Gone to Seed

Down at the Town Mouse veg plot, all is not coming up roses. Or rather, all is not coming up parsnips, leeks, broccoli, lettuce or squash. I thought I’d played it safe with my veg selection, going mainly for vegetables I had successfully grown in the past. But I’d underestimated the difficulty of moving from growing veg in alluvial soil in a suburban garden in the south east to clay soil in rural Scotland.

neighbour's hens, wondering why I'm not feeding them any slugs

Quite apart from the slug wars (several dozen molluscs down, several million to go), the main problem has been things simply not germinating. Either I’m planting dust, or the conditions have not been right for the seeds when I’ve planted them. It probably hasn’t helped that the weather has swung wildly from warm sunsine, to downpours, to frost, to blowing a gale, sometimes on the same day. I’ve probably been far too impatient to plant as well

Of the seeds I’ve planted I’ve had one – count ‘em – parsnip come up (now missing presumed slug’s lunch), four leeks (now half a leek), three broccoli seedlings (currently still hanging in there under bottle cloches) and no lettuces. Only one sowing of peas has germinated, the rest simply refusing to come up. In fact, apart from the broad beans, the only real successes so far have been the potatoes and the garlic, both of which I started off indoors.

So I’m replanting – again – only this time I’m doing everything I can in pots. Of course this means more expense – replacement seeds, more compost, not to mention beer – so I very much doubt whether growing my own is going to work out cost effective at least this year. Still if it gets another bit of our diet out of the clutches of the useless Tesco it will be worth it. At the moment our local one is loudly trumpeting the ‘new season’ strawberries (grown under glass in Holland) whilst stocking no asparagus – surely the culiniary highlight of the spring veg season – at all.

Two Wheels Good

Common Wheel – who really know how to keep a girl in suspense – have tantalised me with the following progress update:

"Here are your wheels, made by Tony, awaiting pickup by John"

Meanwhile, it looks like a race is developing between the completion of my new bike and the disintegration of my old one. At the moment the two lowest gears are making interesting grinding noises and third is starting to go. Do you think it knows?

Walk a Mile in my Shoes

I was helping repair a footpath yesterday, which boiled down to mostly walking back and forth along the unrepaired footpath in a pair of wellies*. The result, if the generalised ache in my legs is anything to go by, was not just a nice repaired footpath, but a superb lower-body workout of the sort you normally have to pay some anorexic shrimp in lycra to force you to do to nasty music in a room full of other anorexic shrimps in lycra who can tell their lefts from their rights and who generally don’t appreciate exercising in a class with someone who can’t**

So I was wondering whether there’s any mileage in flogging an expensive line of ill-fitting clumpy boots and maybe an optional tray of clagging sucking mud for walking in them in – working title ‘Muddy Bloody Wellies’ or MBWs for short – to city-bound office workers who can’t get out into the wilds of Scotland to experience the real thing.

And then I came to my senses and realised that nobody would pay obscene amounts of money for ugly footwear that was deliberately difficult to walk in, even if it did do wonders for their rear view. I mean, would you?

* This wasn’t how we were repairing it, in case you’re wondering (it’s more how it got broken in the first place), but someone had to ferry all the stuff around and that person turned out to be me…

** not, ahem, that I would know this from experience. At all.

Heid the Ba’

So there I was, cycling along the other day, minding my own business, when I heard a car coming up behind me. I was getting to the crest of a hill and the road was narrow, so I didn’t want to be overtaken and have to slow down or stop until I’d reached the top. There’s two schools of thought on turning to look at drivers when you’re on a bike. One says that by showing them your face they stop thinking of you as a ‘bloody cyclist’ and start thinking of you as a human being and are therefore more likely to give you space on the road and not barge past you. The second school of thought is that by turning and looking you’re signalling you’ve seen them* and you want them to pass. In my experience, the latter is more common, and something about this car – the way tinny R’n'B was pounding out of its windows for a start – made me want to take no chances. So I held my line and didn’t look and I was a little surprised when it waited patiently behind me for the last few yards of the hill and even when I’d reached the top and pulled in so it could pass it still seemed to hesitate.

Finally, it roared past and the first thing I saw of it was the lad hanging out of the side window giving me a broad grin and a thumbs up. Which was nice, and distracted me for a second from his mate in the front passenger seat who was waving a golf club – I think it was a 3 wood – out of the window.

Quite apart from my first reaction – which was basically WTF? – this does go to show that golf really is an inclusive sport up here in Scotland. And my second thought was that thank goodness I wasn’t wearing a helmet, because otherwise they might have mistaken my head for a ball…

*Just a note to any non-cyclist drivers reading this: if you’re coming up behind us in a car, we’ve heard you, probably long before you’ve noticed us, and we don’t actually need to look. Particularly if you’ve got the tinny R’n'B thing going on

Poetry in Motion

The post this morning brought an unexpected gift – somewhere between a present and a card – in the form of a pamphlet from the Candlestick Press called Ten Poems about Bicycles. It includes Machines, by Michael Donaghy with this final couplet:

Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move.

