pumpkinstrokemarrow

To deal with the second matter first, the various councils around here seem to have got the bus stop bug. At least three of them are being dug up between here and the baker at Cheam. Not at all clear what is prompting this endeavour which seems in all three cases to involve relaying the kerb stones. Maybe it is like the council grass butchers - they are paid to dig up so many bus stops a year and so that is what they will do. There is also an interesting hole right in the middle of the Epsom side of Howell hill. This appears to involve doing something underneath a cover so presumably something was wrong underneath - but you never know.

If we put aside the rather unsatisfactory leaf beet from last year, today is a day of last fruits and first fruits. That it to say I have pulled the last of the leeks and the first of the rhubarb. The first will serve to accompany the kedgeree and the second to follow it. Have been back to the Epsom fish man again today - but his haddock looked a bit pink which not a good sign and his undyed smoked haddock was streaked with something yellow. So we thought kedgeree was a better bet that baked (white) haddock which really needs good gear to work well. Kedgeree is more forgiving. He also had a strange fish with a spotted pink skin and with a name which I can't remember but which apparently came from Australia. So we are freighting frozen fish from Australia and fresh flowers from central America: one wouldn't think that either activity was terribly green.

Finishing off the second half of the second potato ridge I was struck by the power of the smell of damp fire - now cold from yesterday - even if one does not disturb it. The active ingredient of said smell presumably being carried into the air with the evaporating water.

Been reading about another turn of the last century pop-star like figure, this time one Nansen from Norway. Very talented chap and not just in the snow and ice department - although he certainly did well there - more or less inventing skiing and polar travel in their modern forms. Also managed to survive in very dodgy circumstances for years at a time - a proceeding which included paddling around in the Artic Ocean in kayaks which were pretty leaky (and carrying all their wordly possessions, including two sledges) before a wandering walrus decided to stick his tusks through the skin. But he was also a very strange bird - not in the same way as Scott - and neither were leaders of men. That was where Shackelton and Amundsen scored. Although to be fair, Nansen did get all his men home on his two big expeditions to the snow - although one had become a heroin addict and another became an alcoholic. Presumably one has to be a bit unusual to be attracted to the idea of camping in the snow for two or three years, with contact with neither man nor beast for most of the duration. Modern adventurers don't know what they are missing! Two other factlets. First, Nansen was conducting a brief affair with Scott's wife in Berlin at about the time that Scott reached the South Pole. Something which got left out of the various books about him that I have read so far. Second, notwithstanding what I might have written about Ireland in a Pakenham context above, I now learn that Norway, not Ireland, was the first country to break away from the European settlement forged in the aftermath of the Nap0leonic wars. It made the great powers rather twitchy: if one small country starts playing the national card what about all the others? And unlike Ireland the whole affair was managed in a more or less civilised way. To the extent of Norway flying their flags at half mast when the king of Sweden, previously the dual monarch, died a year or two after independance. A Hungarian friend of Nansen, the subject of another dual monarch was very jealous.

To vary the diet of senior moments we now have psychic moments. Flora - an Excel model - was running overnight and I woke just as it expired at around 0400 - not my usual waking up time at all. I remember such a thing happening once before. Then during the day following I went to inspect it, again just as it had expired. I will have to start keeping records so that I can work out whether something other than chance is at work.

Mild weather continues to favour allotment activities. FIL told us last weekend that dandelions grow to around 4 feet in the Canary Islands. Presumably he means that the flower stands that high, the leaves being rather low in habit. I wish I had seen such things when I was there. In any event I have decided to grow a speciman dandelion to see how big it gets when not entangled in grass and regularly cut down. Looks a bit weedy after transplanting but I dare say it will go. They usually do when you don't want them to. I will be surprised if I do more than a foot. Stake it?

The mole plants transplanted from Gosport are looking a bit sorry for themselves. Don't think they are going to make it after all although it is possible that they will shoot from the base.

FIL also gave me 10 suckers from the Autumn Splendour (or something) raspberries which he planted about 15 months ago. I left them in their plastic bag half a day longer than I had to and it will be touch and go if they all survice. Had a mild frost the evening after planting, that is to say yesterday evening, and some of them were looking decidedly limp by 1600 this sunny afternoon. Maybe they will pick up if we have some damp warm weather rather than the present dry warm weather - which is not making it any easier for the remaining broad beans to break through the crust that all the March rain made.

Inspected my seed potatoes which are shooting merrily. Fat white things about 2 inches long - having decided that chitting was not the thing. The book says that chitting speeds up growth but in my poor soil slowing down growth is more appropriate. But how does one stop the things shooting in the dark?

