pumpkinstrokemarrow

First run of chicken wire hung, second and upper run up and half tied. Just got the lower ties to put in. The activity was enlivened and speeded up by assistance of BH acting as apprentice and by construction of a Heath-Robinson like contraption to facilitate the unrolling of chicken wire a metre up in the air. Need for contraption arising from the considerable weight of a 50 metre roll of the stuff and it's tendency to crease when bent. Very hard to get the creases out. Picture of contraption to follow in due course; hopefully on next sprogvisit. Not so sure about a picture of the fence itself as the chicken wire is surprisingly invisible in some lights: so let's hope the deer have good eyes. Maybe I should string some of the crime scene police tape I found somewhere around it to improve visibility. Also odd how differant the fruit trees look from inside the cage; entirely differant feel to them. Much more domestic and orchard like than it was before.

Have been given a bare root vine. Stuck it in at the end of the clematis fence. We will see if we get any grapes - and whether they are eatable. Maybe they will wind up in chutney like the surplus plums.

Visited by some would-be allotment trusties today. They are busy setting up some cross Epsom allotment garden coordinating committee to harass the council to do better - or better still (and this seems to be the flavour of the month) to make all the allotment gardens into self governing outfits more or less free of the council. Not so sure about the merit of this last at all. The council don't do a bad job as it is and I am not sure I want some busy trusties patrolling the allotments every Sunday making remarks about the state of ones verges. There used to be one of these when I had an allotment near Friern Barnet (mental hospital to one side, heavy duty isolation unit the other) and he accounted for the one time I was seriously tempted to clobber someone with a spade. Quite a scary experience (for me).

Three senior moments between the two of us in the last few days: one of which was to put the boiling water in the tea cup rather than in the tea pot. The other two have vanished - which is not good considering one was rather spectacular and the other was only a few minutes ago. Still, it could be worse - and maybe I will remember what they were when I log out.

Postcript on the recent bonfire. After the rain there was pretty much nothing left, just a few bits of charcoal. No great lumps at all. Not bad at all given that we left the fire when it was still just about in flame, a glowing heap about three foot across and one foot high.

Hawthorne now duly pruned, with a slightly altered configuration. Not quite a pudding tree yet, but we are getting there. Prunings rather sticky - presumably the waste products of micro bugs. Macro bugs represented by a number of small snails - with black and white stripey shells about a centimetre across.

Space for prunings in back garden now rather occupied with the several cubic metres of minced willow tree we acquired last week. May be forced into brown wheely bin land yet. But must take care: the DT reports a scuffle developing between an old gentleman who wanted to put cabbage stalks in his brown wheely bin and the Polish environmental bin service agent who claimed that cabbage stalks were not garden waste and were therefore not allowed in the brown bin. All this does have the good side of giving the service agent something to be bossy about. We all like our day in the sun.

The DT has also been reporting a variety of rather officious official interventions. There was the disabled person who was ticketted because their disabled person sticker was indeed displayed under their windscreen, but upsidedown so it did not count. There was the dad in Ohio who was sent to jail because his son (who was living with his mother rather than his father at the time) failed some maths test. And then we have the do-gooders spending lots of our charitable donations putting up ugly posters all over the place. The world is quite ugly enough without adding to the ugliness gratuitously. The ones I find particularly irritating are those from the heart people telling us to dial 999 if we have chest pains. And the DT tells us that we are about to have a rash of posters teaching us how to count units in a pint of beer. Attacking us is easy (if not very effective). Attacking the supply side would be far too tricky: that might upset the all powerful supermarket chains. It is their divine right to sell vast quantities of cheap booze to all comers at all times of day and night.

All this hawthorne appears to have prompted an allotment dream, which seemed to take place at the allotment I had thirty years ago. At the start of the dream it seems that I had murdered someone - an unknown middle aged man - who was now lying on the allotment covered in a cloth or sheet of some sort. The problem was how to bury the chap having turned up with an inch bar rather than a spade - and with various allotment trusties hanging around, likely to take an interest in the proceedings. What brought this one on? Don't usually have murders. Perhaps an overdose of Inspector Morse? And don't see where wish fullfilment comes into it.

Going off on another tack, the TLS claimed last week that a sculptor called Antony Gormley is the most admired sculptor in the land - which must be another one that passed me by. So the man (responsible for the angel of the north) has a gift for self promotion and likes to stick up casts of himself all over London and this makes him a renowned sculptor? But I suppose I just have to accept that what used to be called the visual arts have been reduced to stunts and self-promotion. Self-promotion has, of course, always been a part of the game. But it used to be understood that one ought to be promoting something in addition to and separate from oneself.

