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Hertford also boasts the first new build Witherspoons I have come across. At least it will be a new build when it is finished, a rather large affair tucked into the entrance to the Castle Park (which contained at least two young DSS types with tinnies when we visited). Amazing what the man has done in less than twenty years. I am still going to one in Tooting which has a Witherspoons party number in single digits - back from the days when he was buying up seedy premises in seedy areas and flogging very cheap beer in them. Does he keep these old ones for sentimental reasons or is he recycling them so as not to damage his posh heritage restore image?

And one moan: in Tooting and elsewhere he was a bit previous over moving his no smoking signs up through the bar - especially since he had grown rich on a generation of seedy old puffers.

The Oxfam ship in Hertford had quite a lot of classical LPs - which was good as they are getting increasingly hard to come by and I am still soldiering on with a turntable. Don't see why I should change while my turntable turns and my tastes don't change. Too much investment in the stuff. So I get a boxed set of Beethoven piano concertos (oddly missing from my stack) for 99p - and declined other single record offerings they had for £30 and more. Presumably there is a market for special recordings - but not with me. Hard put to tell one recording from another never mind about paying £29.01 extra for one.

And one more moan. I have complained about flailing hedges in suburbia before - but now the flail has reached the hedge running along one side of our local recreation ground. One might of thought that a recreation ground counted as a park - more or less a garden - and deserved better than some job-seeker thrashing around with a flail on the end of a tractor and the resulting ugly mess. I vote for the job-seeker doing it by hand with supervision from someone who has seen a garden in his time. One might have thought with the amount of effort going into matters eco, someone might have thought that having someone doing it by hand without the benefit of expensive, noisy and petrol consuming machinery might be the way forward. Set a good example to the rest of us.

I suppose the trouble is that until they get around to putting a punitive tax on petrol to cut consumption, the expensive machine is cheaper. Certainly true when it comes to mixing concrete. Machine wins over breaking back every time!

Connoisseurs of eco-twaddle will be pleased to hear that Cambridge now boasts a Waste Management Park, a little to the North of what used to be called the tip and which appears to be largely grassed over. The new park looks to be managed by a local builder and contains, amongst other waste management goodies, the contraption that turns your green waste into compost, yours for the collection. The compost has, I understand, been cooked to kill any small animals which may have found their way into it and is therefore a suitable medium for vegans to grow their mung beans in.

Paid a first visit to Hertford the other day to find it is a seriously old town with a lot of seriously old buildings. Not amongst these is the main church, rebuilt by the Victorians with not much more of the inside of the porch left over from the previous edition. It is built mainly in invisible brick, the brick being covered with dressed flint and masonry trim on the outside; white paint and masonry trim on the inside. Outside nothing special, still looking a bit new, but the inside was very suitably holy. Not a bad reproduction of an old church at all. Interesting chancel with lots of light. Blue domed roof with lots of stained glass windows and an interesting altar peice. All in all a good thing although I don't suppose there are enough customers these days for the size of the place. The land all these churches sit on would be worth a fortune if they were allowed to sell it for redevelopment: maybe they should given the shortage of land for same and then they could give the balance to some deserving cause. I think Catholic nuns are into downsizing for such purposes - and if they can do it I am sure it is not beyond the wit of the Church Commissioners to do the same.

Hertford also boasted what it claimed was the oldest purpose built Friends Meeting House and a rather run down Masons Hall. There was a also a good fish stall, it boasting an entire halibut about two foot long and a foot and a half deep. We bought three mackeral on the strength of their glitter despite the BH allegation that one does not buy mackeral in the summer. As it turned out they were good grilled. Samphire a rather too salty accompaniment. Today we will have a smoked haddock from the same source, with cabbage rather than Samphire. What with all the beans not had too much cabbage lately.

All this fish being intended to redress the balance of hot pork sandwiches earlier in the week. Nothing like just cooling pork in some fresh bread - both from Cheam naturally, the pork with a certificate assuring the reader that the pig had had a happy life, sealed by the mark of the happy pig itself. Hot pork sandwiches being followed up by cold pork sandwiches.

