pumpkinstrokemarrow

Now finished the book on Napolean which takes too much interest in his private life (see above) - and which finished on a rather manic note, with much whinging about our treatment of the man after Waterloo - forgetting the several million excess deaths that he was more or less personally responsible for. One rule to calm such books down might be that one can only put something in a biography which is in the public domain or which has been given one by the subject or his executors. That would then leave it leave it open to the subject to direct that executors should not cooperate with biographers. But it doesn't run, firstly for public interest reasons. And secondly, if one withholds cooperation the intending biographer will just go to one's enemies and get them to dish the dirt. So pre-emptive strike with a sympathetic biographer might be a better way to preserves one's reputation. Hence the custom of appointing an official biographer. So we are left with an example of a real problem which is probably not solved by making rules about it. One just has to trust to the decency and good sense of biographers.

But I do remember an anecdote to the effect that my informant was asked by a correspondant of his to destroy all letters after consumption. Otherwise, the correspondant said, one never knew where they might end up.

Started a book on colour written by the late headmaster of Rochdale Art College in the twenties - trawled from the second hand bookshop in Tenby from among large musty piles of things Welsh - both about and in. Interesting account of how to make colours work with each other to best effect - with lots of practical exercises (which I don't suppose I will do - a pity because exercises are the way to higher planes of understanding) and without going into any physics. I wonder if the current generation of art students bother with this sort of thing - or whether they are just content to express (their generally tiresome) selves.

Animals are back on the allotment. Deer hiding in a willow tree at the edge of the school field in the middle of the day and a nice new mole hill in the middle of the path. Presumably the man with a gun in the woods at the bottom of the field that the school children made such a lot of noise about (being in earshot during their lunch break) was not successful. Was he a Epsom common trusty converted from the veggie cause?

Discovered that weeding cabbages in my shiny new anti-bird enclosures is a bit of a pain. Can't just get in there with a hoe. And the rate of growth of these particular cabbages is very uneven. Some of them a foot across and rather more of them hardly moving. One has mysteriously died without a proper root - the quarter inch stem just fading away into a few short root hairs just below the surface.

Picked the first Autumn Bliss rasberries which BH approved of. Not a great number but I was impressed to get any considering that they were just suckers transplanted in the Spring. Must find out how to prune the things - not being something that I have ever grown before and I can't remember what my father did 45 years ago. Will have to ask FIL.

Picked the first runner beans of the season. Plants in full flower but are not growing up as strongly as they should. Too many stems drifting across the ground. And maybe the sprouting willow bean poles are taking water that should be going to the beans.

Pumpkin plants forging ahead, doing well on their diet of kitchen waste based compost. Biggest pumpkin so far about 9 inches across. But we had better not count our pumpkins until they are a bit bigger and harder and generally out of slug reach.