and spray and a bit of brushwork.  Those on whom we inflict Christmas cards will see what I mean.  (Fear not: said card features a proper painting by Martyn either on the front or back.)

2021

 

Let's hope it treats us all better than 2020.  Look after yourselves and each other.

 

Martyn and David 

Equality of misery

Kent is a big county, and in the north and east of the county, three boroughs have very high infection rates.  The rate in our borough stands at 87/100k, but our whole county is placed in the most restrictive category, Tier 3.  The Council District next door, where I usually do the shopping, has the much higher rate of 138/100k, yet is placed in Tier 2 because some other East Sussex boroughs have among the lowest rates in the country.  For once in its life, the next village is all over the news: it straddles the county boundary, so one of its pubs is closed and the other is allowed to stay open.  

This doesn’t make a lot of difference to us, since we’ve been behaving for months largely as if we were in the top risk category.  But it means that, unlike during lockdown proper, I am not allowed to shop where I usually do.  Granted, once I’d clocked the figures ‘next door’, I’d decided to give my nearest Fortnums a miss for the duration anyway, but of course this means that our shopping bill is a good bit higher.  We struggle to know what we’re allowed to do.  We also struggle with the logic that confines us to the county, yet leaves tattoo shops, massage parlours and nail bars open, even in Swale, which has the highest rate in England.  I fear that many people will either carry on disregarding the rules, or start disregarding them out of bolshiness or inability to master the detail of the rather complicated regulations.

Lawyers’ Benefit

Well, the big orange fool was never going to admit to being a loser, an epithet he has always been happy to spit out at others.  It’s a shame the predicted landslide didn’t materialise; indeed it’s worrying in the extreme that he picked up more votes than last time.  True, the Democrats have stuck to their miserable tradition of nominating unsuitable candidates - Obama was a rare exception - so lacked a charismatic figure with the power to sway the impressionable idiots who vote for the larger (and nastier) than life Trump.  Perhaps the best news is the Vice-President elect.  

Meanwhile, the lawyers will be rubbing their hands, and stringing things out as long as they can, however hopeless their cases.

Closer to home, I wish I saw a real prospect of a robust trade deal with the EU.  As things now stand, I think the best we can hope for is a deal in name only, with enough loopholes to keep lawyers raking it in for years.  At worst, the UK will become a marginalised irrelevance to the world economy.

But turning to important matters, we now have two genuinely soft-closing bog seats again, gutter fascias that don’t bubble up when it rains, and a down pipe from the top roof that projects water away from the wall.  I’ve started the next round of domestickery by asking the agent for our absentee neighbours to shore up their fence with some concrete spurs, replacing the current arrangement by which the rotten posts are lashed back to their trees with climbing ropes.

The garden is still showing some colour: the cosmos that sulked their way through the summer are flowering rather better, just as we await the frost that will cut them down.  The polyanthus are flowering well already, and I’ll be splitting them up soon to stock the little bed by the front door.  The rudbeckias meanwhile continue to flower, and I’ve done a modicum of staking to keep them going a week or so longer.  I think we’ve had the last of the beans, so we’ll probably get the plants up and out in Monday’s garden refuse collection.  They have done very well, despite a rather poor bean frame.   

On the health front, I’m a bit less anxious than of late: an MRI scan has revealed no sinister reason for a persistent sore throat, and a regime of antacids is helping.  When I mentioned it to the doctor on the phone (our now normal consultation mechanism) she called me in there and then, and decided on an urgent referral to EN&T.  This put the wind up me somewhat, prompting morbid thoughts of life without a voice box and breathing through a hole in my neck.  So now I suppose I’ll be looking around for something else to worry about!  

Martyn, meanwhile, has built another model railway layout that fits on the desktop in his study.  It is built with lightweight materials, so is easy to lift on and off.  I’ll try to find out how to post a picture: used not to be a problem.  Thrombosis, I expect: clot behind the keypad.

Two steps forward, one step back

The new plastickery has now been installed: it took three shortish days, and initially looked pretty smart.  

A couple of days of cold, damp days revealed what looks like a manufacturing fault: on some of the verticals, the fake wood film lifts away from the board, leaving a long line of blisters.  So we shall have another day or crashing and banging when they  come to replace the boards.  Yawn.

Yesterday marked the fourteenth anniversary of our civil partnership ceremony.  We don’t generally make a song and dance of it, since the more important date for us is the day we met, well over nineteen years ago.  

Still, just for fun, we booked ourselves a ride on the local heritage railway, which has acquired a Bulleid  light Pacific engine of the Battle of Britain class.  Quite nostalgic: I still remember watching them hauling the boat trains - and the Golden Arrow in particular - through Orpington when the family first visited well over 60 years ago.  We booked a whole compartment yesterday, to avoid proximity to the masses, and took a picnic with us.  In other times we’d probably have gone for a meal out somewhere, but we did at least buy ready-made sandwiches to make it a little out of the ordinary!   