New model of senior moment yesterday. Put saucer on tea tray, made tea in the teapot in the usual way and then put the teapot in the saucer rather than the teacup.

Further into the biography of Napoleon (which I had forgotten was simply his first, rather than his family, name) I find an excellent quote - originally, I think, from Samuel Butler - to the effect that with women being endowed with so much power by nature it is foolish to add rights and powers in law.

Also reminded that great men do not usually come to be so without a good deal of hard work. Some of which, in his case, was to do with juggling the various competing forces so that they drifted him to the top of the heap. The forces in question not being terribly cuddly - it seems that in the early days he went to banquets carrying his own cutlery, crockery and food (as a precaution against poison) and that he survived at least one serious attempt at assination by bomb.

Time for a rant about boilers - which I am sure are the subject of a conspiracy by the boiler industry to extract money from the long suffering and more or less defenceless consumer. The nub of the matter being that they keep changing the regulations about boilers so that one has to buy a new one more often than one might otherwise, and now with the added twist that the new boiler can't be in the same place as the old one. This means that the fitter does not only get his percentage on the sale of the boiler but he also gets to fit a whole lot of new pipes. And there is a spin off to his mate the painter who has to tidy up after all the alterations. Presumably what happens is that the fitters who don't like actually fitting get to sit on the committees which write the regulations where they can look after their old mates. They probably get expenses paid visits to Brussells to confer with their European colleagues on these matters. All in the interests of reducing the life time risk of a boiler flavoured accident from something negligible to something even more negligible. Maybe we should get the accountants to work on a cost benefit analysis.

In parallel, I also have a solid fuel stove which I installed myself without the benefit of heating engineer advice some years ago. Since then we have installed double glazing in the containing room which means that we have no vent, let alone the sort of vent beloved by the gas board that cannot be shut. So if I were to light the thing and go to sleep downstairs it is a fair chance that I would not wake up again. This I think is dreadful and I shall write to the DT at once requiring the establishment of a committe of inquiry to look into the matter and make recommendations. In the meantime I think the bottom half of our house should be sealed off as a probable crime scene.

And lastly, perturbed no doubt by the parlous state of my onions (see above) which are now drying out of the garage floor - I had a very disturbing dream about rotting onions which collapsed on the first touch and turned out to contain no onion at all. No doubt the more dubious parts of this promising dream have been suppressed.

Made my close to annual visit to Mr Sainsbury to empty my piggy bank into his change machine. Not a wonderful experience. Had to queue for all of five minutes to get at the thing. I then find it has upped the rate from 7% to 7.9% (ever the retailer - they know that 7.9 looks better than 8). Then had to queue at customer services with all the other odds and sods to get my money.

If we suppose that the cost of the machine over five years is £26,000 - although the footprint is only a couple of square metres next to the special porridge special offer, it is presumably quite expensive having to cope with heavy moving objects - and they want twice their money back - that is £52,000 - over that period. I make that £200 a week. My single transaction netted them around £15 so it looks as if they will make my target comfortably. So I think it would be much better public relations if the charity option was free. They could even hike the rate for the give me the money option and one would not mind so much. One might even give the money to charity.

Read of an interesting word shift in the TLS. It explains that inventing was once a word with a strongly positive ring. It was good to invent things because it made life better. Now the word is usually used in a more negative context. A need has been invented. An unecessary consumable has been invented. Heritage has been invented. Panic attacks have been invented (I believe the concept did not exist before the eighties of the last century). Poor old old-style inventors don't hardly get a look in. Perhaps the noisy Mr Dyson is the exception that proves the rule. Maybe Mr Sinclair was the writing on the wall.

Also been reading a biography of Napoleon by Frank McLynn who takes a great deal of interest in his subject's love life and sex life. Now while both appear to be very material to a life of Napoleon, I rather regret the passing of the day when we were rather less intrusive in these matters. Is it really decent or dignified to have the poor chap dissected and laid out on the block for all to view in this way? To be continued, as the finest bacon (at near 50p a slice) from Mr S is calling.

