pumpkinstrokemarrow

The council flail has made a right mess of the hedges between the church and Nonsuch High School on the way to the baker. Not been done for a while, so the flail has been used to both trim and take out substantial branches. I suppose we have to put up with the things in the country where the cost of miles of hedging by hand would be prohibitive and where, if done regularly and neatly the results can look OK, but it is a pity that in the garden suburbs we can't afford to do a bit better - given all the things that governments and councils do see fit to spend their money on.

According to the DT, the last puffers' bastion is falling. The Chinese authorities have decided to ban puffing at their upcoming Olympics, a few drunken brawls on the subject notwithstanding. There will soon be no where for us to go. Or maybe the Middle East and the Balkans will hold out for a bit yet?

But there will still, let us hope, be sausages. Over the last couple of days we have done 12 of the best from a butcher in Crewkerne - sausages and various forms of processed pork appearing to account for most of his business - which would suggest that Crewkerne is still something of a DSS joint despite having cleaned up its act over the last few years. The sausages were good - with the unusal properties of neither sticking to the frying pan (this being far and away the best if not the most reliable way of cooking sausages) nor shrinking. Perhaps I put in enough lard to give them a bit of bouyancy, thus keeping them off the floor. 8 with mash and cabbage for tea; 4 in sandwiches for lunch. Must try the sausages from the Cheam butcher. I don't think he bothers much with sausages so it will be interesting to see what he does do.

He does do cheap bacon peices. About a pound of the stuff for 99p yesterday. A bit salty but quite reasonable if irregular meat lumps with very little fat - quite good enough for yesterday's lentil soup - and much better than the equivalent stuff from Sainsbury which can be a bit grotty at close quarters.

Interesting book pricing at a small book sale in Lyme Regis. There were several books prices in hundreds, quite a lot in tens (mostly badly overpriced) and plenty of junk. I settled for a 'Wind in the Willows' (with proper Mr Pooh pictures) for 30p - the best value in the sale. A fairly ancient 'House at Pooh Corner' was £3 and a bit battered so I passed that up. Can't see that it was worth the sellers' while. The Rotary Club up the road on trestles under a beach shelter was much better value. 30p for paper and 40p for hard - and the stock included some respectables. For example, the standard biography of George Elliot, slightly battered, my copy of which cost me £10. Mr Rotary was also the proud possessor of a large heap of Fowlery - that is to say foreign language (Thai included), mostly signed, mint condition copies of the works of the recently deceased John Fowles. We couldn't think of anything better to do with them than give them to a local language school.

Despite yesterday's optimistic posting about the incubator pumpkins, the slugs have now knocked out all but two. Plus they have had the first of the second line planted a few days after the incubators. They are also getting dug into the runner beans - which had been germinating well but are now looking a bit tattered. Some signs of slugs in the broad beans but the black fly are still not out in force so on balance the broad bean crop is looking good. Rain stop play today not a disaster.

Reminded of the rather open ended function of a dictionary (when is it an encyclopaedia?) when finding out about protean - a word which a book about duality and doubles which I am reading is very keen on. It turns out (from OED), that Proteus was the son of a couple of weather flavoured divinities who could change his shape. Also that proto- is a prefix meaning from or before the beginning. Original. Don't think there is any connection beyond the language of origin.

Now done two Soduku in about as many weeks. Both knocked off in about twenty minutes so maybe the brain, in this case, is better when rested.

And more deep ethical problems from the DT. If one has been careful and saved lots of money, is it fair that one should stump up the cost of being kept when demented, when the toss-pot from down the road who has p***d it all up against the wall is kept in the same facility at Her Majesty's expense. I suppose it is only common humanity to keep said toss-pot, but maybe if there are lots of them we are going to have to move to a two class regime with better quality flowers for those who contribute. Watch this space.

The Jack O'Lantern pumpkins of the 11 May posting now coming up, with nine showing so far, at the two leaf state. This despite their being regularly flooded and parched due to being kept outside (on a table on the patio, hopefully out of reach of the slugs) in a flat china bowl with no drain holes at a time when there has been plenty of rain. Need to move to planting them out in a week or so.

The incubator pumpkins are demonstrating some resilience, now being back from five to seven. Two which I had down as goners are now struggling back. It seems that unless the slugs decapitate the thing just below the first two leaves - above which one has the business buds - they will try and recover with new buds (and so shoots) from really major damage. Maybe the things are tougher than I have been giving them credit for.

Bucket and spade version of South West Trains to the West country this weekend - the five pound for first class wheeze not working (quite reasonably) during the week. So wound up sitting in one of the coach style seats with my knees pressed into the seat in front for half the journey and sitting sideways for the other half.

Visited a superior gastro pub of the rural variety and was pleased to find kidneys available as a starter. Not at all bad, but Hasek is quite wrong. The version of kidneys with carraway seeds (like a common eating house as he would put it) that I do is superior to the version with wine and what have you that restaurants tend to do. The latter is good but mine is better. As one says (counter intuitively, but not, I think, sillely) kidneys should not taste kidney-ey any more than fish should taste fishy.

