A Sign of Aging?

I spoke recently of the wonderful word 'prannet', and yesterday I gave Witchypoo cause to use it.

I woke up with a frontal headache which didn't respond to a pint of water, or to rosemary oil, or to ibuprofen and a spell in the veg patch. I felt oddly out of it, and when the vision began to flicker in my right eye I started to worry it might be a migraine coming on (which shows what I know; when it is a migraine, I never realise). After a couple of hours of this I went back inside, but the flickering was still there so I decided to wash my hands and stick to light duties.

Which is when I looked in the mirror and found a small spider busily at work in my right eyebrow, hence the flickering. D'oh.

Twitter stylee

Sheet mulching 8m x 8m area of old weedy twaddle for (late) early potatoes. Sowing carrots and leeks. Tunnel sowing carrots, coriander, rocket, cos lettuce, romaine lettuce, kohl rabi, heritage carrots for seed saving, radish, spring onion, melon, watermelon, celery, oh and all sorts. Potting up peppers and tomatoes. Ordering eco-balls. PC behaving v oddly. Virus possible. Just found out disabled access regulations are to prepare UK for Dalek invasion. Bad.

Glubs

Since I was on the subject of gloves and why I hate 'em, I might as well have my rant. I've banged on about entry-level products at various points of the years; these are the cheaper end of any product line and, sadly, seldom worth even the pittance that the makers ask for them.

"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper", as John Ruskin once said or, to quote the vernacular, 'You gets what you pays for'. Sadly that isn't always true either, as there are plenty of unscrupulous companies willing to charge you an arm and a leg for something that's no better than cheaper imitations. Although it probably has a nice logo, or spends a bit on advertising. That's why you have to be careful.

Let's have a 'for instance'. One of these trugs will cost you £4.99 on special offer. There's no manufacturer's guarantee so let's say it will last a few years with careful handling. On the other hand one of these non-oil based ones, featured on the BBC's Victorian Farm project, will cost you about £48 - you could always talk nicely to Mr Jones for a discount. How long will it last? Mr Jones scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'It could probably do with a bit of attention in twenty years or so,' he said, 'But with care, I should think getting on for fifty years.' And then, to demonstrate how tough the one he had just made was, he turned it upside down and made Ruth Goodman jump up and down on it.

Okay, so I don't own one either (but I covet them... oh yes, I do), but WP and I do own a cracking pair of quality gloves each. These are Gold Leaf Tough Touch gloves made by Jayco in Southampton.

Ordinary gloves run anywhere from £5 to £15, but they're generally uncomfortable, so poorly made they're just busting to fall to bits, and they don't really fit either. These babies on the other hand fit like, er, a glove; they're thin and flexible so you can still feel what you're doing; and I look good in them too.* They last an age, and at £24 they're much better value than the allegedly 'heavy duty' crap sold by the high street stores; I've dropped them into my Amazon store, and I haven't been able to find them for less money. So there.

*Okay, so I'm lying. Mine don't have that wholesome yellow glow any more, but frankly that's a bit of a relief. Marigolds? 'Nuff said.

A Load of Old Pollacks

Supermarket chain Sainsbury is renaming a local fish, the pollack, in an effort to boost sales. You see we Brits are extremely fond of a bit of cod, which up until recent years was cheap and plentiful from the North Sea. Now, however, some serial stupidity concerning fishing methods and quotas, courtesy of the EU, has seen cod stocks plummetting to the point where they may never recover. We need to eat something else, and quickly.

Pollack, however, is not a name that encourages the zombie shopper. Sainsbury's research has shown that shoppers find the name embarrassing, apparently, although no-one seems to know exactly why (apparently researchers actually know less about embarrassment than they do about humour). Perhaps it's the rhyming resemblance to 'bollocks' (a wonderful old anglo-saxon word used interchangably for testicles and nonsense), or to a great raft of words including 'pilchard' and 'prannet' which are all used to indicate idiocy.

So. What do Sainsbury use to replace this embarrassing word?

Colin.

Except you're supposed to pronounce it the French way, as in Coe-lan.

Ri-i-ight. Like, that'll help. Written on the box, it says Colin. As in rhyming with pollen. And it's even more embarrassing. Why not just call it 'Shirley' and be done with it?

Help Wanted

I'm not quite boring enough, apparently, so Green Books have asked Mark and myself to push on with Polytunnel Handbook II - The Musical. Without talking too much about it - and I'm told this is punishable by death - we need a few victims volunteers in specific areas of the UK for data for the new work, and for taking part in a small experiment which is kicking off in about ten days. Contributors get bothered by Mark and myself intermittently, their name in lights (well, all right, in the acknowledgement section) and it's all quite jolly until someone loses an eye. So, here's what I'm looking for.

