When I'm 104

There really ought to be a trophy for being the World's Oldest Person - a set of golden false teeth, perhaps - but for obvious reasons it tends to be a post that nobody holds for very long. I love reading stories about these folks, however, because they always have theories about why they've managed to live so long.

'No alcohol,' said Tomoji Tanabe, the latest incumbent, in southern Japan on his 113th birthday - but before we all throw the vino in the bin, it's worth remembering that until a couple of years ago the Puerto Rican holder (113) had cited his secret as 'fish, a good laugh, and red wine every day'. Oh well.

In a related note, a couple of customers of mine from the nearby town of Weymouth celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary last year - ten years off the record of 85 years set by a Taiwanese couple a few years back.* There probably isn't even a name for that one.** Reading the article, I waited for someone to ask them the secret of their long marriage.

'I beats her every day,' said Wilf, displaying all of his legendary tact, but his wife was not to be outdone.

'And I shags the milkman behind his back,' she said, to general applause.




* Interestingly, the news report on the Taiwanese couple said that bride Yang Wan suffered from "lethargy and osteoporosis". Lethargy? She was a hundred and two years old! I can just see it - 'Come on Mrs Wan, up and at 'em! It's a big day today, we've got dinner for sixteen to arrange and you haven't even finished sweeping out the barn! What's wrong with you, woman?'

**By that many years, you've run out of substances - but it's fun for the first few years. Witchypoo and I exchanged themed gifts. On the first year (paper) we gave each other photographs; on the second (cotton), shirts; on the third (leather)... actually, let's not go there.

Planning for Winter

I may not have got most of the infrastructure work I'd hoped to done in the garden this year, owing to crappy weather and too much work, but at least I haven't fallen behind on my planting. On Sunday I finally managed to get the winter planting done for the polytunnel (high tunnel), which will be crucial for the cold weather and for next year's hungry gap (that's the name given to the period from March to May, when very few crops are ready to harvest).

One of the problems faced by tunnel growers is the dilemma of summer versus winter planting. Polytunnels are fabulous growing tools, and act pretty much like a greenhouse throughout the summer for a fraction of the price. The trouble is that if you want to, you can still be cutting cucumbers through October, and it could be Hallowe'en before you decide to cut your losses and make chutney out of any tomatoes that didn't quite make it to ripeness; and by then, of course, it's too late to plant most things. Harvesting from a high tunnel all year round requires a few compromises.

When you hit the last planting date for the tunnel in your area – and here in Dorset that's about now – then it's time to make a few hard choices. On Sunday I took out three melons that were going to achieve nothing more, poor things, and planted corn salad (aka lamb's lettuce, machê) in their slot. I gave the cucumbers a long, meaningful look before taking all the leaves off to a height of 2', allowing me to plant rocket – a hugely important ingredient of our winter salads - underneath them.

The remaining tomatoes likewise had their pyjama bottoms stolen before being undersown with vast quantities of spring onions, and so it went on. Other winter planting that got shoehorned in included two types of lettuce, radish, perpetual spinach (pre-grown in modules), peppery mizuna, vast quantities of carrots, a couple of cauliflower, and a few mooli. Everything there will play an important part in our diet through winter and spring (except possibly the mooli, which I should really make more of an effort with). Although the tunnel's looking very gappy now, getting the autumn planting done is one of the times of the year where I give a happy...

...Ahhhhh.

Bankers Will Be Bankers

I wish I knew why, but making a train journey on my own always panics me. Perhaps it's the smell of train stations - a dry, sour smell that speaks of despair and separation; or perhaps it's the slight whiff of timetabling panic that's always in the air as passengers arrive and check their watches. Then again, perhaps it's just the fact that even at the best of times I'm only peripherally aware of where I am and what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. At any rate, yesterday saw me on the train to London to speak to the sales team who will be handling The Polytunnel Handbook next spring.

The train ticket may have been expensive, but I must admit I couldn't fault Southwest Trains on the on-board entertainment. The regional final of the Inconsiderate Prick of the Year Awards were being held in my carriage, apparently – sadly I couldn't stay for the judging, but the Frantic Bankers were collectively outdoing themselves, driving everyone else away from the centre of the train with their hysterical attempts to make sure their fat asses were safe from the unfolding turmoil on the financial markets. My favourite was a fashion victim (charcoal suit with a very faint pinstripe; vertically striped pastel shirt; horizontally striped garish socks. What a rebel!) who insisted on roaring into his mobile, set on hands free, from a distance of three feet so that he could annoy everyone else and e-mail at the same time.

