Not got the allotment yet, although we now have a plan of all the available plots and this weekend I shall be popping down there to have a nosey round with the Site Officer.
Now, I did have a slight concern about doing this Lasagne Gardening stuff, in that I wondered what the council would say. Would they object to my covering a 10 rod plot with old cardboard and neswpaper and peat and soil and stuff to prepare it? Well, it seems I may well have nothing to worry about: I watched Gardeners World on the telly tonight and the whole program was about a set of allotments in Birmingham. As you might expect, most of the plot holders were those fab little old men who know absolutely everything there is to know about growing veg and flowers. There were also a couple of dotty old ladies wot grow flowers and sepcial plants that are used to make dyes (Woad, for example; as demonstrated, this makes a lovely rich blue if the fabric being dyed is dunked about 50 times). These allotment holders get together for an annual show where the prizes for biggest marrows and such are along the lines of 60p for first place, 45p for second and 30p for third. They all compete for the sheer fun of the thing; that and good-naturedly out-doing their neighbours in the Whopping Veg stakes.
Anyway, there’s one old feller there who gets really great veg from his allotment: his secret? Layers of old cardboard and mulch! Lasagne Gardening wasn’t mentioned itself, I guess that’s just a modern phrase for it, but this chap knows his onions and the results were impressive to say the least. He even has a sepcial tool for digging up Parsnips: it’s only a length of hollow steel tube flattened at the end with a bloody great hammer and with a ‘V’ cut into the flat bit, but it works a treat.

See, there’s no knowledge like old knowledge. I can hardly wait until I get me own plot and the first old chap pops by for a chat and gives a few pointers. It’ll hopefully be just like the village I grew up in: loads of kindly old folk who freely impart useful tips in exchange for the odd errand here and there. I like that sort of thing. These are the same old folk that Henners and Trouty meet along the Wey: they know what they know and what they know works. No messing, just good honest knowledge and they have it in spadefuls. I aspire to be a helpful old gent, one day in the far future. Beats being rich with money.

‹Starts storing 10 rods-worth of old cardboard at work›

Y’know, it’s not always possible to take one’s job entirely seriously. Combine two serious points and you get a Silly Event. Allow me to explain:

Serious Point 1
Lately it has been rather warm and stuffy in my dept. Coupled with the latest Law handed down from above, which dictates that no-one is allowed to wear shorts (unprofessional looking, doncherknow), this makes it somewhat uncomfortable to sit at one’s desk. Naturally, I have sought ways to cool the office down a bit.
I rented a portable Air Conditioning unit. This has a dirty great exhaust hose on the back which has to be poked out of the nearest available window. When the A/C kicks in fully, this hose makes a very powerful hair-dryer.

Serious Point 2
We have to shred quite a lot of important paperwork (rather than simply chucking it intact into the recycling bin). For this, we have a very heavy-duty shredder. It’s very effective and, besides paper, it can mash up CDs, credit cards, carelessly dropped electronic door-passes, etc etc. As you might expect, there is an awful lot of waste to be disposed of.

Silly Event
A humerous way of disposing of all those lovely shreddings is to stuff them down the A/C unit’s hose. Wouldn’t it be a jolly jape to aim the hose at someone just as they walk into the office?
Two of my team attempted such. Packed very tighly, was this hose. Switching on the A/C unit, nothing happened. No comedy blast of shredded paper filled the air. These two Jolly Japers didn’t think too hard about their next move and decided to look down the end of the hose, at which point the main output fan of the A/C unit kicked in and blasted them both full in the face.

When I stopped laughing I made them fetch the hoover from the cleaning cupboard, of course.

‹Reflects that it’s always the way, isn’t it, when you don’t have a video camera handy just when you need one?›

Alright then: as promised, here are some kitten piccies for y’all to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahhh’ over. ‘Scuse the shoddy inconsistent editing

Want to see them move? Oh, alright then. Be warned, ’tis a 7MB avi file; please be patient if you have not yet shelled out for broadband

‹More piccies to be taken tomorrow, probably with another 2 week posting-delay, knowing me›