We finished unwrapping the Italian plants today. They were trussed up like chickens for their drive up from the nursery in northern Italy in an articulated lorry. This allows many more plants to fit in the space, and prevents them from getting tangled up in each other and then having leaves or branches torn off during unloading, but they do arrive looking quite stressed. Apart from the fact that it is dark in the lorry, air can't circulate properly around their leaves while they're tied up, and once untied they begin to look happier almost at once, as their leaves relax back to their proper angles.
The arrangement of leaves on a plant is a wonderful thing. The reason why a beech wood is so dark once the beech leaves are out and little will grow beneath a beech tree, is that every leaf is positioned so that the canopy in aggregate receives the maximum amount of light, and each leaf is shaded as little as possible by other leaves. Stand under a mature healthy beech tree in summer and you won't see a flicker of sky, just a total cover of beech leaves. Plants generally orientate themselves to the light, hence Chelsea designers like to get the planting in their show gardens done a couple of days before judging, so that the plants will look natural by the time the judges come round.
The Italian grower uses two kinds of netting. One has a small, neat, diamond pattern, and will rip tidily along its length once started off with scissors. That's fast and easy to remove. The other is a looser weave, made of thin, cutting threads that are painful to pull apart with your bare hands and won't rip in any direction. That is an absolute and complete pain to take off the plants, as bits of it wrap themselves around twigs and leaves and take an age to untangle. I hope not too many waste lengths of it end up as litter after use, because any small creature that got tangled up with it would be likely to stay tangled, and face a painful and lingering death. It really is nasty stuff.
One couple who were planning to sell their house were sizing up what larger plants we had and how much they cost, as they considered whether to create a new border in front of a long, dull stretch of fence to improve the look of the place. I didn't think it was my job to talk them out of this scheme, given that it would be a useful sale to us, and for all I know would help them market the house, but I thought that my heart would sink mildly at inheriting a mass of Photinia x fraseri 'Red Robin' and Cornus alba put in as a job lot by the previous owner. After they had gone I realised that a creative approach to the problem would have been to suggest trained fruit trees, which potential buyers might find more exciting.
Most customers seem pleased about the new tea room, though a few people are against the whole idea, fearing that we're about to turn into just another garden centre, and start selling gas barbecues, fleeces and novelty clocks instead of plants. The boss's parents are going to perform the grand opening, so his mother plans to go on the staff training day so that she knows how to work the coffee machine. My colleague asked me whether I was going, but I'm not. I haven't been asked, and I couldn't, as I have a haircut booked for that day, and have to clean the house and do the cooking for a lunch party the following day.
I put a great many plants out for sale, and swept one of the shrub beds as instructed on the manager's list, and by around four o'clock was feeling quite tired, and glad that there was enough of a steady trickle of customers to justify my staying at the till. My colleague volunteered to sweep dead leaves out from among the pyracanthas, but she has more moral fibre than I have.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Saturday, 10 March 2012
things are hotting up
When I got to work I discovered that they have finally done something about the muddy track across the back of the plant centre. For years, in fact for the whole of the plant centre's existence, the route from the back of the shop to the loo and the office consisted of a desire line across a patch of grass, which wore away the grass and left a chain of puddles in wet weather. The staff periodically lobbied the boss that we needed a proper path, because it looked awful, and because we were left shuffling around in the puddles if there were any plant deliveries after it had been raining. The boss always harrumphed about this, and said that he didn't want a cowboy job, and it would get done properly at some point. I have no idea if it has been done with proper foundations, but the gardener has cut away the damaged grass to form a broad, straight path, which is lavishly coated with fresh gravel. It looks about a thousand times better.
The latest delivery of large specimens from Italy came in as well, on Friday, and is sitting on the grass at the back of the plant centre, half of it still tied up in net bags. The manager left us a long list of things to do over the weekend, but removing the bags didn't feature until Sunday, and as we didn't manage to finish Saturday's jobs we never got on to de-bagging. I felt sorry for the plants, which looked as though they could do with some more air, but one more day probably won't make a great difference. And the first delivery of herbs had arrived since the last time I was at work, and some roses.
A cheerful and courteous man and his wife bought over £650 worth of plants, which helped swell the day's takings. As I put the contents of their three trolleys through the till, which took some time, his wife fetched him a chair to sit on, and he explained without rancour that he had bad sciatica, and it was a damn nuisance. His wife had vetoed his preferred treatment, which was for two beautiful women to walk up and down his spine, though he said she had offered to walk on it herself. He asked to be remembered to the boss, and when I asked his name it turned out to be one of those great gardening names that are commemorated in a group of plants. They'd driven up all the way from Sussex with a van.
Another customer rang to ask whether we sold spiral rabbit guards, and how much they were. The answer was yes, and 50p each. She said she needed quite a lot and would there be a discount? Quite a lot translated to 20, which is quite a few tree guards, but still only ten pounds worth. I don't think a tenner gets you a discount anywhere, certainly not with us. The famous name from Sussex didn't get a discount, though when he enquired amiably if he could I did suggest he should speak to the owner.
The strategy of putting the large and expensive Edgworthia by the till finally resulted in a sale, as I remarked (apparently casually though really with intent) to someone who was admiring it that we had some smaller ones in the tunnel, and she went and got one. I still think that there is only a limited amount that the staff can do to sell more. We can help customers find plants they would otherwise miss, and suggest good planting combinations, or in this case offer temptation in the form of smaller specimens, £20 suddenly looking a bargain when the big one is twice that. But in the end they come in with an idea and a budget, and all we can do is enhance things at the margins. All of our wiles and strategems in the course of an entire week don't make as much difference as whether or not Mr famous name decides to make a trip up from Sussex with a van.
The day's takings were further boosted by a couple from Lavenham who bought £450 worth of plants, including seven trees, and overall we were busy, which is good, and what you'd hope for at this time of year. In the morning I'll discover if we made any mistakes on the till.
The latest delivery of large specimens from Italy came in as well, on Friday, and is sitting on the grass at the back of the plant centre, half of it still tied up in net bags. The manager left us a long list of things to do over the weekend, but removing the bags didn't feature until Sunday, and as we didn't manage to finish Saturday's jobs we never got on to de-bagging. I felt sorry for the plants, which looked as though they could do with some more air, but one more day probably won't make a great difference. And the first delivery of herbs had arrived since the last time I was at work, and some roses.
A cheerful and courteous man and his wife bought over £650 worth of plants, which helped swell the day's takings. As I put the contents of their three trolleys through the till, which took some time, his wife fetched him a chair to sit on, and he explained without rancour that he had bad sciatica, and it was a damn nuisance. His wife had vetoed his preferred treatment, which was for two beautiful women to walk up and down his spine, though he said she had offered to walk on it herself. He asked to be remembered to the boss, and when I asked his name it turned out to be one of those great gardening names that are commemorated in a group of plants. They'd driven up all the way from Sussex with a van.
Another customer rang to ask whether we sold spiral rabbit guards, and how much they were. The answer was yes, and 50p each. She said she needed quite a lot and would there be a discount? Quite a lot translated to 20, which is quite a few tree guards, but still only ten pounds worth. I don't think a tenner gets you a discount anywhere, certainly not with us. The famous name from Sussex didn't get a discount, though when he enquired amiably if he could I did suggest he should speak to the owner.
The strategy of putting the large and expensive Edgworthia by the till finally resulted in a sale, as I remarked (apparently casually though really with intent) to someone who was admiring it that we had some smaller ones in the tunnel, and she went and got one. I still think that there is only a limited amount that the staff can do to sell more. We can help customers find plants they would otherwise miss, and suggest good planting combinations, or in this case offer temptation in the form of smaller specimens, £20 suddenly looking a bargain when the big one is twice that. But in the end they come in with an idea and a budget, and all we can do is enhance things at the margins. All of our wiles and strategems in the course of an entire week don't make as much difference as whether or not Mr famous name decides to make a trip up from Sussex with a van.
The day's takings were further boosted by a couple from Lavenham who bought £450 worth of plants, including seven trees, and overall we were busy, which is good, and what you'd hope for at this time of year. In the morning I'll discover if we made any mistakes on the till.
Friday, 9 March 2012
as ye sow so shall ye reap (possibly)
I met a friend for coffee in the Beth Chatto Gardens tea room, and with remarkable self control managed not to buy any plants. The tea room occupies a rather fine modern high ceilinged building with glass walls, and if you choose the right end you can have a view straight down the gravel garden. If you choose the other end you look into a polytunnel, which is less scenic, though full of individual treasures. Then I went and bought a tray of 15 polyanthus in B&Q, to go in pots by the front door. They are very slightly frilly, a mixture of pale pink and pale yellow, which will be delightful unless I discover that they darken to bright pink or anything like that as they age. I peered closely at all the trays before choosing the palest looking one. They were potted up this afternoon, so I have not actually finished the day with a net increase in pots needing planting out.
I spent the rest of the day sowing seeds in the greenhouse. In past years I've done that a month ago, in the second week of February, but this February the weather was atrocious and I had a cold. Last year I didn't sow any at all, because I had so much clearing up to do from the winter's damage (and that of the previous winter) that something in the timetable had to give. I even ordered a few packets from Chiltern Seeds before coming to this conclusion, so they stayed in the box of seeds along with all the ones that come free with gardening magazines.
Raising your own plants from seed is enormous fun, and you can save a significant amount of money when even small herbaceous plants sell for £3.50 or more, and most shrubs don't leave any change from a tenner. I like propagating, and think it's a key part of gardening, to the extent of holding that people who don't raise any of their own plants aren't really gardeners so much as plant based exterior decorators. I suppose I make an exemption for those with tiny gardens and absolutely no space for even a cold frame. However, it is time consuming. Before the sowing comes the scrubbing of the pots, and labels, and the rummaging in the shed to find the plastic propagating cases, which also need washing. Then there's a day or two of sowing, and possibly the special trip to the garden centre because you find you've run out of Cheshunt Compound. B&Q sell pots and labels at this time of year, but if you want fungicide suitable for seedlings (that's what Cheshunt Compound is) you will have to go to a proper garden centre. Then there's the pricking out, which takes much, much longer than the sowing did, and the potting on, and the finding enough space to stand all the pots, as one 9cm pot of seedlings multiplies to become three or four trays of young plants.
The next thing I must remember to do is renew the shading paint on the greenhouse, before we get a hot day and the pots of seeds cook. If they get too hot they dry out in a trice, and seedlings are soft little things, that won't withstand overheating like the overwintering pots of pelargoniums, that will take it all in their stride and maybe even believe they are back in South Africa.
My losses over the years have come partly from some pots drying out, and partly from others going mouldy, despite the Cheshunt Compound. Sometimes it starts on the seeds themselves, and I can see that they must have brought their own fungus infection with them on their seed coats. It's all rather rough and ready, and if I had more space, and automatic vents, I would probably do better, but I generally end up with enough usable plants to make the exercise worthwhile. Almost the hardest part of the grow your own from seed project is co-ordinating the plants and the site. Plants rapidly go downhill if not moved on into larger pots when they need it, or else planted in the ground, but finding the space to stand large numbers of 2L pots and the time to pot the plants on is tricky, so my home raised stock tends to stay in 9cm or at best 1L. The garden for most of its history has been a project evolving out of a field, and sowing seeds in February or March it is difficult to visualise which areas will be cleared, weeded and ready to receive the new young plants by September, or the following spring. Over the years I've ended up more times than I'd like with young plants that look good and vigorous, ready to be planted out, and nowhere to put them, because the area I had in mind is still knee deep in nettles or rye grass. Sometimes I manage to use half a batch of plants, and the difference within days between those that are still stuck in their pots and those that have been given the freedom of the open ground is remarkable.
Addendum Half way through typing this the Strulch arrived. I ordered it on Tuesday, and hadn't heard further from them since they acknowledged my order, so I wasn't expecting it this afternoon. It's just as well somebody was in. My instructions on how to find us, and request to send as small a lorry as possible, never made it through to the delivery company, but fortunately it was a fairly small lorry, and the driver got it round the turning circle without a problem, and knew how to find us, because he'd delivered the last load of Strulch. It is excellent stuff, and I will return to the subject soon, and put in a link, only not now because I am going out with my dad and my niece for a curry.
I spent the rest of the day sowing seeds in the greenhouse. In past years I've done that a month ago, in the second week of February, but this February the weather was atrocious and I had a cold. Last year I didn't sow any at all, because I had so much clearing up to do from the winter's damage (and that of the previous winter) that something in the timetable had to give. I even ordered a few packets from Chiltern Seeds before coming to this conclusion, so they stayed in the box of seeds along with all the ones that come free with gardening magazines.
Raising your own plants from seed is enormous fun, and you can save a significant amount of money when even small herbaceous plants sell for £3.50 or more, and most shrubs don't leave any change from a tenner. I like propagating, and think it's a key part of gardening, to the extent of holding that people who don't raise any of their own plants aren't really gardeners so much as plant based exterior decorators. I suppose I make an exemption for those with tiny gardens and absolutely no space for even a cold frame. However, it is time consuming. Before the sowing comes the scrubbing of the pots, and labels, and the rummaging in the shed to find the plastic propagating cases, which also need washing. Then there's a day or two of sowing, and possibly the special trip to the garden centre because you find you've run out of Cheshunt Compound. B&Q sell pots and labels at this time of year, but if you want fungicide suitable for seedlings (that's what Cheshunt Compound is) you will have to go to a proper garden centre. Then there's the pricking out, which takes much, much longer than the sowing did, and the potting on, and the finding enough space to stand all the pots, as one 9cm pot of seedlings multiplies to become three or four trays of young plants.
The next thing I must remember to do is renew the shading paint on the greenhouse, before we get a hot day and the pots of seeds cook. If they get too hot they dry out in a trice, and seedlings are soft little things, that won't withstand overheating like the overwintering pots of pelargoniums, that will take it all in their stride and maybe even believe they are back in South Africa.
My losses over the years have come partly from some pots drying out, and partly from others going mouldy, despite the Cheshunt Compound. Sometimes it starts on the seeds themselves, and I can see that they must have brought their own fungus infection with them on their seed coats. It's all rather rough and ready, and if I had more space, and automatic vents, I would probably do better, but I generally end up with enough usable plants to make the exercise worthwhile. Almost the hardest part of the grow your own from seed project is co-ordinating the plants and the site. Plants rapidly go downhill if not moved on into larger pots when they need it, or else planted in the ground, but finding the space to stand large numbers of 2L pots and the time to pot the plants on is tricky, so my home raised stock tends to stay in 9cm or at best 1L. The garden for most of its history has been a project evolving out of a field, and sowing seeds in February or March it is difficult to visualise which areas will be cleared, weeded and ready to receive the new young plants by September, or the following spring. Over the years I've ended up more times than I'd like with young plants that look good and vigorous, ready to be planted out, and nowhere to put them, because the area I had in mind is still knee deep in nettles or rye grass. Sometimes I manage to use half a batch of plants, and the difference within days between those that are still stuck in their pots and those that have been given the freedom of the open ground is remarkable.