I assume some other gent. of the same cut (or perhaps ilk) is responsible for the two large and ugly graffiti now decorating the front of the Tate Modern. I wonder how much Arts Council money was spent on paint and cherry-pickers and whathaveyou? Not to mention the essential event party, my invitation to which mysteriously went astray. £20,000? One could have harrassed at least 100 old gentlemen about the contents of their brown wheely bins for that sort of money. Or killed maybe 23,617 MRSA bugs in St Helier hospital.

A DT editorial caught my eye yesterday. A propos of Iraq it says: "... failure ... to ensure there was a sustainable plan for the occupation was a critical failure, for which this country is paying a terrible price". On the assumption that the 'this' refers to the UK, floating the notion in passing that our losses, which might amount to a hundred or something, are a terrible price - without mentioning the half million or so excess deaths that our intervention in Iraq has resulted in, struck me as remarkably crass.

Intrigued by the AA-Saga saga. Bit of a mystery how the boys in the city can talk the combined value of these companies up enough in three years to extract £2bn or so profit - in cash mind, not promises for the future - out of a total of £10bn or something. OK so the sharp minds of private finance might be bringing a breath of fresh management air, but I find it hard to believe that they can make so much differance so quickly. And the explanation in both the DT and the Guardian failed to throw any light for me on the mystery. Maybe it really is all down to fancy cooking of the books and tax evasion.

The residents of Epsom continue to fret over who is going to provide land for all the houses that we seem to need (not least for all the Poles who will no doubt mostly work hard, prosper and want to move on from the shacks, sheds or squats they are living in now). As ever, the answer seems to be not here.

But I do worry about my allotment. The square allotment field takes about a quarter out of a large field - presumably a bit of Epsom Common cut off by Christchurch Road - the rest of which is owned by the local school. The whole lot was probably allotments during the last war and is there for all to see on Google Earth. But the local school only uses about a third of its three quarters and the allotment field includes an access to Christchurch Road. Now having two allotments is a very nice thing, but the £40 a year or so which I pay for each of my 300 sq metre allotments bears no relation to the cost of building land around here. I would have thought the council could make quite a strong case in equity to grab most of it to help meet whatever quota has been set by the busies in Whitehall. It would also enable them to sort out the parking mess with all the mum-driven Epsom tractors. But there would be much squealing - maybe even some from me as I should be very sorry to pack up vegetable gardening - and it might even turn out that the council has a duty to provide allotments within reasonable distance of where people live. Maybe it is green belt which is still fairly sacred. Maybe they should move out onto one of the nearby farms - which presumably only hang on in expectation of a development windfall and who would presumably be delighted to collect and move on to Majorca.

If the allotments and the last hospital site further up the road went for high density housing, the next step would be to make Christchurch Road a lot wider to cope with all the extra traffic - maybe a few more roundabouts to keep the council roundabout nut happy - and generally moving it in the general direction of the Chessington end of Hook Road - that is to say pretty grotty. Where will it all end?

More trouble down at the allotment with the live stock - or rather wild stock. My allotment neighbour had been telling me about some vegetable chat room he belonged to where there had been long discussions about mice and broad beans. It seems that quite a number of people had had their bean plantings decimated (or worse. One could live with one in ten) by mice, who, it seems, are attracted to the smell of the beans. The answer was to grow your beans in deep pots (so as to give the strong central root space), take them out of the pots, remove what is left of the bean and plant the plant less the bean out in the ground. The plant less the bean does not smell and does not attract the mice. To which my response was that this seemed like a lot of bother for broad beans which seemed to come up pretty well without anything of that sort. Or planting two beans to the hole - which would start to get a bit expensive the number that I plant.

Next day, down on the allotment to complete the third row, and there were signs of excavation in the first and second rows. Entirely consistant with the activity of small rodents. Odd that I should never have noticed such activity before but that it arrives the day after notification. Still, got to keep moving forward. Third row now in. Maybe we need a bit of rain to re-consolidate the surface to keep the wee mice out.

Third row associated to third year in some film I saw many years ago about the thirty years war. There was much devastation and destruction of growing crops. The story was that the peasants were persistant types and would carry on planting after destruction for three years. After that they would give up. Take to the bottle or become a bandit or something.

And a few days ago had a dream about some speciality shops that I am quite sure I used to dream about some years ago on a reasonably regular basis. Entirely fictitious: one in back streets behind Victoria Station, another in back streets to the immediate East of Trafalgar Square and one more woolly one further to the East. But on awakening, with the shop in question still vivid, when one tries to probe for more detail, the vision collapses. Vividity is no more. Rather as if it is just a peice of scenary built for a film or for a theatre and which will not bear close inspection.

Scenary associated to obscene - the derivation of which, I learnt recently, is 'on stage'. From 'ob' for to or towards and 'scena' scene or stage. Which meant things which were on stage, on view as it were, which should not be. The meaning gradually contracting to its present meaning. Which derivation strikes me as an oddly off-centre and ironic. I would have expected something more direct about the unpleasantness of whatever it was.