We’re adopting top-level precautions as the country shambles blindly into another spike of infections.  As we queued to join the train, mask wearing and distancing were far from universal.  I admit it: I’m scared.

Histoire de chiottes

Last year we replaced two lavatories, one in the shower room and one downstairs in the cloakroom.  The seats thereof were of the soft-close persuasion, and for a time both worked well.  When the downstairs one developed a preference for clanging shut, Martyn contacted the suppliers, Victorian plumbing, to ask for their comments.  They asked us for pictures of the fault, so Forges-l’Evêque Media Inc produced an audio-visual masterpiece of my shutting the bog lid with accompanying clang-shut sound effects, and off it went.  Next email told us that the product we had returned (we had not) had been tested and found to be fault-free.  Martyn wrote back to put them right, and the next thing we heard was that the replacement we had ordered (we had not) would be delivered today.  Well, delivered it was.  Broken.  Watch this space.

The awful leylandii across the back of the garden are no more, likewise the ones that overhung the cold frame and mini-greenhouse.  The hacking down was done by two brothers from the farm down the road, who left the place clean and tidy, and charged us a very reasonable sum for their day’s work.  Watch these spaces too.

More of the same...

 I eventually managed, with the help of the Waitrose call centre, to order a couple of bottles of wine for our Wakefield friends’ golden wedding anniversary last weekend.  Said call centre persuaded me to pay for delivery on a specified day.  They then proceeded to deliver two days early.  I went back to them, saying that no harm had been done, but that I hadn’t actually got what I’d paid for, and they promptly refunded the whole delivery charge, and not just the difference between standard and specified day delivery.  Good, eh?  If you don’t ask, you don’t get.  The sweet irony is that I’d wrongly diaried the date, and in fact the parcel arrived on the day of the anniversary.  Just a shame we weren’t all celebrating it together as planned on the Queen Victoria in Propriano.

Autumn is beginning to make itself felt, though a lot of leaves have still to fall.  The grass has had a cut despite not really being dry enough, and most of the tomato plants are in the compost bin, with their compost spread over the bed where we hope to have raised beds next season.  There’s a big tray of more or less green tomatoes on the sitooterie window ledge, so we may get some more of them to ripen.  (Don’t even bother suggesting green tomato chutney: pickling vinegar has no place in this house.)

The replacement of soffits, fascias and gutters is due to begin next week, so I suppose I’d better put biscuits on the shopping list and check the instant coffee supplies.  The replacement of our gas meter remains outstanding, so yesterday I had a long and so far fruitless conversation with a nice lady in an Asian call centre.  We’ve decided to shelve our other project for the time being (the refitting of the bathroom).  We’re still a long way from the point at which we’d be comfortable with the idea of having various different tradesmen inside the house.  But we think we’ve worked out how to get a bath and a drive-in shower into the space, as well as a wc, bidet and wash basin.  The bath would be smaller than the one we have, but since we so rarely use it in preference to the en suite shower, that ain’t a show-stopper.

Conscious that we aren’t out and about much, I’m trying to get into the habit of doing some old geezer type exercises.  I’ve been using some YouTube videos by a likeable young Australian, Mike Kutcher, whose web site is morelifehealth.com, and is intended to cater for the over-60s.  He also shows up on any form of social media you care to name.  Wild horses couldn’t drag me into a gym, so Mike’s syllabus is fine by me, requiring no more than a sturdy chair and a few hand weights.

Martyn, meanwhile, is building a table top model railway layout that he can operate on, and easily lift off, the desk in his study.  Impressive stuff as always.  Pictures anon.

Stubbornness score: 15/10

Regulars will recall my dialogue with a certain motor car company and its dealership, when bits of a newish car went scrofulous.  That process persuaded me that persistence can pay - or, at least, mitigate losses.

Though I’ve been using a smartphone for years now, I’ve never given up on my ancient GSM Nokia thickphone.  For a time, my late mother-in-law used it in her care home.  She got it from me as a hand-me-down, and she died over twelve years ago, so it is no spring chicken.  I last used it to make a call from a ship at sea when the fancy-dancy iPhone couldn’t see a transmitter, and it still had £20-odd worth of credit on the SIM. That must have been last December.  Meanwhile, Vodafone has introduced a rule by which unused numbers are disconnected after 90 days.  In fact, they disconnected mine after nine months.

