Alley Alley Aster.

Remember when as a child you watched those first snow flakes tantalisingly start to fall, and wished with all your heart and soul for it to keep going. We had a rhyme for the occasion, and our little street gang would all look up to the skies like a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses on judgement day, chanting “Alley Alley Aster Snow Snow Faster”.

Not exactly a Keatsian eulogy I know, and I’ve no idea who Alley Aster is, but we believed that if said repeatedly and long enough with increasing volume it could affect the weather to our advantage.

Sometimes it worked and we’d be rewarded with enough snow to go sledging down the roly-poly hill, so called because in dryer weather you could do a roly-poly down it, hoping you didn’t go through any dog muck.

Anything would do as a sledge, a bit of old lino, a redundant milk crate, or if you were lucky, a ‘real ‘ one made from some old wood with six inch nails, that would have the elf  ‘n’ safety police round today.

Pulling sleeves down over numbed hands, we’d have snowball fights with the enemy kids from the next street, who had some good shots and if you weren’t careful you’d cop for one right on your lug ‘ole, leaving it throbbing for a good ten minutes.

Arriving home, looking like a drowned chimpanzee with sleeves trailing to the floor, you’d get a clout on the other ear for not coming in and putting some ‘proper’ clothes on. “You’ll get double pneumonia you will my lad!”,  my Mother would say, with a dire warning not to put reddened feet  too near  the fire, for fear of getting the ‘hot aches’.

Sadly, when it snows these days such childhood nostalgia gets washed away in a tide of pragmatism, and now I despair at not being able to get things done down at the plot for example. Oh, and when I did that triple lutz the other day, whilst clearing the footpath yet again, I could have strangled that bloody Alley Aster!

At a cinema near you.

It was  Mrs N’s birthday yesterday, and seeing as she absolutely loves Les Miserables which was being shown at the local cinema, we went to see it.

“ Bloody hell, how much !” I exclaimed, as the girl at the ticket office told us the price, and was just about to point out the irony of the film being about the oppressed poor and all that, when a glowering look from the birthday girl persuaded me to keep quiet.

The film was to last 158 minutes and being of a certain age, I thought it wise to pay a ‘visit’ before we went to our seats. On entering the Gents, I nearly broke my neck tripping over a step stupidly situated just behind the entrance door. It’s quite an old cinema, and I wondered how many countless people over the years must have used those very same expletives.

Taking our seats early, I passed the time before the film started telepathically guiding late-comers to seats well away from us, and muttering about punctuality. There was only one near miss when an old lady hovered for a breathtaking moment looking at the seats directly in front, until a shout of “Barbara, we’re over here love”, thankfully had her heading off in another direction.

Eventually it started and at first I was quite impressed, but not being one for  films soon descended into apathy and nodded off for a while as it did drag on a bit. Mercifully, after 98 minutes precisely, the interval came and I paid another ‘visit’ just in case, only to trip over that  step again! Well, 98 minutes is a long time at my age you know, both mentally and urologically.

The second half was much better and whilst managing to stay awake long enough, witnessed some very moving moments, songs and performances. It’s a pity they felt the need to rely on some big names whose singing abilities left a lot to be desired. She of Mama Mia fame as lovely as she is, trilled away like a canary on acid, and Russell Crowe should really stick to disemboweling other gladiators.

All in all though it was very good or should I say c'est magnifique, and as we munched our way through a bag of Raspberry Ruffles and Chocolate Eclairs, my eyes did water a couple of times. Once when I accidentally bit my lip, and the other when I tried crossing my legs, and nearly did myself a mischief . Well that’s what I told Mrs N, when she saw me wiping my eyes.

The Birds.

I’ve never been that interested in orny orni birds, but I do like to look after the ones in the garden, and so can regularly be seen putting my fat balls out for them on a cold winter’s morning.

Also, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve become hooked on a computer game called ‘Angry Birds’over Christmas, on Mrs N’s new Kindle that she got as a present. When I first saw the title, I did wonder how they could possibly make a game about drunken women having a punch up on a Saturday night, until I discovered it was about lobbing explosive cartoon birds at pigs heads!