Addendum Half way through typing this the Strulch arrived. I ordered it on Tuesday, and hadn't heard further from them since they acknowledged my order, so I wasn't expecting it this afternoon. It's just as well somebody was in. My instructions on how to find us, and request to send as small a lorry as possible, never made it through to the delivery company, but fortunately it was a fairly small lorry, and the driver got it round the turning circle without a problem, and knew how to find us, because he'd delivered the last load of Strulch. It is excellent stuff, and I will return to the subject soon, and put in a link, only not now because I am going out with my dad and my niece for a curry.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
in the garden
It was a beautiful morning, sunny and bright, and I had the whole day to spend in the garden. I started off by weeding the gravel in the front. That is, weeding part of the gravel. There's a lot of it, and so keeping it free of weeds and leaf litter is an ongoing project. I decided to devote some time to the gravel, despite the borders crying out to be weeded and the seeds needing to be sown, because a mostly used bright green dumpy bag of gravel had been sitting near the entrance for weeks, and it seemed to me that using it up and getting rid of the bag offered a favourable ratio of effort to visible cosmetic improvement. There was no point in chucking perfectly good gravel on top of the weeds, hence the weeding. Although it was sunny, the wind was keen and made my eyes water, with the irritating result that I kept crying on my glasses. Once I'd cried on them I couldn't see properly, so kept having to stop weeding, take off my gloves, and rummage around under my fleece to find the hem of my cotton shirt to wipe them dry. This is why I have a pair of glasses specifically for gardening.
After I'd cleared the green bag out of the way I returned to the climbers under the veranda. I'm on the home straight (I tell myself), tackling a large honeysuckle that has grown up a huge elder. The honeysuckle was full of dead twigs, and as I cleared those out the underlying structure of twining stems revealed itself. I was able to tie quite a long section of honeysuckle and climbing rose into the trellis under the veranda, once I'd cleaned out all the debris. I'm cutting down the elder, but not until I have tidied the honeysuckle that's hanging from the top of it. That's a task that would be a hundred times more fiddly with the honeysuckle lying in a big collapsed heap around my knees. As I picked up years' worth of fallen twigs I uncovered a mysterious disc of something that looked vaguely unpleasant, and as if it might once have been alive. I wondered if the previous owners had ever had a tortoise, and if I had stumbled upon its shell, and then whether it was a gigantic hibernating toad. Investigating it cautiously I discovered it was an old birds' nest, that had fallen to the ground and started to solidify as it decomposed.
The Trachelospermum jasminoides does not look at all happy, which is a shame since it was starting to look quite good by the end of last summer. Its leaves have gone dull and hand down at the wrong angle. I blame the very cold snap, but maybe I have let it get dry. I put a can of water on it last week, just in case. The Berberidopsis corallina has lost a lot of leaves and the ends of its shoots have died in the cold, but it is throwing a new stem from ground level that looks healthy, and I think it is minded to live.
As I feared, those two nights when the temperature plummeted to around minus 12 C have hit several plants. The Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue' that had made good growth in its first season in the front garden has lost all the leaves from its upper branches. I thought they were doomed just after the frost, when they had gone the wrong colour. The branches at the very bottom of the bush look OK, so maybe it will sprout from the base. I'm starting to get chary about using pittosporums as structural features, pretty as they are. It is probably safer to regard them as ephemeral, charming while they last, but not to be depended on long term. Some people are like that.
The hyacinths in pots are opening. I tried a new (to me) variety, 'City of Bradford'. They are a soft blue, with a definite flush of pink while in bud, extremely attractive, and I'm delighted with them. Hyacinths are good bee plants, and today as well as the honeybees I saw a great queen bumble on one of the flowers. One stem had flopped over, and I took a couple of minutes to fetch a slim stake and some string and tie it up. It's worth making the effort, because hyacinth flowers last longer if not allowed to fall down.
After I'd cleared the green bag out of the way I returned to the climbers under the veranda. I'm on the home straight (I tell myself), tackling a large honeysuckle that has grown up a huge elder. The honeysuckle was full of dead twigs, and as I cleared those out the underlying structure of twining stems revealed itself. I was able to tie quite a long section of honeysuckle and climbing rose into the trellis under the veranda, once I'd cleaned out all the debris. I'm cutting down the elder, but not until I have tidied the honeysuckle that's hanging from the top of it. That's a task that would be a hundred times more fiddly with the honeysuckle lying in a big collapsed heap around my knees. As I picked up years' worth of fallen twigs I uncovered a mysterious disc of something that looked vaguely unpleasant, and as if it might once have been alive. I wondered if the previous owners had ever had a tortoise, and if I had stumbled upon its shell, and then whether it was a gigantic hibernating toad. Investigating it cautiously I discovered it was an old birds' nest, that had fallen to the ground and started to solidify as it decomposed.
The Trachelospermum jasminoides does not look at all happy, which is a shame since it was starting to look quite good by the end of last summer. Its leaves have gone dull and hand down at the wrong angle. I blame the very cold snap, but maybe I have let it get dry. I put a can of water on it last week, just in case. The Berberidopsis corallina has lost a lot of leaves and the ends of its shoots have died in the cold, but it is throwing a new stem from ground level that looks healthy, and I think it is minded to live.
As I feared, those two nights when the temperature plummeted to around minus 12 C have hit several plants. The Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue' that had made good growth in its first season in the front garden has lost all the leaves from its upper branches. I thought they were doomed just after the frost, when they had gone the wrong colour. The branches at the very bottom of the bush look OK, so maybe it will sprout from the base. I'm starting to get chary about using pittosporums as structural features, pretty as they are. It is probably safer to regard them as ephemeral, charming while they last, but not to be depended on long term. Some people are like that.
The hyacinths in pots are opening. I tried a new (to me) variety, 'City of Bradford'. They are a soft blue, with a definite flush of pink while in bud, extremely attractive, and I'm delighted with them. Hyacinths are good bee plants, and today as well as the honeybees I saw a great queen bumble on one of the flowers. One stem had flopped over, and I took a couple of minutes to fetch a slim stake and some string and tie it up. It's worth making the effort, because hyacinth flowers last longer if not allowed to fall down.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
talk in Chelmsford
I drove to Chelmsford today to do a woodland charity talk. It is slightly mad to have someone clogging up the roads driving from north Essex to Chelmsford to bang the drum for environmental conservation, but they don't have a volunteer based in the middle of the county. They did have somebody a few years back, but he found his working hours became unpredictable and he couldn't combine work with volunteering. I once stepped in to cover one of his gigs at Hatfield Peveril at extremely short notice, a fact to which the organisation saved from having a meeting without a speaker were totally oblivious, and so completely ungrateful.
Today's group were perfectly pleasant, and the talk went fine, apart from a heart-stopping moment before the start. I'd got the digital projector set up, and done my best to level the image by twiddling the legs under the machine, trying to work out how much of my problem was that the screen is wonky after years of use and makes the picture look off-kilter when it isn't, and to what extent the issue was that the floor wasn't level. The picture looked about right, or at least as good as I was going to get it, I put the remote control down on the projector stand, and the power cut out. Suddenly there was not merely no image, but no green light on the projector. My host said he hadn't switched anything off, so I didn't know if it was a momentary power interruption, or if my equipment had broken. The remote requires you to press the off button twice before the machine will power down, to save you from accidentally switching it off if you press 'Off' once by mistake while talking, so I knew I hadn't turned it off.
The digital projector takes several seconds either to power up or power down, so once you have tried anything you need to give it time to work. I tried pressing the on-off button once, and the red light on the back of the machine began to flash, which normally means it is powering down. My host began to flap around me, trying to be helpful, and looked alarmingly as though he were going to experimentally unplug the machine. My cry of 'please don't touch that' had more than a touch of squeak about it. The machine went through a phase of bringing up the slide menu, but refusing to go into the first slide, claiming not to be able to detect an input, then settled down and worked for the rest of the afternoon. At times like that I still find the digital projector un-nerving, even after years of using it, because I know that if it goes off-script and does something I am totally not expecting, it is only a small and stupid computer and I am not good with computers, so my chances of getting it to work are slim. Especially when I have an anxious pensioner fussing around me who knows even less about digital projectors than I do, and a compilation of popular songs of the twentieth century playing rather too loudly in the background. (I find background music hampers thought, and always have to switch off the radio for tricky bits of navigation in the car. I don't understand all those people who call Classic FM with their requests and say they are at work, or worse still, finishing a thesis or revising for exams.)
On the journey home I got cut up by a van and a four wheel drive on my way back to the A12, and then ground to a halt around Hatfield Peveril, which turned out to be due to a jackknifed lorry blocking one lane at Rivenhall. The lorry had demolished a lampost before coming to rest with the cab at ninety degrees to the road jammed into a large bush, and the trailer across one carriageway, but the glass of the cab was intact and I shouldn't think the driver was seriously hurt. It was a perfectly nice day by then, not raining, decent visibility. Goodness knows how anybody manages to jacknife a lorry in those conditions, but they ought to be prosecuted for causing a nuisance. There are some evil potholes in that part of the A12, which I was able to study in detail at my leisure as we crawled along. They need filling in before the next traffic jam is caused by a motorcyclist sticking their front wheel down one and killing themselves.
When I got home (eventually) I discovered that all four little hens had come out of the chicken house, and been scratching around the straw bale in the run while the rooster stood on top of it with a horrified expression, like somebody standing on a chair to escape from mice. He'll like them when they're older.
Addendum BT refused to admit that the reason why our broadband capacity falls off a cliff in the evenings is because they don't provide enough capacity for the number of customers using the line then, and said we must have a new home hub. The Systems Administrator fitted it, and we discovered that our wireless printers would no longer work. Seems the new home hub can't support them. I now have a too-short USB cable strung across my desk as an emergency measure. Good old BT.
Today's group were perfectly pleasant, and the talk went fine, apart from a heart-stopping moment before the start. I'd got the digital projector set up, and done my best to level the image by twiddling the legs under the machine, trying to work out how much of my problem was that the screen is wonky after years of use and makes the picture look off-kilter when it isn't, and to what extent the issue was that the floor wasn't level. The picture looked about right, or at least as good as I was going to get it, I put the remote control down on the projector stand, and the power cut out. Suddenly there was not merely no image, but no green light on the projector. My host said he hadn't switched anything off, so I didn't know if it was a momentary power interruption, or if my equipment had broken. The remote requires you to press the off button twice before the machine will power down, to save you from accidentally switching it off if you press 'Off' once by mistake while talking, so I knew I hadn't turned it off.
The digital projector takes several seconds either to power up or power down, so once you have tried anything you need to give it time to work. I tried pressing the on-off button once, and the red light on the back of the machine began to flash, which normally means it is powering down. My host began to flap around me, trying to be helpful, and looked alarmingly as though he were going to experimentally unplug the machine. My cry of 'please don't touch that' had more than a touch of squeak about it. The machine went through a phase of bringing up the slide menu, but refusing to go into the first slide, claiming not to be able to detect an input, then settled down and worked for the rest of the afternoon. At times like that I still find the digital projector un-nerving, even after years of using it, because I know that if it goes off-script and does something I am totally not expecting, it is only a small and stupid computer and I am not good with computers, so my chances of getting it to work are slim. Especially when I have an anxious pensioner fussing around me who knows even less about digital projectors than I do, and a compilation of popular songs of the twentieth century playing rather too loudly in the background. (I find background music hampers thought, and always have to switch off the radio for tricky bits of navigation in the car. I don't understand all those people who call Classic FM with their requests and say they are at work, or worse still, finishing a thesis or revising for exams.)
On the journey home I got cut up by a van and a four wheel drive on my way back to the A12, and then ground to a halt around Hatfield Peveril, which turned out to be due to a jackknifed lorry blocking one lane at Rivenhall. The lorry had demolished a lampost before coming to rest with the cab at ninety degrees to the road jammed into a large bush, and the trailer across one carriageway, but the glass of the cab was intact and I shouldn't think the driver was seriously hurt. It was a perfectly nice day by then, not raining, decent visibility. Goodness knows how anybody manages to jacknife a lorry in those conditions, but they ought to be prosecuted for causing a nuisance. There are some evil potholes in that part of the A12, which I was able to study in detail at my leisure as we crawled along. They need filling in before the next traffic jam is caused by a motorcyclist sticking their front wheel down one and killing themselves.
When I got home (eventually) I discovered that all four little hens had come out of the chicken house, and been scratching around the straw bale in the run while the rooster stood on top of it with a horrified expression, like somebody standing on a chair to escape from mice. He'll like them when they're older.
Addendum BT refused to admit that the reason why our broadband capacity falls off a cliff in the evenings is because they don't provide enough capacity for the number of customers using the line then, and said we must have a new home hub. The Systems Administrator fitted it, and we discovered that our wireless printers would no longer work. Seems the new home hub can't support them. I now have a too-short USB cable strung across my desk as an emergency measure. Good old BT.
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
more mushroom compost
The tiny hens were ravenous when I let the others out, and went rushing to the food hopper as soon as the rooster and the big hen went out of the hen house. It occurred to me belatedly that yesterday, with the adult fowl sheltering from the rain in the house, which the SA reports they did, the new hens may have spent the day hiding in the egg box and not have got much to eat. Two of them came out into the run briefly later on, so that's progress. They are very tame, and don't flinch away from my hand when I top up their food or renew their water, though they still keep kicking sawdust in their pan of water, and the sooner they start using the run normally with the others the better. They keep together in a little flock, and make small peeping noises, which again is encouraging, as hens generally seem to chatter when they're content.
We went and got more mushroom compost this morning. Originally we were going to go last Friday, then the Systems Administrator began to think that a morning spent shovelling straw and manure might not be the best preparation for an evening sitting on the chairs in the village hall, which was a perfectly sensible thought. It was just a pity that we had over 20mm rain in the intervening period. The yard at the mushroom farm was particularly slurry covered, and staff were dumping fresh loads of spent compost when we arrived, so that the only accessible pile for us to dig from lay the other side of a large puddle and a layer of semi-liquid straw and manure about 15cm thick.
I went to pay at the office, and the woman there asked me how many bags we'd had. I said that we hadn't loaded it yet, but would like 25. She looked at me and asked 'How large is your car?' We agreed that mushroom compost was splendid stuff for the garden and she wished me happy shovelling.
By the time we got to the twentieth bag I was beginning to feel tired, but I really wanted that compost, and when we'd bothered to drive all the way up there it seemed a pity not to make the most of it. I nearly got my boot stuck a couple of times, but didn't, and we both managed not to fall over. We had a bit of a scare with the truck when the SA reversed it down a slope to bring it nearer to the bags, to save carrying them across the yard, and it wouldn't go up the hill again because the wheels kept slipping on the slurry. Eventually the truck made it back to the top, after taking a run at the hill, and we heaved the bags on board. I could lift the small ones that originally held B&Q composted farmyard manure, but the big ones that originally held Strulch were a two person job
On the way home we agreed that it was just as well I hadn't gone for 30 bags, and the SA confessed to hating loading manure, while seeing that it had to be done. The bags certainly weigh more than 25kg, which is the weight of a sack of chicken feed or bag of cement. If they weighed as much as 40kg each then we lifted 1000kg of manure, which is a tonne. Literally. It might have been a bit less than that, but it was a lot. As the SA says, a whole heap of shit.
We went and got more mushroom compost this morning. Originally we were going to go last Friday, then the Systems Administrator began to think that a morning spent shovelling straw and manure might not be the best preparation for an evening sitting on the chairs in the village hall, which was a perfectly sensible thought. It was just a pity that we had over 20mm rain in the intervening period. The yard at the mushroom farm was particularly slurry covered, and staff were dumping fresh loads of spent compost when we arrived, so that the only accessible pile for us to dig from lay the other side of a large puddle and a layer of semi-liquid straw and manure about 15cm thick.
I went to pay at the office, and the woman there asked me how many bags we'd had. I said that we hadn't loaded it yet, but would like 25. She looked at me and asked 'How large is your car?' We agreed that mushroom compost was splendid stuff for the garden and she wished me happy shovelling.
