Beans on toast.

Every Tuesday Mrs Netall and I venture into town to do a bit of shopping and pay our regular visit to the library. Not that I’m a big reader, its just that the diuretic tablets I have to take every morning start to kick in by the time we are passing the place, and there’s a toilet in there.

I’m not a big lover of shopping either, and usually end up forlornly waiting outside with tied up dogs, while she’s inside buying mysterious things. But if I’m patient and behave myself, she rewards me with a late breakfast of beans on toast and a mug of coffee at our favourite café on route.

Of course I could have beans on toast anytime at home, made with the freshest of home baked bread, real butter and only the best beans money can buy. But there’s something about our little treat that defies all culinary logic, because it shouldn’t but it does, taste delicious.

Is it the thin sliced white bread I ask myself, toasted by the plumber with his blow torch, who’s in the back fixing the sink. The quality varies, but sometimes it can be a work of art with a patch of white that radiates out through all shades of brown to a blackened perimeter. I once had a piece with the face of Christ clearly visible on it, could it have been that the Holy Toast was among us that day!

Or is it the beans ? Kept warm for at least 4 hours in a container on the hot plate, until they can only be served up with a cake slice. Sometimes they have peas on the menu, in a container next to the beans, and if you’re lucky you get some of those as well. It all adds colour to the appearance you see, and I’d give the counter staff 5.9 for artistic merit if it was a competition.

Then there’s the butter to consider, or whatever it is they put on the toast, its yellow anyway. Applied so thick I’m sure they’re doing a deal with the local heart surgeon, who’s trying to meet his government targets.

Obviously there’s a bricklayer working in the back with the plumber, who lends them a trowel to spread it on with, and I have been known to scrape off the un-melted excess and take it home in a serviette to grease the chain on my bike.

It’s not cheap mind, and they’ve just put the prices up! In fact the last time we were in I overheard an old lady saying to her friend, that if her mother were still alive today, she’d die if she saw those prices.

What the hell has all this got to do with allotments, I hear you ask.

Sod all really, so here are some gratuitous photographs of strawberries I picked today to compensate.


This bonzer weighed in at a full 2 ounces!

Thieves, Hares and the Microchip.

What a combination eh! It all happens down at our allotments.

We’ve had some thefts recently from quite a few sheds on the site, which was something of a double injustice for some of us. The old timers in their wisdom, advised us when we first got our plots that it was a waste of time putting a lock on your shed, because any potential thief would think there was something valuable inside and break in. Well so much for that theory, all the locked ones were left completely untouched !

I still haven’t worked out if anything was taken from mine as it’s a total tip, in fact I think the burglar opened the door, took one look inside and decided it was unsafe to venture any further.

Whilst a few of us were stood discussing what we would do with the intruder, if caught, and who would donate the actual cucumber, Mary arrived over at her plot.

Some moments later however, we heard her let out a blood curdling scream. Concerned, we looked over and could see her manically waving her arms about, and shooing something away.

“What’s up wi’ her”, said Old John “Has she found that burglar hiding in t'gooseberry bushes or summat?”

“It’s a Hare”, she cried, and we all cheered as she chased the thing from her plot, then down the central path towards us brandishing a cane. Knowing she is a retired teacher, I thought for a moment that she was going to punish all of us for laughing.

When I say chased, the animal didn’t look to be in too much of a hurry and kept stopping to let her catch up. Eventually it got fed up of waiting, sauntered off and hid under one of the parked cars.

“The damn thing was eating my lettuces, it’s no good I’ll have to get a gate”, she said as she reached where we were gathered, and seeing the chance of a natter gave up the pursuit.

Talking of gates, before long she was telling us about her daughter, who was away in Italy attending a wedding.

Afterwards she was then travelling the length and breadth of the country, alone, in a 14 year old Ford Fiesta! But wait, that wasn’t the interesting bit.

She went on to say that the wedding was of her daughter’s best friend to a young man whose father had, in Mary’s words, “invented the microchip”.

“ Blimey, that’ll be some wedding, I bet he’s not far behind Bill Gates financially”, I commented, genuinely impressed.

“ Bill Gates?” she asked, frowning and looking at me as if I was an idiot.

“That computer billionaire”, I replied.

“What’s it got to do with computers?” she went on.