Well, the other day I’d just completed level three with a new highest score, when those dreaded words rang out that send shivers down my spine, “We need to get on with some decorating”, she said.

Mmmm, perhaps now’s a good time to put the game down, get off my now fatter a**e because of the Christmas excess, and pay my first visit of the year to the plot, I thought. She was a ‘not too pleased’ bird, rather than angry as I left.

Not long after arrival I was  joined by a visitor looking for a free snack. No, it wasn’t old Bob cadging my chocolate digestives again, it was a Robin redbreast. Now I’m not one for superstitions, apart from avoiding walking under ladders or breaking mirrors, oh and having to put my left shoe on first (don’t ask), but the sight of a Robin I take as a good omen. So I’m hoping this means that next year will be better one on the allotment, after the blight ridden wash-out we had last year.

A good omen ?

Then I went to get the fork from the shed to do some digging, and was met by a real angry bird. It was a little wren that must have been roosting in there, and as I opened the door it nearly scored a hundred points just missing my head as it flew out screeching. It's Karma again, I'm telling you.

Sadly it soon started to rain, again, so I reluctantly had to abandon the digging and return home. “ I think I’d like it in Magnolia”, she said.

Dangerous Liaisons.

I’m letting you all into a little secret here, by saying that I erm, rendezvoused with a certain young lady recently, and it’s not the first time either.

We meet at regular intervals throughout the year, because she’s so good with her hands, and listens to all my woes whilst running her fingers through my hair.

What’s more, Mrs N doesn’t mind a bit and actually makes me go to see her, as she doesn’t want to do it anymore, like she used to until a few years ago.

There is a down side however, as it costs me 6 quid every time I visit, and a 50p tip if she’s exceptionally good. But I suppose that’s not bad for a decent haircut in this day and age.

One of the main reasons I go to this particular hairdresser is that she knows I have an allotment, and as she grows things in her greenhouse, it gives us something to talk about.  The trouble is, she thinks I’m an expert and it always turns out like a session of Gardener’s Question Time.

“ My tomatoes wouldn’t go red this year,” she said the other day, “what do you think I did wrong ?”

I haven’t a clue, I thought, but I did tell her of one young woman I’d heard off, who tried watering her tomatoes in the nude, to make them blush.

“And did it work ?” she giggled.

“No it didn’t, but her cucumbers grew by four inches”, I replied.

Now here’s a warning, don’t tell your barber any jokes whilst they’ve got the tools of their trade in their hands, because she was now laughing so much that the scissors were menacingly going all over the place.

That, and the fact that she’s probably the fastest hair cutter in the west, had me in serious fear of leaving the place looking like Van Gogh !

With it being Christmas, she offered me a free bottle of Budweiser as a thankyou for my patronage throughout the year, but I don’t really like these new fangled beers. So not  wanting to upset her I accepted it, in the true Yorkshire spirit of never to refuse anything but blows.

It came in quite handy as it happens, because being straight from the fridge the bottle was cold enough to use for cauterising the blood coming from my earlobe.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Tom

Less is more.

In an effort to avoid using farmyard manure because of the dubious qualities of some you can get, I religiously compost everything I can down at the allotment and also from the garden and kitchen.

When I say religiously, I don’t mean I say a prayer over the compost heap every Sunday morning, when I take stuff down. Though, I have been known to ask my maker to not let there be any rats under the old carpet covering, when I take it off.

No, I mean that every scrap of compostable material that we produce, including lawn cuttings, leaves, paper towels, cardboard and even blog bog roll tubes are diligently saved for the heap,

It all adds up to a very big pile at the end of a season, positively spilling over from my pallet bins, like some classical cornucopia of decaying matter.

But where does it all go, because when I come to use last year’s, the pile will have shrunk to next to nothing and I’m lucky if I get a couple of barrows full from it. Once again, at digging time, I’ll be left looking at those great steaming piles of manure belonging to my allotment neighbours, with green eyed envy and ever diminishing standards.