“I'm telling you, Toby, no word of a lie. She sat there the whole night and only ate half a bread roll! She couldn't even manage the salmon. I mean, fucking salmon, Toby – it's like chicken, isn't it? No fucking taste at all, and she just couldn't manage it! Wait...” He stabbed frantically at the keyboard. “Fuck, it's the office. I'll call you back.... Fee-oh-naaaa! Darling! What's the price, are we cool? Ex-cell-ent...I bet he's going mental, isn't he? I bet he's going fucking mental!”

Meanwhile, I was experiencing my own bout of panic as the first station slid by. Was the train going in the right direction? Was it the express service, or had I accidentally got on the Slow Train to Arseville, travelling at a top speed of eight furlongs a fortnight and collecting cattle at all stops east of Wareham? The feeling was further compounded when it transpired that I was sitting in a seat reserved for someone else, and had to move. I felt a brief, irrational surge of class envy that only dissipated when it turned out that Mr Fucking Salmon was also in the wrong seat, and was forced to give way to a Chinese student with a wispy moustache and dreadful halitosis. The world was set to rights.

The talk, after a pleasantly boozy lunch provided by my Lovely Publishers, went fairly well given that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I gibbered desperately for five minutes, wishing that I'd said no to the wine, and answered a few questions. Yes, we gave a list of suppliers. No, polytunnels don't have to be big. No, I don't have any humorous stories featuring bloody marrows. Then I sank gratefully into my chair and watched the marketing people go to work on the whole Green Books catalogue for next spring. Strap lines were put in and taken out, prices moved up and down, covers abandoned, typefaces adjusted, categories fiddled with... and then, suddenly, I was on the spot again about somebody else's book.

“What is permaculture, exactly?” one of the team asked.

“I'm sure Andy will be able to tell you that,” responded Wasp the publicist, knocking the ball smartly over to my side of the court before I'd finished tying my shoelaces. “Andy?”

“It's, er, sort of like ergonomics in the garden. Looking at a garden holistically so that its elements work together, rather than considering them separately. Or a city, or a society, or whatever. Except you do all the thinking work in the pub.” (Sly Bill Mollinson reference, there)

“And how does that relate to Transition Towns?”

“Um, I'm sure James will be able to tell you that. James?”

See? I learn fast!

Of Matters Piratical

There's been a nasty outbreak of Pirate's Disease at the Hollow. The symptoms aren't always easy to spot, but this morning Number One Son went off to school with a sore throat, a runny nose, and a stuffed parrot on one shoulder. The first two are just down to a cold but the last one is a dead giveaway, and a quick search of his schoolbag turned up a contraband eyepatch. Pirate's Disease for sure. We've had Pirate's Disease in the house before, back when Number One Son was a tiddler. It took nearly three weeks before we stopped roaring 'Yarrr!' at each other over the breakfast table - so this time I'm taking a zero tolerance approach to all things piratical until I'm sure the danger has passed; but frankly, this outbreak is my fault - because the party was my idea.

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, y'see, and I grabbed the chance to hold a Carribean night where everyone would bring along a dish from one o' the oilands to tempt my jaded palate, arr - dammit! You see how easy it is? Down here in the West Country, birthplace of most o' the scum-sucking molluscs that ever sailed the high seas (at least according to Hollywood), the accent never gets more than a gnat's fart away from Piratical anyway. It's only a matter of adding the arrs for flavour, and once you do that it's a slippery tops'l tae reef, says I it's oddly difficult to stop.

These meals are always a collosal treat. There was a pitcher of Piña Colada to get things rolling - an important source of Vitamin Arrr, I was assured, and then we all got a chance to sample salt cod with achee and jerk chicken Jamaican style, black beans and boliche from Cuba, and tangy little coconut-lime tarts to follow. And the rum*... oh, the rum. I was busy mixing bumboo (rum, syrup, nutmeg, water) and the more modern mojito (rum, syrup, juice of half a lime, ice, soda water) until caution and a sense of impending doom drove some of us back to my homebrewed cider and a local (and frankly inferior) scrumpy. There were games of Name That Pirate and Famous Movie Lines Delivered in Best Piratical** and, best of all, we got to dress up in stripey rugby shirts and pin beads into our hair. Or at least, those of us with hair did.

