“Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden?” Robert Breault.
Listening to Farmers Weekly on R4 the other Saturday morning just in from clubbing of course, as ever there was plenty of old-fashioned common sense on offer.
For those of us patiently awaiting the spoils of the last few months in the vegetable garden, wise words were guaranteed.
With the coldest May I can remember passing, a farmer described one days worth of growing conditions in August as worth a week in September and a month in October.
Apply the same logic working backwards and a day in June might be the same as a week in May and so on. Growing vegetables is an exercise in patience and persistence but harvest time now awaits.
Liked an excited child at Christmas, I love it when the first potatoes come into flower, like a woman bursting with child, so long as it’s not mine.
I will be lifting the first earlies this weekend; they may be small but does size really matter?
The water butts ran dry a week or so ago so old tightarse here has been recycling washing up water nightly without shame.
Waste not, want not…so they say. But please can we have a deluge soon.
Summer Days
As I climbed the stairs to my Mums room with a hearty “Bring out the dead! Bring out the dead!” the spirited response was quick and to the point as ever. “Bugger off!”
Informing her that it was her gym session, sharp as a tack she replied. “I’m resting and having a lie-in.”
I pointed out she had been “resting” for almost six months hoping to gain the upper ground so far as the debate went. “That’s nowhere near enough having brought you up!” So you win again, I hummed.
With a mischievous glint in her eyes, she swung the old legs out of bed, slipped on her go faster Paver slippers and reached for her stick.
Following the principles of the local gym machine, we did a couple of laps up and down the staircase, punctuated by the odd accusation “were you a bloody Nazi?” Nothing woke or politically correct about my Mum.
Torture over for now, I positioned her favourite chair in front of the television with tennis from Queens to occupy the afternoon.
It reminded me of childhood days when Wimbledon meant it was fend for yourself, or at least wait to get fed when the main match had finished. Five sets classics were never my favourite.
I do remember a teenage crush on Chris Evert that lasted all my teenage years. Grace, beauty, athleticism; I prayed she would win to maintain my two-week stalking of her via the BBC.
Soon it will begin again but, like most sport, I have no interest. The characters are long gone, players robotic machines, save perhaps for the ageless Federer. Money rules all.
But at least my Mum will be fixated and I might even give her a few days off.
GB News
I tuned in at varying points during last Mondays launch of the new news channel and can only hope it gets better. Technical glitches forgiven, some of the presenting was hammy, shouty and way too matey for me.
There were too many inclusions of viewers comments from the likes of Bed Wetter from Bedford. Why do we need these?
Many of the presenters seem to be ex-Sky, the odd one more suited to CBBBC. Those of us hacked off by the dominant giants with their woefully sterile knee-bending offerings need this to work.
If ever we needed common sense and balance to counter the snowflakes it is now.
Only this week came this headline: The Good Life is given a viewer warning for offensive racial imagery after an episode featured the Golly badge for Robertson’s jam – see here for full story.
If Tom and Barbara Good need censoring the world really has gone mad.
Posh Bradford
I popped down the valley this week to see Richard at Raymond Town Menswear hoping to negotiate a trade deal post-Brexit. The colonial outpost of Bradford Council was alive and well with all taxes due to Emperor Hinchliffe paid up. More cycle lanes will follow.
Sadly I had to return a tee-shirt having not been with me the mandatory twenty years.
Fast fashion had reared its ugly head so Richard consulted the customer care booklet written by his late father John and found the appropriate response.
“P*ss off to Matalan! Shoes Sir?”
As I type this the sun is beaming, my new red shorts are on the bed and that will surely be that so far as summer is concerned.
At least the veg will be happy.
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