Also to a book about dreams which I also read some years ago by one J Allan Hobson of the Harvard Medical School. As well as providing a lot of useful material about sleep, Mr Hobson seemed to be very concerned to consign the views of Mr Freud to the dustbin. He went on and on about it. His view was that dreams were rubbish. Bits and peices floating around, assembled into apparently meaningful assemblies but which were not. I am sure he is wrong; that there is room for both views. That dreams are bits and peices, but they do, some of the time at least, have psychic import. That they do tell us something important about ourselves, or at least about our then current condition. Perhaps Mr Hobson had a bad experience with a Freudian shrink when he was a young and troubled adolescent and has hated the Freudians ever since.

Must be gradually acquiring a taste for literary biography, this being a genre I have largely eschewed for nearly sixty years. So my parents having read Aldous Huxley with great gusto 75 years ago, and my having read him with similar gusto (I must have understood very little of what I was reading. At least at the level of emotional intelligence. A deficiency which seems to be oddly appropriate, given what the biography (see below) says about the author) 45 years ago, I have now acquired a two volume biography by one Sybill Bedford - who, as it happens, my mother was also rather keen on. Courtesy of an Oxfam charity shop in Kingston - where the central shop is very expensive, but this one, the off centre one, has much more sensible prices. With the result that I now have three heavy weight biographies of literary heavy weights. A by-product of an expedition to do with the far more serious business of new worktops for the kitcher.

This biography is full of interesting snippets and insights. Some of these last arising, I think, from the fact that Ms Bedford is herself a writer - not just a biographer - which is not quite the same thing. So Huxley has the enviable distinction of a walk on part in Proust, under his own name. As opposed to some recognisable and unflattering fragment of him appearing under a nom-de-clef. I wonder what kind of accolade would be the equivalent today? He also spent a lot of time on Latin at Eton. It seems that for a time, Tuesdays from 8 until 8 were devoted to Latin and a good part of that time was devoted to Latin verse. That is to say that the teacher would hand out some chunk of Tennyson, Wordsworth or whatever and invite the class (each pupil separately) to translate the chunk into Doric streptameters or whatever. It seems there is quite a choice of sorts of Latin verse that one might translate into. But it seems that he loathed the Anglo Saxon to which he had to devote so much time at Oxford. So not one of the Tolkein gang at all. There is also a not very flattering anecdote about Joyce from a dinner at which they were both guests.

To Devon for the weekend which was wet. The newly acquired FIL boiler seems to be doing its stuff. Its controller fiddly in a differant way to ours. Maybe one day someone will design an affordable usable user interface to these things. Perhaps when our homes are all controlled by the yet to be announced 'Home Manager' from Microsoft - which will no doubt be as irritating as Word, always doing things when you don't want it to. A useful by-product is the hot water tank which has now been planted in the allotment to do service as a water butt. It seems that when there is a hosepipe ban - the existing one may well continue despite the rain - it is OK to run a hose from the stand pipe to a conveniently placed tub and to water one's plants from the tub with a watering can, thus saving the trek to and from the stand pipe. Perhaps the rule also says that the conveniently placed tub has to be stationary. One is not allowed a bowser which one can wheel around the allotment.

Also planted some of what AE calls mole plants. She had a few of them in her garden and wanted them removed as they breed. She thinks they are called mole plants because moles will not come up under them. We have them in our garden, as does next door, and we think they are a brand of helibore. Good breeders here too. That being as it may, three of the ones pulled up from AE's garden which have been lying on the compost heap for a week have now been replanted. One of them had basal shoots so it might still go. We also have moles in the allotment paths so maybe we will be able to test the mole theory too.

We will have to see whether the teazle patch survives the arrival of the new tub.

We revisted the large secondhand bookshop in Ashburton; pleased to find that it was still there albeit with new owners. Shrink section still up and running and caught me for £4. This was followed by a stroll up Haytor. Fine place but very wet and windy - glad to tooled up with sking gear left over from our coach trip to the South of France a couple of years ago. Also refound the granite railway. The term being interesting because the railway is both made of granite and for granite so the ambiguous qualification is entirely appropriate. One branch of the railway runs into a disused quarry which would make a splendid picnic place in the summer there being a bit of a lake and trees inside - the catch probably being that lots of other people will think so too!

And coincidentally top rib, having had same for the first time after many years last week, was on the menu in Dorset - in stew rather than roast form. It certainly stewed very well to firm well textured lumps - around the size of three sugar cubes. The cow in question was a grow-your-own Aberdeen Angus Cross. Which suggests a whole new game for foodies. Instead of running on about the spiffing rasberry tinted sunflower bouquet of one's cinquieme cru burgundy, one could go on about whether the cow in question had quite enough silage in its diet. Whether a cross or a parallel breed does better on greensand. Great fun.

Bread in Dorset well up to standard. From a baker in Bridport I think, via the local Post Office. And the nannies are thinking of shutting the Post Office. Shock horror.