Tried a new planting method for the Kestrels - second earlies. Last Autumn dug out two trenches about 3 foot wide by a spade deep (the depth of the top soil) and filled them will half rotten leaves - about twelve barrows to the row. Covered them back over leaving two ridges, about 4 feet apart. Cleaned them off with a Chillington hoe this afternoon (which included chopping down what looked like minature versions of the dying mole plants but which I think were actually euphorbias), then planted the potatoes by digging individual holes, again about a spade deep. This was easy as the soil had been well shaken up in the Autumn and was good and loose under the crust. The pulled the soil back up to leave the one and a half ridges. A lot quicker than digging the narrow and shallow trench which is my usual form. Plus the potatoes are rather deeper, the rows are rather further apart and the leaf mould should provide a water buffer if we have another dry summer. We will see if we do better than my usual indifferant.

The seed potatoes were a lot larger this year than last, with the result that two bags only did one and a half rows rather than three. I will have to check whether the bags are the same weight and roughly the same price. It may be that I will get a better crop from bigger seeds - which would be well worth while. More news on that front in three months time or so.

We have now been instructed in the mysteries of giant parsnip soup - all very easy really. Peel and chunk then boil parsnip for a while. Add a carrot if so minded. Puree. Add a bit of milk and cream and serve with bread. Not the sort of soup you are going to eat by the litre but surprisingly good. So parsnip glut problem can now be declared closed.

Spent half a day in Salisbury, the main item on the agenda being the cathedral. I had forgotten what a splendid place it is. Amongst other things, it solved the problem of how to plant a large object on the ground rather well. Rather taken with the way that local worthies in times past were able to colonise tracts of floor with large slate gravestones, around 3 foot by 7. At least two families had managed about six in a row. Not so sure that I want to be buried under a busy path. In some places burying under a busy path is what you do with executed criminals. Maybe being in consecrated ground makes all the differance.

Managed to find a proper baker - run by two ladies who said that the shop had been there more than seventy years. Bread quite good but hard to see how they made any sort of a living at it, in a quietish off centre street with a Tesco between them and the centre. One can only suppose that they own the premises and don't eat too much.

Passed two CIU places which looked fairly healthy. Unable to check out the interior as on driving duties.

Then off to Old Sarum to picnic off said bread. Very cold and windy and we were reduced to picnic inside the car where we finished off the Garrett Lane cabanos. Inspection of the packet suggested that they were gluten free and FIL tried one without ill effect. Even went as far as saying that he quite liked it. We were told that lack of a decent water supply was one the things that drove the town down the hill to where it is now but for my money cold and wind must have been another factor.

Spent a happy more than two hours - supported by the regulation maltesers - in front of the French lieutenant's woman in an ancient but handsome cinema in Lyme Regis. Ridiculous plot with a rather clumsy framing story, but all very pretty and one could play spot the set. It seems that the locals had great fun during the shooting although some missed out on being extras on account of being beard free at the relevant moment. And author of the book promoted himself to local worthiness on the strength of it. The whole business being an excellent subject for beer fuelled discussions for years to follow.

Addicton is now such that I felt the need to blog the moment at Sidmouth indoor market. Took a few minutes to work out how to get here given the absence of supporting favourties but here we are.

It seems that Sidmouth has a much grander stream through the middle of it than Lyme Regis. Fully equipped with large beech trees and very large holm oaks. Maybe the visitors of old at this establishment were rather grander than the fisher folk down the road.

We are also the proud possessors of a number of giant parsnips - fully the equal of the relatively modest speciman which makes page three of today's Guardian. Have taken two snaps of them with the trusty mobile phone and can spend the next month learning how to get them from there onto a PC. The last lap onto this thing I think I understand.

Off to the seaside!

Postcript to the M&S post. I was surprised to see that their wire shopping baskets in the ladies' area were very worn and shabby. About on a par with a parcel of them that I picked up outside a convenience store in Garrett Lane a month or so ago - having been put outside by the shopkeeper as rubbish. One would have thought that M&S would be more concerned about image.

Two interesting senior moments. One, I go to put the pestle in the hole in the rotating spice rack where the pepper bottle was supposed to go. Not so bad, given that the pestle and bottle were the same general shape. I stopped before the pestle got stuck in the hole. Second, another virtual senior moment. While waking up, I manged to pour loose tea into a tea cup, rather than a tea bag, in the course of making the BH's morning cuppa. Perhaps just as well it was virtual.

Finished off the weekend loin of pork in yesterday's lunch time sandwiches. Oddly, the pork seemed to have improved, from a sandwich point of view, from a couple of days in the fridge. While I thought that the fridge dried things out, in this case the texture of the meat had got a bit moister.

Planted the first row of onion sets. Which established beyond doubt that the proposed line of runner beans is not parallel with the end of the allotment. Parallel lines of broad beans, leaf beet and now onions now having bumped into it. Must work on surveying arrangements. Broad beans now showing in over half the rows. Mystery how they manage to poke through the crust - but relectant to start serious watering - not least because the water has not yet been turned on and the tanks won't last very long. And anyway it seems a bit silly to water when it is as cold as is it just presently.