By the time we got to the twentieth bag I was beginning to feel tired, but I really wanted that compost, and when we'd bothered to drive all the way up there it seemed a pity not to make the most of it. I nearly got my boot stuck a couple of times, but didn't, and we both managed not to fall over. We had a bit of a scare with the truck when the SA reversed it down a slope to bring it nearer to the bags, to save carrying them across the yard, and it wouldn't go up the hill again because the wheels kept slipping on the slurry. Eventually the truck made it back to the top, after taking a run at the hill, and we heaved the bags on board. I could lift the small ones that originally held B&Q composted farmyard manure, but the big ones that originally held Strulch were a two person job
On the way home we agreed that it was just as well I hadn't gone for 30 bags, and the SA confessed to hating loading manure, while seeing that it had to be done. The bags certainly weigh more than 25kg, which is the weight of a sack of chicken feed or bag of cement. If they weighed as much as 40kg each then we lifted 1000kg of manure, which is a tonne. Literally. It might have been a bit less than that, but it was a lot. As the SA says, a whole heap of shit.
Monday, 5 March 2012
my words in print
Blimey. All those customers who gushingly declare that they would love to have my job, it must be such a wonderful place to work, ought to try it on a day like today. It rained. It was windy. It was cold. The plants fell over. There weren't many customers. Those that did come deserved to get a medal.
The new tea area has grown window frames since I was last there, though the windows themselves aren't ready yet, and the holes in the wall are still neatly boarded over. The interior walls have received a fresh coat of brilliant white paint, which will disappoint my colleague who was hoping for something warmer. We were all asked to think of any refreshments that we ought to stock in addition to the tea and cake, and I wrote ginger beer on the list, but refrained from adding 'lashes of'.
The big excitement from my point of view was that the new garden guide arrived from the printers. The owner was disappointed with the front cover, which she had expected to be a brighter shade of green. Apparently her printer told her that it was her own fault for using her web designers to design the booklet, as web designers never understand colour printing. We all thought that the colour, a dark olive, was good, even if unintentional. They used my text almost verbatim (I've just checked against the last draft I sent her). There are a couple of flourishes I suspect the boss of having added, and a couple of mangled substitutions I blame on the web designers, having seen their original wording for the website. Why alter 'the course of the natural stream' to 'the adjoining watercourse'? 'Adjoining' is a word straight out of estate agents' particulars (along with the phrase 'benefits from') and subtly alters the meaning, to something meaningless. And I'm slightly worried that plant names I used in their common sense, like rhododendrons, have been capitalised and put into italics to use them in their botanical sense, while retaining the plural s at the end. Still, overall it is almost exactly what I wrote and I'm quite chuffed to see my words in a printed document that somebody actually paid for.
The annual rainfall at work is even lower than I thought. I'd put it at 570mm, based on the nearest local site I could find records for on the internet, but the boss has revised that down to 510mm. Many garden guides don't bother to include any information about the growing conditions, and that always irritates me. As I go around a garden I like to know what sort of soil it's on and how much rain it gets, to put the planting in context.
A man wearing heavy work boots and a fleece with the logo of another garden on it took away five trees, six tree ties and a pair of gloves, saying they should be invoiced for. I was pretty sure I recognised the name of his garden, and it would be an odd sort of scam, to have a fleece made specially and then use it to take five trees without payment. I didn't know him though, and it is a bit odd that our sales staff are supposed to just let people who say they get invoiced walk off with stock. I asked a while back if we could have a list of customers who were on invoicing terms, but nothing ever materialised. If eventually we are scammed I suppose at that point we'll slam the stable door.
The new tea area has grown window frames since I was last there, though the windows themselves aren't ready yet, and the holes in the wall are still neatly boarded over. The interior walls have received a fresh coat of brilliant white paint, which will disappoint my colleague who was hoping for something warmer. We were all asked to think of any refreshments that we ought to stock in addition to the tea and cake, and I wrote ginger beer on the list, but refrained from adding 'lashes of'.
The big excitement from my point of view was that the new garden guide arrived from the printers. The owner was disappointed with the front cover, which she had expected to be a brighter shade of green. Apparently her printer told her that it was her own fault for using her web designers to design the booklet, as web designers never understand colour printing. We all thought that the colour, a dark olive, was good, even if unintentional. They used my text almost verbatim (I've just checked against the last draft I sent her). There are a couple of flourishes I suspect the boss of having added, and a couple of mangled substitutions I blame on the web designers, having seen their original wording for the website. Why alter 'the course of the natural stream' to 'the adjoining watercourse'? 'Adjoining' is a word straight out of estate agents' particulars (along with the phrase 'benefits from') and subtly alters the meaning, to something meaningless. And I'm slightly worried that plant names I used in their common sense, like rhododendrons, have been capitalised and put into italics to use them in their botanical sense, while retaining the plural s at the end. Still, overall it is almost exactly what I wrote and I'm quite chuffed to see my words in a printed document that somebody actually paid for.
The annual rainfall at work is even lower than I thought. I'd put it at 570mm, based on the nearest local site I could find records for on the internet, but the boss has revised that down to 510mm. Many garden guides don't bother to include any information about the growing conditions, and that always irritates me. As I go around a garden I like to know what sort of soil it's on and how much rain it gets, to put the planting in context.
A man wearing heavy work boots and a fleece with the logo of another garden on it took away five trees, six tree ties and a pair of gloves, saying they should be invoiced for. I was pretty sure I recognised the name of his garden, and it would be an odd sort of scam, to have a fleece made specially and then use it to take five trees without payment. I didn't know him though, and it is a bit odd that our sales staff are supposed to just let people who say they get invoiced walk off with stock. I asked a while back if we could have a list of customers who were on invoicing terms, but nothing ever materialised. If eventually we are scammed I suppose at that point we'll slam the stable door.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
unfit persons
I thought I might have a couple of hours to work in the garden before the rain arrived, but it was already raining by the time I got up. We need rain, and it didn't rain yesterday afternoon when it was supposed to, so I can't really complain. It would be handy if it could be nicer weather just at the moment, to encourage the new little chickens to come out of the hen house. They were all clustered in the egg laying box when I went to let them out this morning, and when I lifted the lid four little faces did look up at me, and start peering over the side of the box, so they have had a glimpse of what lies out there. It is not very convenient for the laying hen to have the nesting box occupied by tiny hens, and I hope they get a little braver soon, but a cold, wet day like today does not provide a good incentive for them to want to come out. Later on the rooster went into the hen house, and the new little chickens all tried to hide in a heap behind the food hopper, like something out of the Keystone Kops. They have got a tray of water in there, as they won't come out to use the proper drinker, and they keep kicking sawdust in it.
I spent a happy hour picking dead leaves off the overwintering pelargoniums in the greenhouse, until my feet got cold, and then scrubbed the old writing off my collection of used plastic plant labels. Pencil washes off quite easily, with the help of a green scouring pad. It's a job to save for a wet day, when there's not much else to do, and you can listen to the radio while you're doing it. Later I might scrub some flowerpots, and sow some seeds. A greenhouse is a wonderful toy for anybody who likes pottering around with plants. It has all the merits of a shed, but with abundant natural light.
I also failed my UK Citizenship Test. This would come as a blow if it weren't that I am already a citizen. I took the on-line practice test out of curiosity, to see what kind of questions they asked, after reading an article about it in the Telegraph, and Nigel Farndale was right, it is a really bizarre test. I got 63%. Nigel Farndale failed it too, though he doesn't say what he scored. It's true that I wasn't trying very hard, and maybe subconsciously wanted to do badly to prove how silly it was. I was finished in nine minutes and something seconds, and you have up to 45 minutes to complete it. However, as it is a multiple choice test you shouldn't need that long to answer 24 questions. If you don't know the answers then the safest method, like spelling a word you're not sure about, is to go for the first answer you think might be right, and not spend too long agonising over it.
For example, the number of children and young people aged up to 19 in the UK is 13,14,15 or 16 million? I guessed 15 million, which turned out to be correct. This was based on nothing except that I remembered from a Woodland Trust campaign that several years ago there were 12 million UK children under the age of 16. It turned out to be right, but what earthly bearing does it have on anybody's fitness to be a UK citizen? If they'd thought that the answer was 5 million or 25 million we should be worried that the applicant was innumerate, deeply stupid, or hadn't even a rough idea of the size of the total population, but 15 million versus 14 or 16 million? It doesn't matter. I got the next question wrong, guessing that the Muslim population in 2001 was 1.6% of the total, whereas it turns out it was 2.7%. I knew it was a low number And the question asks about eleven years ago, not even now. If a prospective new citizen believed that Muslims comprised 10% of the population, or 25%, then I'd be worried, but 1.6% versus 2.7%? Sub three per cent, either way. A smallish minority.
Some of the questions were ambiguously worded, when you thought about them. I decided that it was True for the purposes of the test that you could only attend a hospital without a letter from a GP in an emergency, thinking of visiting A&E versus seeing a consultant for the first time, where you do need a referral. But follow-up appointments with consultants, and regular attendance at things like diabetes clinics, don't need a GP's letter every time. Once you're in the system you deal directly with the hospital, so the literal answer to the question would be False. I got that one right, but failed the first question. It turns out to be False that in the 1980s the largest immigrant groups were from the West Indies, Ireland, Pakistan and Indian. They were from the United States, Australia, Africa and New Zealand. The test must take a narrow definition of immigrant group as citizens of other countries currently living in the UK, whereas I'd taken it to include second and third generations who still formed parts of culturally distinct immigrant communities. It's true that in the 1980s The Systems Administrator and I did know several Americans, Australians and Africans who were working in the UK (who never took UK citizenship and have mostly since left), but you don't hear talk on the radio or read in the papers of 'the American community' or 'the Australasian community', whereas you do hear about 'boys from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds' or 'the Pakistani community'. The latter exist as official concepts. Their attainments are monitored by state bodies and they are the recipients of outreach programmes. The former don't and aren't.
Many of the questions are astonishingly narrow. Children aged 13-16 are limited to 10 or 12 hours of work during the school week? I don't have children, and I'm not planning to employ any children. If I needed to know the answer to that question I could find it out. But what constitutes work? Does it count if it's the family business? If it's not paid? Where is the cut-off line between helping out your parents and work? Some of the questions are straight out of O level history, 1970s style. In which year did married women get the right to divorce their husbands, 1837, 1857, 1875, 1882? What??!! They are all dates in the nineteenth century, during the Victorian age. How many native born UK citizens whose ancestors have been here since Boudicca was at war with the Romans know the answer to that question? (it's 1857, if you want to know. I didn't). If a prospective citizen thought that the answer was 1980, or 1500, I'd be slightly worried, but not very. If they thought that married women couldn't divorce their husbands I'd be more worried, and if they believed that they ought not to be allowed to, I'd be really worried.
There is nothing in the test about values or beliefs. Absolutely nothing. The cultural questions are mostly very odd. Asking whether people know what the speed limit is on single track roads is fair enough (glad I got that one right) but checking whether they know that Ulster Scots is a dialect spoken in Northern Ireland? Checking whether they are up to date with the plot line of at least one TV soap and the last round of the current reality show would be a better guide to their prospects of fitting in socially around the water cooler.
The SA failed the test as well, so we had better start searching for a country to take us in. Meantime, I have a modest proposal. Let every MP and senior civil servant take the test. Those that fail will of course resign immediately, since they are not fit for office. Or they could invent a better test.
I spent a happy hour picking dead leaves off the overwintering pelargoniums in the greenhouse, until my feet got cold, and then scrubbed the old writing off my collection of used plastic plant labels. Pencil washes off quite easily, with the help of a green scouring pad. It's a job to save for a wet day, when there's not much else to do, and you can listen to the radio while you're doing it. Later I might scrub some flowerpots, and sow some seeds. A greenhouse is a wonderful toy for anybody who likes pottering around with plants. It has all the merits of a shed, but with abundant natural light.
I also failed my UK Citizenship Test. This would come as a blow if it weren't that I am already a citizen. I took the on-line practice test out of curiosity, to see what kind of questions they asked, after reading an article about it in the Telegraph, and Nigel Farndale was right, it is a really bizarre test. I got 63%. Nigel Farndale failed it too, though he doesn't say what he scored. It's true that I wasn't trying very hard, and maybe subconsciously wanted to do badly to prove how silly it was. I was finished in nine minutes and something seconds, and you have up to 45 minutes to complete it. However, as it is a multiple choice test you shouldn't need that long to answer 24 questions. If you don't know the answers then the safest method, like spelling a word you're not sure about, is to go for the first answer you think might be right, and not spend too long agonising over it.
For example, the number of children and young people aged up to 19 in the UK is 13,14,15 or 16 million? I guessed 15 million, which turned out to be correct. This was based on nothing except that I remembered from a Woodland Trust campaign that several years ago there were 12 million UK children under the age of 16. It turned out to be right, but what earthly bearing does it have on anybody's fitness to be a UK citizen? If they'd thought that the answer was 5 million or 25 million we should be worried that the applicant was innumerate, deeply stupid, or hadn't even a rough idea of the size of the total population, but 15 million versus 14 or 16 million? It doesn't matter. I got the next question wrong, guessing that the Muslim population in 2001 was 1.6% of the total, whereas it turns out it was 2.7%. I knew it was a low number And the question asks about eleven years ago, not even now. If a prospective new citizen believed that Muslims comprised 10% of the population, or 25%, then I'd be worried, but 1.6% versus 2.7%? Sub three per cent, either way. A smallish minority.
Some of the questions were ambiguously worded, when you thought about them. I decided that it was True for the purposes of the test that you could only attend a hospital without a letter from a GP in an emergency, thinking of visiting A&E versus seeing a consultant for the first time, where you do need a referral. But follow-up appointments with consultants, and regular attendance at things like diabetes clinics, don't need a GP's letter every time. Once you're in the system you deal directly with the hospital, so the literal answer to the question would be False. I got that one right, but failed the first question. It turns out to be False that in the 1980s the largest immigrant groups were from the West Indies, Ireland, Pakistan and Indian. They were from the United States, Australia, Africa and New Zealand. The test must take a narrow definition of immigrant group as citizens of other countries currently living in the UK, whereas I'd taken it to include second and third generations who still formed parts of culturally distinct immigrant communities. It's true that in the 1980s The Systems Administrator and I did know several Americans, Australians and Africans who were working in the UK (who never took UK citizenship and have mostly since left), but you don't hear talk on the radio or read in the papers of 'the American community' or 'the Australasian community', whereas you do hear about 'boys from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds' or 'the Pakistani community'. The latter exist as official concepts. Their attainments are monitored by state bodies and they are the recipients of outreach programmes. The former don't and aren't.
Many of the questions are astonishingly narrow. Children aged 13-16 are limited to 10 or 12 hours of work during the school week? I don't have children, and I'm not planning to employ any children. If I needed to know the answer to that question I could find it out. But what constitutes work? Does it count if it's the family business? If it's not paid? Where is the cut-off line between helping out your parents and work? Some of the questions are straight out of O level history, 1970s style. In which year did married women get the right to divorce their husbands, 1837, 1857, 1875, 1882? What??!! They are all dates in the nineteenth century, during the Victorian age. How many native born UK citizens whose ancestors have been here since Boudicca was at war with the Romans know the answer to that question? (it's 1857, if you want to know. I didn't). If a prospective citizen thought that the answer was 1980, or 1500, I'd be slightly worried, but not very. If they thought that married women couldn't divorce their husbands I'd be more worried, and if they believed that they ought not to be allowed to, I'd be really worried.