Still pondering about how to keep the deer out of the allotment. Plan A was to eat them. Apart from the technical difficulty of catching them a bigger problem was the high proportion of veggies/animal lovers around here. None of whom seem to be in the least concerned by the amount of damage that deer do. (But I am not alone. Even the Daily Telegraph is running correspondance on how to deal with them). Plan B was to erect my very own six foor deer fence around the fruit trees - about 50 yards worth. Which would have cost the equivalent of many years' worth of fruit and a week or more's time. Plus maybe damage so not so robust back. So plan C was that maybe it will be cheaper and quicker to check the existing six foot fence around the whole allotment site - the catch being that some of it disappears into bramble thickets and such like.

Have discounted the theory that the deer are getting in through the culvert from Stamford Green. This looks to be about two foot in diameter and fifty yards long. I don't think a deer would go through such a thing unless chased or frightened. Perhaps just as well because while I first thought that it would be easy enough to block off the culvert using chicken wire or some such, such a blockage would soon block up with (Autumn) debris. Maybe even a modest flood on Stamford Green? In any event it seemed likely that someone would find something to complain about.

Walking around yesterday observed that there was a fairly new stretch of fence about where I vaguely remember a tree falling down and taking a chunk out. Job done! Then I saw a deer in the neighbouring school field. Turned my back for a few minutes and there it was in the allotment field, bold as brass. So job not quite done yet. Inspection will have to continue.

Catering matters relatively quiet at the moment. Today's challenge is the construction of stuffing for a chicken without the benefit of fresh sage - recently dug up, as reported on 6th instant. Nor are there any hazel nuts and I am not at all sure if walnuts will be a very satisfactory alternative. Using frozen bread to make the breadcrumbs, but that should not be a problem. So long as one does not cheat and use a food mixer which turns out breadpowder rather than breadcrumbs. There is also the temptation to let too much crust in which does nothing for the colour of the end product. Brown bread even worse. We will see how we get on.

Rather wet to continue digging. Also rather warm for killing off bugs as is proper at this time of year. Said to be the warmest November since records began.

Labels: stamford green deer

The remains of the turkey failed to rest in peace. The last half pint of soup, resting next to the boiler chimney (yes, our house is ancient enough for the gas boiler to be permitted by OIC gas safety to use a chimney), started to ferment and was bubbling gently when found. We resisted the temptation to pursue the home brew angle.

Allotment continues with the start of this year's runner bean trench. About two and a half feet wide and one foot deep (that is to say taking the trench down to the subsoil) then fill with compost and back fill. The compost comes from the two year old, Eastern half of the outdoor pallet contained compost heap. Did the Western half last year. The outer few inches are more or less hay but inside most of the compost looks remarkably like earth - some of it clayey even. Some livestock but nothing like as much as in the house compost heap - which of gets a lot more kitchen waste - including meat, fish and fat which the heap trusties do not approve of - and is more enclosed and more damp. Maybe a lot more earth gets in with the weeds than one thinks.

Planted two and a half strawberry plants, courtesy of the Cambridge crew. The half plant being a runner which is trying hard to root. Maybe now that I have covered it up, it will. My first venture into soft fruit since acquiring an allotment.

Picked up the Pakenham book again. On which topic I was interested to read in the LRB that during the first world war, other things being equal, an Irishman in the English army had a four times higher chance of being executed for cowardice. I wonder how I could check such an assertion? That said, 300 or so in four years stikes me as an amazingly low number given the what was going on. LRB goes on to say that the French and Italians executed rather more and the Germans a lot less.

And picked up from the Galbraith book on Iraq the interesting fact that despite all the ballyhoo about African yellowcake before the event (which I believe turned out to be based on faulty or sloppy intelligence), no-one bothered after the fall of Iraq to secure the legitimate supplies of the stuff already known to have been there, several tons of which having now gone missing. Along with substantial quantities of other things that one would rather did not fall into the wrong hands. What a mess.

Last interesting fact, from Thomas on Cortes, launches a question. Hernan Cortes managed to grab Mexico with a suprisingly small number of men. William the Conquerer grabbed England with a small number of men - although granted proportionally rather more. So what did William do right that he got to keep England, whereas Hernan got kicked out by the civil servants and retired, albeit reasonably rich, to Seville?

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.

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.

Saw part of a film called Greystoke something the other day. Not sure if they would get away with making it these days. Large amount of time devoted to nude shots of under age boy. Large amount of time taken up by fetching shots of animals prancing about in the jungle at a cost of goodness how much ill-treatment to get them to prance properly. And last but not least some of the human stars could be seen enjoying a smoke on screen. Nor was I convinced that all the animals were the same sort of monkey/ape but that could be ignorance.