All six of the intermediate deer exclosure posts have now sprouts, albeit one a bit reluctantly. But before we get too excited, it is also true that two or three of the posts in the heap are sprouting. It seems to be enough to touch the ground, never mind be planted in it. The willow wand hedge now sprouting at around 60%. They seem to sprout much faster off young wood (I seem to remember something about this when do the same thing with gooseberries) but we will see how things look in a month or so's time.

The slightly unusual experience of being in our local mall on Sunday morning waiting for most of it to open. It is quite a long time since I have waited outside for a pub to open - maybe 5 years - but never outside a mall. To keep warm we were reduced to Marks and Spencer where I decided I did not like their shoes. Not foot shaped enough for me. So off to Clarkes where foot shapes rule even if longevity does no longer. For once the cheapest offering suited.

This morning saw the return of the ground-loving green woodpecker. We also had a visit from what looked like a very dim heron. Standing in the edge of the small pond, gazing blankly at the fence. But given the size of the brain part of its head perhaps dimness follows. Notwithstanding, impressive how it could take off from a standing start.

I forget why I got interested in one Holman Hunt, but now making better progress. Having got stuck in a book by one Jacobi, which looked to have some interesting stuff in it but was rather inpenetrable, I have now read a more conventional biography by Clark Amor. Should have enough background now to make sense of the heavier tome. Maybe one day I will come across a copy of his autobiography which I can afford.

A few factlets. First, rather to my surprise, the council busies were alive, even in 1905 or something. At the grand old age of 75 he gets kicked out of his house which had been compulsorily purchased to make - or to make way for - a school. Second, when he finally goes he is cremated. I had not thought that decent folk went in for cremation before the first war. Third, he was as much a pop-star figure as George Eliot, who caught my eye some months ago. Much adulation from adoring crowds. Much money made from mass consumption of engravings of his paintings. He sends a picture on a tour of the commonwealth, on one leg of which, it is thought that three quarters of the population of Australia went to see it. Perhaps the population was rather small at that time. It seems that the picture in question (the Light of the World) was the second most popular picture in the world, after the Mona Lisa, until overtaken by the Sunflowers. Fourth, a new personal best. I now have two books out of the local library. It must be many years - maybe not since we were first married and we took Trollope out of the little library at Harringey West in the early seventies. Not sure whether it is lack of storage space or retirement reduced income which has pushed me to this pass.

All in all, should be well prepared for forthcoming visit to the Walker gallery in Liverpool.

Took a chance on the rather odd looking Eccles cakes in the Cheam baker on Saturday. The pastry looked right but there was something slightly odd about the shape - maybe too plump. Eccles cakes should be flat. On closer inspection, later in the day, it turned out that while the outside might have been all Eccles cake, the interior was more mince pie. A sweet sticky mess of dried fruit. But that is not what the real Eccles cake is about. The interior should be hollow, with sundry currants sticking to the roof of the cave as it were. Maybe one thing that the baker in Strutton Ground - who bought all that sort of thing from some commercial baker - got right. As an aside, I have always assumed that the Eccles in question is the one near Salford rather than the one in Kent - which before I checked in Britannica I had confused with Beccles in Suffolk. Maybe I would be better off sticking with Google.

Yesterday to Hampton Court to inspect the daffodills. Pleased to find that they have not decided to charge entrance this year despite the event being advertised in large sheets tied to the railings as Florimania or some such. Picked absolutely the right day this year with the daffodills in full flush. Even flickering in the wind - BH quoted some poem which used a better word but I can't remember what it was. Two tone effect with most of them planted organically, au naturelle, in the woods, but with some of them planted, one variety in a time, en masse in formal beds. They had also introduced some colour - blue and white - into the reproduction formal garden on the giant vine side, the garden being slightly blighted by something having got to the little box hedges around the beds. Probably the frost was too much for the tight clipping.

Exiting by the Lion gate - itself a mass of colour (hyacinths or primulas - it was little more than 24 hours ago but I can't remember what was there) - tried the Italian cafe next to the small garage. The dining room was a bit warm on first arrival but its windows overlooked Bushy Park which worked well. I settled for a spicy fish stew with rice called Jumbalayoo or some such. Very good with a decent amount of fish (mainly shell) - set off by good presentation and good service. Only catch was that I was driving so had to settle for much water bottled at 1400m somewhere in Italy rather than something more interesting.

Today is a roast loin of pork day. We are told by the leaflet in the butcher that the pigs in question have had a very good life. It seems that access to trauma therapists is provided free, as part of the service. They also have a special wooded area for flirtations. Having got to me, five and a half pounds of meat makes nearly three hours in the Radiation Cook Book. We gave it two and a half hours which was slightly too long for my taste. Must make more allowance for the long thin boniness of this cut. Well set off by a beetroot sauce - beetroot puree flavoured with horseradish - acquired from a little Polish shop which has popped up in Garrett Lane. Good stuff which makes a change from the white creamy gear we usually get from Sainsbury - although oddly enough the recommendation came from someone who had come across the stuff in the huge Sainsbury at Vauxhall. Maybe more Poles to the square inch in that part of London.