Bought some black fly gear in Robert Dyas in Dorchester. For the broad beans. At nearly £10, demonstrating yet again that growing your own is a bit of a mug's game - at least in so far as getting cheap vegetables is concerned. Without doing any serious sums, I estimate that I could buy two years' vegetables with the cash that I put into the allotments in one year. And that is not counting all my time and the wear and tear on the bicycle. The pill was sweetened with a £5 off if you spend £10 redeemable in any Dyas on bank holiday Monday. Sadly we completely forgot about it despite being within 800 metres of such of place on that day.

And last but not least another tweeters' moment. Close up view of the smaller of the woodpeckers which is not a green woodpecker. Vigourously attacking a post. At least it was a post, not the lawn like the things we seem to get in Epsom these days.

Perhaps unwisely have upgraded my primary laptop to Office 2007. Fairly radical changes to the user interface (at least, over that that I have been using), some nice new features, some irritations fixed (most importantly for me, the limit on the number of columns in a worksheet) and some new ones arrived. I have also had two Excel crashes of the sort that try to send a report to Microsoft - something I don't recall getting for ages. Fortunately, only a few minutes work lost. I am reminded of all the flapdoodle we used to go through in the world of work when considering an upgrade - and all the now absent support staff that used to go with it. Having to learn to paddle my own canoe. If it floats, I might have to bite the expensive bullet and upgrade the other two PCs, one at least of which will need an OS upgrade for this to be possible. Working across versions can be a real pain.

Today's DT has a good crop of trivia.

Interesting to see that the boss of the National Audit Office runs a generous expense account, generously shared with his wife. I imagine that such things are largely tax free - not an unimportant consideration when you earn lots of dosh. I don't suppose that this would be a problem for someone of his standing in the private sector - but he isn't. He is a fairly grand civil servant, sufficiently grand to sign his own expenses claim and it is hard to see who, apart from the likes of the DT, is going to call him to account. Oddly, he has just cancelled an important foreign mission.

And then that a new division (4 civil servants, 3 consultants, 2 lawyers and a tea lady in a pear tree) is about to be created in whichever ministry is responsible for the buyers' packs debacle in order to work on regulations which will define a four bedroom house for the purposes of non-exemption from the requirement to have such a thing. As things stand it seems it is perfectly OK to put one's house on the market with three bedrooms and an upstairs study - which is exempt - with the fact of a bed in said study not being material. A house is only a four bedroom house if the owner so designates it. At least one's home is one's castle to that extent. But not for long. The control freaks are coming!

On a differant tack, I have just learnt that the biodegradeable tuna fish sold by Mr Sainsbury is packed in spring water. Persumably the marketing people have decided that spring water has a positive ring about it which might as well rub off on their tuna fish. As far as I recall brine was the thing last year and olive oil the year before that. Presumably olive oil had the positive ring OK, but brine was a lot cheaper - overlooking the fact that brine, while it might be the fishes' natural medium, has no ring. Sounds cheap in fact and 'packed in its own juices' sounds a bit off. So spring water it has to be. In any event it diverts attention from the tradition that tins for tuna fish bear no relation to the amount of tuna fish in them. (Perhaps no is a little strong here, there is a relationship in that the tin is always substantially bigger than it needs to be).

Just finished a very odd novel, a relic of Crouch End and an illustrated first edition, called 'The Martian' by one Du Maurier. Apart from telling one something about how French boys' boarding schools were organised in the mid 19th century, something about how one went about being an artist at the same time and generally a bit of middle class colouring in, the book seems to be pretty much content free. And the Martian ending is ridiculous. Maybe a bit of an odd cove; the father of a famous actor and the grandfather of the famous Daphne.

The ten incubator pumpkins are now down to five. One more or less untouched and two in quite good condition. The weather is now hot so we will see. Second rank coming on in the shed and will be ready to go into the line in a few days.

Dug up the first row of carrots - West of the deer exclosure - on the grounds that not enough have survived to be worth it. Tried putting in two packets of January Kings instead.

Momentary panic yesterday evening when I couldn't find the red lentils to make tea with. Panic subsided when I found some green lentils - not the big affairs about a quarter of an inch across but little French jobs aboút an eighth of an inch across. So made up lentil soup in the usual way - boil up lentils add sliced carrot towards the end. Fry up some chopped onion and bacon and add that at the end. The green lentils had a quite differant texture than the red, keeping their shape and not dissolving. The bacon worked very well: organic vegan pig dry cured from some butcher in Topsham via Rosemary's. Didn't look that special but thick cut with good flavour and texture. Just the job for the new style lentil soup which was more like a lentil stew.

Found red lentils in the morning.

Discovered a new form of coral on the beach near Dawlish. The strands of red sandstone had lots of barnacles and small mussels and the former appeared to be building up into coral like masses, draped over the South facing strands. The South presumably being something to do with the currents or the lie of the rock. The coral like masses being inches thick, perhaps as much as six inches in places. So presumably not coral, but much the same sort of idea.