Clearly much affected by all this, because that night I had a dream involving a black bear standing upright by the Eastern side of the road to Huntington outside Cambridge. The black bear was clearly derived from the rather impressive black panther in the dodgy flick. The black panther being an animal I had something of a crush on as a child.

And then, when thinking about the bear on waking, was reminded, or perhaps redreamt, part of a formerly regular dream involving a fictitious bread and breakfast establishment in a small village in the middle of low lying fields near Fareham in Hampshire, Fareham being a place I used to visit in connection with my work. This dream is also associated with a fictitious and complicated train ride (once regularly taken) home which involved a hairy change from one crummy two coach deisel train to another, across numerous tracks and platforms, at Peterborough. There are a number of places and events of this sort which are not real but which persist and which I visit from time to time. Who knows where all this stuff comes from? But I do not believe a book by a US dream expert which I read recently which alleges that dreams are just mental garbage without any real significance at all. This particular expert struck me as having got himself into denial about all things Freudian. Maybe one of them got him the sack at one point. And as far as dreams are concerned, maybe there is some garbage involved but I do not think that that is all there is to it.

Followed up the liver with ox kidneys. Stewed in the universal butter, onion and tomato mush. Not, of course, forgetting the carraway seeds. See above for more detail on this point.

Followed this up by a splendid but small poppy at the allotment. Deep crimson with a velvety black centre. Wonderful thing, the richness of colour perhaps a consequence of it being rather small - perhaps two inches across.

Pampas grass plant at the allotment got lots of flower shoots now. Should get a good show shortly; this despite refusing the regular burning recommended by both BH and FIL. Something to do with creating the natural conditions of the pampas. I have read somewhere that there are seeds which need the heat of a fire to prep them for germination - but I remain unconvinced that this treatment translates to the fleshy part of pampas grass plants.

Returning to dodgy, came across Seven Dials again in a short story by H G Wells. The last time I came across it in fiction was in (I think) the Three Hostages by John Buchan. Both authors seemed to regard Seven Dials as an alluringly dodgy part of London where all sorts of interesting things are likely to happen. Perhaps the sort of area they would frequent when they fancied a bit of beer and skittles with no questions asked. When I first knew the area, some of this tackiness survived, sadly now all swept away by clothes shops and bean shops. This change being heralded by the many years they spent building a new heritage pillar topped with seven blue oval dials (can a dial be oval?) at the centre of the junction in question.

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.

Settings mysteriously returned to normal. This is good, being old enough not to like change, whether or not for changes sake.

Interested to see in the Guardian earlier this week a peice neatly linking up two of my bug-bears - to wit, regulitis and signitis. Linking both into a general failure of 21st century people to manage themselves - and particular the lower orders thereof - in a sensible way. Dishing out orders in one medium or another being a rather unsatisfactory substitute for work, thought or management. Didn't actually read the peice so don't know whether the author (a gent) picked up on the third bug-bear, that is to say the various interest groups who make money out of these diseases and who therefore have no interest in their control. Maximum sustainable yeild is what they ought to be into - although maybe they don't read their Lipseys and go for the quickest possible buck. Accountants, lawyers and consultants in the first case; consultants, contractors and PFI partners in the second.

But our ambivalence in these matters was neatly demonstrated by the peice immediately following which laid out in loving detail the various problems which will arise from a weekly consumption of alcohol the daily consumption of which would leave the average denizen of TB considerably less than satisfied.

Broad bean harvest continues with a bacon and onion flavoured version today (the general idea coming from the good Delia). Plants now getting on for 5 feet high - as a result of not pinching out the shoots this year. Doesn't seem to have resulted in a plague of blackfly so perhaps the spray I used was particularly unorganic. Report back on bean stew later.

Ate the first ever strawberry from the allotment today. Cambridge stock planted out over the winter. Next year might get a proper crop.

But it is a pity that one can't eat willow shoots. The small tree which I cut to within a foot or so of the ground at the bottom of the Southern allotment over the winter had put out shoots to around 5 feet high. Pulled them all off today and there must have been twenty pounds of the things. All fairly green and soggy so put them in the compost bin - the half that I cleared out last so it has more than a year to do the business with the willow. Unless that is, everything is disturbed by having to renew the pallets holding it together on that side. They are looking decidely past their sell by date.

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.

What little I know of modern philisophy - gleaned from those essays passing as reviews in the TLS - does not impress. A bunch of clever people peering into each others' (unwashed) ears looking for the error in the latest proof of the theorem concerning the beginning of all things. However, I quite like thought experiments which might just about qualify, prompted by the book I am reading on the Armenian massacres, mentioned a few days ago.

Suppose I have a prize dandelion in my garden. Suppose also that the king of a country some thousand miles away has announced that he will kill a hundred thousand of his subjects if I cut the dandelion down. Who is guilty when I cut down the dandelion? This is prompted in turn by an argument which appears to be saying that the Western powers behaved rather irresponsibly with regard to Turkey, as a result of which the Armenians got massacred. Therefore, the guilt really rests with the Western powers. The book leaves this charge implicit but it is clearly there.

