Tempus fugit, amor manet*

Yesterday marked twenty years and four weeks since I retired, and decided I’d rather be bald than balding.  It also marked twenty years exactly since I took a trip to Brighton for a professional head shave, on the recommendation and in the company of a fellow member of the Yahoo Bald by Choice group.  I had joined said group after early experiments had proved somewhat bloody, and hoped to get recommendations from fellow baldies as to suitable razor blades.  We had a nice day out, a reasonably good shave apiece and a beer with the late Barbara, to whom I’d offered to bring a shrub for her little a courtyard garden.  I’m talking about Martyn, of course: we met the following week for a meal roughly half way between our homes, and found that there was rather more between us than a shared interest in being bald by choice.  A year or so later we exchanged rings (sitting in Martyn’s old red Peugeot in Brighton station car park...), and when the law changed we made honest men of each other.  

Much has happened in the intervening years.  Martyn took a good degree from the University of Kent and embarked on a new career in teaching at secondary and further/higher education levels.  And he retired from that ten years ago.  I embarked on a new (if unpaid) career in criminal justice, joining the local bench.  I retired from that last year: a little early, so as to avoid an unnecessary infection risk.  For the last ten years I usually sat in the middle chair at court, and think that my colleagues and I faithfully carried out our judicial oath to do right to all manner of people, without fear or favour, affection or ill will, though with some of the bonny dearies we encountered, the last bit was sometimes difficult.  It was a rewarding experience, occasionally distressing, often quite amusing, and latterly very boring, largely spent drinking tea in the retiring room while the parties tried to make progress despite the utter chaos in the prosecution service.  I made a few life-long friends in the process, and don’t miss the court sittings - still less the winter drives home from the county town after dark on wet roads.

Anniversary celebrations were modest but enjoyable.  I went for my second jab of the Pfizer vaccine, and we lunched on fish and chips from the friendly Turks in the village.  On the way home from the jabodrome, I picked up a bottle of Prosecco, which we enjoyed in the evening with cannelloni that I’d slapped together in the afternoon.  As I write, Martyn has just left for said jabodrome for his second shot of the Oxford Astra-Zeneca vaccine.  The doctor who screened me yesterday said I might have slightly worse side effects than last time, but so far, so good.  My arm is sore, sure, and I feel disinclined to exert myself, but that’s a small price to pay.

The pandemic has changed all our lives.  By and large, though, apart from our not being able to travel as we’d hoped nor to socialise with friends, it has been pretty tolerable.  Refunds from Cunard have paid for the rebuilding of the top of the garden, and help a lot towards the forthcoming garage conversion building work.  I hope it will have been worth the modest sacrifices, and hate to think what it would have been like to get through it without Martyn.

Meanwhile, the infection rate hereabouts is the third highest in the region, thanks no doubt to careless socialising in the beer gardens and terraces.  We are largely avoiding shopping, and instead having stuff delivered.  The butcher and grocer both delivered this morning, so we shall be sharing a slow-cooked lamb shank tonight.  And Fortnums’ pastéis de nata with a cup of tea when Martyn gets back.

*Thanks to Thierry Zanada for the latin tag.

More gardening: what else?

We’d been waiting for some warmer weather before planting the spuds.  After toying with planting them in the soil, we opted to go with canvas bags on the terrace again, since that method has served us so well in the past.  Fewer bags this year, since we seem to have got fewer seed potatoes in this year’s kilo.  Anyway, nine bags are planted, so we’re on the way.  Martyn sowed various beans yesterday, in pots in the sitooterie, and I’ve sown a row of dill in the new raised bed, alongside the enthusiastic rocket and sulking spinach beet.

Today we’ve planted five new roses (I remarked to himself as we left the nursery that the bill for the groundworks was the tip of the iceberg...).  I’ve weeded and enriched a sunny bed for the auriculas today, and shall plant them out tomorrow, knees permitting.