Reminded how the TLS does not always contain reviews. Read an interesting article about one Paul Mendes France, a propos of a new biography of same. The article managed to mention the new biography once. So while I now know rather more about Paul M F than I did, I know nothing about the biography should I want to know more. This being a common failing of TLS reviews: the reviewers seem to find it easier to write a short essay about the subject in hand, usually with a bit of grandstanding, than bothering to read the book in hand and tell one something about it. Reviews in the New York Review of Books rather better in this regard.

Had a ride on a long range SouthWest Trains train. The level of in-train announcements refreshingly low compared with that on their short range cousins. But I did learn that we now appear to have sponsored stations. That is to say, rather than having simple, decent signs announcing the name of the station that one has just arrived at, some stations now couple such signs with an advertisement for some sponsor - with the result in my case that one neither knew where one was or who was its sponsor. But then the continentals run advertisements on the platform televisions that we use to tell passengers about trains so I suppose I should not complain.

I discover that the ground loving woodpecker noticed in March might be a tweet. That is to say it was not a green woodpecker at all but some occasional called the Eurasian woodpecker which does indeed graze on the ground and not peck wood at all. DT in TB saw one in his garden and had the tweet of mind to look it up in his book.

To the QEH yesterday to hear the Takacs quartet. Dvorak, Shostokovitch and Brahms. The pianist for the latter distinguished himself by wearing pink shoes and flaunting a small bright green towel with which to wipe his sweating fingers. A good crew and pleased to see that there is quite a bit of chamber music coming up over the next year - the Brahms piano quintet being about as noisy as I like my music.

Driven out of the foyer beforehand by some dreadful band - Jazz I presume - and audience drawn in by freebies. Bit of a sauce that one is paying serious money for tickets without anywhere civilised to wait. Waiting for Beethoven one does not really want to hear the Beatles. Hopefully this particular bit of noise pollution will vanish when they reopen the Festival Hall - but maybe the popularisers and accessabilityerisers will insist.

While outside observed a lady locking up what I assume was a rather posh bike. The most elaborate lock I have ever seen with extensions to wrap around the front wheel, linking to the main lock around the back wheel frame and bicycle rack. The lock must have cost as much as the average bicycle. A drag that we have to go to such lengths to keep the scum bags at bay.

While waiting for a train at Wimbledon later, where previously we have fed the mice living under one of the advertising hoardings with bits of discarded Macdonalds, observed another lady, interesting in herself rather than because of what she was doing. A fifty something, of jaunty appearance. Flat cap, knee length black leather coat (not new), interesting mid calf length flouncy pink trousers and the ensemble finished off with white trainers. Who was she; where had she been and what was she up to?

The slugs had a bit of a field day the night before last. 8 of the 10 incubator pumpkin plants have now been attacked. 2 dead and 4 more or less seriously injured. Stuck some Dobies Gold Nugget squash (6 seeds to the £1 or so packet. Good money if you can get it) and some anonymous Big Max pumpkin seeds in to fill the gaps. In previous years I have done well with putting seeds straight in the ground: one is a bit late but the germination rate is good and one seems to have less bother with slugs with plants that start off outside.

Weeded the first row of onions. Pots of small slugs and some slug damage. Fortunately, they seem to leave onions alone if one keeps them weeded. They seem to need the damp and shelter of weeds to bother with onions.

Runner beans starting to show. We will see how many of them survive birth by more than a few days.

The rhubarb suddenly starting to look a bit sad after coming up really strongly. Did I pull it too hard?

Look to have a good set on the apple trees in the deer exclosure. Will probably need to thin them a bit in due course. And must get around to tidying up the Victoria plum which is invading the space of the Early Rivers plum. Maybe only fair as it is a lot more prolific.

More aptly named this one. Learnt more or less by chance that cloud cookoo land was invented rather a long time ago by some classical Greek. In-house reference material failed to confirm this factlet - it knew about cloud berries but not about cloud cookoos - so reduced to Google who referred me to Wikipedia. Presumably the use of this particular phrase is proportional to the use of classics lessons in schools, that is to say declining fast.

A moment of a rather differant sort first thing this morning. Looked out of the window at the large weeping willow tree in the back of the next door garden, that is to say the one with the absentee landlord. Most of one side of it was a sort of lemon yellow. It looked most odd. This turned out to be a very transient light trick which takes place just as the sun is rising.

Further irritation from yesterday's DT. Talk of some awful bureaucratic decision about health not having been taken on clinical grounds. It is about time we all grew up and recognised that lots of decisions about health are quite properly taken on money grounds. Someone has to deal with the unpleasant choice between treating 5,000 kidney stones and 30,000 hip replacements or 10,000 kidney stones and 15,000 hip replacements. OK so the actual choice is not about money, but the fact that we have to make such a choice certainly is and having some if not most of our newspapers whining on as if money was not a constraint is irresponsible. If a clinical decision is deciding to apply the best conceivable treatment (at least best given the prevailing state of the art, depressingly subject to national and other fashions, as transient as fashions in other fields of endeavour) without regard to availability or opportunity cost, then such decisions have no place in a centrally funded health service. Irritation moves to depression when one thinks that the growing wealth gap will soon be translated into a growing health gap: I can't see anyone stopping rich people from buying the best treatment they can afford. This was not an issue when only the state could afford the fancy machinery needed for fancy treatments, but this is changing. Not least because of the anticipated wave of hugely expensive cancer drugs. Thus the healthily egalitarian vision of the NHS collapses.