The experiment would get more complicated if the king set up a satellite from which the dandelion could be observed 24 hours a day and wired in a trip mechanism that nuked the Armenians when the satellite detected absence of dandelion.

BH made an interesting observation this morning. The charectars who make policy in the Blair bunker are not all control freaks; some of them are just spin doctors. So when a bit of diversion from bad news is needed or when the government wants to look busy (which it seems to think is what the electorate want (maybe they are right)) , they find a new minority sport to make illegal. So according to today's DT they are going to get stuck into the 20% or so of adults who abuse alcohol. What happened to the liberal society that we are supposed to belong to?

Which reminds of of a trap that control freaks - in all fields of endeavour - can fall into. If you want to stop something happening you make it illegal and think that your job is done - without really attending to whatever it is that is making the something happen. Net result is we are all breaking lots of rules lots of the time and the rule book is brought into disrepute. Serious weakening of civil society. Quack, quack. Move over the Guardian, the bloggers are coming.

Down at the allotment was struck the other evening by a very happy view of the small sycamore tree at the bottom of allotment number one. It is about 10 feet high and its hanging clusters of fruits - the winged parchute things - are just starting to ripen with the wings starting to turn a really handsome red colour, constrasting well with the light green of the early summer leaves. Very conspicuous in a small tree without all that much foliage. All in all quite special in the evening light.

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.

Have now completed filling in my living will and have got it signed by all the great and good. Next job is to get many copies and lodge them with said great and good. Hopefully I will manage to avoid being semi comatose at the receiving end of a peg feeder.

Plenty of more sprightly gerries have come out in the sun though. Yesterday there was a bunch of cyclo-gerries on a training run through Cheam. Nearly all white haired but all blue lycra with fairly serious bikes. As the owner of a reasonably respectable Trek I got a few nods. Bit let down by lack of lycra.

And today on the common more evidence of chain saw activity by the eco-gerries. Quite large swathes have now been semi cleared to bring it into line with some bucolic adenic state which is supposed to have existed a hundred years ago. I just wish they would just take up something innocuous and private and stop meddling with public spaces.

Second ration of Bakewell tarts from the baker today, having decided that their Eccles cakes are not really up to snuff. One Bakewell tart must be the equivalent of a Mars Bar (and costs rather more) - but very good. Just the thing for a hot afternoon with one's Earl Gray. (or Grey).

Sowed some summer cabbage seeds out in the allotment: Golden Acre Primo (II). In the allotment because our shed seems to be rather cold and germination seems to take ages there. Maybe do better with a cold frame. In any event not a crop I have done very well with in the past.

Odd story in testerday's DT about a girl who got banned from all the fun at her school because she declined to do extra revision after school. League tables are all very well, but for my money extra revision is optional. One should be able to elect not to be a blue stocking, however undesirable that might be in the great scheme of things. In this case the girl in question seemed to be doing OK anyway. Perhaps - as if often the case with seemingly odd stories - we are only getting half of it.

Classy senior moment. Was trying to top up my pay-as-you-go mobile phone so had flexible friend in the left hand and the phone in the other; all ready to roll into action when the computer lady on the phone sprang into action. Unfortunately, I put the flexible friend to ear instead of phone. Luckily, brain, even in its present state of decay, fairly quickly worked out that this was not going to work.

Computer lady on South West trains clearly has stamina. I think on my visit to London yesterday she managed to find something to say about every thirty seconds. Irritating cow. Whereas the one on Southern trains on Wednesday appears to have given up altogether and that on Great Northern trains could only manage one on a 45 minute (that is to say about the same journey duration as Epsom to London) trip to Cambridge. Perhaps you don't get bombs or have to mind the step North of the big river.

I wonder what the penalty for swamping the loudspeakers in some sort of fast setting foam goo would be - perhaps the sort of thing that they use to stick window frames in with these days. Perhaps a conditional discharge like that for the coughing major who tried a bit of physical remonstrance with some dreadful teenager. Perhaps we are supposed to ask for their name and address so that we can pass it onto to the police so that they can go and talk to the parents. Perhaps the busies should put up helpful signs on jogging tracks advising people who are molested to contact a member of the track supervision team (this being more or less what the South West trains computer lady does - without, it seems, having given much thought to the problem of getting hold of a member of the team at short notice when in an 8 car train in the middle of the night...).