For once no cabbage. Still tucking into the allotment leeks - from which, unusually, two small slugs had to be removed - together with un orgo carrots and fairly orgo brown rice.

Three beans - removed from bean pudding pot - have now finished the bean campaign. Quite a few up now. Wondering if I ought to water them a bit. The ground is wet enough but with the warm breezt weather after all the rain we now have a crust on top. Will the beans make it through?

Two rows of leaf beet sown this morning - a beautiful warm spring day. The packet says April but I am sure I usually plant them before then and it is very warm. Last year beet did not do very well at all - I think because of failure to water the seeds while they were germinating. Hopefully with more time this will not be a problem this year. More time certainly makes the whole business much more satisfying. Instead of rushing out on Sunday morning and trying to cram everything into a few hours - certainly less than 10 - one can go at it in a much steadier way.

Pulled another couple of yards of leeks. These being hand-me-downs from somewhere up the allotment field. Got off to a very slow start last year being infested with some sort of nemotode (I think) which burrowed into the leaves - but the mild winter and now warm spring has enabled them to recover a bit. For some reason the first year I planted leeks - maybe three or four years ago - I did pretty well. But since then things seemed to have gone downhill. Not very successful with getting seedlings to go and not very successful once the seedlings have been transplanted. In differant parts of the allotment so it shouldn't be a ground exhaustion problem. Again, maybe more time will produce a better result.

Returned to the Epsom market fish stall yesterday - having defected to the man from Hastings who parks up outside the baker at Cheam on Fridays. He claims that his fish comes off the boat on Hastings beach the morning he sells it. Certainly the haddock we had from him was very good. And it had a white creamy texture which the Epsom stuff doesn't have. Notwithstanding, took some Epsom haddock yesterday and baked most of it for lunch. Thin layer of thinly sliced onion on bottom of baking dish, fish on top of that, a tomato for decoration, cover with baking foil, cook for an hour and off you go. In this case with leeks and mashed potato, the former being own grown. BH likes to sprinkle black pepper on the fish. I prefer not. That aside, all turned out very well. Balance of the haddock fried in a little butter with some more onions for breakfast today.

Pleased to find yesterday that the 'Coach and Horses' in Greek Street is still much the same, despite the retirement of long serving management. Slightly less seedy but still an interesting place with good beer.

And very impressed by the illuminated millenium wheel. Looked really good. But whoever designed the thing didn't manage to plant the ropes which hold it up in the ground quite right. A common problem with outdoor sculptures. Sculpture fine but the plinth which connects it to the ground not fine. A problem which is brilliantly solved by Millbank tower which contrives to float slightly above the ground - at least as seen from across the river.

Good weather continues so another 2.5 rows in - less three beans - and that's the lot. So another4.5 was a bit optimistic. Leaf beet tomorrow.

Rhubarb nearly ready to pick.

The willow at the bottom of my allotment cut down to about a foot from the ground a month or so ago is pushing out shoots hard. Not broken yet but definately on the move. The willow posts - about 10 foot high by 2 inches thick and maybe a foot in the ground - used as intermediates for the deer exclosure - are also sprouting. Sprouting at the top, presumably because water is still pushing up the post without too much regard for what is happening at the bottom. The top does not know that the bottom is dead. Maybe that will cause an air lock. But maybe they are not dead at all.

The baker has acquired another Eastern European assistant - a Polish girl - now into her third day. Cheerful and willing even if her English could do with some work. I tried to explain that 'do you want some plastic bag' is not quite right and that 'a' is the correct article for a single object. Only thought of the right way to explain how all this works after the event so we will see in the days to come how well she learnt the lesson. Quite Asian in appearance with slanting slit eyes - presumably reflecting rape and pillage by marauding Mongols in the not so distant past. Pale blond in other respects. But I have also noticed eyes of this sort on Irish girls which one can hardly blame on Mongols.

One can get quite excited about the differance between indefinate and definate articles. Ladies' magazines and assistants in ladies' shops like to use a definate article to impose on one. 'Do you want the scarf now?' suggesting a shared understanding about mandatory scarfs, rather than the more neutral 'Would you like a scarf?'. A shared understanding of the right way to do things which separates us off from the riff-raff. We're posh, we know how to do things properly. Or put another way, a bit of flattery to encourage you to buy the thing. I'm sure men are good for this sort of thing too but can't think of a good example just now.