At close yesterday, the slugs had had 1.5 of the 5 pumpkin plants planted the day before. Several years ago I had slug problems with young cucumbers, but more recently I have not been bothered. Maybe I planted them out when it was a bit hotter and drier; this year I am trying to get the plants in early to give them the longest possible growing season, being some hundreds of pounds off the UK record.

Have never yet gone in for slug pellets. Perhaps foolishly, soldiered on and planted the second and last five. Exterminating the dozen or so slugs that I came across on the way.

While reading a Goncourt winning novel from a charity shop in Clapham North (what a dump it used to be in the not too distant past), I suddenly decided that Mary Magdalene (maudlin to cognoscenti) is the same person as Marie-Madeleine. Odd how it has taken me so long to work this out. Odd also that Madeleine is a common name in France but Magdalene is a rare name here. In fact, I am not sure that I have ever come across one.

Been an interesting week from a culinery point of view, with the BH summoned for nursing duties. Started off with a luncheon T-bone with white bread. Not sure that I have ever bought such a thing before. Excellent fare - although maybe a pound of steak and a pound of bread is going it a bit for lunchtime. This was followed up with chicken soup yesterday. Take junk from chicken, add onions and carrot and boil for a long time. Strain off the stock; wash the junk while still warm to get a bit more. Add pearl barley and leave for as long as it takes to knock back the odd pint. Bring to boil, add slivvered savoy cabbage and diced cooked chicken. Serve. Also excellent. And this morning it was white pudding sandwiches. The white pudding continues to carry something soapy about it - not sure whether it is the smell or the taste - but good gear all the same. Today is the turn of the kidney. Good looking fresh ones - not that pale brown they go when they have been sitting around for a bit.

Further depredations by slugs. Was out for the evening earlier in the week and forgot to bring in the two trays of incubator pumpkins before I went. Rushed home at midnight to find several slugs had climbed on board and one had eaten half one of the first leaves of one of the bigger plants. Brushed off all I could see and returned the trays to the shed. No further damage in the morning.

Have now planted out one tray of the incubator pumpkins - five plants - on top of the compost reported on previously. A catch with the incubator trays being that the plants have all got a bit mixed up and you can't get the young plants out as cleanly as one can from a pot. Maybe I should have transplanted them to pots as soon as they germinated. Strung a bit of washing line around the planting site to try and keep the deer off - footprints everywhere. Didn't put down slug pellets mainly because the packet was very firm about not putting them down just before it rains. Maybe I will regret this when I inspect later today, rain permitting.

On the other hand the continuing damp weather seems to be good for the raspberry suckers. All nine looking pretty healthy and no further damage by either deer or slugs. Have trimmed the shoots off the willow marker sticks, leaving just a few at the top for now. The sticks had been getting more bushy than the raspberries.

More nonsense from the DT. It seems that some femmy nursing mother who also happens to be a mayor of somewhere up North is noisily asserting her right to breast feed while carrying out her ceremonial duties. Has the woman no respect for her office? How would she feel if she was collecting her corporation medal for services to sardine tin recycling from some fat male slob with a mayoral chain who was walloping back some wallop at the same time? Wouldn't she want a bit of respect? Or how about a lady pope wanting to breast feed while she elevated the host? Ladies who care that much about their kids should be at home minding them not thrusting their cares (or worse) on the rest of the world.

Wet enough to deter me from going to the allotment. Wet enough to push the grass in the exclosure and the paths up good and fast.

The broad beans were in full flower last time I looked, despite their only being a foot or so high, and were being serviced by what looked like small bumble bees. Lots of them, so we ought to get some beans. Must finish off the hoeing and keep an eye on the black fly - who like the damp if not the cold.

On the other hand, some of the carrots which were starting to show have vanished and the cabbage and leek seedlings are hardly moving at all. Is it the cold or am I doing something wrong?

The shed pumpkins have been attacked by slugs. Putting the trays out in the sun collected half a dozen of the things underneath, who then came out on the rampage when in the privacy of the darkened shed that evening. Lost two seedlings and two more looking a bit peaky. Fortunately they don't seem to have got to the incubator pumpkins now being hardened off - outside during most of the day and in the shed at night. Should get them out on the allotment in a day or so - where they will have to take their chances with the slugs there. Some years they seem to be a problem and some not - this without using any form of deterrent - organic, mechanical or otherwise.

By way of a postscript on the recent compost mining, the stuff was almost worm free - when sometimes one comes across writhing layers of the things. Presumably they serve in some particular phase of the process and then move on. On the other hand the compost was very warm so it must have been alive with something.