Lovely. But what a sad irony that it arrived on the same day as this news. Somebody, somewhere, just doesn’t get it.

Oak Before Ash

Spring has come to the hedgerows recently, but I cycled past one bit this afternoon that didn’t seem to have got the memo:

I thought it might just have been over-flailed, but closer inspection revealed the black buds of an ash. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if the old wives’ tale is relevant here, and I proceeded to cycle very slowly indeed, looking for oaks and ashes to compare:

That looked pretty good to me. After all, if both the met office and the old wives were in agreement, surely we must be in for a dry summer after all – always assuming the met office aren’t simply using old wives’ tales for their long range forecasting themselves. Which might explain quite a bit…

And then I cycled a little further and saw this:

oh no! Ash Leaves

Come on trees, make your minds up. After further careful surveying it seemed that in general, the oaks seemed to be a little bit more out than the ashes, but it wasn’t exactly conclusive. So which is it going to be – soak or splash?

I expect round here it’s going to be a bit of both…

No Rush Hour

Various miscalculations and a C.R.A.F.T. moment* on my part led to me having to drive through Bigtown at 5:30 yesterday afternoon

‘Oh no, I’m going to be stuck in rush hour traffic now,’ I said.

‘Don’t be daft,’ my friend said. ‘Bigtown’s rush hour is about 3 o’clock…’

And she was right.

*Can’t Remember A F****** Thing

There’s no Such Thing as Bad Weather…

… there’s only bad clothing.

Or so they say. And, the rain having set in more or less permanently since Monday, I attempted to put this to the test today. Yesterday I’d set off in jeans for the papershop, mistaking a brief letup in the rain for it stopping instead of it merely pausing for breath, and I’d quickly regretted it. Today I was going to dress properly: hat, gloves, waterproof jacket, even the dreaded waterproof trousers and just get on with it.

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad clothing

It doesn’t start too well, with a rubbing noise with every pedal stroke that has me spending a lot of time adjusting the front mudguard until I realise it is in fact my waterproof trousers making the noise. Either I’m a knock-kneed cyclist, or they’re too baggy. Still at least they’re not leaking. Yet

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad clothing

I plod up the hill that is nearest village and out into the full force of the headwind. With my head down against it, my view is restricted to the peak of my cap now beaded with raindrops, a blurry section of road above my glasses, a less-blurry but rain-smeared section of road through my glasses, and my wet bike. Every so often a drop detaches itself from my cap and, if the wind is feeling kind, misses the tip of my nose.

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad clothing

When the road curves and I’m side on to the wind the headwind at least is reduced, but whichever ear is to windwards bears the brunt of the rain. My cords, protected from the rain by the over-trousers, are now steadily soaking up sweat instead. I’ve a feeling the only truly practical cycling wear for rain might be shorts, but I’m not quite ready for that yet, and neither, I suspect, is the world

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad clothing

Someone has dug out some of the ditches, but not all the culverts are clear yet and  water still gathers on the tarmac On Big A Road, for the few short yards that I take it, three lorries power past me too fast and too close, sending up skirts of rain and spray.

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad driving clothing

Coming back, with a tail wind at last and the rain off my face, but without its cooling effect the heat from my face steams up my glasses and the road ahead now is either blurry or foggy or both

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad clothing

Even the sheep have stopped eating and are gathered in the lee of walls and hedges, looking miserable the way only a wet sheep knows how. It seems even the finest and thickest merino wool would not be effective against this weather

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only bad clothing

Coming back through Nearest Village and there’s a faint glow in the sky ahead, an easing at last of the rain, and a brightening of the hills around me. The rain – well, stops is too strong a word, but it certainly lessens. I am still damp through and steaming but my mood brightens along with the weather. Besides I am almost home

There’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s…

You know what? There is such a thing as bad weather. And whoever said that didn’t spend near enough time in Scotland, during the glorious month of May.

Gastropub

The slug wars continue, and the good news is that you don’t actually have to waste real beer on the slimy buggers (although if you do, the darker the better). As it’s the yeasty smell that attracts them, just mixing flour, warm water, sugar and yeast is apparently enough.

As I had to mix up yeast to make pizza dough anyway, I did some extra for the slugs. The result wasn’t going to win any Camra awards, but it smelled right and I buried a couple of jars of it around my peas and beans.

And the next morning: bingo. Dead slugs – and happy chickens. Must be the beer marinade that does it, because my neighbour’s hens couldn’t get enough of them.

the morning after

Mixed Messages

Round here we are blessed with a large number of cycling routes …

Cyclists sod off

… and the usual number of idiots putting up signs. This, I think, explains a lot about why cycling provision is still so poor in this country despite any number of government schemes to improve it. I did think perhaps that what they meant to say was ‘cyclists rejoin road’ but if so …

meanwhile, on the other side of the road...

… why didn’t they just say so?