Broadband failure on Friday afternoon. The second time in getting on for 18 months, so not too bad. Reappeared for about 5 minutes on Saturday morning then off for good. Phone the number in the book (luckily retained) and 5 minutes of key 5 if you have a problem and key 8 if you have a blue problem. Then got onto the (helpful) help desk lady in Bangalore or somewhere within a few hundred miles of there. 5 minutes on have I plugged the gray cable into the white box and have I turned the power on. Do I have a small screwdriver to hand? What about a long thin spike or a mobile phone? Much running around and crawling underneath the desk. Then 5 more minutes with Bangalore calling me on my mobile, at the end of which they said they would call me back after doing more remote tests. Phoned back Saturday morning with the announcement that there seemed to be a fault and would I like to get in touch with the BT PSTN people. Not clear why their wonderful help desk support system could not do this bit. Phoned them and logged a fault. Two similar text messages at 0800 on Monday morning announcing that an engineer was on the case. Phone call at 1100 from an engineer saying he had arrived in the area. Phone call at 1600 saying he had found a serious fault - something about water on the line. I wonder if the cable television people with their newer infrastructure have less of this? He needed to consult. Phone call at 0900 Tuesday telling me that the person he needed to consult was not in. But the fault would probably require a hole to be dug in the road. So all in all, quite attentive to the customer, but it looks as if I am going to be offline for at least a week, maybe a good bit more if Easter gets in the way.

So into cold turkey big time, so this from Garratt Lane. The good news was that this Internet Cafe was indeed in Garratt Lane but nowhere near where I remembered it to be. But at least it was on the route to Wetherspoons.

Had an odd experience in a Wimbledon Wetherspoons yesterday. The bar I was at was not particularly busy, but I had to wait maybe 5 minutes while the young barmaid served maybe half a dozen customers who had arrived after me but around the corner. They say you start to feel invisible in the face of the young as you get old. Pleasant enough barmaid but hopeless. Dim and slow. But while I was waiting, I suddenly got the urge to hurl an empty pint pot into the elaborate display of alco-pop bottles behind the bit of bar at which I was standing and then walk out. Quite a strong urge; not had anything like it since 35 years ago when I had an urge to wallop an allotment busy who was complaining about my dandelions or something. I was holding a large Irish-fashion heart bladed spade at the time so it was just as well that he was berating me from a safe distance. No idea how close to the throw I was. Let's hope not too close in case something of the sort happens again!

Digging the bed for the onion sets continuing on the current allotment, with the ground in pretty good condition for same. Should be ready to start banging them in some time over Easter. No signs of broad beans yet but there might be enough rhubard for lunch on Easter Sunday. Leaves a fresh green colour, quite differant to the fuller but duller green you get later in the year. Peach in flower; flower buds swelling on the rest of the fruit trees.

And for the tweeters, we can say that it the season for large thin thrush like birds - at least two of them - to land on our lawn. Mid brown backs, pale very speckled chests, long thin necks and long thin beak. Not, I thought, a regular thrush, not that we get very many of those. Ergo, some sort of a Spring traveller. I wonder what? The name fieldfare comes to mind for some reason.

Various interesting snippets from a recently acquired New York Review of Books: a generally good magazine, a cross between the TLS and the LRB with plenty of good quality writing. Maybe a bit light on the lit bit for some, but that does not bother me. One snippet being the factlet that a good proportion of the slaves who went from West Africa to the Americas had not been abucted in some raid, but had been expelled by their home village or tribe for some civil or criminal offence. They had nowhere to go and so were easy pickings. Not being in the home village was pretty much a death sentence anyway. I suppose that in such a tribe or village, the range of penalties was a bit limited. Death, fine or expulsion. Prisons and ASBOs not really options. And if we suppose the crime rate to be much the same as ours - perhaps rather higher given the stress of life in general in those parts in those times - that might easily lead to many expulsions. So, we get the picture of a very much nastier version of our sending people to Australia.

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!

I moan from time to time - most recently on December 20th - about the antics of the Chain Saw Volunteers. No problem when they trash chunks of our natural heritage.

But when it comes to making our local school bigger - Stanford Green Primary - which could be done with much greater comfort if the school was allowed to grab a chunk of green space - no go at all. All the ecofaddists are parading the streets of Epsom. Chaining themselves to the railings of the town hall.

What I have in mind is that the school has pots of land, the only problem being that it is landlocked. Only one narrow road to the outside world; a road which reaches the outside world near enough to our own house to mean that we have lots of Chelsea Tractors parking outside at school start up time in term time. So a simple solution would be to punch through, from the pots of land, to Christchurch Road, well away from our house and possibly through the allotments. Maybe grab a bit of Stamford Green to make a roundabout so that the Chelsea Tractors are not a hazard to themselves or others on the reasonably busy Christchurch Road.

If the allotment holders get too stroppy - and they include plenty of people well up for making an effective fuss - just buy up one of the houses on Christchurch Road. Although one might argue that growing food on allotments is not very green at all. Much more efficient to grow food on a large scale. All this small scale farming dreadfully inefficient. One only has to think about the enclosures in the past: all very sad for the cottagers at the time but you can't stop the march of history.