That will free up some pots for fuchsia cuttings and herb seedlings: Celia brought us a pot of healthy tarragon seedlings on Wednesday, and ours are catching up.  We have lots of sage seedlings, though only a couple of rosemary: they are best propagated from cuttings, I think.

As for the world of politics, certain current and former heads of government are being exposed as criminal, depressingly corrupt or, at best, devoid of ethics, according to their former senior ministers and a certain special advisor.  They say a population gets the government it deserves, which doesn’t say a lot for democracy, certainly in the anglo-saxon world.  Glad I’m childless and old.

Outdoors, outhouse

We’ve had a few fine days for getting on with things in the garden, and for just sitting admiring it, so when Disgustedville’s contractors finally took the collection they found a full garden waste bin.  There’s a fair bit more weeding to do before we can plant out our bedding plants: the auriculas are coming along nicely in the greenhouse, and judging by the colours of the flowers, I think each plug contains at least one plant.  The tagetes are out there to harden off, as are the leeks.

On Sunday we set to and assembled the little shed that we need for the lawnmower, which will be displaced when the building work is done.  We only had a small space for the shed, and I have to say that it looks remarkably like a privy.  The labour involved was not spectacular, but my joints are telling me all about it today.

As I write, Martyn is fitting the shed out to accommodate the gardening tools, which hitherto have hung on the wall of the big garage, perilously close to one of the cars.  We can probably rationalise things a bit: one incidental effect of marrying late in life is that we have three garden forks: mine, Martyn’s and my late Ma’s.  At least two have become a bit snaggly, so may find their way to the tip ere long.  But it’s amazing what a 4x4 shed can be made to accommodate.  Martyn has contrived battens to take hooks from which to hang the tools, and a shelf to take all the garden potions that had been cluttering up the garage.

The old raised bed is now enriched and adorned with wigwams ready for the climbing beans (which I haven’t yet sown).  I’ve sown a row of carrots between them (having stripped off the manure I’d just spread: evidently one should not sow carrots in soil that has been manured in the preceding twelvemonth).  In the new bed, the row of rocket sown a while back is finally germinating, and I think the spinach beet may be showing itself.  The leeks are now beginning their hardening off in the mini greenhouse, so I’ll get them planted out in a week or two.

[Later]  The exertions on the shed took their toll somewhat on the knees, but today I’m a bit more mobile.  Martyn has today fitted more hooks to the shed walls, so practically all the garden tools are accommodated in the East Wing.  Martyn has sown lots of beans, and I’ve sown a row of dill in the raised bed.  Spuds this weekend, I think, when I can get supplies of compost.

Just a shame I was a bit off form yesterday when we had our first visitors for over a year: Celia and Andy came round for afternoon tea in the garden.  It was unfortunately rather cool, so we had to wrap up.  But how lovely to socialise after such a long time in isolation.  Scenes from London, where pub terraces have been thronging, suggest we should brace ourselves for a fourth wave.  We have our second vaccine doses next week, and shall continue to live carefully.

Busy morning!

We hung around all day yesterday, waiting for our garden shed to be delivered.  They had helpfully specified a time slot of 09:00-18:00.  At 17:40 someone rang to say that the carrier had assigned the job to a van in which the pallet would not fit: would today be OK?  This morning the phone rang at 07:20 (just as I’d managed to get back to sleep after a poorish night): the delivery driver, saying he’d be here in 20 minutes.  That’s slightly longer than it normally takes me to get washed, dressed and into my right mind.  Fortunately, the package was rather better arranged than our last outbuilding (it took three deliveries to get a serviceable kit of parts that time).  The quality is a bit depressing: we’d to do some running repairs as we unpacked it, but it seems generally OK.  Building it up will test us somewhat, but it does come with very clear instructions.  We’d just finished schlepping the kit round the back when the groceries arrived, so that was another spot of exercise.  

We’d just sat down after that job when our local Hermes courier arrived with the box of primula auricula plug plants that I’d ordered on line.  Lovely& little plants, some of them already in flower.  They are now potted up and in the greenhouse to grow on a bit until they are ready to plant out.  That gives us a bit of time to weed and improve the bed they’re going into.  This is something of a sentimental purchase: we had a row of auriculas in the front garden at home in Scotland, and I’ve rarely seen the variety since then.  Just have to remember to water them for the next few weeks.