A postscript on two people with one body. Google thought I was asking about the proverb 'two heads are better than one' which seems to attract a good deal of material. Including the word siamese did the trick. Fair amount of stuff came up including a peice in Wikipedia and a longish video clip from YouTube - this being the first time that I have used the thing. And all being triggered for me by press coverage of a television programme which went out in February, part of their attempt to ease themselves into the world. As ever, it seems that things are more complicated than at first appears. The two people started with two bodies which fused. The bottom half merged in a reasonably clean way, the middle is a bit of a muddle with odd numbers of some organs and the two tops remaining separate. The forked spinal cord must be a bit tricky. They sound suprisingly together and are hoping for a normal life but I guess they will be very lucky to get it. Although the original Siamese twins did well enough, both getting married (as I recall) and running a farm for some years.

Now had a couple of days of drying weather and the ground is now in reasonable condition - for planting beans anyway - after all the wet weather which we have had over the last few weeks. So got a row and a half in this afternoon - maybe another four and a half to go. Then onto onions and leaf beet.

Tenacity of weeds continues to impress. Weeds which have been upsidedown in the ground, several inches down, for months, continue to struggle to the surface. Whacking great shoots nearly making it. If only plants that one can eat were so tenacious.

Rain has unearthed various interesting debris. For example some very bleached chunks of crab shell which have survived being composted for perhaps a year or more. Then various silk flowers which come with the leaves which the council sweep up in the Autumn from their cemetaries and crematoria.

Interestingly, quite a lot of allotment types are not into composting. You would think that they are deeply orgo but they are not. Maybe half simply pile their waste - quite often including bottles, tin foil containers and plastic bags - up in heaps around the edge of the allotment field. They are quite firm that it is for someone else to deal with. Probably relatives of the sadly numerous people who don't think it is any part of their duties to remove, for example, empty beer bottles from their part of the pavement.

Someone has been talking in the media about UK needing to punch above its weight - a phrase invented, I think, by some Tory Foreign Secretary - Douglas Hurd maybe - some years ago - and which people continue to trot out. Now it is a good sounding phrase but wrong. I see no merit in trying to be bigger than one is. Eventually you get found out and all the expense has been for nothing. But at least there is some good sense left in our Labour party. Some of our MPs are prepared to say out loud that they think that the hugely expensive replacement Trident is not good value for money. But sadly no where near enough to stop the thing.

Someone has also been talking about a person with two heads - a subject in which I have a passing interest given that the shrink book from Ashburton was all about multiple personality. A person with two heads is a very extreme case - not something that I had not thought possible. Correcting myself as I go, I should have said two persons with one body. I am told that both persons sound suprisingly normal - although it has taken them some time to learn to coordinate control of the one body. Apparently, to some extent at least, one person has control of half a body. Maybe in time there will be advantages. One person could worry about running around leaving the other free to concentrate on something else at the same time. Using the mobile phone while her other half drove the car doesn't work with only one set of hands but there must be activities for which that is not a limitation. And then I imagine that they could make themselves a fortune renting themselves out to university pyschology departments - assuming that does not count as some kind of abuse. (In the (golden) olden days people with severe challenges were often happy to make a living in circus freak shows. One point they made was that at least in that context people took them for what they were and didn't try to pretend they were something else. No longer quite the thing though). Must ask Google for more information.

To Gosport, visiting. My practical duties consisted mainly of doing things in the shed. Started out with the plan of errecting shelves to hold miscellaneous tins full of things to do things with cars with but soon decided that the window frame which was to hold one end of the shelves was in greater need of attention, with the base of the frame crumbling under the combined attack of wet rot and wood worm. Replaced base with a bit of 2 by 1 which happened to be lying about, so the uprights (not in too great condition themselves) now have solid support. In the course of all this I lost one of the four panes. I think it was cracked before I started. Yellow Pages directed me to an ancient hardware store (good that such places still exist) which cut me out something which was a very good match to what had broken - although slightly startled at paying £10 for a peice of glass 50 by 40 cm. Then reminded that my glazing skills have not yet reached NVQ standard. And the configuration of the new base meant that I thought best to fit an external glazing bead to it. I don't suppose it is going to last all that long - years rather than tens of years - so we will see if I still think it was best in five years time. Hands have now stopped smelling of putty, some 36 hours later.

I hear that the Mayor for London is collecting around 10 tons of free newspaper from the underground network each business day. Or at least he has some helpful people from Eastern Europe to do it for him. I think a good interim solution - entirely in keeping with our establishment's habit of throwing large sums of money at con artists of various sorts - would be to have competitive newspaper castle building in Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank. Every team entering (at least one member of which has to be a resident of the former greater Greater London Council area) will get a plot 15 by 15 feet and an unlimited supply of newsprint. Teams whose efforts fall outside their plot are instantly disqualified. I rather fancy a pyramid after the Mexican model. The winning team will get a grant from the Arts Council to move their entry into Tate Modern - the grant to include a cost of drink allowance. Reality TV and live webcasts throughout. Consolation prizes for exhibitionist (perferably pretty) castle builders to be awarded by viewers.