There is nothing in the test about values or beliefs. Absolutely nothing. The cultural questions are mostly very odd. Asking whether people know what the speed limit is on single track roads is fair enough (glad I got that one right) but checking whether they know that Ulster Scots is a dialect spoken in Northern Ireland? Checking whether they are up to date with the plot line of at least one TV soap and the last round of the current reality show would be a better guide to their prospects of fitting in socially around the water cooler.
The SA failed the test as well, so we had better start searching for a country to take us in. Meantime, I have a modest proposal. Let every MP and senior civil servant take the test. Those that fail will of course resign immediately, since they are not fit for office. Or they could invent a better test.
Saturday, 3 March 2012
lasting fame
We went last night to a lecture about Charles Dickens. To be specific, it was about Dickens and his relationship to the artists of his day. (Spending Friday night on a not madly comfortable chair in a village hall listening to an Emeritus Professor of literature talking about Dickens would not normally be the the Systems Administrator's first choice of how to have a good time. In fact, it would come a distant second to going on with the box set of The Sopranos, but the SA is good that way about acting the supportive partner when required, and we'd been invited to the supper after the lecture, and I wanted to go, and anyway I am on the committee). It was an interesting lecture, though it confirmed my impression gathered from reading some of his books and the odd Radio 4 documentary about him that Dickens was rather a pain in the neck. Even the Emeritus Professor expressed some surprise that Dickens was quite so popular at the moment, reminding us that it was the two hundredth anniversary of Thackeray's birth last year, and that passed without a murmur, let alone a spate of TV adaptations.
This set me musing on how ephemeral popularity and critical esteem are. Reputations rise and fall, and sometimes rise again, or else disappear from the cultural map leaving no trace, except to the most dedicated researchers and trawlers of archives. Among my stationery supplies I have a box of postcards, originally one hundred of them (I've used some) all based on original Penguin cover designs. Many of the authors are still well known, like Evelyn Waugh and Emily Bronte, but have you heard of Siren Land by Norman Douglas, Siamese White by Maurice Collis, or Mantrap by Sinclair Lewis? And if you have heard of them, have you read them? Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. Some of his books are still in print, though I'm not sure about Mantrap, which doesn't come up on Amazon. His first listed novel on the Amazon search, Babbit, ranks at number 214,915 in Books. It actually sounds quite good, being about a prosperous, unpleasant real estate agent from Ohio whose middle class existence is shattered when his friend is convicted of murdering his wife (I presume Amazon means the friend's wife, not Babbit's wife), but the only way it's likely to make the best-seller lists is if someone makes a film of it (starring Leonardo DiCaprio, maybe?). You get the Nobel Prize for Literature, and eighty years later almost nobody reads your books.
Other prize winners have lasted better. Thomas Mann won the year before Sinclair Lewis, and Buddenbrooks was a set text for those reading German when I was at Oxford. I have read it (in translation) and it is jolly good, though not a light read (you wouldn't expect it to be). It was turned into a film in 2008, though in Germany rather than Hollywood. The film is two and a half hours long, and IMDb only gives it 5.8 out of 10. The Forsyte Saga was turned into a TV series in 1967 and again in 2002 and we've all heard of it, even if we haven't read the novels, but how many of us realise that John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932? People loved the series, especially the original one, but nobody has much to say nowadays about the books.
Here is a link to the list of all 104 winners in the history of the prize so you can amuse yourself seeing who else history has forgotten, or preen yourself about how many of them you've heard of, or even read. You can play the same game with winners of the Man Booker Prize. Midnight's Children, Schindler's Ark, Moon Tiger. Yeah, yeah, we've heard of those, and read them. Quite a few have been made into films, which generally gives the book sales a nudge (or at least makes it easier to pretend that you've read it). John M Coetze went on to win the Nobel Prize. But how many will stand the test of time? I've read (I think) 15 out of the 45, the most recent from 2000. Barring unexpected advances in medical science, I won't be around in 82 years to find out how many of them are on the average keen reader's late twenty-first century's equivalent of the Kindle (I think we can say that the concept of novels being 'in print' by then will be well and truly dead) but I'd be surprised (if I weren't well and truly dead as well) if it was as high a third.
This set me musing on how ephemeral popularity and critical esteem are. Reputations rise and fall, and sometimes rise again, or else disappear from the cultural map leaving no trace, except to the most dedicated researchers and trawlers of archives. Among my stationery supplies I have a box of postcards, originally one hundred of them (I've used some) all based on original Penguin cover designs. Many of the authors are still well known, like Evelyn Waugh and Emily Bronte, but have you heard of Siren Land by Norman Douglas, Siamese White by Maurice Collis, or Mantrap by Sinclair Lewis? And if you have heard of them, have you read them? Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. Some of his books are still in print, though I'm not sure about Mantrap, which doesn't come up on Amazon. His first listed novel on the Amazon search, Babbit, ranks at number 214,915 in Books. It actually sounds quite good, being about a prosperous, unpleasant real estate agent from Ohio whose middle class existence is shattered when his friend is convicted of murdering his wife (I presume Amazon means the friend's wife, not Babbit's wife), but the only way it's likely to make the best-seller lists is if someone makes a film of it (starring Leonardo DiCaprio, maybe?). You get the Nobel Prize for Literature, and eighty years later almost nobody reads your books.
Other prize winners have lasted better. Thomas Mann won the year before Sinclair Lewis, and Buddenbrooks was a set text for those reading German when I was at Oxford. I have read it (in translation) and it is jolly good, though not a light read (you wouldn't expect it to be). It was turned into a film in 2008, though in Germany rather than Hollywood. The film is two and a half hours long, and IMDb only gives it 5.8 out of 10. The Forsyte Saga was turned into a TV series in 1967 and again in 2002 and we've all heard of it, even if we haven't read the novels, but how many of us realise that John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932? People loved the series, especially the original one, but nobody has much to say nowadays about the books.
Here is a link to the list of all 104 winners in the history of the prize so you can amuse yourself seeing who else history has forgotten, or preen yourself about how many of them you've heard of, or even read. You can play the same game with winners of the Man Booker Prize. Midnight's Children, Schindler's Ark, Moon Tiger. Yeah, yeah, we've heard of those, and read them. Quite a few have been made into films, which generally gives the book sales a nudge (or at least makes it easier to pretend that you've read it). John M Coetze went on to win the Nobel Prize. But how many will stand the test of time? I've read (I think) 15 out of the 45, the most recent from 2000. Barring unexpected advances in medical science, I won't be around in 82 years to find out how many of them are on the average keen reader's late twenty-first century's equivalent of the Kindle (I think we can say that the concept of novels being 'in print' by then will be well and truly dead) but I'd be surprised (if I weren't well and truly dead as well) if it was as high a third.
Friday, 2 March 2012
first count your chickens
The new little chickens arrived last night. We had to get more hens, as we were down to one hen and the rooster. Chickens are social animals, so a flock of two was barely adequate, and ran the risk that if we lost another we would have one lonely, sole fowl rattling around in the run. We got four more, which could mean we end up with rather a lot of eggs, but lots of things could go wrong between now and when we get the hypothetical egg mountain.
I tend not to mention when we lose a hen, unless it is to a fox. They are pets, of a sort, and we are fond of them, though not in the same way as the cats. They don't come into the house, or have individual names, and we don't cuddle them, though during a bird flu scare my brother asked me rather nervously whether we did, and I could imagine him weighing up whether or not he should ban us from contact with his family, in case we infected his children. The trouble with telling anybody except a fellow poultry keeper that one of your hens died is that you don't get a sympathetic response. Instead you are quite likely to get a joke about bird flu, one of those awkward jokes that (a) aren't actually funny, and (b) fail to hide the joker's underlying anxiety, in this case about about bird diseases that might spread to humans. Or else a comment along the lines that you don't seem to have much luck with your hens.
The trouble with hens is that they do tend to die. We've had a couple that battled on to a grand old age, and several that became fox food soon after arrival. One pair of young hens persisted in foraging along the edge of the wood, instead of staying in the front garden, and they were picked off one after the other in short order. One old lady jumped on to a low wall, and fell off it stone dead, presumably of a heart attack. One developed an impacted gizzard immediately after we bought her, as a result of eating something unsuitable. Two or three just began to look poorly over a period of days, and then died. Reading poultry forums we seem not to be alone. Still, we don't generally talk about our losses. If all of them died one after the other I'd call the vet and resign myself to the next bird flu epidemic possibly having started in my chicken house, but so far each loss has been an isolated incident, the rest remaining perfectly healthy, so I've put the deaths down to one of those things.
The last chicken we lost had a stroke. We are pretty confident it was a stroke, and not Newcastle Disease (a notifiable virus infection that causes paralysis) because she went to roost right as rain, and the next morning I found her lying on her back under the perch. I put her the right way up, thinking that this didn't look very good, and she got neither better nor worse, but seemed paralysed. It was the weekend the snow came, and it seemed inhumane to leave her out in the cold in the chicken house, so we put her in a cat basket in front of the Aga, covered with a towel. Occasionally she scrabbled noisily against the wire basket, and most of the time she was quiet. She ate a small amount of wet bread, and seemed to possess a great will to live, but was disabled below the neck. This was the same weekend the grey tabby fell ill, so we had the cat fading away before our eyes in the study, and the hen insisting on living even after we had both begun to hope she would die in the kitchen. It was horrible, and faintly ludicrous. After we had taken the grey tabby on her one way trip to the vet, the Systems Administrator had to round off a miserable morning by taking the chicken outside and giving her a merciful dispatch.
Now is not a good time of the year to buy hens. Left to their own devices they go off lay in the winter, so young hens which have reached the point of lay tend to become available from amateur enthusiasts in the summer, having developed from eggs laid in the spring. The Systems Administrator tracked down some commercial suppliers of hens to hobby keepers like us, and ordered four on-line. I think commercial hen producers use artificial lighting to keep them laying in the winter months, so that they have hens available at all times of the year. We have gone for Speckledys this time, instead of pure bred Marans, partly because that's what we could get, and partly in the hope that they might have better constitutions than the Marans. The Speckledy is a hybrid cross between the Maran and the Rhode Island Red, with dark feathers very like a Maran, but a slightly more prolific egg layer. They were developed in the 1990s for organic commercial egg producers, who wanted something that could free range and laid pretty brown eggs, but was more productive than the pure rare breeds. They are said to be friendly birds, and they should be large enough to discourage the cats from getting any improper ideas.
The new little hens came from somewhere near Blackburn in a dedicated chicken delivery van operated by two cheerful blokes, who scooped them out of their travelling box and put them into our hen house. They arrived at about 7.00pm, so the existing chickens were already roosting. The delivery men didn't seem to think there was a problem putting them straight in with birds they didn't know, which is just as well, as we only have one hen house, and so do most other amateur poultry keepers. Letting them get to know each other gradually might be the ideal way to do it, but was not a practical option. Our two are nice with other chickens anyway. When their late companion collapsed they showed no signs of picking on her, and if anything they looked rather worried. I have never seen any signs of feather pecking, vent pecking or other bullying in the run.
The new little hens are terribly sweet, and don't look quite large enough to start laying yet, but that doesn't matter. We aren't in a great hurry for loads of eggs, as long as we got company for the other two chickens, and we can start letting them out into the garden fairly soon. The eggs can come later (if all four little hens survive then probably rather a lot of them). I think they spent the night huddling together in the egg laying box, all four of them, and today they explored the hen house, where they have food and water, but wouldn't come out into the run. Of course they may never have been outside, but I'm sure they'll get the hang of it. They have little undeveloped combs, and little anxious faces, and look as though it is all a bit much for them, at the moment.
I tend not to mention when we lose a hen, unless it is to a fox. They are pets, of a sort, and we are fond of them, though not in the same way as the cats. They don't come into the house, or have individual names, and we don't cuddle them, though during a bird flu scare my brother asked me rather nervously whether we did, and I could imagine him weighing up whether or not he should ban us from contact with his family, in case we infected his children. The trouble with telling anybody except a fellow poultry keeper that one of your hens died is that you don't get a sympathetic response. Instead you are quite likely to get a joke about bird flu, one of those awkward jokes that (a) aren't actually funny, and (b) fail to hide the joker's underlying anxiety, in this case about about bird diseases that might spread to humans. Or else a comment along the lines that you don't seem to have much luck with your hens.
The trouble with hens is that they do tend to die. We've had a couple that battled on to a grand old age, and several that became fox food soon after arrival. One pair of young hens persisted in foraging along the edge of the wood, instead of staying in the front garden, and they were picked off one after the other in short order. One old lady jumped on to a low wall, and fell off it stone dead, presumably of a heart attack. One developed an impacted gizzard immediately after we bought her, as a result of eating something unsuitable. Two or three just began to look poorly over a period of days, and then died. Reading poultry forums we seem not to be alone. Still, we don't generally talk about our losses. If all of them died one after the other I'd call the vet and resign myself to the next bird flu epidemic possibly having started in my chicken house, but so far each loss has been an isolated incident, the rest remaining perfectly healthy, so I've put the deaths down to one of those things.
The last chicken we lost had a stroke. We are pretty confident it was a stroke, and not Newcastle Disease (a notifiable virus infection that causes paralysis) because she went to roost right as rain, and the next morning I found her lying on her back under the perch. I put her the right way up, thinking that this didn't look very good, and she got neither better nor worse, but seemed paralysed. It was the weekend the snow came, and it seemed inhumane to leave her out in the cold in the chicken house, so we put her in a cat basket in front of the Aga, covered with a towel. Occasionally she scrabbled noisily against the wire basket, and most of the time she was quiet. She ate a small amount of wet bread, and seemed to possess a great will to live, but was disabled below the neck. This was the same weekend the grey tabby fell ill, so we had the cat fading away before our eyes in the study, and the hen insisting on living even after we had both begun to hope she would die in the kitchen. It was horrible, and faintly ludicrous. After we had taken the grey tabby on her one way trip to the vet, the Systems Administrator had to round off a miserable morning by taking the chicken outside and giving her a merciful dispatch.
Now is not a good time of the year to buy hens. Left to their own devices they go off lay in the winter, so young hens which have reached the point of lay tend to become available from amateur enthusiasts in the summer, having developed from eggs laid in the spring. The Systems Administrator tracked down some commercial suppliers of hens to hobby keepers like us, and ordered four on-line. I think commercial hen producers use artificial lighting to keep them laying in the winter months, so that they have hens available at all times of the year. We have gone for Speckledys this time, instead of pure bred Marans, partly because that's what we could get, and partly in the hope that they might have better constitutions than the Marans. The Speckledy is a hybrid cross between the Maran and the Rhode Island Red, with dark feathers very like a Maran, but a slightly more prolific egg layer. They were developed in the 1990s for organic commercial egg producers, who wanted something that could free range and laid pretty brown eggs, but was more productive than the pure rare breeds. They are said to be friendly birds, and they should be large enough to discourage the cats from getting any improper ideas.
The new little hens came from somewhere near Blackburn in a dedicated chicken delivery van operated by two cheerful blokes, who scooped them out of their travelling box and put them into our hen house. They arrived at about 7.00pm, so the existing chickens were already roosting. The delivery men didn't seem to think there was a problem putting them straight in with birds they didn't know, which is just as well, as we only have one hen house, and so do most other amateur poultry keepers. Letting them get to know each other gradually might be the ideal way to do it, but was not a practical option. Our two are nice with other chickens anyway. When their late companion collapsed they showed no signs of picking on her, and if anything they looked rather worried. I have never seen any signs of feather pecking, vent pecking or other bullying in the run.