Well, that’s April for you (updated)

After the morning snow - and it got a lot worse after yesterday’s blog post - it was fine enough in the afternoon for me to sit outside for an hour potting up seedlings: roughly six dozen tagetes, grown from the seed we harvested last back end.  They didn’t look too happy about being out in the coolth and gentle breeze, but perked up overnight in the sitooterie.

Not much of a gardening day today, but I’ve hacked down the penstemons between our and the neighbours’ drives, so the fortnightly objective of filling the garden waste bin is well on its way to completion, helped also by a few handfuls of hairy bittercress: our most successful crop...  And Annie’s lavenders are getting some more light for a month or so.

Don’t know if I’d mentioned that I join in twice a month in a German conversation group, organised by the local u3a.  Someone suggests a text for each meeting to prime the pump, and I’d voiced a concern at the fact that it tended to degenerate into read-and-translate, reminding me all too uncomfortably of Hammy’s French classes at school, when we laboured through Le Grand Meaulnes, translating as we soporifically went.  One of the group had suggested quite a long piece about the popular uprising of 1953 in the DDR, and since it was so long, our organiser suggested that we all read it at home and then discuss it in free format when we met (on Zoom, of course).  The session fairly buzzed!  I had done a bit of further reading in preparation, discovering (excuse my higgerance) that Stalin had proposed re-unifying Germany way back in 1952, allowing freedoms of speech and press (yeah, right!), but stipulating neutrality, cf. post-occupation Austria.  The Brits, the French and the USA assumed it was a ploy to integrate Germany into the Soviet bloc, helpfully providing it with some warm water ocean ports.  A European Defence Treaty had just been signed, and German neutrality would scupper it.  (In fact, it was never brought into effect.)  Adenauer, a catholic Rheinlander, wasn’t buying it, since integration would give the  consequent Protestant Prussian majority too much sway.  So, though it didn’t happen, it’s worth wondering whether it would have spared the people of the DDR the dreadful hunger and oppression they suffered for another 38 years.

Ironic....

 

....that on the day the pubs are allowed to start serving out of doors, we have a significant fall of snow.  Two weeks ago it was short sleeves and 24°.  Hailstones yesterday.  I blame the government.

I was thinking yesterday about planting leeks and sowing carrots.  Perhaps I’d better leave that for a week or so.  It’s not long since I moved the leek seedlings into bigger pots, so it’s probably as well to let the roots develop a little more.  I read, by the way, that carrots and leeks protect each other from their common pests, so we’ll be planting them in rows side by side.  Mint is evidently another good companion, so we’ll have pots thereof on top of the walls of the raised bed.  Not sure if I can bring myself to plant French marigolds amongst the tomatoes, however.

In the herb department, some night visitor has been digging in the sink in which we have a clump of chives, and they look pretty bedraggled in consequence.  Whoever it was didn’t seem interested in the rosemary.  Thyme is growing well in another old sink, together with oregano, and in the sitooterie, the sage, tarragon and rosemary seeds are coming along slowly.  

I planted up a hanging basket yesterday with upright and training geraniums.  They seem to have survived the rather cold night, fortunately - they are in a very sheltered position.  The polyanthus they replace had not done very well (another case of neglect, I admit) so they are now planted in the soil next to their brothers, which have been giving us a fine display for some weeks now.  And are now snowed in....

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum

Sad to learn that HRH has pawned his wooden footwear.  For all his faults, he was a hard worker for The Firm and for the country, particularly its yoof, whatever one may think of the monarchy and its role in the modern world.  I saw him twice (at a modest distance), once back in the sixties at a royal visit to some alms houses in the East End (my uncle was LCC Ceremonial Officer at the time) and again a few years ago at a Buck House garden party, to which Martyn and I had been invited as a perk of the hobby.