On the home front, the force with with the BH, so when she had intoned "chain saw" the appropriate number of times, the yew tree across the fence in the garden of the absentee landlord became considerably smaller than it was. The stuff shoots like crazy, a lot of the branches I was taking off being furry with leaf, so hopefully my attempts at sensitive butchery will pay off and in a year or so it will have acquired a respectable shape. Next stop the rather ugly bay tree in the same place. Only catch is that the green waste disposal area at the bottom of the garden is starting to get rather full. Might be reduced to using the waste transfer station.

Remembered on the way to Cheam about the Sudeten Germans, between 2 and 3m of whom were expelled from what was then Czechoslovakia after the second world war. The history is rather messy with the Sudeten Germans having lived in what had been the Kingdom of Bohemia for a very long time. The Czechs grabbed Sudetenland after the first world war on the collapse of the Austrian empire, paying possibly scant regard to the aspirations of the German majority there. This eventually resulted in the Sudeten Germans, taken as a whole, looking to Hitler to sort things out. And then there was the movement of the Polish borders to the West after the second world war, incorporating chunks of what had been Germany in Poland. This also resulted in large scale migration in unpleasant circumstances. In both of these cases the migrants were on the losing side and shared in war guilt; and while I believe some Germans are returning - presumably to the land of their parents rather than to their own - the numbers involved are quite small. One does not come across Sudeten Germans in the news very often. Details courtesy of wikipedia.

All this is no excuse for what happened in Palestine but it does provide some background and context. There were numerically bigger tragedies closer to home.

Been reading about what happened in what was Palestine in 1948, courtesy of an Israeli historian called Pappe. In very crude terms, it seems that at that time the Jews - around 500,000 or them - were 25% of the population and had 25% of the land. The Jews were mainly urban and the Palestinians mainly rural. But the Jews thought that having 75% of the land and no Palestinians would be a much better deal. The UK and the infant UN more or less went along with this, brains presumably paralysed by guilt over the holocaust. The Jews did a deal with the King of Jordan whereby he got the 25% - that is to say West bank of the Jordan (a very handy addition to his otherwise rather arid kingdom), thus neutralising the strongest Arab force in the region. They then proceeded to colonise the 75% using violent methods to persuade resident Palestians to leave. The UK army, present at the start of this process at least, stood by and did nothing.

Given the passage of time, turning the clock back is not going to happen. But maybe some admission of guilt of past misdeeds would do something.

I was vaguely aware of all this, but having it set out so clearly makes for depressing reading. But I am only a third of the way into the book so maybe there will be some less depressing end to the story.

It gets better. I have been wondering about the fate of sacred cows, prompted by the sad news that a sacred cow up North somewhere is suspected of having tuberculosis, is under sentence of death and local cowites are talking of making a human shield around the cow for when the deed has to be done. I seem to recall that in India, any kind of restraint of such a cow is forbidden. So a cow can wander into one's china shop and play the bull in a china shop. Are sacred cows cows or bulls? Must do a wiki. In the meantime, I wonder what happens if, say, the cow had a gangrenous foot and had to be immobilised so that it could be anaesthitised before commencing operations? Or if it had a decayed tooth that needed removing? Perhaps sacred cows have survived with strict rules on such matters precisely because they don't get medical problems which play havoc on the margin of said rules.

Otherwise a day of smells. Bought some haddock fresh from the man from Hastings on Friday and it was giving the fridge an interesting smell by Saturday. But baked in the usual way it did very well; a counter example to the fish book which said haddock is best in the winter.

But a much more interesting smell from the compost heap - a very rich sticking smell, not unlike strong cheese or meat broth made with plenty of bones - or indeed the smell one used to get from the rendering plant at Widnes, across the river from Runcorn. The occasion was the early summer emptying of the house compost heap to provide food for the pumpkins which are about ready to plant out, given a bit of sun to settle them down in. Rich brown gear with said interesting smell. Maybe the better gear is the product of heap enclosure, as a result of which the compost gets far more meat waste than it used to. This was not on before because of the foxes rooting around the whole time. Five bags so far which gave me and the car said smell for the rest of the day - and the car is still going strong. One bag to the plant buried about six inches down. No burst or leaking bags so far - but if I don't find a source for post office mail bags fairly soon there will be. They seem to degrade over time. When I was working one used to come across them, abandoned on the pavements of London fairly often - but it hardly seems worth going up there just to scour the pavement for bags. There must be a better way.

Is a wonderful thing, especially when the pints in question are the very reliable Newcastle Brown. An acceptable if rather strong alternative to real beer, supply of which is, sadly, diminishing.

The wisdom went as follows. You have a twenty year old person who cannot stop himself (or herself) stealing. This might be because of a faulty gene, alcoholic father, single mother, grotty upbringing or whatever. But for reasons which are not said twenty year old's fault. There was nothing he could have done about any of these things. Problem 1: we have an unpleasant but no fault person. Is he allowed into heaven? With or without extra prayers? Problem 2: are we allowed to lock him up for our own protection - assuming that no more sophisticated remedy is available. Problem 2 is to me a no brainer. The fact that there is no fault does not mean that the rest of the community is not allowed to protect itself. Property rights are basic to the sort of complex society that we live in. One might be a bit sorry about having to take drastic action - as one might be about an elephant which was rampaging through one's village - but there it is. One cannot sit back and let the thing wreck one's life. However, I quite failed to make the case in TB. Part of the argument against seemed to be that it was OK for a poor man with a starving family to steal from a rich man (or from the government or an insurance company). Episode 2 will follow after further intake of liquid wisdom.