If you'd like to hold your own piratical event, there's still a few days left. So what be ye waitin' for, ye salty curs? Jump to it, or ye'll feel the lick o' me cat!



* As part of this nutritious breakfast.
**'Ye were only supposed to blow the boody portholes off!'

'Me mammy, she said; Life be like wakin' up in a whorehouse midden. Ye never know what yer gonna get.'

Not Waving, but Drowning

As I manoeuvred my punt down the garden this morning, and moored it at the top of the waterfall beyond which lies the polytunnel, I reflected sadly on the weather this year. I gave it my best shot at optimism this year, I really did. The spring was dull, blustery and cool, but while all the doomsayers were preaching a rerun of 2007 I just shook my head and said that it was too early to tell. It would brighten up later, I said, even while I marvelled at the poorest germination rates I had ever seen in the carrot patch.

And for a while in late April, it looked like I might be right. Temperatures came up and there was some sunshine, and although we never quite seemed to shake the winter winds I was full of quiet optimism. Even when the rain started again in May I kept upbeat. Not many people know that Britain has a monsoon season, you see; we call it 'June' and it's fairly reliably pants, which is why the Glastonbury Festival is always such a laugh. It'll clear up, I said.

Witchypoo, yesterday. Allegedly.

And it did - for a fortnight only, before we were back to depression after Atlantic depression. No showers, these, but wall-to-wall cloudfests lasting for days at a time, punctuated by full-blooded deluges that flooded roads and burst rivers. And the winds - well, the winter winds never really stopped this year in the West Country. I've never had to hold bean wigwams up with guy ropes before, and frankly it didn't help much. The runners have had to learn to like living in the hedge.

The garden is too depressing for words, particularly since I have not been putting in the time that it needs this summer (hopefully for the last time). Apart from islands of order, everything has overgrown, been knocked flat by the gales, and then been half-drowned. The chickens are bedraggled and rather dejected. Even the polytunnel isn't as cheerful as usual, with August receiving the lowest hours of sunshine for that month since records began; the hot weather crops are going to have to stay in there a little longer than in previous years to ripen up properly - which means the crossover to winter planting will be a fiddly one.

So here I am, not so much watching my garden grow as watching it drown, and I've had enough of it. Screw summer, I say, and bugger autumn too. Bring on the winter so that I can hide inside by the fire in a jumper as thick as walrus skin. Except of course that can't happen yet - there are still plants to go in, crops to gather, foraging to do, preserves to make and drinks to brew, otherwise the winter will be a thin one (unless we find a way to live on slugs). Yet I know this funk is only a passing thing; give me a good's night's sleep and a sunny morning and I'll be whistling Dixie.

Please?

Meet the Johnstones

It's official; the countryside is no longer emptying into the cities. For the first time in generations there are more people moving into the countryside from the cities than are going the other way, according to the Government's own report State of the Countryside 2007. This, as you'll notice, predates the real weight of the credit crunch and the coming recession; this probably has more to do with growing awareness of Peak Oil and social trends than anything else.

The Observer Magazine has noted this trend by running a feature on four families who typify this trend, if Stonehead can be said to typify anything at all. If you've never been over to Musings From a Stonehead, you really ought to take a look at what can be achieved - if you're bloody minded enough, that is - even in less than ideal growing conditions. Get that crowbar out!

Improve Bladder Control - the Hedgewizard Way

Step 1: Grow embarrassing quantities of cucumbers and tomatoes. Keep bringing more of them from garden to kitchen until family beg you to stop.

Step 2: Resolve to make relish and chutney. Spend at least two hours peeling, chopping etc until trance state is achieved.

Step 3: Consume large amount of filter coffee to negate trance state.

Step 4: Have brief conversation with personal assistant of suitable celebrity concerning possible endorsement of book. Promise not to go out until phoned back.

Step 5: Go out. Only to the compost bin, mind, with very large pan full of onion, pepper, cucumber and tomato gubbins unsuitable for preserves.