The new little hens are terribly sweet, and don't look quite large enough to start laying yet, but that doesn't matter. We aren't in a great hurry for loads of eggs, as long as we got company for the other two chickens, and we can start letting them out into the garden fairly soon. The eggs can come later (if all four little hens survive then probably rather a lot of them). I think they spent the night huddling together in the egg laying box, all four of them, and today they explored the hen house, where they have food and water, but wouldn't come out into the run. Of course they may never have been outside, but I'm sure they'll get the hang of it. They have little undeveloped combs, and little anxious faces, and look as though it is all a bit much for them, at the moment.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
laughed out loud
We went last night to see Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. It was very funny and we had a great evening and it's on until 10th March so there's still time to go and see it. And that's about it, really. You can skip the rest of the post if you like.
I have said it before, but if you live in the Colchester area the Mercury is a wonderful theatre. The staff are pleasant, the seats are comfy, service at the bar is quick, the multi-storey car park is a few minute's walk away, tickets are a third of the price of London theatres. There's nothing not to like, provided the play is any good. As we enjoy Ayckbourn's brand of sharply observed, near-the-bone comedy then given a half-way competent production we were practically bound to be happy.
The Mercury's version is not merely competent, but good. Absent Friends is a play in real time about a man who has tragically lost his fiancee in an accident, who is invited to tea with a group of old friends who haven't seen him for a while and never met his fiancee, but think they ought to be supportive. This is a classic Ayckbourn set-up, with a group of people whose relationships are already strained or simply in the past, a major taboo subject (death), and an outsider (the bereaved and out of touch former member of the group) to tip things into motion. They move. It would spoil it to say how, but it is a deliciously funny, minutely observed play, and the cast do it justice. The set, a 1974 domestic interior, is a masterpiece, from the furniture down to the tiniest details like the pair of wooden gazelle on the fitted modular shelves, and the two stereo speakers at different heights. And the spider plants. It was uncanny, like being there (and being in 1974 was quite bad enough the first time round).
Ayckbourn writes cruel plays. I've thought so before. There is some knockabout comedy, and there are some brilliant bits of dialogue as people say the things that they shouldn't, or that are madly inappropriate given circumstances they don't know about but that the audience does. It isn't fluffy, though. Absent Friends was first performed in 1974, the same year as Porridge first appeared on TV, but is far nastier than Porridge's gentle, compassionate humour.
There were a few empty seats last night, but the auditorium was pretty full. I originally tried to book for Tuesday, just because Tuesdays are slightly cheaper than Wednesdays, but was late getting round to it, as the Mercury spring brochure is yet another piece of mail that never reached us. By the time I thought it must be out by now and looked at the website, Tuesday was almost a sell-out. The Colchester audience likes its acid comedy.
Absent Friends is a good choice for the Mercury in that regard, and because it is a six hander with only one set, and so comparatively economical to stage. It's a tough choice for regional theatre directors in these difficult times for the arts. Put on too many plays that are perceived as middle-brow, middle class humour and you risk losing your Arts Council funding like Exeter's Northcott did, even if they do delight the local audience and fill the house. Put on too many modern-dress re-creations of Greek myths intended to challenge us and tick the funding boxes and you risk playing to empty seats. The Mercury's production of Iph featured in Charles Spencer's list in the Telegraph of the top ten worst plays of the year a few years ago, and we didn't go to see it, even though the Mercury did write to us offering us free programmes and ice-cream if only we'd give it a go. Sorry, but we know what we like, we provincials. I'm rather hoping that in the current climate they will play it a bit safe, and we might get some JB Priestley, or a Tom Stoppard revival.
Regrettably, the next company production is by Arnold Wesker, and after being bored out of my skin at the National Theatre some years ago by a play of his about national service, that had practically no plot and not much to commend the dialogue, I'm not inclined to risk it. I'm more of a natural theatre-goer than the Systems Administrator, so the deal is that I try to choose things we'll both like, and the SA puts up with the duds with a good grace provided the long term aggregate experience remains positive. Absent Friends was a big plus in the theatre-going enjoyment account. We're planning to try Dancing at Lughnasa in the summer, and while I hope that will be another positive, it might require the SA to draw on accumulated reserves of goodwill, so I'm not chancing my luck with Arnold Wesker.
I have said it before, but if you live in the Colchester area the Mercury is a wonderful theatre. The staff are pleasant, the seats are comfy, service at the bar is quick, the multi-storey car park is a few minute's walk away, tickets are a third of the price of London theatres. There's nothing not to like, provided the play is any good. As we enjoy Ayckbourn's brand of sharply observed, near-the-bone comedy then given a half-way competent production we were practically bound to be happy.
The Mercury's version is not merely competent, but good. Absent Friends is a play in real time about a man who has tragically lost his fiancee in an accident, who is invited to tea with a group of old friends who haven't seen him for a while and never met his fiancee, but think they ought to be supportive. This is a classic Ayckbourn set-up, with a group of people whose relationships are already strained or simply in the past, a major taboo subject (death), and an outsider (the bereaved and out of touch former member of the group) to tip things into motion. They move. It would spoil it to say how, but it is a deliciously funny, minutely observed play, and the cast do it justice. The set, a 1974 domestic interior, is a masterpiece, from the furniture down to the tiniest details like the pair of wooden gazelle on the fitted modular shelves, and the two stereo speakers at different heights. And the spider plants. It was uncanny, like being there (and being in 1974 was quite bad enough the first time round).
Ayckbourn writes cruel plays. I've thought so before. There is some knockabout comedy, and there are some brilliant bits of dialogue as people say the things that they shouldn't, or that are madly inappropriate given circumstances they don't know about but that the audience does. It isn't fluffy, though. Absent Friends was first performed in 1974, the same year as Porridge first appeared on TV, but is far nastier than Porridge's gentle, compassionate humour.
There were a few empty seats last night, but the auditorium was pretty full. I originally tried to book for Tuesday, just because Tuesdays are slightly cheaper than Wednesdays, but was late getting round to it, as the Mercury spring brochure is yet another piece of mail that never reached us. By the time I thought it must be out by now and looked at the website, Tuesday was almost a sell-out. The Colchester audience likes its acid comedy.
Absent Friends is a good choice for the Mercury in that regard, and because it is a six hander with only one set, and so comparatively economical to stage. It's a tough choice for regional theatre directors in these difficult times for the arts. Put on too many plays that are perceived as middle-brow, middle class humour and you risk losing your Arts Council funding like Exeter's Northcott did, even if they do delight the local audience and fill the house. Put on too many modern-dress re-creations of Greek myths intended to challenge us and tick the funding boxes and you risk playing to empty seats. The Mercury's production of Iph featured in Charles Spencer's list in the Telegraph of the top ten worst plays of the year a few years ago, and we didn't go to see it, even though the Mercury did write to us offering us free programmes and ice-cream if only we'd give it a go. Sorry, but we know what we like, we provincials. I'm rather hoping that in the current climate they will play it a bit safe, and we might get some JB Priestley, or a Tom Stoppard revival.
Regrettably, the next company production is by Arnold Wesker, and after being bored out of my skin at the National Theatre some years ago by a play of his about national service, that had practically no plot and not much to commend the dialogue, I'm not inclined to risk it. I'm more of a natural theatre-goer than the Systems Administrator, so the deal is that I try to choose things we'll both like, and the SA puts up with the duds with a good grace provided the long term aggregate experience remains positive. Absent Friends was a big plus in the theatre-going enjoyment account. We're planning to try Dancing at Lughnasa in the summer, and while I hope that will be another positive, it might require the SA to draw on accumulated reserves of goodwill, so I'm not chancing my luck with Arnold Wesker.
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
food issues
We think that Our Ginger's diet is starting to work, a bit. From some angles he looks slightly less like a rugby ball covered in acrylic orange fur with a leg at each corner. From some angles. When he goes into Clive Anderson mode and shrinks his neck down into his shoulders he still looks pretty chunky. The Systems Administrator says there is a little less podge around the tummy, and I think that's probably right. Our Ginger has been quite good about being dieted, finishing his breakfast and then spending the rest of the morning asleep rather than agitating for more food, though that could partly be down to the mild weather. Cats need to eat significantly less when it's warm, a reminder that they have a higher surface area to volume ratio than us, and that in cold weather they need to stack away a lot of calories just to maintain their body heat.
We are trying to get him to lose weight for his own good, after staring one time too many at the poster in the vet's consulting room illustrating the health dangers of obesity. Unfortunately, by the law of unintended consequences, the fat tabby has taken the non-constant availability of food as a personal threat, and started hoovering down any she can see, so as Our Ginger gets slimmer (possibly) she gets fatter. The big tabby's nerves are still jangled, so that he is sometimes reluctant to eat at all, and sits staring at his food with a vague expression. Standing with him talking to him nicely sometimes helps encourage him to eat, but we have had to resort to taking him into the kitchen with us while we eat lunch, and giving him extra rations behind closed doors. He seems to like eating with us (his dish is on the floor) so the exclusive company and occasional sachet of Sheba generally persuade him he feels hungry.
The black cat knows what he's doing, eats what he wants, and remains at a healthy weight. But in response to the Telegraph vet who says it is a tired old excuse among pet owners that they can't control the weight of their animals because they have to feed more than one, I say, try it. If you happen to have four like the black cat then good luck to you, and no wonder you think it's easy. For those of us who have one with gluttonous and one with paranoid tendencies, plus another with a borderline eating disorder, it's a challenge.
They are moulting as well, a sign of spring. The Systems Administrator looked last night at the strands of fur that were rising one by one under the heat of an anglepoise lamp from a mat on the table in front of the TV and said 'Do you think you could move that thing?' and that it was no wonder we both had permanent runny noses and sore throats. I sometimes think we are slightly allergic to them, but it's too late to worry about that now.
Addendum The replacement gear part for the lawn tractor arrived in a little cardboard sleeve, and was the right, genuine Briggs and Stratton component. Taking half the afternoon, and sustaining only minor flesh wounds, the SA managed to rebuild the starter motor. The tractor now works perfectly, and it will be handy knowing how to disassemble the starter motor for the next time something breaks.
We are trying to get him to lose weight for his own good, after staring one time too many at the poster in the vet's consulting room illustrating the health dangers of obesity. Unfortunately, by the law of unintended consequences, the fat tabby has taken the non-constant availability of food as a personal threat, and started hoovering down any she can see, so as Our Ginger gets slimmer (possibly) she gets fatter. The big tabby's nerves are still jangled, so that he is sometimes reluctant to eat at all, and sits staring at his food with a vague expression. Standing with him talking to him nicely sometimes helps encourage him to eat, but we have had to resort to taking him into the kitchen with us while we eat lunch, and giving him extra rations behind closed doors. He seems to like eating with us (his dish is on the floor) so the exclusive company and occasional sachet of Sheba generally persuade him he feels hungry.
The black cat knows what he's doing, eats what he wants, and remains at a healthy weight. But in response to the Telegraph vet who says it is a tired old excuse among pet owners that they can't control the weight of their animals because they have to feed more than one, I say, try it. If you happen to have four like the black cat then good luck to you, and no wonder you think it's easy. For those of us who have one with gluttonous and one with paranoid tendencies, plus another with a borderline eating disorder, it's a challenge.
They are moulting as well, a sign of spring. The Systems Administrator looked last night at the strands of fur that were rising one by one under the heat of an anglepoise lamp from a mat on the table in front of the TV and said 'Do you think you could move that thing?' and that it was no wonder we both had permanent runny noses and sore throats. I sometimes think we are slightly allergic to them, but it's too late to worry about that now.
Addendum The replacement gear part for the lawn tractor arrived in a little cardboard sleeve, and was the right, genuine Briggs and Stratton component. Taking half the afternoon, and sustaining only minor flesh wounds, the SA managed to rebuild the starter motor. The tractor now works perfectly, and it will be handy knowing how to disassemble the starter motor for the next time something breaks.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
cutting back
The scene of my gardening operations has returned to the rose bed below the veranda. It is referred to as the near rose bed in my garden diary, and does contain quite a lot of roses, but some other things as well, including a clump of Paulownia tomentosa and a patch of Helianthus salicifolius. Both were included to add some height and some foliage interest to the roses, and are suckering with enthusiasm. The perennial sunflower makes tall, largely unbranching stems with narrow, willow-like leaves, which are quite intriguing. It has small yellow flowers in autumn, but they aren't really the point. There are a couple of rusted metal tripods with clematis up them, and an Eryngium pandanifolium bought at Great Dixter, which grew far larger than I ever envisaged before being cut down by the cold of last winter. That has since started making a good recovery, and I should really be brave and try and move some of its rosettes, since in the course of regenerating from the remains of the old clump it has migrated from its original position, which was already too close to a box hedge. There's an Astelia chatamica too, which made a fine specimen before being mostly destroyed by last winter's cold. It is regrowing from a couple of points, but doesn't look totally convinced about making the effort. And there's a dome of box, included to give some evergreen volume, and a narrow leaved bay, which keeps growing larger than I should really like it, and is a pig to prune, since it is on a slope and all hemmed in with roses.
The near rose bed loomed back into my consciousness because the Systems Administrator began to murmur that I really needed to finish cutting back the climbers on the veranda before the birds started nesting. They have to be cut back to give access for the SA to paint the barge boards and replace the gutter along the back of the house, and the desirability of finishing this job before the sailing and cricket seasons start has been looming in the SA's consciousness. They need tidying up anyway, as a great mass of dead twigs and branches has built up beneath the outer living layer. And when we're sitting in our steamer chairs on the veranda in the evenings, it would be nice to look out at the view, and not straight into the side of a mass of honeysuckle. I spotted one old birds' nest in the tangle, confirming that it has been used as a nesting site in the past, though it probably won't be so appealing once it's tidier.
I managed to neither stab myself on a thorn nor poke myself in the eye today, and as the afternoon wore on switched to hand weeding for the last part of the day. When I think about the times when I've scratched myself gardening badly enough to need a trip to the doctor, most of the accidents do seem to have occurred in the last couple of hours before the light goes. It could be coincidence, but I suspect that increasing tiredness and decreasing visibility have something to do with it.
I'm not even cutting back the climbers very hard, and it may be that when we try to get the scaffolding in, everything will have to suffer another, more severe chop. They are yielding up an extraordinary volume of debris as it is. The old lawn tractor, which is used minus its cutting deck to haul the garden trailer, disgraced itself yesterday by breaking down in a place where it was blocking the drive, and the trailer was hanging behind it on a slope. What should have been a ten minute job for the SA, emptying the trailer by the bonfire and putting it back by the veranda, took most of the afternoon, working out how to detach the trailer, pushing the tractor out of the way, and investigating the cause of the breakdown. That turned out to be the catastrophic failure of a component in the starter motor. A new part has been ordered (from Amazon. They sell everything) but in the meantime we are without the tractor. The current lawnmower will haul the trailer at a pinch, but as it is new, expensive, and not really up to the job, the SA is reluctant to use it for that purpose, and once I've filled the trailer again that may be my lot until the spare part arrives.
If I run out of space in the trailer then I will be free to return to my primary objective, which is to confine the yellow stemmed bamboo in the gunnera bed within the two rolls of galvanised lawn edging. It's got personal between me and that bamboo.