“You know, microchips for computers”.

“Oh no…..”, she said chuckling, “not those…… the ones you put in the microwave from McCains…....his dad used to work there”.

Hmmm, I do sometimes wonder if she’s winding us up you know !

Dear Hosepipe

Dear Hosepipe,

Please forgive me for completely forgetting about you since last year.

Throughout those long winter months, there you hung limp and forlorn on the back fence, exposed to the vagaries of wind and weather, heartlessly unloved, when you should have been safely hibernating somewhere inside.
Even at the start of the growing season, I dispensed with the need for your undying services and used that pampered plastic watering can that’s kept in the shed, on my newly sown seeds.

For weeks and weeks I cast all cares to the wind and gambled on the weather to keep things watered. Sure enough, those ever grey leaden skies delivered the goods as regular as clockwork.

Then, as we got further into the growing season, the heavens began to fail, and despite my naked midnight rain-dances around the water butt, the allotment became as dry as a dead dingo’s donger, as they say in some parts of the world.

Imagine my horror that day, to find all the vegetables gasping like lost souls in the Sahara Desert. I’ll never forget those terrible scenes of baby carrots and beetroot begging for water.

Hurriedly I plugged you in and rolled you out, then expected you to perform immediately without question, before I got reported to the RSPCV.

So I can’t really blame you for springing that leak, but did it have to be at the delivery end just as I turned the nozzle on, and leave me pi**ing wet through for the rest of the day.

P.S.
I was surprised how much of the stuff you could actually dispense in those few seconds that I spluttered for breath, with the freezing deluge that hit me in the face. You certainly made your point, I’ll put you away next winter.

Tom Wetall.

The sun has got his hat on.

I don’t do hats, they just do not suit me. I have a theory that either my ears are too near the top of my head, or they make them too deep. Whichever, the brim always ends up resting on my ears, bending them over slightly and making me look a right prat.


Because of this, having the allotment has brought me up against something of a dilemma, sunburn. There is no shade whatsoever down there so I’m totally dependent on sun cream, and I hate it. After an application it’s not long before I resemble one of those old sticky flypapers, with greenfly all over my face.

And how the hell do you get it on to your scalp? It’s easy for all you follically challenged people out there, but not being bald does have its disadvantages you know. Putting it on my hair spoils that carefully coiffured look that I’m renown for, it’s called a short back and sides in the trade. So there I sit on the plot enviously watching all the others looking so natural and cool in their hats, while I bake like a sun dried tomato.

Whilst in town last week I decided to bring matters to a head, so to speak, and find one that I can wear and not scare the grandchildren.

The first I tried was the standard flat cap, as they were giving away mufflers and live whippets with them, and I’m always up for a bargain. It was similar to the one my father used to wear when he was alive, and when I looked in the mirror I jumped back, there he was staring back at me.

Mrs Netall tried her hardest not to laugh, but failed, “Try a baseball cap”, she suggested.

Now as far as I‘m concerned there should be a law brought in immediately to stop men over a certain age from wearing them. So not exactly taking the suggestion seriously, I put one on backwards and pretended I was riding a skateboard. It didn’t stay on my head very long, when she hit me with her handbag and told me to stop embarrassing her.

At one point I picked up one of those Russian fur hats. Apparently it's called a Ushanka, which could be rhyming slang for what I would look like in it I suppose, and translates to ‘Ear Flap’ hat. Well that would take care of my particular problem I thought, but soon put it down again when I saw her handbag hand twitching.

Lastly in desperation, I tried on a kind of bush hat in blue denim, that didn’t look too ridiculous I thought, even though it had a brim wide enough to shade a glass of Fosters, and was only missing the corks on strings.

“ But… I look like Crocodile Dundee”, I protested to no avail, as she dragged me off to pay for it.

So on the plot the first day of wearing it, I was feeling a little bit self-conscious but not too bad, until Old John came along that is. He was on his way to the water tap, and I was sure I could hear him whistling ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport’, as he approached my plot.

Pausing at the gate, he looked over to where I was doing some weeding.

“Summat’s been at yer cabbages I see”, he observed.

“Yes”, I said, “ I haven’t a clue what’s doing it”

“It’s them Koala Bears you know…. little buggers they are”, he replied, and with a toothless grin ambled off with his watering can.