The only catch that I can think of is the need to firm the castles up. Maybe netting (the sort used on allotments is very cheap and only a few clicks away) fixed down with big staples and the whole covered with a thick layer of some varnish like stuff.

If successful, said Arts Council can export the concept across the world. If unsuccessful, the paper could be shipped to allotment sites across London to be used for compost.

A differant gang, the British Council, sponsored the production of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' which we saw yesterday afternoon at the renovated Roundhouse - which some of us remembered being put to rather differant uses. Very colourful and entertaining if not depending on Shakespeare for much more than the story line - which last at least one member of the party thought was a good thing. Excellent set - a huge wall made of bamboo scaffolding and covered with plain white paper. The cast used the wall as a climbing frame and the paper gradually disappeared during the performance. Presumably more Eastern Europeans to stick it all back again between performances. One member of the cast was a mathematics teacher when he was resting so can't be all bad. Another member of the cast looked to be about 10 years old - which caused the Camden Council for Cruelty to Children (CCCC) pause for thought. But they were OK about it in the end.

The king was rather more kingly than is usual and the court scene towards the end more courtly. They gave a sense of their superiority and sloaniness which is often missing.

But not convinced by the poyglot script. OK, so they have a lot of big languages in India which all want some recognition, but couldn't see enough point in delivering the thing in a mixture of languages which any one person in the audience was unlikely to know more than two of - and outside India more than one of. Maybe this gave them a bit more choice when casting - with a few of the cast claiming not to perform in English - but for me - despite getting clues in English from time to time - the result was a mime rather than a play. Should have read the story before going. Nevertheless, all in all, a good outing.

On further thought, maybe polyglot would have been better had all the seats got little screens in their backs like you have in aeroplanes, and you got subtitles in the language of your choice. Complete with footnotes to explain any obsolete or difficult words. Or pop-ups when you hover the mouse over something. But all this might of been a bit tricky and/or expensive to organise in touring venues with demountable seating.

The stretch between Camden Town and Chalk Farm absolutely heaving with young people in dark clothes. Lots of shops selling beads, smells and tattoos. But civilisation broke in in the form of a Witherspoon's by the canal. Bombardier rules.

I think the title of the last post should have been Infanta of Castile - the point being that the name got Chinese whispered into Elephant and Castle. The wife of John of Gaunt perhaps?

And I have it from an informant at TB that the mysterious ambulance was not an ambulance at all. Rather a mobile incident centre. It seems that the ambulance chaps decided that since the other emergency services had incident centres they ought to have one too. Apparently they are allowed to provide an incident commander for a gold incident once every blue moon to justify the thing. Gold incidents attracting all kinds of para military goings on - so earlier musings were not that far off the beam.

Spring seems to be on the way. Warm, balmy day.

Two odd sightings in the garden. First, the green woodpecker which quite often visits the neighbouring willow tree, spent a bit of time digging for grubs on our lawn. Maybe all the wet pushes them to the surface. Second, the first green finch for some time.

Made it to the allotment for the first time in a week or so. Ground very wet so was not able to do all that much - beyond clearing the last two discs round trees in the deer exclosure. This involved hoeing through two molehills - but the signs are that the mole has departed. No signs of any further activity since the first spurt of activity. And still no deer spoor inside - although plenty outside - so maybe we get a rest from animal intruders for a while.

The smaller, unproductive nut tree is very nearly in leaf. The peach tree is almost in blossom - although we will maybe be limited to just one blossom. But it is quite a young tree. A good proportion of the willow cuttings are now sprouting leaves so I think the final tally of strikes is going to be more than 66%. The cherry tree is just about alive after having had problems last year. If all else fails there is a bud swelling below the union and we will see what a St Julian stock type A looks like when it is allowed out. And last but not least the first broad beans are now up - though curiously not those in the first row planted.

Bird flu has brought the Sykes Picot agreement to mind again. The Englishman of the pair - Sykes I think - a minor aristo (baronet) who died in the flu epidemic after the first world war - was buried in a lead coffin which means that he is now a candidate for exhumation as part of the war against bird flu. I hope the flu warriors have good cause because I do not care for this sort of disturbance. I don't much like people dissecting people who got themselves frozen in glaciers a few thousand years ago, much less those from more recent times, and never mind about doing it on television. Maybe the Arabs are grimly amused.

But I do wonder what would have happened had we not made this now infamous agreement. I imagine that if the colonial powers had walked away from the wreck of the Ottoman empire, there would have been a terrible mess and much blood shed there for some time. Would it have been best in the long run to let the people on the ground sort themselves out? They might have managed it by now.

Had occasion to visit Elephant and Castle last week. I had forgotten what a cosmopolitan place it was. And the shopping centre underneath was the sort of thing one might find up North. But it also included a bookshop which I had not visited for a long time and was pleased to acquire a two volume biography of Walpole by one J H Plumb. I was told at school that he was a very reliable historian but had never come across anything much by him. So off we go. Know very little about the early 18th century so it will all be very new for me.