The near rose bed loomed back into my consciousness because the Systems Administrator began to murmur that I really needed to finish cutting back the climbers on the veranda before the birds started nesting. They have to be cut back to give access for the SA to paint the barge boards and replace the gutter along the back of the house, and the desirability of finishing this job before the sailing and cricket seasons start has been looming in the SA's consciousness. They need tidying up anyway, as a great mass of dead twigs and branches has built up beneath the outer living layer. And when we're sitting in our steamer chairs on the veranda in the evenings, it would be nice to look out at the view, and not straight into the side of a mass of honeysuckle. I spotted one old birds' nest in the tangle, confirming that it has been used as a nesting site in the past, though it probably won't be so appealing once it's tidier.
I managed to neither stab myself on a thorn nor poke myself in the eye today, and as the afternoon wore on switched to hand weeding for the last part of the day. When I think about the times when I've scratched myself gardening badly enough to need a trip to the doctor, most of the accidents do seem to have occurred in the last couple of hours before the light goes. It could be coincidence, but I suspect that increasing tiredness and decreasing visibility have something to do with it.
I'm not even cutting back the climbers very hard, and it may be that when we try to get the scaffolding in, everything will have to suffer another, more severe chop. They are yielding up an extraordinary volume of debris as it is. The old lawn tractor, which is used minus its cutting deck to haul the garden trailer, disgraced itself yesterday by breaking down in a place where it was blocking the drive, and the trailer was hanging behind it on a slope. What should have been a ten minute job for the SA, emptying the trailer by the bonfire and putting it back by the veranda, took most of the afternoon, working out how to detach the trailer, pushing the tractor out of the way, and investigating the cause of the breakdown. That turned out to be the catastrophic failure of a component in the starter motor. A new part has been ordered (from Amazon. They sell everything) but in the meantime we are without the tractor. The current lawnmower will haul the trailer at a pinch, but as it is new, expensive, and not really up to the job, the SA is reluctant to use it for that purpose, and once I've filled the trailer again that may be my lot until the spare part arrives.
If I run out of space in the trailer then I will be free to return to my primary objective, which is to confine the yellow stemmed bamboo in the gunnera bed within the two rolls of galvanised lawn edging. It's got personal between me and that bamboo.
Monday, 27 February 2012
tally ho
It rained in the night, which made it difficult to see which pots needed watering. I didn't think it had rained that much, but some things that had looked by the end of yesterday as though they were going to need watering in the morning felt heavy enough already, when I hefted them. The phone got busy early, while I was trying to put labels on the last few items left from last week's deliveries. The labelling consequently took a long time, as I kept having to break off to trot around the plant centre checking whether we had various things and reserving them, or find pen and paper to take messages for people. The builders were hard at work sawing two holes in the side of the shop for the extra windows. Cutting through long lengths of weather boarding which are attached to a timber frame, and then the underlying layer of OSB (oriented strand board) makes an extraordinary amount of noise, even using a hand saw. I had to ask some of the callers to repeat themselves rather a lot of times.
I had an unusual mid-morning coffee break, going instead to watch the hunt gather and set off. The boss invited us to go, and I was very curious to see it. The fact the hunt was starting next door explained why since yesterday there had been signposts pointing across the car park for the Essex and Suffolk hunt foot followers. There must have been forty or fifty horses by the time they all assembled, some large and magnificent in sober shades of bay and chestnut, and some small and dumpy in more plebeian or exotic colour schemes. Many of them were beautifully turned out, with plaited manes, and tails carefully tied up out of harm's way. The horses stood around looking relaxed about life, their riders chatting. I was rather amazed at the insouciance with which the ladies handing out refreshments and the foot followers moved among them. Since my brief childhood horsey phase I haven't had much to do with horses, but I thought you were not supposed to walk around the rear end of a horse in case you spooked it and it kicked you. Anyway, that was partly my excuse for staying at the hunt for longer than my fifteen minute break, that and the fact that the owner said I must stay to see the hounds off.
The hounds mostly clustered in a tight and disciplined pack, away from the horses and the refreshments, though the boss's mother did have to drive one determined hound off the table with the cake and sausage rolls on it. The huntsmen stayed with them, their red coats contrasting with the other riders' black, or greenish tweed. There was also a terrier contingent, but they were kept in their travelling box mounted on the front of a quad bike, barking. When the hunt finally set off I saw that the box had a mesh door, facing towards the rider, so the terriers could see out and see their handler. Another box on the front of a second bike apparently held an eagle owl. One foot follower had brought a tiny white terrier, which escaped any risk of being trodden on by riding on his shoulders throughout.
We'd been told to help ourselves to refreshments, so I did. They were made by the gamekeeper's daughter, who is going to do the food for the new tea room, and they were extremely good. I declined the owner's and boss's offers of a glass of wine at quarter to eleven in the morning, on the grounds that I had to go back and be polite and compos mentis with their customers for the rest of the day. I was slightly surprised that the riders, who were about to go galloping over hedges and ditches, were cheerfully downing their stirrup cups beforehand. Maybe a glass of wine numbs the fear, as Nelson's navy was more or less drunk going into battle (I have checked this fact with the Systems Administrator, who says they were pretty well permanently pissed anyway, but would pipe spirits before a major action).
The boss had borrowed a horse he never rode before. I think there is something wrong with his own. It was a large creature whose reputation preceded it, and he professed to be nervous. The person who rode it on Saturday is still in bed with concussion. It had two strange hollows above its eyes, such as I have never seen before on a horse. Given it was a devil horse maybe that is where its horns were removed, although it was looking perfectly placid during the refreshments. The boss was wearing the coat, boots, jodpurs and stock, but I was amused to see that he still had his usual green pullover with the clothes moth holes in it under his coat.
Then the huntsmen blew their horns and moved off with the hounds, and the rest of the hunt followed, at quite a distance. I seem to remember from novels involving hunting that overtaking the hounds is an absolute social no-no. It was a scene that could have dated from decades ago, apart from the quad bikes. I hurried back across the car park to my work, and the tiny terrier dismounted from his master's shoulders.
After that I was potting and price-gunning. The drama of the afternoon was that the builders turned off the power to the shop, so that they could connect the new electrics into the circuit, and then couldn't get it to come on again. There followed a search for unknown fuse boxes, in case they'd tripped a switch. The manager, who was supervising the potting, desperately tried to keep his head down, disclaiming all knowledge of the fuse boxes, but eventually had to go and lend moral and practical support to the staff member working in the shop, who had no working till or credit card machine, a queue of customers, and had run out of change. Then they got the power on again. I don't know how. But the highlight of the day was definitely the hunt.
I had an unusual mid-morning coffee break, going instead to watch the hunt gather and set off. The boss invited us to go, and I was very curious to see it. The fact the hunt was starting next door explained why since yesterday there had been signposts pointing across the car park for the Essex and Suffolk hunt foot followers. There must have been forty or fifty horses by the time they all assembled, some large and magnificent in sober shades of bay and chestnut, and some small and dumpy in more plebeian or exotic colour schemes. Many of them were beautifully turned out, with plaited manes, and tails carefully tied up out of harm's way. The horses stood around looking relaxed about life, their riders chatting. I was rather amazed at the insouciance with which the ladies handing out refreshments and the foot followers moved among them. Since my brief childhood horsey phase I haven't had much to do with horses, but I thought you were not supposed to walk around the rear end of a horse in case you spooked it and it kicked you. Anyway, that was partly my excuse for staying at the hunt for longer than my fifteen minute break, that and the fact that the owner said I must stay to see the hounds off.
The hounds mostly clustered in a tight and disciplined pack, away from the horses and the refreshments, though the boss's mother did have to drive one determined hound off the table with the cake and sausage rolls on it. The huntsmen stayed with them, their red coats contrasting with the other riders' black, or greenish tweed. There was also a terrier contingent, but they were kept in their travelling box mounted on the front of a quad bike, barking. When the hunt finally set off I saw that the box had a mesh door, facing towards the rider, so the terriers could see out and see their handler. Another box on the front of a second bike apparently held an eagle owl. One foot follower had brought a tiny white terrier, which escaped any risk of being trodden on by riding on his shoulders throughout.
We'd been told to help ourselves to refreshments, so I did. They were made by the gamekeeper's daughter, who is going to do the food for the new tea room, and they were extremely good. I declined the owner's and boss's offers of a glass of wine at quarter to eleven in the morning, on the grounds that I had to go back and be polite and compos mentis with their customers for the rest of the day. I was slightly surprised that the riders, who were about to go galloping over hedges and ditches, were cheerfully downing their stirrup cups beforehand. Maybe a glass of wine numbs the fear, as Nelson's navy was more or less drunk going into battle (I have checked this fact with the Systems Administrator, who says they were pretty well permanently pissed anyway, but would pipe spirits before a major action).
The boss had borrowed a horse he never rode before. I think there is something wrong with his own. It was a large creature whose reputation preceded it, and he professed to be nervous. The person who rode it on Saturday is still in bed with concussion. It had two strange hollows above its eyes, such as I have never seen before on a horse. Given it was a devil horse maybe that is where its horns were removed, although it was looking perfectly placid during the refreshments. The boss was wearing the coat, boots, jodpurs and stock, but I was amused to see that he still had his usual green pullover with the clothes moth holes in it under his coat.
Then the huntsmen blew their horns and moved off with the hounds, and the rest of the hunt followed, at quite a distance. I seem to remember from novels involving hunting that overtaking the hounds is an absolute social no-no. It was a scene that could have dated from decades ago, apart from the quad bikes. I hurried back across the car park to my work, and the tiny terrier dismounted from his master's shoulders.
After that I was potting and price-gunning. The drama of the afternoon was that the builders turned off the power to the shop, so that they could connect the new electrics into the circuit, and then couldn't get it to come on again. There followed a search for unknown fuse boxes, in case they'd tripped a switch. The manager, who was supervising the potting, desperately tried to keep his head down, disclaiming all knowledge of the fuse boxes, but eventually had to go and lend moral and practical support to the staff member working in the shop, who had no working till or credit card machine, a queue of customers, and had run out of change. Then they got the power on again. I don't know how. But the highlight of the day was definitely the hunt.
Sunday, 26 February 2012
even busier
It was a good day for bird spotting. Driving to work I saw a pair of goldfinches flit into a hedge as I passed, the yellow bars on their wings and their red heads shining in sunlight that was already bright by 8 am. In the early afternoon I looked up, prompted by customers who were doing the same, and saw three buzzards floating languidly high overhead. They flapped their wings infrequently, gliding for long periods, and made strange high calls, a sort of descending mew. Somewhere in the garden the peacock thought spring had arrived, and screeched periodically through the day.
My colleague caught up with the backlog of mail order, packaging plants up into strange improvised dalek-shaped parcels. I took my branded box from Ashwood Nurseries in, which was re-used for a consignment of shrubs. It would be rather smart, not to say time-saving, to have our own boxes in a variety of sizes, with our name and logo on the side, instead of fabricating parcels from multiple boxes and trays taped together, and topped off with old compost bags turned inside out.
We have got new flexible plastic covers for the tills. The difference is remarkable. The old ones were practically opaque through age and use, so that it was almost impossible to read the keys. The replacements are crystal clear in comparison. The keyboard has got to be covered with something to keep dirt and damp out of it, otherwise the tills would fill up with compost in practically no time. I thought the new cover felt rather stiff, but presumed it would bed down with use, then the owner who had been puzzling why they had sent us only one cover discovered that it was in fact two, stuck together. They seem extremely expensive, costing £20 a time for what is just moulded flexible plastic, but I suppose they have to withstand movement and UV without going brittle. When I bought a boot liner for my Skoda six years ago I couldn't understand how a plastic tray could cost so much, but as it has survived this long without splitting it must genuinely be made out of superior plastic.
The dangers of bringing plant growth on to appeal to customers desperate for an early shot of spring colour were demonstrated by an entire table of Anemone blanda, which had got badly frosted. They arrived a few days ago as charming looking pots of blue flowers and dainty little leaves, a critical two or three weeks ahead of the ones growing in my garden, and lo, a sharp cold night caused the top growth to shrivel. The manager's list of tasks for the weekend instructed us to remove the damaged leaves, and put any pots that looked too bad away out of the sales area to recover. I soon discovered that on most of the plants virtually all of the leaves and flower buds came away from the pot with the gentlest pull, the stems resembling beansprouts that had been left for too long in the fridge. The manager was hopeful that there were new leaves coming up, but many of those turned out to be damaged as well. It will be interesting, in a rather depressing way, to see if they have sufficient reserves to make new foliage, or if they run out of oomph.
Having commented to the owner that yesterday we hadn't had many high spending customers, even though the day's total takings were respectable, today the high rollers were in. One bought four large box balls, three olives and a big pot, and asked without much conviction whether as he was spending a lot he could have a discount. Sorry, that's something people have to negotiate with the owner (the answer is almost always No). Another couple bought six birch trees, and trolleys full of hellebores add up to three figure totals. It was reassuring to be busy. When it is very quiet we can't tell if that is just the time of year and the weather, or if it means that everybody has fallen out of love with gardening or stopped spending money on anything except the basics.
My colleague caught up with the backlog of mail order, packaging plants up into strange improvised dalek-shaped parcels. I took my branded box from Ashwood Nurseries in, which was re-used for a consignment of shrubs. It would be rather smart, not to say time-saving, to have our own boxes in a variety of sizes, with our name and logo on the side, instead of fabricating parcels from multiple boxes and trays taped together, and topped off with old compost bags turned inside out.
We have got new flexible plastic covers for the tills. The difference is remarkable. The old ones were practically opaque through age and use, so that it was almost impossible to read the keys. The replacements are crystal clear in comparison. The keyboard has got to be covered with something to keep dirt and damp out of it, otherwise the tills would fill up with compost in practically no time. I thought the new cover felt rather stiff, but presumed it would bed down with use, then the owner who had been puzzling why they had sent us only one cover discovered that it was in fact two, stuck together. They seem extremely expensive, costing £20 a time for what is just moulded flexible plastic, but I suppose they have to withstand movement and UV without going brittle. When I bought a boot liner for my Skoda six years ago I couldn't understand how a plastic tray could cost so much, but as it has survived this long without splitting it must genuinely be made out of superior plastic.
The dangers of bringing plant growth on to appeal to customers desperate for an early shot of spring colour were demonstrated by an entire table of Anemone blanda, which had got badly frosted. They arrived a few days ago as charming looking pots of blue flowers and dainty little leaves, a critical two or three weeks ahead of the ones growing in my garden, and lo, a sharp cold night caused the top growth to shrivel. The manager's list of tasks for the weekend instructed us to remove the damaged leaves, and put any pots that looked too bad away out of the sales area to recover. I soon discovered that on most of the plants virtually all of the leaves and flower buds came away from the pot with the gentlest pull, the stems resembling beansprouts that had been left for too long in the fridge. The manager was hopeful that there were new leaves coming up, but many of those turned out to be damaged as well. It will be interesting, in a rather depressing way, to see if they have sufficient reserves to make new foliage, or if they run out of oomph.
Having commented to the owner that yesterday we hadn't had many high spending customers, even though the day's total takings were respectable, today the high rollers were in. One bought four large box balls, three olives and a big pot, and asked without much conviction whether as he was spending a lot he could have a discount. Sorry, that's something people have to negotiate with the owner (the answer is almost always No). Another couple bought six birch trees, and trolleys full of hellebores add up to three figure totals. It was reassuring to be busy. When it is very quiet we can't tell if that is just the time of year and the weather, or if it means that everybody has fallen out of love with gardening or stopped spending money on anything except the basics.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
things are hotting up
The warmer weather is bringing the customers back like migrating birds. Some are regular visitors to the plant centre, commonly seen any time between spring and autumn. Others are new sightings. Some have made their way purposely to us in search of a particular plant, while others have the air of having just blown in and landed at random. We greet the familiar faces, and try to be nice to all of them.