Just planted a dozen or so Jack O'Lantern pumpkin seeds outside in a bowl from one of those washing kits one used to have on a washing stand (proper ones with marble tops) in one's bedroom before they invented running water and bathrooms. Also described as pumpkin Maxima. From Italy via Holland. We will see how they get on. Also started hardening off the indoor Mammoth pumpkin plants in the shed, with a view to getting them in the ground in the next few days - about three weeks after planting. It will be odd if the maximum pumpkin really is the biggest as its seeds were a good deal smaller than the Mammoths.

Along with the bowl, also got some second hand pine boards from Gosport with a view to making a new bookcase - a mere ten years after our large supply of small bookcases was broken up in favour of one large one. Book turnover discipline held for that long but we now seem to be down to bedrock: nothing else I can bring myself to recycle to make way for new. The boards are very impressive being around an inch thick and maybe 20 inches wide. Taken from two chests: each about 40 inches long by 20 by 20; two small drawers above and one large below. The whole thing very stoutly made with serious handles at each end and looked to be able to stand some serious handling. Perhaps they were sea chests: things for seamen to keep all their wordly wealth in while they cruised the oceans at Her Majesty's pleasure. In which case rather a pity to have smashed them both up - although they were both a bit battered and would have been heavy and awkward to move around in one peice.

We also have the loan of a naval service record - with twenty years service being completed in the 1920's - for someone who, as it happened, was born in nearby Worcester Park. One titbit so far. In among the papers was a wound record - something like a page from the accident book which you might get on a modern building site - to be filled in for every wound. One of the tick boxes was used to indicate whether the subject was drunk or sober at the time and one of the empty boxes was for the completer to enter an approximate age - it presumably being assumed that neither the completer nor the subject would necessarily know the exact age of the subject. Or maybe this was a way to hide the employment of under age seamen. Black economy even then.

The outdoor pumpkins have now sprung into life - emerging in a much more modest way than the indoor one. Perhaps what they say about the rate of growth in the tropics is true - and we now have three Big Max pumpkin seedlings. And we now have 17 of the three dozen sweet peas up Watchword patience.

When we lived in Harringey we used to eat boiling chicken quite often - a very cheap rather yellowish something that the Cypriot butchers sold rather a lot of. The yellow was more to do with age than being corn fed but they were very cheap and made a very good stew - a bit more to it than the same thing made of a roasting chicken. So we have now tried out the Cheam butcher on this one - getting a very large chicken, very slightly yellow for about £10. Cut up into six peices and duly boiled up with the usual trimmings - not taking very long at all, maybe an hour and a half - and turned out very well. Two of us did half of it in the first sitting. Odd thing is that while one is eating a higher proportion of the fat - which gets into the gravy rather than be discarded from the bottom of the roasting tin - the whole thing seems much lighter on the stomach and more digestible than its roast cousin. Interest in which issue clearly reflects one age. Second half frozen and to follow tomorrow.

Tales of good intentions gone wrong from our neighbouring electrical contractor. It seems that the government decided to do something about the standard of domestic electrical work and imposed all kinds of standards, certificates and documentation. Which all sounds very well. But there is a catch. Soppose one has a rather large central light fitting in one's sitting room ceiling and it falls off. One decides that one would rather get someone in to put it up again rather than wobble around on the steps oneself and that the light switch might as well be replaced while we are at it. Maybe a couple of hours work all told. Budget £50 for the work and start approaching electricians. According to my informant, the safety and documentation requirements for a job such as this mean than even if he charged £100 it would still not really be worth his while - presumably compared with what he can get on other classes of work. Net result is that I think he is charging far too much for such a piffling job and decide to do it myself. I wobble on my steps, make a bit of a hash of the job. Said hash subsequently causing the house to burn down, the result that the regulation was designed to avoid. Maybe we have struck quite the right balance here. Clearly need an enquiry by a panel of experts.

Friday was not a bad day for the Guardian. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder; it certainly makes the stomach fonder of baked white fish. In any event, learnt a new phrase - bogus prohibition. Applied to drugs and illegal immigrants. Both are illegal but both are present in large quantities despite much huffing, puffing and incarceration over many years. The general drift being that management might be a better approach. I find drugs the odder one: I would had thought that we would have moved away from the current criminalise & punitive approach years ago but the outturn has been very little legal movement at all. On the other hand we have large quantities of alcohol, much huffing and puffing - and it is not only legal but encouraged by unrestricted opening.