Maybe sell one or two of the pots of land for housing to pay for it all.

PS: one should remember in all this that there is no-one who makes as much fuss about smoking as an ex-smoker. Or in this case, an ex-allotment keeper (twice).

Turkey is now resting in peace, barring about half a pint of soup.

We made the soup stock by boiling the carcase for a couple of hours together with some mainly left over vegetables. Left to cool overnight, brought to the boil again in the morning and strained. Got about 5 litres of stock of a creamy colour which set to a very flabby jelly. Reheat; add some potatoes and when they were done some white cabbage and the soup was done. Very good. Good strong flavour so clearly plenty of e-numbers but all entirely organic and home made.

The remains of the meat was made into what we call turkey pie. Boil some carrots. Cook some onions in the brown jelly from the roasting. Make the onions and jelly up into a roux with corn flour and make up to volume with some of the soup. Add some coarsely cut button mushrooms. Stir the whole lot together into a pyrex tub. Top with mashed potato, make air vent in centre (too tall for the pie funnel) and bake for an hour. Serve with cabbage. Need to talk to the house shopper as we are down to our last two cabbages. Might need to get some from the allotment.

Today we move onto to fish to give stomachs a break from recent assaults.

Been reading an interesting Christmas present about Iraq by one Peter W Galbraith. What has stuck so far, is that whatever one might think about the wisdom of Western efforts over recent years, Saddam Hussein was a very evil man. Let us hope that the world will be a better place without him. But the manner of his going niggles me. Why did he not go out in slightly better style, as did two of his sons (although they may not have been given the choice). In so far as someone like him has honour, is it more honourable to face the music in the form of a show trial or to go down fighting? Macbeth went for the latter. But some senior Nazis were faulted for their suicides, so leaving their subordinates to take the rap alone. Maybe Saddam Hussein was hoping right up until the end that he would cut some shabby deal or that he would be rescued. For I long time after he was caught, I thought that he had done a deal but it seems I was wrong.

Yesterday an excellent visit to Painshill Park - a large landscape garden put together by an 18C plant nut who may have been related to the Hamiltons of Nelson fame. Fell into disrepair but someone has done a very good job of rescuing it. The senile trees which can figure so strongly in old gardens are not too conspicuous. Started off over the suspension bridge over the Mole - the sort of thing they might put up in Cambridge. But they need to clean the white paintwork which is turning very green. Then into the walled garden where I started to think that we might have arrived at an educational experience. There were large outdoor instructive posters everywhere - not my bag at all. Half expecting worksheets and audio guides when we bought tickets from the trusties - who take great pride in being independant and not being national trusties. They also have a very tasteful shed to work in containing very tasteful souvenirs. I think they got a prize for it. That aside, the educational experience did not come to pass and the epidemic of posters largely faded as we got into the park proper.

Two more features. First, it contains the largest cedar of Lebanon in Europe with a height of 120 feet and a girth of thirty. Very impressive. Second, their deer fence was put up with posts at around 20 feet centres - a good deal further than the six feet centres that I had been thinking of. This would get us down from 25 posts to maybe 6 or 7 - a far more manageable numbers. So maybe we are back into fencing at the allotment after all.

Resumed normal duties there today. Now nearly finished the first dig but there is still plenty of ground to be cleaned around fruit trees, bushes and the other perennials without the benefit of protective screes. Took down this year's runner bean sticks - a mixture of hazel thinnings from Horton Country Park, an ornamental plum tree and a hazel tree from our house garden. Need to think about what to do with the half which still have some life in them. Some of them had acquired plaques of an intesting spongy black fungus which I had not seem before. Others - I think the plum sticks - had the red spot fungus.

Have now picnicked twice on wild boar salami from Italy, courtesy of Mr Selfridge. Excellent stuff but I am not sure that I would have known that it was not regular pig - or donkey for that matter. We having bought some of this last from Savoy last year.

The baker had made some rather splendid New Year loaves today - round flat affairs with modest decoration. Very attractive. Assuming they were for sale, I should have had one. And given that he described himself as being open for orders only, he had a lot of cakes. Cheam seemed very quiet at 1100 so I hope he got some custom. Must find out why he makes Chelsea buns so rarely.

Noticed that Nonsuch School for Girls appears to have been taken over by David Lloyd and that the front entrance of the school has acquired the vulgar display which graces endeavours of his sort when they are trying to drum up business. Not like a school at all but I suppose they are still allowed to do that provided they don't get in the way of paying customers.

The lego tower did indeed make it to the ceiling, in good enough condition to place a shark on a little platform just under the ceiling. But, to be fair, the last couple of feet was more by way of an aeriel than a structure. And I had to use a stressing cable (in the way of Greek triremes) to keep the whole thing up. Sadly, it did not survive a visitor's inspection - the thought being that the stressing cable was a crane which could be played with, so photographic evidence is missing. Better luck next year!