New plants are starting to arrive in quantities too. The choice of herbaceous plants at this stage seems arbitrary. We've suddenly got the full gamut of hollyhocks, some lupins, a few achillea, and for some reason Centaurea montana and Hesperis matronalis. Delightful cottage garden plants, the last two, but scarcely the first names that would spring to mind if putting together a core range. The glasshouse-fresh foliage, so different to the winter-burned leaves on plants growing outside, is designed to tempt. Why else have a choice of half a dozen dwarf pinks, which won't start flowering for at least another month? Pots of Fritillaria meleagris, brought on under cover, are blooming weeks ahead of the ones in the garden. Bread-and-butter shrubs are starting to arrive too, variegated forms of Pittosporum tenuifolium and pyracantha. To a plant enthusiast they are not nearly so fascinating as the twigs that came in last week, but they score far more highly as eye candy.
We had to do some watering, outside as well as in the tunnels. We are out of practice after the winter break, hoses not in the right place, routes round the plant centre not honed to a precise routine. It takes a few days to learn to split the watering with a new team member. Initially you find dry patches that each person thought the other had done or would do, then with practice you develop the unspoken understanding that is a mark of all good teams, and everybody knows what the others are going to do without any need for discussion.
The manager had got us moving some of the shrubs that have over-wintered in the shelter of the tunnels back outside. We weren't too sure how cold he was expecting it to be tonight, as he'd also left instructions for us to wind down the tunnel sides, tuck fleece over the agapanthus and turn off the pump and the water tank at the end of the day. Turning off the irrigation fell to me, the other two saying they didn't know what we were supposed to be doing, so I hope I have clunked the correct lever and turned the right stop-cock, not being mechanically minded.
There were a couple of mystery plants to identify from samples. One looked like an alder of some sort, but not the common one, unless it was from a specimen that was doing far better than any of mine. The other looked more like some kind of Genista than anything else I could think of, though I was puzzled that the people asking had never noticed it flower. They await the manager's verdict on Monday morning, as does the almost-but-not-quite dead Hydrangea quercifolia, that has gone backwards for two and a half years. I wonder if two fierce winters separated by a drought sapped its will to live. All will be revealed on Monday.
The sun shone and the birds sang. Somebody brought in a gigantic and amiable black dog called Max, who wanted to smell everything, and thought that his owner's views on where she wanted to go need only have a very loose influence on his own progress. At home Max likes to sit on the sofa. She had to buy a second sofa. If you like plants and people watching then an up-market plant centre is an entertaining place to be, in the spring.
New plants are starting to arrive in quantities too. The choice of herbaceous plants at this stage seems arbitrary. We've suddenly got the full gamut of hollyhocks, some lupins, a few achillea, and for some reason Centaurea montana and Hesperis matronalis. Delightful cottage garden plants, the last two, but scarcely the first names that would spring to mind if putting together a core range. The glasshouse-fresh foliage, so different to the winter-burned leaves on plants growing outside, is designed to tempt. Why else have a choice of half a dozen dwarf pinks, which won't start flowering for at least another month? Pots of Fritillaria meleagris, brought on under cover, are blooming weeks ahead of the ones in the garden. Bread-and-butter shrubs are starting to arrive too, variegated forms of Pittosporum tenuifolium and pyracantha. To a plant enthusiast they are not nearly so fascinating as the twigs that came in last week, but they score far more highly as eye candy.
We had to do some watering, outside as well as in the tunnels. We are out of practice after the winter break, hoses not in the right place, routes round the plant centre not honed to a precise routine. It takes a few days to learn to split the watering with a new team member. Initially you find dry patches that each person thought the other had done or would do, then with practice you develop the unspoken understanding that is a mark of all good teams, and everybody knows what the others are going to do without any need for discussion.
The manager had got us moving some of the shrubs that have over-wintered in the shelter of the tunnels back outside. We weren't too sure how cold he was expecting it to be tonight, as he'd also left instructions for us to wind down the tunnel sides, tuck fleece over the agapanthus and turn off the pump and the water tank at the end of the day. Turning off the irrigation fell to me, the other two saying they didn't know what we were supposed to be doing, so I hope I have clunked the correct lever and turned the right stop-cock, not being mechanically minded.
There were a couple of mystery plants to identify from samples. One looked like an alder of some sort, but not the common one, unless it was from a specimen that was doing far better than any of mine. The other looked more like some kind of Genista than anything else I could think of, though I was puzzled that the people asking had never noticed it flower. They await the manager's verdict on Monday morning, as does the almost-but-not-quite dead Hydrangea quercifolia, that has gone backwards for two and a half years. I wonder if two fierce winters separated by a drought sapped its will to live. All will be revealed on Monday.
The sun shone and the birds sang. Somebody brought in a gigantic and amiable black dog called Max, who wanted to smell everything, and thought that his owner's views on where she wanted to go need only have a very loose influence on his own progress. At home Max likes to sit on the sofa. She had to buy a second sofa. If you like plants and people watching then an up-market plant centre is an entertaining place to be, in the spring.
Friday, 24 February 2012
bees need homes
I went last night to a meeting of my local beekeepers association, to learn about the use of bait hives. A bait hive does what the name suggests. You put out some sort of shelter, and hope to collect some bees.
You can do this for bumble bees, or at least for those species that like nesting in boxes. Indeed, you can buy purpose built bumble bee boxes, for what always seems a large amount of money for a small and pretty rudimentary piece of woodwork. Last night's speaker confirmed something I've read elsewhere, and which is a common source of complaint from visitors to the beekeeping stand at the Tendring Show, which is that the bumble bee boxes rarely attract any bees. Apparently bumbles much prefer bird boxes, and especially boxes that contain an old bird's nest. An old mouse nest is even better, as bumble bees like the smell. Odd, honey bees don't.
You can also rediscover the joys of Blue Peter by making yourself a nest for mason bees. They like small tubes, something the size of a bamboo cane or hollow shrub stem, with one end stoppered up. A handful of these wedged into a length of drainpipe, again with the back end closed off, put a couple of metres above the ground, preferably on a south facing aspect and angled slightly downwards to shed any rain that gets in, should attract some wild bees, eventually. They don't actually set up home in there like the bumble bees, but lay their eggs and then die. You'll be able to see if any of the tubes have been used as the bee will block up the outward facing end of the tube. You can buy special wild bee tubes as well, but home made ones are much cheaper, and work just as well. Our speaker demonstrated a couple, one with the drainpipe stoppered with an old jar lid, and the other with an empty can. I suppose they were not the most elegant creations, but the bees won't mind if they're hung in an obscure corner of the garden. In fact, they'd probably be quite pleased, as they are shy creatures.
Bumbles and solitary bees are both delightful to have about the garden, and good pollinators, and increasingly rare, so you can upgrade the aesthetics of your domestic environment and give yourself a pat on the back for conservation work by providing them with a home. Our speaker was equally passionate about the need to provide suitable accommodation for swarming honey bees, so that they would not have to move into people's roof cavities, chimneys and other unsuitable places, where they would fall victim to pest controllers. I sensed that the audience were sympathetic to his conservation message, but more interested in how to obtain free bees. I fancied the idea of free bees myself. They cost a fortune to buy nowadays, what with beekeeping having become fashionable, and I'd quite like another colony or two.
Honey bees like a space which as far as possible resembles a hole in a tree trunk, with an ideal capacity of 40L. In other words, something a little smaller than the commercial brood chambers I normally use, with a solid floor and a small entrance. Putting frames of foundation or drawn comb in there will help attract them, as they like the smell of the wax, and the smell of bees, if the equipment has been previously used. On that basis you could just use a spare beehive. The speaker suggested making a copy of a proper hive, to less exacting construction standards and out of plywood. After all, it only has to stand outside in the swarming season, from about April to early August. Compared to using a spare hive, a plywood model will be cheaper, and if the bees you collect turn out to have American foul brood, burning a home made plywood box is going to be less painful than torching a couple of hundred quids' worth of Thornes' finest cedar. Which said, AFB is quite rare and while possible wouldn't be top of my list of things to worry about with a swarm.
Swarms like to move about a mile from their original hive, so you are likely to catch other people's bees rather than your own. Our speaker had tried setting boxes up next to feral colonies in Colchester Castle Park and they had shown no interest at all. With around ten bait hives set up locally he achieved a hit rate of about 20% of hives occupied in 2011, when there were very few swarms, and more like 80% in 2010, which was a swarmy year. The ideal height for a bait box for honey bees is 3 to 11 metres above the ground. Make that 3 metres then. Tottering around up a ladder 11 metres off the ground with a box of stinging insects is not my idea of how to make life easy for yourself. Actually, 3 metres sounds pretty inconvenient, and I don't have a stand that high, so I shall put my bait hive exactly where I should like the bees to remain, should I manage to catch any, which saves any issues over moving them once they've set up house.
Unless you are a beekeeper you probably don't want to attract swarms of honey bees into your garden, but you will find wild bees the most delightful companions. Solitary bees can't even sting human beings, being unable to penetrate our skins. Bumbles can (and if they do it is extremely painful) but you have to annoy them a lot before they will (I did, inadvertently).
Addendum I ended up volunteering to take on the role of treasurer for my local group, as they needed somebody and no-one else had stepped forward. The rule is that the treasurer has to stand down after three years, and ours has done his three year stint. Knowing him I'm confident I'll get some spreadsheets in good running order, and not a shoebox of mysterious invoices, unmarked cheque stubs and unreconciled bank statements. He made it sound very easy. There aren't even any capital assets to worry about.
You can do this for bumble bees, or at least for those species that like nesting in boxes. Indeed, you can buy purpose built bumble bee boxes, for what always seems a large amount of money for a small and pretty rudimentary piece of woodwork. Last night's speaker confirmed something I've read elsewhere, and which is a common source of complaint from visitors to the beekeeping stand at the Tendring Show, which is that the bumble bee boxes rarely attract any bees. Apparently bumbles much prefer bird boxes, and especially boxes that contain an old bird's nest. An old mouse nest is even better, as bumble bees like the smell. Odd, honey bees don't.
You can also rediscover the joys of Blue Peter by making yourself a nest for mason bees. They like small tubes, something the size of a bamboo cane or hollow shrub stem, with one end stoppered up. A handful of these wedged into a length of drainpipe, again with the back end closed off, put a couple of metres above the ground, preferably on a south facing aspect and angled slightly downwards to shed any rain that gets in, should attract some wild bees, eventually. They don't actually set up home in there like the bumble bees, but lay their eggs and then die. You'll be able to see if any of the tubes have been used as the bee will block up the outward facing end of the tube. You can buy special wild bee tubes as well, but home made ones are much cheaper, and work just as well. Our speaker demonstrated a couple, one with the drainpipe stoppered with an old jar lid, and the other with an empty can. I suppose they were not the most elegant creations, but the bees won't mind if they're hung in an obscure corner of the garden. In fact, they'd probably be quite pleased, as they are shy creatures.
Bumbles and solitary bees are both delightful to have about the garden, and good pollinators, and increasingly rare, so you can upgrade the aesthetics of your domestic environment and give yourself a pat on the back for conservation work by providing them with a home. Our speaker was equally passionate about the need to provide suitable accommodation for swarming honey bees, so that they would not have to move into people's roof cavities, chimneys and other unsuitable places, where they would fall victim to pest controllers. I sensed that the audience were sympathetic to his conservation message, but more interested in how to obtain free bees. I fancied the idea of free bees myself. They cost a fortune to buy nowadays, what with beekeeping having become fashionable, and I'd quite like another colony or two.
Honey bees like a space which as far as possible resembles a hole in a tree trunk, with an ideal capacity of 40L. In other words, something a little smaller than the commercial brood chambers I normally use, with a solid floor and a small entrance. Putting frames of foundation or drawn comb in there will help attract them, as they like the smell of the wax, and the smell of bees, if the equipment has been previously used. On that basis you could just use a spare beehive. The speaker suggested making a copy of a proper hive, to less exacting construction standards and out of plywood. After all, it only has to stand outside in the swarming season, from about April to early August. Compared to using a spare hive, a plywood model will be cheaper, and if the bees you collect turn out to have American foul brood, burning a home made plywood box is going to be less painful than torching a couple of hundred quids' worth of Thornes' finest cedar. Which said, AFB is quite rare and while possible wouldn't be top of my list of things to worry about with a swarm.
Swarms like to move about a mile from their original hive, so you are likely to catch other people's bees rather than your own. Our speaker had tried setting boxes up next to feral colonies in Colchester Castle Park and they had shown no interest at all. With around ten bait hives set up locally he achieved a hit rate of about 20% of hives occupied in 2011, when there were very few swarms, and more like 80% in 2010, which was a swarmy year. The ideal height for a bait box for honey bees is 3 to 11 metres above the ground. Make that 3 metres then. Tottering around up a ladder 11 metres off the ground with a box of stinging insects is not my idea of how to make life easy for yourself. Actually, 3 metres sounds pretty inconvenient, and I don't have a stand that high, so I shall put my bait hive exactly where I should like the bees to remain, should I manage to catch any, which saves any issues over moving them once they've set up house.
Unless you are a beekeeper you probably don't want to attract swarms of honey bees into your garden, but you will find wild bees the most delightful companions. Solitary bees can't even sting human beings, being unable to penetrate our skins. Bumbles can (and if they do it is extremely painful) but you have to annoy them a lot before they will (I did, inadvertently).
Addendum I ended up volunteering to take on the role of treasurer for my local group, as they needed somebody and no-one else had stepped forward. The rule is that the treasurer has to stand down after three years, and ours has done his three year stint. Knowing him I'm confident I'll get some spreadsheets in good running order, and not a shoebox of mysterious invoices, unmarked cheque stubs and unreconciled bank statements. He made it sound very easy. There aren't even any capital assets to worry about.
Thursday, 23 February 2012
tall buildings
Trawling around the newspapers over a mug of tea, I stumbled upon a thoroughly entertaining website called Skyscraper News. It does what it says on the tin, in that it contains news about skyscrapers, but it also has a load of history and some good panoramic views taken from high places. If you are curious about the great edifices that are being added to our cities, or making the news for not being built, Skyscraper News is the place to find out more. (It would have been just the thing to have on my smart phone, if I had one, during yesterday's journey into Liverpool Street, when I proved quite unable to answer half my mother's questions about what the tall buildings were).
The tallest completed building in the UK is not a skyscraper, but the Emley Moor Transmitter at Huddersfield, completed in 1971 and standing 280m tall. Coming in at number two is One Canada Square, the Canary Wharf tower with the pyramid shaped top, completed twenty years later. That is 235.1metres tall, so the view from the top floor must be pretty good, but it ceased to function as an observation level in the mid 90s, leaving Britain as the only country in Europe not to have an observation level at the top of its tallest building. There are fifty floors over ground, but no floor number thirteen. Other facts I previously didn't know about One Canada Square is that it has 36 lifts, the steel structural frame weighs 27,000 tonnes and the cladding another 47,000 tonnes.