So far I have learnt that no-one (important or memorable anyway) at that time thought it was odd for the Chancellor of the Exchequer - then as now the minister in charge of the Excise - to indulge in smuggling from Holland on his own account. At a time when common smugglers were apt to be hanged if caught. So perhaps parliamentary morals are better than they were, despite the goings on of our current lot.

On the way there passed a very high tech ambulance, outside the headquarters of the London ambulance headquarters. Someone there clearly has fantasies about being in the SAS or being James Bond because the roof of this ambulance appeared to be covered in various kinds of high tech gadgets usually associated with military or television people. Maybe the idea was that you could poke some kind of a scanner into damaged person on pavement and the things on the roof would beam a moving picture back in real time to the traumatologist in his bunker at St Thomas's, who could then direct the team on what to do. Or maybe even control the scalpel remotely. I remember of an operation being done in such a fashion quite recently, so not completely off the wall.

A little further down the road there was a Blackwells next to the South Bank University. In for a quick look and was rather taken aback to find a book about cognitive pyschology in the 'x for dummies' series - the yellow and black books - no doubt by someone entirely respectable and probably eminent in the field (it's the filthy lucre what does it). While such books have been around the IT world for some time, I'm not sure that as a respectable student studying for a serious degree I would want to be seen with such a book. First, I would not care to be thought of as dumb - however apt the label might be. Second, I would not care to have what I thought was a difficult, serious and worthy subject presented in comic book fashion. I want my books to be solemn and serious. More seriously I still remember an adage from my teacher mother: there is no golden road to learning. That is to say, roughly speaking, if you want to learn something worth while you are going to have to work at it. On the other hand learning some things - certainly scientific things - can be made much easier with fancy aids. Good quality pictures at the very least. maybe computer programs which visualise all kinds of processes for you in some accessible, diagrammatical way. Four pint wisdom coming on again so time to stop this one.

And finally a differant sort of moment. BH bought some large dark red plums. Reddish yellow inside. Biting into one I tasted the smell of something which one might use for glue sniffing. A very odd sensation to be tasting someone which one recognised as a smell. On reflection, BH thought the substance in question might be acetone. All goes to show that that sort of thing is more under mind control than one expects. A related factlet being that both taste and smell were sometimes turned off by some hysterics in the last century.

Felt quite lost for two days, unable to post although both the blogger site and this PC appeared to be up and running. Clearly quite an addictive activity. But thank you to whoever or whatever cleared the jam.

Have been treated to a sight of the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council instructions to mini-cab drivers about the forthcoming ban on smoking in public places. It seems that mini-cab drivers will not be allowed to smoke in their cabs at all because the smoke can soak into the unholstery while he smokes and then ooze out in a cancerifous way while the passenger subsequently sits. And our taxes are paying people to write this twaddle while herds of hoodies continue to roam the estates, the regular inhabitants of some of which are getting quite twitchy. Apparently one's propensity to twitchiness about such matters increases rapidly with age. Eventually one hunkers down in the locked and bolted kitchen, huddled around the radio tuned to the phone-in show devoted to such matters. And reads the Daily Mail.

The same twaddle writers, presumably, who write the regulations about recycling. As a result of which we have learnt that some of our neighbours have criminal tendencies because they have taking to secreting small amounts of recyclable waste in among the land fill waste in their wheelie bins because it was too cold/wet/whatever to make it to the compost bin down the garden. We look forward to the day when the waste transfer station environmental engineers (first class) have been empowered to extract on the spot fines if they catch us at it.

A differant sort of hoodie accosted me as I cycled back from the baker. Not really a hoodie, rather quite a decent looking teenager from the local comprehensive coming back from a games lesson. But he was in a peer herd he clearly felt the need to make loud comments about gramps tearing down the road at all of 5 miles an hour as I cycled past. I hear of much worse. Now when I was that age, all our criminal tendencies were focussed on the length of sideburns (which I was and remain useless at) and on wearing shoes which contravened the school dress code in some way. Favourite techniques were shoes with what were called Cuban heels or shoes with elasticated sides rather than laces. Were these Chelsea boots? Both could get teachers into a right paddy. At least in those days there were rules for us to head butt - one does, it seems, need something - but the rules were in very safe territory. Now that we allow children to do almost anything they, are a bit stuck for something good to butt - and are reduced to being seriously unpleasant. I remember I trailed this theory at a shrink class once and got shot down for having manipulative tendencies. But I stick to my guns.

To QEH again on Thursday to hear a Finn (Ollie M?) play the Goldberg Variations. A very florid stage presence - which I rather liked. And he managed to make the piano sound rather more like a harpsicord than I would have thought likely. All in all a rather loud and boisterous performance. But we liked it - unlike the man in today's DT who clearly did not. Maybe he was the chap to our left who left half way through - despite there being no interval.