Whilst wheeling some of my precious material in the barrow the other day, I saw old Bob looking over the top of his manure pile.

“You want to get some of this stuff on it ”, he shouted over, casting a disparaging eye at my pitiful barrow load, “best cow s**t for miles”.

As he hadn’t actually seen me get the barrow load from the compost heap, and so didn’t know exactly what it was, I decided not to be out done.

“Ah but this is very special stuff ” I told him,

“Oh, what’s special about it then ?”, he asked.

“It’s from a bull and because it’s more concentrated you don’t need use as much”, I told him, with as straight a face as possible.

(Sorry about the picture quality, the camera was shaking for some reason)

For a fleeting moment I had him, then the penny dropped.

“What a load of Bulls**t”, he said, and ambled off to continue with his digging.

Rest In Peas.

It was a lovely sunny morning when Grandma was driving three year old Emma to nursery recently.  Munching away on a biscuit, and no doubt dropping crumbs all over my newly cleaned car, the little one spotted a man on a tractor ploughing a field.

Emma....“What’s that mister doing over there Grandma ?”

Grandma....“He’s a farmer sweetheart, digging his soil like Grandad does ”.

Emma....“No Grandma, Grandad’s not a Farmer”.

Grandma....“Well what is he then darling ?”

Emma....“He’s an Allotment, silly”.

Well I never! Stereotyped by a bloomin' three year old, I ask you !

When Grandma told me this little anecdote, I was quite amused, but it also set me thinking.

Is this how I’m seen now by my family in my later years, and what’s more, is this what I’ll be remembered for when I’m gone, having an allotment ?

What about what I did in my working life, will I be remembered for that? and am I not now a writer blogger, guitar player and local historian even (well I do find old things on the plot).
 
All these other talents so obviously invisible to this poor unfortunate child, perhaps I need to work on my image a little more before it’s too late.  

But you know what they say, “out of the mouths of babes” and all that, and I suppose I ought to be grateful really that she doesn’t describe me as a pub or a betting shop. But please little Emma, if I am to be an allotment in your eyes, can I be a well tended, fertile and productive contribution to the horticultural world, and not the weed infested and pest ridden entity that I am at the moment.

Now I’ve thought about it  I quite like the idea, and I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad after all to be remembered for my allotment  by my family when I’m gone, or even as one by Emma. I can just see it now :-

                                         

The Tree of Optimism.

A friend of mine is a member of our village Parish Council, and me being of an allotmenteering bent., he asked me to help with a special job recently. It was the planting of a replacement apple tree on Parish land, for one that had become diseased and had to be felled, and which was protected by a tree preservation order.

Little was known about the now truncated old tree, such as when it was planted or what variety it was, which I thought rather sad. It had stood there forlorn and forgotten  in  that field for a very long time, but must have  had some significance once,  having ended up with a TPO on it.

Stumped (gettit !) as to what variety it was, we plumped for a good old  fashioned Bramley as its replacement, that will hopefully supply the innards of many a scrumptious apple pie for years to come.

Before

After

When the sheep in the field where it was to go, were eventually corralled off, the deed was duly carried out on a very wet and windy afternoon with their prolific droppings clinging everywhere. I must admit, for a while I wondered what the hell I was doing there!

People who passed by expressed an approving interest, except for one doom laden old lad who deflated me a little.  “You’ll just have to wait about seven years now, to see any apples from it”, he muttered, and it did make me think, given our ages!

It reminded me of the tale of the very old man who wanted to plant a tree, but his wife of sixty years questioned whether it was worth doing at his extended age.

“Hmm, I see what you mean”, he said, but after a short hesitation added,  “I’d better get on with it sharpish then, hadn’t I”.

Now was that just an acceptance of his fate, or a defiant show of optimism in the continuity of life beyond his own existence.  I prefer to believe the latter.

So in solidarity with that old man and in memory of the old tree, it was worth getting p***ing wet through and covered in sheep s**t for, I think, even though I may have to wait a while for some apple pie.