Well, yesterday I found an on-line Vodafone dialogue site, and eventually persuaded a distant person to reconnect the number.  When I checked this morning, the number had been reconnected, but the credit showed as zero.  I eventually managed to find the dialogue site again, and enquired why this should be so.  Vodafone’s story is that, when a number is disconnected, any remaining credit ‘is vanished’.  At this point my stubbornness index kicked in.  ‘That is unacceptable, [name of correspondent].  If I had been told this would happen, I’d have taken the necessary action.’  Same answer repeated.  ‘Thanks for the explanation.  Would you be so kind as to connect me to your team leader?’  

Cutting a long and doubtless deadly boring story short, I now have a working thickphone with £20 credit on it, and it sends and receives.  Apart from one use of the word ‘theft’, I stuck to courtly courtesy throughout, and addressed my correspondent by the stated name.  That, together with a good ration of Hartnäckigkeit, has paid dividends.  Just wish I’d estimated the outstanding credit at £150, but that wouldn’t really be me, would it?

Last of the fine days

 

With an eye to the weather forecast, we thought we’d go and take a look on Tuesday, from a safe distance, at some of the cruise ships berthed at Tilbury.  Only one at a riverside mooring, the much-renamed Columbus, last operated by the now bankrupt CMV.  Its stablemate (sorry - bad analogy) Astor is also berthed in the port, together with Gaga’s latest along with many others.  Our future cruise plans are now in serious doubt.  The next one is scheduled for next July, and I suppose someone may have pulled a rabbit out of the pharmaceutical hat by then.  Though one has to say that Gravesend is not exactly the jewel in Kent’s crown, the promenade is pleasant enough a place to sit on a wall and eat an egg and cress sandwich from M&S.

I’ve picked best part of a kilo of tomatoes today, and two modest portions of passata are cooling down for the freezer.  Our home-grown spuds are now a fond memory, but we’ve had gardener Ben round to estimate for some raised veggie beds, so we may have a more varied and longer lasting crop next year, if we’re spared.  The runner beans continue to crop well, so with luck we’ll be picking for a week or two longer.

Indian summer days out

At Martyn’s suggestion yesterday, we cut some sandwiches and took ourselves out for a spot of sea air, motoring down to the coast at the Birling Gap, part way along the line of chalk cliffs between Seaford and Eastbourne in East Sussex.  The drive took a bit longer than expected, since soon after leaving town we got caught up behind a tractor and trailer.  The driver sportingly pulled over into a lay-by to let the tail get past and press on to the next set of roadworks.  Of which there were many.  We got slightly lost in the outskirts of Eastbourne, so got a small bonus of a tour via the Long Man of Wilmington which (whom?) I hadn't seen before.  On reading up when I got home, I find that he is almost certainly not of prehistoric origins, But dates at the earliest from the 16th century, And quite possibly from C18, depending which story you read.  Neither is

he carved into the chalk, since the soil thereabouts is too deep.  The white outline at one time consisted of whitewashed yellow bricks, which have subsequently been replaced by breeze blocks painted white.  Striking all the same.

We were astonished to see how many cars were parked at the Birling Gap.  Fortunately, as a life National Trust member, I get to park free of charge close to the stairs by flashing my membership card at the machine.  There were a lot of people on the beach and in the water, including several exuberant dogs!  We didn’t hang around too long, since the beach was so busy.  We’d no trouble keeping our distance while we had our lunch, but I was a bit anxious about using the stairs to and from the beach since there was no hope or maintaining the recommended two metres distance.  We slapped on masks,  unlike anyone else we saw, since we each have plenty of reasons to try to avoid infection.

Although I no longer send people to clink, I retain the letters after the name, so can be asked to authenticate signatures on declarations not involving oaths.  I had four to deal with yesterday evening in a pleasant rural environment.  But when one punter drove in with his mobile phone clamped to his ear, he got the benefit of a beakish dressing down.  Old habits die hard.

Today our outing was somewhat more mundane.  When I was changing bed linen this morning I could see that it was time for some new pillows.  We took ourselves off to a well-known big shed just outside the county town, and I foolishly remarked en route that we were out of town within twelve minutes compared with the usual 25-30 when I was doing the journey first thing in the morning for days at the hobby.  We had a long wait at a four-way traffic light where they are tinkering with a roundabout, and had two or three other waits at roadworks on the way.  So, one way and another, in the past two days we’ve seen enough traffic lights to last us a lifetime.

Anyway, at said big shed we quickly found what we were after, and had paid and left within five minutes. Sad, the rewards of life in retirement: I feel modestly pleased at having got two lots of bedding washed and dried, the new lot out on the line and well on the way, and two pillows in the washing machine (they’ll do for spares).  Stand by for further balls-achingly boring bulletins of elderly domesticity.