New Tunnelers anywhere in the UK: If you've put up your first tunnel this year, or are about to, we want to hear from you. I haven't forgotten the magic of my first polytunnel season, but I can also remember learning a hard lesson or two - so I'd love to hear how you get on.

Tunnelers in the Cumbria / Northumberland belt: For some reason you're a bit shy up there. Go further north and tunnelers are throwing themselves at you and showering you with photographs, but the Geordies are notably retiscent and in the Lake District they're too busy stuffing themselves with Kendal Mint Cake. Or so it seems, so speak up.

Tunnelers in the Midlands: I used to live up there, but that was before I discovered how fast everything grows when you hide it under an oversized plastic bag. Black Country people too - it's okay, I can hire a translator. (NB For readers unfamiliar with the Black Country region of England, this area has a truly magnificent Chaucerian accent but the translator is actually more to help us cope with the eclectic sense of humour. If you ask one of the Folk how they are, they're quite likely to say 'Fer to middlen' or possibly 'Worse'n ever, thanks f'rasken'.

Tunnelers in the Channel Islands: It's all a bit of a mystery down there, frankly, but there is apparently enough light to produce freesias in the dead of winter. I must know.

Any tunneler, anywhere, that reckons they have an unusual way of growing. Having heard yesterday about a tunnel in the North of England that has a solar-powered heating system that keeps it frost-free all winter, I know there are some scarily inventive people out there. I want to hear from you!

To join in, e-mail me at cantburp hyphen fimp at yahoo dot co dot uk.

Summer Hands

I have my summer hands on now. Anyone who doesn't garden in gloves* will know what I mean. A week's worth of spring weeding has left my skin tough and covered in tiny scratches, and a late-night jamming session yesterday** allowed the assorted juices to etch my hands in an entertaining manner, so that I look like a homage to Ray Bradbury's Tattooed Man. These hands don't come clean with anything less than a sandblaster, so that's it until the end of October when the squash are harvested. In high summer I'll add the yellow fingertips of a 60-a-day smoker, from pinching out tomatoes, and I'll wear my stains with pride.

A novel solution to dirty hands

The jam is unseasonal, I know, but our developing soft fruit beds have been so successful that I actually need to allow time to process the stuff. Last year (even with our dreadful summer) I was caught completely by surprise with a heavy non-garden workload and had no option but to freeze it all as it ripened, or give the stuff away. I made a few smallish batches of preserves at the time so we weren't in any danger of running out, and it was only when I tried to do the freezer's annual clean that I realised we had in excess of 10kg of soft fruit in there. So now it's smoothies, and sorbets, and vast quantities of jam; and this summer it will be wine. Oh yes.

In the interests of variety I'm going to spice some of the jam: cloves for the blackberry, dark and mysterious; cinnamon for the raspberry, full and luxurious; and ginger for the rhubarb, beloved of grandmothers since the gods were in short trousers. That just leaves the strawberry, and for the inspiration to add fresh tarragon to it I thank my friend Mrs Gadget. It's not a combination you'd think to try – but let me tell you, the first jar to enter the household lasted 45 minutes. Yes, 45 minutes. People were looking for things to spread it on.

So – to any Ozzies out there, happy jam making. To the rest of you, here's hoping you've not let the weeds get as bad as I have.

*Which I don't, for the record, unless I'm dealing with something that is likely to sting me, bite me, scratch me or make me smell suspicious. The routine wearing of gloves, I've always felt, indicates an unwillingness to touch. And if you don't touch, how can you connect? How can you really understand? Right from the moment we first gain control of our infant limbs we establish the need to literally get to grips with things, and although I draw the line at bunging them in my mouth, I must confess that glove-wearing gardeners make me sneer in a most unattractive manner. It puts me in mind of my father who, having watched a six-year-old Hedgewizard gingerly trying to weed with only fingers and thumbs, pounced on me and rubbed my hands in the soil. 'There,' he said with satisfaction. 'Now you don't have to worry about getting dirty any more.'***

**No, not the cool sort that involves a dimly-lit club, musical instruments and copious amounts of alcohol. The sort with strawberries in. Sorry to disappoint.

***Not a man to build a compost toilet with, believe me.

Sunrise, sunset

Excellent, another world's oldest person. I love these. This time it's the turn of one Gertrude Baines in LA, California. One hundred and fifteen years old, and according to her doctor said "...that she owes her longevity to the Lord, that she never did drink, she never did smoke and she never did fool around."

Well. That was a hundred and fifteen long years.