Back from a couple of weeks in Pembroke; Tenby to be more precise. An excellent resort doing just the sort of thing resorts should do. Beach, cliffs, castles and churches.

Interesting bacon experiences. The indoor market butcher in Carmarthen (where a good deal of Welsh was being spoken and not just for our benefit) sold three sorts of ethnic bacon. A large white rolled affair tied up with string, 95% fat, maybe six inches in diameter. Then another 95% fat job which was a rather strong yellow colour and which came in irregular lumps of about 10 cubic inches. And then some streaky bacon. This last came in an ordinarily bacon shaped lump and he carved us four slices with a boning knife - none of your bacon slicers here thank you. The couple behind us explained that the lady of the couple liked to smell it cooking and the husband liked to eat it - an arrangement which suited everybody. We thought we had scored a real bacon coup until we came to cook the stuff. Smelt good cooking, looked good cooking, but tasted extremely salty - to the extent that only the BH could manage it. And what is more, strange brown powder, insoluble in fat - oozed out of it during the frying. Did much better as a flavouring for vegetables - cabbage or lentils than as a sandwich.

So finding a butcher in the indoor market in Tenby who also sold ethnic bacon we tried the white stuff (this time in a bacon shaped lump, three months in the curing) - which it transpired was surprisingly edible uncooked. We fried it chopped and stirred it into pre-cooked baby green lentils (see above) where it did very well. He could also say on which day and where the lamb which went into his lamb cutlets had been slaughtered.

Just for the record the ethnic butcher in question was a German from somewhere near Saarbruken who happened to have wound up in Tenby through the cooking trade - which perhaps explains why his way of cutting cutlets was a bit crude compared with the men of Cheam. But they tasted good.

Took along a large bag of broad beans which lasted out until the last day. Not all that pretty by then and no longer young broad beans but entirely edible. Did rather well in a bacon and cheese flavoured white sauce.

First two visits to the allotment since return. Lifted the remaining potatoes and managed quite a low spear count. Perhaps the best crop ever, both in terms of size and quantity. Just the odd albino among the red desiree. Onions had died off without drying, it having been so wet (unlike Tenby which was not bad at all. Only one seriously wet day and several really hot days). Now lifted and drying out in the garage. Perhaps the worst crop ever, both in terms of size and quantity. BH picked the first of the season's blackberries, picking perhaps a couple of pounds. Half of them being tray frozen in the freezer as I type.

Something has knocked over the teazles. Wouldn't have thought it was the rain so I guess it must be my friend the deer getting his own back for the fruit trees having been enclosed. On the other hand he is leaving the leaf beet alone. Maybe he can do better at this time of year.

Interested to see a peice by Simon Jenkins on regulitis in the Guardian. A nicely expanded and embroidered version of one of my own! Ironic that it should be the Guardian that publishes it; I should imagine that there is a strong correlation between reading said paper and likelihood of developing acute regulitis. One point that he makes is that because cats cause an allergic reaction in millions of people - probably costing the economy more than fags do - they will be the next thing to be banned in public spaces. Not a bad thought. They will find something to ban and I can't think of a better target for the moment. Unless, of course, they veer back on the hunting tack and get stuck into coarse fishermen. They will have to leave the other sort alone - partly because the people who do it are mostly posh and partly because doing it is an art form and therefore cultural and historic if not heritage. Something for our shiny new minister for culture to fight the corner for.

Quite windy today, rather than rainy. Two large lumps down on the way to the baker and the broan beans plants are starting to look a bit battered in places. That said, we have had a really good harvest, running down now, but we must have had more than 100 pounds of the things - in their pods that is. Supposing that they are £1 a pound to buy, contrary to early burblings, this part of the allotment is clearly in profit given that the outgoings are, say, £10 for seeds, £10 for spray and £15 for their share of the rent.

Plus the aesthetic appeal of a well laden broad bean plant. Maybe three or four strong stems on the one plant, each stem carrying maybe a dozen well filled, bright green pods. Not a bad return for one plant. And given that it does not seem to be necessary to feed the ground that they are in, the things must have been staples in the olden days. Give or take the labour cost of removing black fly before chemicals cut in.