Autumn already

 

A consolation of approaching autumn is the emergence of some old favourites, like this cyclamen, which colleague Jane invited me to plunder from her garden before she moved - gosh! - ten years ago.  So that’s as long as we’ve had the motor mower, which she didn’t need in her new garden.  It’s therefore entitled to be on its last legs: like its owner, the engine is in good shape, but the bodywork is rotting away.  It’s still working, however, and saves a whole lot of effort compared with the old electric job.  But I’m researching rechargeable battery machines

Tomorrow being shopping day, I was rather scratching around this evening for supper ingredients. So it was a mug of pasta into lots of boiling water, a packet of smoked lardons sweated over a medium-low flame, followed by half an onion finely chopped and a clove of garlic, the remaining half of a red pepper, the last mushroom and a handful of our tomatoes, halved and de-seeded.  Salt, pepper and basil, plus a good dollop of crème fraîche, and freshly grated Parmesan.  Bob: uncle; Fanny: aunt.

I can’t begin to describe my feelings about our political masters either side of the pond.  All I’d say is that HMG is thrashing around like a rudderless dinghy in a gale, and N°45 is advocating voting felony to his supporters, while doing all he can to undermine the voting system itself.  The times are depressing enough as it is without the increasing threats to democracy.

Closer to home, the third visit from the wasp man seems to have done the trick.  I sent him up into the garage loft this time, and he admitted that the latest nasty materials are less effective than the old stuff, to which he has reverted.

Reflections on tomato growing

We only grow cherry plum tomatoes - or that’s the plan at least: we’ve also been given some bigger, fleshier tomato plants, and are now waiting for them to ripen.  All are grown outside on a south-facing terrace. The wind got up in the night and blew over some of the smaller pots in which we’ve been growing the little chaps from cuttings, so I went out earlier to collect the windfalls, and pick all that were ripe.  That crop ran to 600g, qv.  We’re hoping that trimming the sails and watering well will keep them standing now.  The pickings from the six parent plants brought this morning’s crop up to 1.375kg.  That’s a lot of cherry tomatoes!

As I’ve probably mentioned before, Annie heard Bob Flowerdew say on Gardeners’ Question Time a while ago that you only need one tomato plant per variety, since the side shoots root easily.  Given that our preferred variety, Sweet Olive, comes in not inexpensive packets of six to eight seeds, this seemed worth a try: ever a fan of owt for nowt, I’ve experimented, and here’s what we’ve found (though we hear that results are less good with other varieties):

• Side shoots root in water, which is fun to watch, or directly in compost.
• Direct rooting in in compost is probably better, since those rooted in water wilt a bit when potted up (they do recover well).
• Cuttings grown in big pots of the size used for the parent plants perform just as well, and extend the cropping season.
• Cuttings grown in smaller pots, hence less well fed and watered, produce just as much fruit, but smaller. 

We might grow some bigger fleshy tomatoes next year, depending how a certain recipe turns out.  More anon, maybe.

Seemed like a good idea at the time, iteration 693: UPDATED

The deal with our current energy suppliers requires me to send them meter readings at intervals.  Anyone watching me wrestle with the software so as to enter readings would be reminded of the celebrated Private Eye cartoon: New Technology Baffles Pissed Old Hack.  As a rule, they send a meter reader a day or two after I’ve done so, so I don’t quite see the point.  Any road up, out of the blue came an email the other day inviting us to have ‘smart meters’ fitted, which would avoid my having to get into outdoor shoes, heave the dustbins around, wrestle with the cabinets and read the meters.  Since that sounded like a good plan, we signed up for it.  

Along came a nice young man today to do the work.  The electricity side went OK, but when it came to the gas, he discovered that the gas shut-off lever is fitted in such a way that it conflicted with the new meter when he came to turn the supply back on.  Back went the old meter, the pressure test nipple on which then sheared off when he went to close it after testing.  Fortunately he had a spare with him.  So we soon had a gas supply again.  No further for’arder, mind you.

Next came a call from a nice woman at whatever part of the gas supply mafia is responsible for the supply valve.  They are sending someone tomorrow to see if it can be fixed.  If not, I’ll have to settle for going outside every time they want a gas meter reading.  

The deal came with a cute little box that is meant to display our energy use.  A glance at the instruction leaflet brought back the sort of sinking feeling I used to get on turning over a Moral Philosophy exam paper, so I think I’ll outsource that job to Management.  I haven’t yet persuaded said cute little box to get data from the meter, so have parked it out of harm’s way on top of the fridge, next to the carbon monoxide alarm.

This one could run and run.

[Next morning]  Today’s experience was brief and satisfactory in part.  The fellow was here a few minutes after 08:00, and quickly reversed the action of the shut-off lever.  But we’ll have to wait over three weeks for the new gas meter...