Not sure if much will change in my lifetime, but the debate is open.  The present incumbent and her father, who was on the throne when I was born, were and are well respected.  Their predecessors (and maybe successors) do not enjoy such a degree of respect.  But then, recent times have shown the disadvantages of elected heads of state, particularly when they have powers such as the UK monarch lacks.

Sonst: gardening: what else?  The latest mortgage of shrubs is planted out, and the grass is cut, but the mower is getting rather tired.  We could probably nurse it through another season, but the decision arises ere long whether to replace the mower or just GBI (get Ben in) to do the mowing.  

Garden again

 

Systematic neglect seems to work sometimes: this pot has had precisely no attention since it was planted up last year - or maybe even the year before.

Elsewhere in the garden we’ve been a little more active: the penstemons are chopped down, and all are showing good new growth from the base.  During much of the process I was supervised at close quarters by our resident robin: I hope that the disturbance of dead leaves provided him or her with a spot of lunch.  The garden waste bin is in consequence full, which is the way we like it the day before it is emptied, given that we have to pay annually up front for the collection each fortnight at £2 a pop.

It won’t be long before we can plant out the leeks, which have germinated well.  I potted them up a few day ago, and they are now nearly big enough to plant.  It’s all too tempting, when there are some fine spring days to get stuff out too early, so we shall sit on our hands for another week or two before sowing runner beans (indoors) and carrots (out).  The weather is see-sawing between winter and spring, so patience will be repaid.

The pandemic has - in some ways - been a godsend for HM Courts and Tribunals Service.  A former colleague who sat for the last time last week reports that both the prosecutor and the clerk appeared by video link, as had been the case on his penultimate sitting.  I’m glad I took the decision to stand down when I did a year ago: this is no way to conduct a court, even if it does save money.  The delays that have resulted from lockdown risk damaging justice, of course, particularly when it comes to trials, since memory gets progressively less reliable as time goes by.  Glad I don’t have to worry about it as a practitioner, but I do worry about justice itself which, if delayed, is largely denied, so the saying goes.  I worry also about the proposed extra police powers: Montesquieu must be spinning in his grave.

April - oh, be quiet, Eliot!

The landscaping work on the garden is 99% finished, and we’ve started planting.  The bought stuff is in and looking OK, and we’ve planted lots of the cuttings from the cold frame and greenhouse.  I’ve planted a row of box cuttings along the side of the path, which gives me an incentive to live for a few more years! The owners of the house the other side of the now exposed fence have given permission for us to nail on some wires or trellis, so we’ll get on with that when stuff starts growing.  

Back down the slope in the sitooterie, tagetes and rudbeckias have germinated well, as have the leeks, which I potted up yesterday.  The fuchsia cuttings are a bit curate’s egg, but we’ll give them time.  Some of the herbs are germinating: rosemary, tarragon and sage.  Today I have hacked down the holly, pyracantha and laurel up beside the garden bench, and am casting a murderous eye towards the remaining  laurel.  They all grew wild when they could hide among the leylandii: the hedge having gone, they looked pretty straggly.  Well, the pyracantha has taken its revenge: see scalp.

As for other projects, the toon cooncil has ‘validated’ our application to make a habitable room of the small garage, giving itself a target date for decision a month and some days hence.  The builder is keeping a June start date in his diary, so it might be an idea to mark your diaries to avoid the blog for that month.  I get rather intense during building work...

What else?  We’re both now within four weeks of jab2, and are making no travel plans meanwhile.  We have cashed in our loans to the Bank of Cunard, and have more than committed the funds involved to home improvements, and will think about travels only once the situation has improved.  We’re really alarmed by the behaviour of our fellow-citizens, who don’t seem to give a fat fuck whether they acquire or transmit the virus.  Probably a good job that the weather is returning to glacial on Monday.  It is shocking to see how people are gathering in large crowds in parks and on beaches.  The vast amount of litter left behind just reinforces the message that too many of our fellow citizens lack any concept of civic pride or social responsibility.  I blame Thatcher.