Greenpeace crashing around again. Charging around in small boats interfering with the unpleasant business of whaling - but in a way which erodes long standing custom about how to behave to others at sea - which to my mind is a dangerous place to be. They are also demanding a judicial review of the decision to get moving on nuclear again. I assume their position is that global warming is bad and that nuclear energy is bad and that the government should do something about both of them. Whereas I don't see how we are going to slow the growth in carbon emissions enough without nuclear. And if that means burying a whole lot of nuclear waste five miles underground where their containers might leak in the event of a volcano erupting underneath them - that is a risk that we are going to have to take. Global warming is rather nearer to hand - even if it is mainly going to hit poor people living a long way away. And leaving aside the issue of substance, going for a judicial review of every executive decision one does not like, strikes me as another dangerous place to be. The point of our reasonably successful indirect democracy is that we empower and trust the executive to get on with that sort of thing while we worry about the pumpkins of more immediate import.

Talking of which, I have now hoed about half my ten rows of broad beans which had come up reasonably well with not too many gaps. Still don't beleive in the practise which some preach of putting two beans in each hole. If you are getting 95% up it doesn't seem worth the bean. The earlier ones now well into flower. But the ground is cracking up - despite being fairly wet underneath and we do need some rain. Clouds have been circling all day, with the odd bout of that pre-rain damp feeling, but so far no rain at all. The in-the-downs-rain-shadow effect seems to be at work again.

In the meantime one can continue to savour the very distinctive smell of water from the watering can hitting dry ground in the sun. Nothing quite like it.

Black flies are early this year. Perhaps they like the warm dry spell which we are having. In any event they are starting to infest the beans much earlier than usual. Will need to spray next weekend to keep them under control. Don't usually get around to this before the plants are around two feet high - that is to say twice the height that they are now.

An intriguing factlet, or at least a candidate factlet. In the olden days it was customary to hang one's best clothes in the privy because the noxious smells put off the moths. As a result the word for both was garderobe which might well be translated as wardrobe. The OED, however, puts a slightly differant slant on the whole business. Garderobe was a special, private and possibly locked place in which one kept one's best clothes, and by extension or euphemism a privy. Rather in the way that we use toilet or lavatory. Doesn't mention moths. Which all goes to show that it is hard to be sure the paths through which the meanings of words wander.

And further intrigue on Howell Hill. Yesterday, a lorry, two men and two portable traffic lights assembled around the new speed camera. What were they up to? Unfortunately, this morning they have all vanished with nothing to show for their transient presence.

Of the ten Autumn raspberries moved from Devon, one almost succumbed, shot again and then succumbed again. Maybe slugs. Now buried under one end of a half row of onions. Two at the other end have had their lead shoot taken out by the deer and are not looking very happy. The remaining seven look like they will survive, despite the dry wind we have been having for the last few days. And the peice of green washing line (green plastic covered flex wire) erected about 15 inches above ground level along the side of that part of the allotment seems to be having some deterrent effect. No more footprints in that part.

Having had a very bad leaf beet year last year. I left the few plants that I did get up over the winter, not digging that part of the allotment. The deer fed off them occasionally and now they are rushing to seed - and therefore pretty much useless. Cutting out the seed heads does no good at all. But before digging them up I stripped them - a lot more carefully than one would had they been growing properly - and got enough for two meals. So our first green vegetable from the earth this year. The down side being that the ground is now fairly hard - although still wet enough a spade depth down - and is taking a while to dig. A compensation is a rash of a small red leaved ground crawler plant with very pretty yellow flowers. But not at all sure that it would not have been better to simply have dug the whole lot over in the Autumn.

And talking of seed heads a recent savoy from the Cheam greengrocer had a very powerful, strongly tapered stalk inside, curled over at the top and terminating in immature, purply rotting flowers right at the centre of the savoy. No great pain but not something I had noticed before.

And last but not least we have now taken delivery of 'Our English Coasts', courtesy of the proper Tate gallery via some arty image firm. This last, to give them their due, took their packing very seriously and the picture arrived splendidly wrapped in a large cardboard tube. The frame cost twice as much as the picture but the result, now hanging above me as I type, looks very well. The first time we have had a picture from this crew on our walls. And pleased that Mr Google knows such much about it: give him the title in quotes and the first eleven hits are all the right thing. Clearly he shares our good taste. Next stop Fairlight which should be within reach of the £10 a night travelodge special offer at Hastings.

behind the squirelling. Eight pallets, about 8 feet square.

We learn that the US, having decided that people from some backgrounds present more of a risk to their homeland than those from others, are thinking about asking the former to get a visa before they visit - the backgrounds in question cutting across national lines. According to the DT, the first response from the Blair crew is that any differentiation between one group of UK citizens and another is out of the question. Divisive if not worse. To which the US might say: fine - you can all get visas. For once, I think I'm with them! Nowithstanding any blame there might be for the pickle we are in, given that we are in a pickle, they are entitled to defend themselves in this way if they want. If it damages their tourist business, that's their problem.

Excellent lunch yesterday with ox kidneys on toast. Cut them up, fry in some butter. Add carraway seeds. Some minutes later add some chopped onion. Some more minutes later add some chopped tomato. Simmer whole lot for hour or more, taking it down to a stiff dropping texture as they say of cake mixtures.