Taken another couple of pounds of blackcurrents, big ones from the small plant and little ones from the big plant. Maybe the latter needs pruning. They all get tray frozen - presumably for speed - and wind up in tarts and the like through the winter.

Thinned out the apple crop as far more apples had set than the trees could bear. Too much of the fruit at the end of stems - reflecting, I think, the lack of winter pruning - not having liked to do much cutting with the trees so badly weakened by the deer. But with that problem now in the past maybe I shall start.

Dug some more Desiree. Crop continuing quite reasonable although this particular row was infested with some tall weed with yellow, daisy like flowers. White tap root about three or four inches long and quite easy to pull up. Managed to spear rather a lot today - maybe ten - and so decided, rather than chuck them, I would keep them back for today's evening meal. So I get to scrape them and found that they gave off something which quite irritated the airways. Not something that I had noticed with the Kestrel. Maybe I can have allergies too.

Discovered a new way to use left over new potatoes and leef beet. Thought of the potato and spinach dish you get in Indian restaurants and had a peek in our one Indian cook book for it (a gift from a collegue from Gildengate Square in Norwich). Didn't find it but did find a recipe for doing something spicy with potatoes. All far too complicated for this occasion, so chose four spices from the recipe, more or less at random, and used them. Black pepper, cumim seeds, pale cardoman pods and termeric. Melt butter and add pounded spices. Fry for a bit. Add a large, finely chopped onion. Fry for a bit. Add coarsely chopped cooked potato and finely chopped cooked leef beet. Leave on heat, stirring occasionally, until heated through. Serve with a hint of jus de cassis. Quite a good variation on bubble and squeak.

Same book has an excellent recipe for Ragan Josh (I think). Being a goat curry, it gives me an excellent excuse to pay a visit to Balham.

Are coming at traffic lights at the moment. One in particular as one comes right off East Street into Hook Road. Generally speaking, you have green for ahead and when that goes red, you get a green for right. But sometimes, the traffic lights miss a beat and skip the green for right and you have to wait through the cycle again. But, as often as not, I notice the ahead green going red and assume it is my turn without noticing that the right red has not turned green and traffic is roaring out of Hook Road across my path. But survived so far.

The odd person continues to point up my cycle clips - which are the sort of bulldog clip which have wire grips which can be folded back once one has attached the clip to whatever it is one wants to clip - trousers in my case. I find them much more comfortable than the sort of clips which grab your ankle. But although a number of people have admired them over the years - having been doing this since I abstracted a pair of clips from what was OPCS in Titchfield thirty years ago (those particular ones had to be replaced recently) - I have never seen anyone else doing it. Maybe this reflects the proportion of bicyclists who wear lycra and don't need clips these days. Also useful when walking and one wants to lift one's trouser bottoms out of the wet grass or mud or whatever. BH not happy about walking with me when so dressed. Not sure why.

Been reading a book about the battle of Trafalgar - the details and tone of which I find I was very vague on - despite reading copious amounts of Hornblower as a child. Casualties on our side much less than I had thought at less than 500 deaths. But I suppose that is enough from less than 20 ships carrying maybe 500 each. And Collingwood had to stay on station after the battle, rather than going for R&R, to stop what was left of the combined fleet heading North to join their colleagues at Brest - which would have been a bit awkward for us. It seems he died of exhaustion some years later, before he was able to enjoy his retirement to the peerage. I was struck by two things in particular. One was the amount of letter writing which went on - something which was also a feature of the French march to Moscow and back. The other was the maintenance of professional courtesy in the middle of a big battle. So a British boat crew board an enemy ship, having wrongly thought that it had struck. The Spaniards explained that they had not struck, but nevertheless suspended firing until the boat crew had got back safely to their own ship. Courtesy nothwithstanding, I think the Spaniard had to give up shortly afterwards.