Step 5: Whilst mentally totally focussed on coming conversation, stand on end of spare slat for compost bin front. Slat pivots on concealed brick, tossing sleeping grass snake through the air.

Step 6: Scream in neighbour-attracting fashion as snake vacates foot.

Step 7: Repeat until desired level of bladder control is attained.

I Know Just How She Feels

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/vdunet/20080904/ttc-canadian-woman-in-tech-support-hosta-6315470.html

Piracy on the Electronic Seas

Whenever the internet is withdrawn it's fairly serious for me, being as it's the medium of choice for communicating with my publishers, colleagues, Transition group, insurers, banks and, cursed be their name, the supermarket. My connection has been up and down more often than a tart's knickers lately, so when it went down again yesterday I gave them eight hours to sort themselves out and picked up the phone to call Pipex.

To find nothing, nada, bugger all. "Please redail," some digital bint told me, through her nose. I did, but nothing doing. Oh well, I'll go straight to tech support.

Number not recognised.

Billing? No, nothing there either. Time to call directory enquiries, who helpfully gave me three numbers. The first two were dead, but the last one cut to a recorded message telling me to 'Rejoice! Pipex is now part of Tiscali!'

Woe.

I remember Tiscali only too well, having transferred away from them because of crap customer service a few years ago. With a sinking heart, I dial them up. An automated call streaming service invites me to make a few choices, and to my surprise I am put through to an automated fault reporting service which asks me for the affected number. Heart in mouth, I hand it over. Could they actually have become efficient? But no - once they have the number I am put on hold. A recorded voice informs me that contrary to all appearances, my call is important to them; it's just that they are experiencing abnormally high call volume today. This seems horribly familiar.

Fifteen minutes later, a distant realisation rouses me from my callcentre slumber as I notice a little light has come on under the desk. It's the router; a light has come on. I grab the box with my toes and rotate it gently to read the panel. The light says 'internet'. I keep the phone clamped to my ear for the further five minutes it takes me to negotiate the flaming hoops my 2Wire system imposes on me - for some reason it always assumes I am a hacker hellbound on the destruction of Western civilisation if it has been cut of from the ISP - and suddenly find myself back on line. But Tiscali still isn't talking. I hang up.

So. Did their automated system fix my connection without telling me, leaving me to hang on a premium rate phone line for a good spell, or was it sheer co-incidence? I leave it to you to decide. I know what my money's on. I'll be changing ISP now, because I've been paying more per month for Pipex than Tiscali charge, on purpose, because of Pipex's previously excellent customer support. Tiscali have bought them out, engulfed them, and kept very quiet about it to keep the higher fees. Goodbye, chaps, another lost customer.

Guillotine

It's the feeling of impending doom. You know the one. Everybody gets it when a really big storm is coming. I get it when a migraine is threatening, but yesterday I got it because I was tackling the Wall of Thorns in a high wind.

The Wall of Thorns is the Strangler Vine that I (no doubt foolishly) cultivate in the fruit cage. Spurred on by the difficulties of the annual blackberry forage, this is a moderately doomed attempt to tame a commercial strain with posts and wires. The result is a vertical wall of nastiness that, since it cannot chase you up the garden and kill you any more, contents itself with being so heavy that the concreted-in posts lean towards each other alarmingly. It is dense. It is scratchy. It is wasp-laden. I have a lot to learn.

It is also distressingly windy out there, and the plant has stretched its supporting wires until it is capable of flapping back and forth in the gusts. This wouldn't be so distressing if I were not currently armpit-deep in the foliage trying to extract the most succulent blackberries whilst watching out for wasps; every time the wind flips the damned thing the other way it slits me up a treat. I am only wearing a t-shirt for, as has been previously mentioned, I am a bit of a twit.

I reflect that this is how French aristocrats might have felt when they were being guillotined during the Revolution. It must have been windy a few days then, too.

'Monsieur! Please to 'old very, very still! Eet is ze wind, you see... ze blade, she move so! So, we will wait for 'er to be in ze middle - Pierre, pull ze lever when I say... now!'

'Oh sir! What an 'aircut we have given you! La la, it could become quite ze fashion in Paris, no? If we weren't still going to kill you, zat is. Pierre, wind up ze mechanism again! Now sir, zis time I will ask you to... oh! 'E 'as fainted. D'accord!'