And a little while ago, a fine peice of brisket on the bone. Unlike the last peice we had, this one was from the thin end and looked really good raw. About seven pounds. Wrapped it up in foil and baked for about 10 hours at slow - 80C - then a couple of hours at 120C. Good gear - although suprisingly little juice or fat came out of it - barely a quarter of a pint. I was expecting loads of the stuff, as one gets from, say, shoulder of lamb. And another time I think I would either boil it or slow roast at a slightly higher temperature, perhaps 100C.

Day 2 and 3 had it in hash form - that is to say baked with some gravy and coarsely chopped raw potatoes. Day 4 saw it off as broth. And with all the bones and gristle very good broth it made too.

Runner beans now in; packet and a bit of Scarlet Emperor from Dobies, straight in the ground. Not had a lot of luck with bringing them on in pots recently. Trench a bit improvised - the intended trench having been taken over by potatoes - with only three barrow loads of leaf mould, rather than having lots of allotment compost (picture of bin to follow) in a proper trench - that is to say the stuff made from allotment waste rather than kitchen waste so not particularly composty. But the leaf mould was well rotted down and it will interesting to see what differance it makes. And I think I have the most impressive bean poles on the field, with the highest around 10 feet high and the whole construction reflecting well on a scouting background with pioneering specialisation. General construction the same as previous years: solid pole at each end with line wire strung between them and with the bean poles proper strung in pairs off the line wire. Two long side struts in the middle to give lateral stability. A novelty this year was simply hitching the poles to the line wire with a long, single peice of nylon cord, rather than separately tying each pair of poles. Quick and effective. We shall see whether the nylon rots in the sun. I have also strapped two rows of horizontal poles to the uprights to give the young plants a bit more to grip on. The luxury of lots of poles being the reward for chopping down the willow tree last Autumn, as previously mentioned.

Unlike the unfortunate Lord Browne, some of my pumpkins felt able to come out this year. Ten of the twelve seeds planted in covered seed trays on a sunny window sill (it seems my earlier spelling of cill was obsolete when Murray came out. Is anything other than poor spelling bringing the 'c' to the fore?) have now come up and will be ready for hardening off outside in a few days. A record for me. On the other hand the seeds planted out in the shed have done badly, despite being moved into the sun during the day. Out of a dozen marrow, a dozen pumpkin and three dozen sweet peas we have three sweet peas to show so far. Maybe I should stop economising on the potting compost and buy some more, rather than assembling scraps from around the shed.

More news from Howell Hill. The speed camera now has two sets of calibration lines, one pointing up the hill and one down. Maybe the thing can be swivelled from Ken's control bunker to catch the rush hour traffic - down the hill in the morning and up the hill in the evening. Or maybe they have to get some expensive consultant to come up from Hastings and swivel it by hand and then recalibrate it. The cost of which might exceed what the borough are going to get out of it. But then maybe these cameras are like lots of expensive corporate toys: a lot more money in the maintenance than in the purchase.

Have been reading about Shackelton's last expedition to the Antarctic. Which prompted some musings about the word concert. The men on the expedition used to have concerts on Saturdays to keep their spirits up. No doubt very participatory affairs with everybody - lack of talent or shyness notwithstanding - being obliged to contribute. And then I think for Pepys a concert was when a group of musicians happened to feel like singing in concert. With or without an audience. I will have to check with what verb he went. But with both sorts being rather differant from me solemnly marching off to the QEH to sit in serried (not so suited these days) ranks to hear the el supremos of the quartet world do something in the middle distance. Which reminds me of a parallel thought about stories. It seems that somone brought up with a strong oral tradition - story tellers at the fire or tall stories in the bar - might find the idea of reading a book, in private, most peculiar. What on earth is the point of reading to oneself? In silence? Where is the fun without an audience, without other participants?

to the deer exclosure.

It turns out that the mysterious workings in the middle of Howell Hill were the construction of an emplacment for a speed camera. Perhaps we are coming to the end of the program and the people who sell the things are knocking them out on an 'end of line' basis - which means that they are popping up in the most unlikely places. But then think of the huge saving your council is making by buying two for the price of one.

But we remain decidedly schizoid in matters of control freakery.

A few days ago the DT reported the case of a farmer who had his field trashed by 200 or so protesters - with the protesters being escorted by two mounted policemen to make sure that there was no trouble. The idea that the farmer might be entitled to some protection for his property seems to be missing. The subject of the protest - GM crops which the farmer was erroneously thought to be growing - is more or less, to me anyway, irrelevant. Perhaps the police were mindful of the case in Norwich a few years ago when a jury refused to convict protesters of this sort whom the police had bothered to take to court.

And then today there is a report of an allotment holder who was prosecuted by the RSPCA for attacking a Harris hawk which was attacking his chickens. Not proscuting the owner of the hawk for not keeping it under proper control. What chance have I got with my moles?

Or ants. Have been hoeing potatoes and the ground they are in seems to be full of them. Do they eat potato roots?

But on a more optimistic note I have now completed the planting of my smaller allotment - the one containing the deer exclosure - with two half rows of leaf beet and one half row of onions. Runner bean trench ahoy!