The length of ship duels seemed to vary lots. Sometimes they would be slugging it out for several hours - on other occasions one would achieve a quick knockout with maybe three quick broadsides, fired down the length of the enemy ship, more or less destroying the lower decks and their contents. The trick was to manoeuvre into a position to fire such broadsides without being at the receiving end of too many.

And reminded that the current fashion for collecting contemporary accounts of historic events is not the same as writing history. Contemporary accounts might help one get a feel for how - a perhaps poorly selected sample of - people felt at the time. But this is not the same as producing a balanced narrative which enables one to get a feel for the event as a whole.

Pushed into another bit of geekery by a lightening strike which caused the cheapest of our computers to reboot spontaneously, losing work in progress. Pushed into writing tricky recovery mechanisms in the code and buying a surge protector - I had forgotten if I ever knew how dear they are at around £30. All takes me back to the old days (at Titchfield again) when computers were always breaking down in the middle of long runs and one put a lot of effort into to writing recovery wheezes into one's application. This was before the invention of database software with lots of recovery wheezes built in and included in the price.

Having failed to smoke out the end of an era on Saturday (unlike the die hards of the Coach and Horses - a place I had had it vaguely in mind to visit on this occasion), had my first outside smoke of the new era. Appropriately, at an old pub which used to be called the Eagle, is now called the Snug, has fitted with sofas and amongst other things serves Earl Grey tea. They probably sell real guacamole with chips. Not the same at all, despite the passing interest of the passing trade - most of which appeared to be foreign language students.

Followed some time later by our first venture into noveau cuisine from Bangladesh (at least we thought Bangladesh, rather than one of the neighbouring countries) at Bishops Stortford. The place looked as if it had only just re-opened after a refurbishment from the old style red plush. Samosas followed by prawn biryani. Not bad at all - and certainly not something that I have ever suceeded in making so a good thing to have in a restaurant. We decided that samosas were a relation of spring rolls: the same sort of filling, wrapped and fried in the same sort of way. Just shape and presentation a bit differant.

The place was well shopped and the charity shops were well booked so we came away with 3 more books than we arrived with. There were also a surprising number of large old buildings and two large churches. The regular one of which last had an interesting red brick extension to its tower and and contained the first memorial tablet that I remember seeing to an English soldier who died in the Easter rising. The church was very grand and the blurb said it was both old and rich - which didn't go terribly well with another blurb that said that the place cost just short of £500 a day to run so please give generously. The irregular one was a huge gray brick edifice - roughly in the shape of the Albert Hall, albeit on a smaller scale. Put up by the United Reformed Church and most impressive from the outside - despite their appearing to have had to sell their front garden to make a small shopping arcade - but, sadly, not open. Presumably the size of the church has rather outstripped their ability to populate it.

Broad bean harvest continues, making sterling use of the abandoned supermarket wire baskets found in Mitcham Lane, despite a sharp hail storm this afternoon.

Started on the Desiree (in order to make way for a cabbage bed). Not as big a range of size as the Kestrel but quite a good return. Only speared one out of a half basket full. And found that despite all the rain quite a lot of the ground is not very wet at all. The water seems to soak in in a very patchy way.

The new fashion - at my allotment anyway - for cabbage netting is to have a wire mesh sided rectangle with plastic netting draped over the top. Far neater than the ridge tent like things I had been making using just the plastic netting and which did not do very well at all: you did not get a lot of space for your net. And as luck would have it, I have all the makings for the new fashion. Aluminium tent poles for the corners, jam jars to put on them, wire mesh (the deer enclosure wire mesh, cut lengthwise to give strips about 1.5 feet deep) and plastic netting. A further stroke of luck is that the lengths of wire mesh that I have got are just right for the size of plastic netting - around 12 feet by 6 feet. Only catch is that cutting long strips with a domestic pair of wire cutters is heavy on the wrist - and one of the two peices has to have one ragged edge. Also a lot of fag for a few cabbages and it does waste a lot of land. But not a bad result - I now have two of the things - and I am sure I will think it all worth while when I am picking small slugs out of the January Kings in January next. Think of all that orgo flavour.

Next phase is to make a tall version to hide the Brussel Sprout plants in.