BH reminds me that the last time we heard this peice live was around 30 years ago - when we heard it twice, once on the harpsicord and once on the piano, with an interval, by a Polish lady. About 3 hours all in apparently: clearly a lot after a day's teaching, it sticks in the mind after all this time. I think I must have been doing something less arduous.

I wondered whether the fact that there were 32 chunks was significant. 32 is, after all, a very powerful number and I think that most composers of the Bach era were very into numerology. On the other hand, one of the 32 chunks is the aria and one the finale (although called something else, perhaps coda), so the count of 32 is a little shaky. And Diabelli is, I think, 30 so that doesn't work either.

We find that a cafe in Reigate also sells Belgian buns. The same sort of idea as those from Cheam but rather flatter. As if one had started with a much fatter Swiss roll of bun mix and then sliced it rather thinner. The finished product about the size and shape of a Danish pastry. So it seems that Belgian buns have a genuine existance and are not a whimsy of the baker at Cheam. All that said, a proper cinnamon flavoured fairly soggy Chelsea bun is the way forward. None of this foreign stuff here please.

Getting withdrawal symptoms from the allotment - not having been for more than a week. I thought we were going to have a dry day which meant that it might have been worth going tomorrow - but just had a shower. Hopefully my continuing efforts with the paint brush will have had time to skin over before they got wet.

Garden now as wet as I have seen it for some years. Pond overflowing down the hill. It might be fine today but we had some more good rain yesterday - complete with thunder, lightening and two rainbows (at the same time that is).

Discovered that a new evergreen clematis growing in the our back hedge is more or less destroying my part of the hedge so am cutting it back hard. Probably the entirely wrong time of year. Funny how one struggles to grow the things in one part of the domain and struggle to keep them at bay in others. Clematis full of dead twigs which have fallen off a tree just the other side of the hedge, following the regularly anti-social bonfires far too close to both hedge and tree. BH had one go at bellowing at the culprit; seemingly without effect.

First celandine is now out. No signs of anything eating them.

Sodoku more or less on the back burner at the moment. Having got as far as the wrong solution yesterday, the first attempt for some weeks. On the other hand an interesting rat puzzle. You have a square compartment and a rat at each inside corner. The rats are trained on the word of command to chase after the one in front. How far does each rat run before it catches up with the one in front? Playing with nested rotating squares inside the first square, I decide that the answer is 1, where 1 is the length of the side of the original square. After a bit more work - say half an hour - I get a non liner differance equation which describes the behaviour of the approximating squares. I am then completely stuck. No idea how to solve the equation and proving that the thing converges, let alone converges to the right answer as one decreases the amount of rotation at each step, is well beyond my fading powers. On the other hand, half an hour in Excel VB computes the rotating squares. The first approximation is a number a little above 1. As the amount of rotation per step decreases (making the approximation better one hopes) the approximation steadily decreases to something just below 1, then starts climbing again, this time looking to converge to 1 from below. Reasonably complex behaviour which does not encourage me to think that I am going prove convergance.

Now which is the better way to do this? When I was small and the computation involved was unavailable - at least in schools - no question but that you had to solve a problem like this algebraically - and theoretically correctly - with no approximations. But given the likelihood of making algebraic mistakes, is the theoretic answer better than the computed one? Could one persuade young people of the merit of sweating through the algebra when Excel is available?

But then again, maybe I have missed some far simpler way to do this!

I learn from TB that the 'Daily Mail' is having a go at immigrants from Eastern Europe. First line of attack is the rate that these people (presumably mostly young and single) are gobbling up our infrastructure services and resources. Second line of attack is the way they are depressing wages. So an electrician earning perhaps £400 a week for the last few years is now getting pushed down well below that. With unfortunate effect on his mortgage repayments, agreed on the basis of the £400. Now while this is a bit of a problem, ironic that the complaint should come from this thunderer for the merits of market forces. And the evils of workforces - like those in France - not fully exposed to the chill winds of competition in level playing fields.

My take is two-fold. On the one hand, I think that these people are largely doing jobs that native Brits don't want. And on the other, with places like China making trillions of consumables on the cheap, we are living beyond our means. We are paying ourselves too much. Sooner or later there is going to be a nasty adjustment.

Steady trickle of senior moments. Some the entirely ordinary sort. Some more complicated, as when I got into a complete muddle - after the event that is - as to whether I had turned right at some traffic lights at Cheam village just as they were turning against me or just as they were turning for me. No safety issue though - lower level processing was in charge of making the actual turn, and not cycling under a bus, whatever higher order processing might or might not have thought about the lights.

And one virtual senior moment. That is to say, I was not fully awake but dreaming about putting a date in my diary. And as I finished writing it in, I realised that I had included the full date in the written entry - completely superfluous in a diary which presumably had printed dates and days of the week ready made. All without properly waking up. Maybe I will start dreaming about putting the frozen peas in the washing machine rather than the freezer.