The Shard when completed is due to knock One Canada Square into a distance second place, as it will rise to 310 metres. This was scaled back from the original proposal for 380 metres. The part built Shard overtook One Canada Square as long ago as November 2010, and it is due to be finished this year. There will be a public viewing gallery 243.8 metres above the ground. Ironically, the name was coined by English Heritage, who dubbed the tower a shard of glass stabbing the heart of historic London. Thanks guys, cool suggestion, we'll use that.
Statistics on buildings use their own terminology, like data on most things. I puzzled for a while over Roof Height (AOD) before working out that AOD stood for 'above ordnance datum' (ordnance datum in Great Britain is the mean sea level at Newlyn in Cornwall between 1915 and 1921), and that Roof Height (AGL) must stand for Roof Height above ground level. Roof height (AGL) is the measurement used in rankings of building heights. Raising the top even nearer to heaven by standing your building on a mountain doesn't give you a comparative advantage in the tall building stakes.
You get the top thirty buildings in the UK, ranked by height. The first entry from outside London feiatures at number ten, the Beetham Tower in Manchester which is a mixture of hotel and residential, and in total only six of the thirty are outside London. The Blackpool Tower is at number 18, the London Eye at 21 and Wembley Stadium at 23.. The top thirty is limited to completed buildings, so there'll be some changes in the rankings as various projects get finished, though yesterday's Evening Standard was not very optimistic about how lettings are going, and some partly built towers may end up shorter than originally envisaged.
You can look up details of tall buildings for any city. London has 2,717 entries, Manchester 466, Ludlow only one. Actually, lots of places only have one or two tall buildings listed. (The facility to list by location isn't obvious from the menu, and I fell into it while fiddling around with the search option). Colchester has seven entries, including Colchester Castle, status complete, completion date 1100. The other six are the student blocks at the university, height 43 metres, 14 floors. No images are available but I can tell you that they look like the towers of Mordor (black, forbidding). Identical.
The list of buildings for London are a geography of memory, and of the imagination. A palimsest, they include not merely buildings demolished, but buildings never built, and buildings that exist as 'visions'. Somebody might build them one day, depending on the economy and the planners, or they might join the ranks of the cancelled. The Aldgate Tower existed as a 325 metre possibility in the late 80s, and was cancelled as the market collapsed. The original Wembley Park observation tower, completed in 1907, stood at 353 metres making it the tallest thing to have actually been built, until it was demolished. [Erratum The Systems Administrator pointed out to me that this was proposed, but aborted when the ground proved too soft.] Of the top twenty tallest buildings ever proposed for London, according to Skyscraper News, one was built and four are under construction. The others are all visions, in pre-planning, on hold, or in five cases cancelled. Architecture must be one of the most soul-destroying art forms, as your chances of seeing your idea become even approximately realised are pretty low, according to this database.
It struck me yesterday as our buses trundled through the City, how many holes in the ground there were, and how often I struggled to remember what had been there before, beyond a feeling that it had been post war and not very interesting. Some, like Bucklersbury House, I remember being frankly hideous. The table bears my impression out, with buildings erected in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s already demolished to make room for something else, or in many cases representing failed experiments in high-rise living. Ropemaker Place, completed in 1987, was demolished in 2005. We can't afford to go squandering materials and energy like that, and need to learn to build better and for the longer term.
Addendum Having written this on Wednesday afternoon I failed to press the Publish button, and found it still in draft when I posted Thursday's blog. That is the first time I have ever failed to post, which is rather a waste when I did write it on the day. My trip to London and the shock of paying for my 40,000 mile service for the Skoda were obviously too much for me. Erratum In the blog as originally posted, I said that the old Wembley Park had a tall tower, but in fact that was abandoned when only partly built, so it didn't. I should have known that, and it proves that I should look at big databases found on the internet more carefully. All I can say I wasn't concentrating when I wrote the post. Sorry about that.
You can look up details of tall buildings for any city. London has 2,717 entries, Manchester 466, Ludlow only one. Actually, lots of places only have one or two tall buildings listed. (The facility to list by location isn't obvious from the menu, and I fell into it while fiddling around with the search option). Colchester has seven entries, including Colchester Castle, status complete, completion date 1100. The other six are the student blocks at the university, height 43 metres, 14 floors. No images are available but I can tell you that they look like the towers of Mordor (black, forbidding). Identical.
The list of buildings for London are a geography of memory, and of the imagination. A palimsest, they include not merely buildings demolished, but buildings never built, and buildings that exist as 'visions'. Somebody might build them one day, depending on the economy and the planners, or they might join the ranks of the cancelled. The Aldgate Tower existed as a 325 metre possibility in the late 80s, and was cancelled as the market collapsed. The original Wembley Park observation tower, completed in 1907, stood at 353 metres making it the tallest thing to have actually been built, until it was demolished. [Erratum The Systems Administrator pointed out to me that this was proposed, but aborted when the ground proved too soft.] Of the top twenty tallest buildings ever proposed for London, according to Skyscraper News, one was built and four are under construction. The others are all visions, in pre-planning, on hold, or in five cases cancelled. Architecture must be one of the most soul-destroying art forms, as your chances of seeing your idea become even approximately realised are pretty low, according to this database.
It struck me yesterday as our buses trundled through the City, how many holes in the ground there were, and how often I struggled to remember what had been there before, beyond a feeling that it had been post war and not very interesting. Some, like Bucklersbury House, I remember being frankly hideous. The table bears my impression out, with buildings erected in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s already demolished to make room for something else, or in many cases representing failed experiments in high-rise living. Ropemaker Place, completed in 1987, was demolished in 2005. We can't afford to go squandering materials and energy like that, and need to learn to build better and for the longer term.
Addendum Having written this on Wednesday afternoon I failed to press the Publish button, and found it still in draft when I posted Thursday's blog. That is the first time I have ever failed to post, which is rather a waste when I did write it on the day. My trip to London and the shock of paying for my 40,000 mile service for the Skoda were obviously too much for me. Erratum In the blog as originally posted, I said that the old Wembley Park had a tall tower, but in fact that was abandoned when only partly built, so it didn't. I should have known that, and it proves that I should look at big databases found on the internet more carefully. All I can say I wasn't concentrating when I wrote the post. Sorry about that.
bees and bamboo
Today felt like spring. I went to see the bees, and to my pleasure they were alive and flying from all three hives. I was particularly impressed that the little colony in the nucleus hive, only half the size of a normal beehive, has made it this far. They appeared as a swarm late last season, and by autumn were not nearly as large as my bee instructor told me a colony needed to be to come through the winter. However, there was nothing to do about that, short of risking upsetting one of the established colonies by trying to combine them, so I fed them and left them to take their chance. It looks like they may have seized it with all six legs and both wings.
I didn't open the hives fully. It would probably have been just about warm enough for a very brief inspection if I've absolutely had to, but I didn't. There's a risk they may have lost their queens during the winter, in which case there is no future for them, unless I intervene with a replacement, but they probably haven't. Instead I gave each of them a 2.5kg lump of fondant, a soft paste of sucrose, glucose syrup and invert sugar syrup, which is supposed to be easy for them to digest, and not to require them to collect too much water to use it. Stored honey by this stage can be rock hard, and require the bees to gather water to dilute it before they can eat it. The fondant comes in plastic bags similar to vacuum packs, which are peculiarly resistant to being cut open with kitchen scissors. The brand is called ambrosia (which makes me think of tinned rice pudding) and is German. On the side of the box it says Bienenfutterteig, which translates as Feed Paste, and in smaller letters Einzfuttermittel, which less felicitously translates as Single feeding stuff. You put it on top of the crown board over one of the holes leading down into the body of the beehive, and they come up and collect what they want.
I bought the fondant a while back, when I was concerned that the unseasonably warm weather might be leading the bees to be more active and use more stores than they would normally, at a time when there wasn't much forage. My bee tutor said that they knew what they were doing and would be fine, and then it turned cold again and a friend warned me that they wouldn't touch the fondant when it was that cold. Then I began to feel so tired and unwell I decided to believe my bee tutor and leave them to get on with it, but today felt like paying them a visit. It was very nice to see them, and fairly soon it'll be time to have a look inside each hive, and find out what's going on. If I see them bringing in pollen in the meantime that will be a good sign that they are likely to be feeding brood. They were foraging today, working the crocus in the bottom lawn and the hellebores, even the new ones in pots that are still stood in the porch.
I worked at weeding the damp bed. I still call it the Gunnera bed, even though the Gunnera died a couple of years ago. They grow from a great scaly core, like a rhubarb crown on steroids, which is vulnerable to cold in severe winters, rotting if it gets too wet, and being eaten by voles. I have a replacement sitting in a pot in the greenhouse awaiting planting when the milder weather arrives. Before planting anything it is necessary to remove the excess yellow stemmed bamboo, which has run far beyond its intended space. Its name is Phyllostachys aureosulcata 'Aureocaulis', and if you are ever offered one I should treat it with the respect it deserves. Once I've hacked mine back to a quantity of bamboo I consider appropriate, I am going to try and check its future wanderings by sinking two rolls of galvanised lawn edging around it. It may of course attempt to burrow under or climb over the lawn edging, but at least that will give me a boundary to work to. I shall have to be vigilant. The way this bamboo spreads is to send out horizontal shoots only just below the surface of the soil. These periodically send down roots, and a new vertical stem arises from that point, which gradually thickens into a large woody plate. The roots do not go deep, but in established parts of the clump they are extremely firmly attached to the ground. It's no good trying to fork them out, you would just break the fork handle, and a pick axe is required. Bafflingly and rather frustratingly, while the yellow stemmed bamboo has gone wild, the black stemmed Phyllostachys nigra planted in the same bed keeps dying out in patches, and has never made a good clump.
Self seeded willows have shot up in this bed, and reached a considerable size remarkably quickly. I should have hauled them all out last summer, but never got round to it. Fortunately their trunks and roots are comparatively soft, quick to saw through and to chop through with the pick axe. The bamboo roots are tough as hell. I have heard of really rampant clumps that could only be removed with explosives.
I didn't open the hives fully. It would probably have been just about warm enough for a very brief inspection if I've absolutely had to, but I didn't. There's a risk they may have lost their queens during the winter, in which case there is no future for them, unless I intervene with a replacement, but they probably haven't. Instead I gave each of them a 2.5kg lump of fondant, a soft paste of sucrose, glucose syrup and invert sugar syrup, which is supposed to be easy for them to digest, and not to require them to collect too much water to use it. Stored honey by this stage can be rock hard, and require the bees to gather water to dilute it before they can eat it. The fondant comes in plastic bags similar to vacuum packs, which are peculiarly resistant to being cut open with kitchen scissors. The brand is called ambrosia (which makes me think of tinned rice pudding) and is German. On the side of the box it says Bienenfutterteig, which translates as Feed Paste, and in smaller letters Einzfuttermittel, which less felicitously translates as Single feeding stuff. You put it on top of the crown board over one of the holes leading down into the body of the beehive, and they come up and collect what they want.
I bought the fondant a while back, when I was concerned that the unseasonably warm weather might be leading the bees to be more active and use more stores than they would normally, at a time when there wasn't much forage. My bee tutor said that they knew what they were doing and would be fine, and then it turned cold again and a friend warned me that they wouldn't touch the fondant when it was that cold. Then I began to feel so tired and unwell I decided to believe my bee tutor and leave them to get on with it, but today felt like paying them a visit. It was very nice to see them, and fairly soon it'll be time to have a look inside each hive, and find out what's going on. If I see them bringing in pollen in the meantime that will be a good sign that they are likely to be feeding brood. They were foraging today, working the crocus in the bottom lawn and the hellebores, even the new ones in pots that are still stood in the porch.
I worked at weeding the damp bed. I still call it the Gunnera bed, even though the Gunnera died a couple of years ago. They grow from a great scaly core, like a rhubarb crown on steroids, which is vulnerable to cold in severe winters, rotting if it gets too wet, and being eaten by voles. I have a replacement sitting in a pot in the greenhouse awaiting planting when the milder weather arrives. Before planting anything it is necessary to remove the excess yellow stemmed bamboo, which has run far beyond its intended space. Its name is Phyllostachys aureosulcata 'Aureocaulis', and if you are ever offered one I should treat it with the respect it deserves. Once I've hacked mine back to a quantity of bamboo I consider appropriate, I am going to try and check its future wanderings by sinking two rolls of galvanised lawn edging around it. It may of course attempt to burrow under or climb over the lawn edging, but at least that will give me a boundary to work to. I shall have to be vigilant. The way this bamboo spreads is to send out horizontal shoots only just below the surface of the soil. These periodically send down roots, and a new vertical stem arises from that point, which gradually thickens into a large woody plate. The roots do not go deep, but in established parts of the clump they are extremely firmly attached to the ground. It's no good trying to fork them out, you would just break the fork handle, and a pick axe is required. Bafflingly and rather frustratingly, while the yellow stemmed bamboo has gone wild, the black stemmed Phyllostachys nigra planted in the same bed keeps dying out in patches, and has never made a good clump.
Self seeded willows have shot up in this bed, and reached a considerable size remarkably quickly. I should have hauled them all out last summer, but never got round to it. Fortunately their trunks and roots are comparatively soft, quick to saw through and to chop through with the pick axe. The bamboo roots are tough as hell. I have heard of really rampant clumps that could only be removed with explosives.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
great big trees
I went with my mother to see the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was rather a faff getting there. The trains into London ran OK, but when we filed down to the Central line we found a train standing at the platform, doors open, for an ominously long time, and then there was an announcement that the delay was caused by a customer incident at Oxford Circus. That could have meant anything from a minor scuffle to a suicide, so we went back up the escalators and caught the number 23 bus. A bus arrived almost at once, and I felt rather triumphant at knowing how the buses worked, but the traffic was very slow (or maybe just going at normal central London speed) and after huffing and puffing at the delays in Great Winchester Street my mother declared at Charing Cross that it was time to abandon the bus and walk. I was concerned that by the end of the day she would probably have done more than enough walking, but we got off.
The Hockney exhibition is very large, and good. Enough art critics have said enough about it that I am not going to join in and even hazard a guess whether or not he is the natural successor to Lucien Freud (OK, he's not), but if you like extremely big, brilliantly colourful evocations of the English landscape you'll like this. Lots of people do. You could tell that from the length of time they spent in front of individual pictures and groups of pictures, and the conversations that were going on. Anybody from Yorkshire was in triumphant mode, able to inform their companions how like the real place the picture was, and I heard the comment 'I could live with that' oftener than, say, at Gerhard Richter (actually, I don't think anybody expressed the desire in my hearing to live with a Gerhard Richter). Hockney paints Yorkshire with warmth and love, and people respond to his warmth. I did myself.
Various critics had mentioned the drawings made on his iPad, and I thought the RA missed a trick in not having a small display somewhere explaining how exactly you do draw on a tablet. I don't have one and I hadn't a clue. I managed to gather the basics (or at least a version of them that may turn out to quite misleading when I look it up) from an overheard conversation between some fellow visitors, and a helpful security guard who showed us the iPhone equivalent. Apparently a stylus and a colour menu are involved, plus the ability to visualise what something done on a tablet is going to look like when it's blown up to be 4 metres high. I liked the scribbly, graphic quality of the iPad drawings. And I liked his two early paintings, done when he was 19 (and included to show how far his style had progressed), though if he had continued as he began he would now be having a nice retrospective at the Minories Gallery in Colchester rather than the Royal Academy. And I enjoyed the video installations shot from multiple viewpoints, though my mother said they made her feel seasick.
It was rather a bun fight, but fortunately most people were pretty sensible about staying back from the walls so that we could all see the paintings, and the paintings were mostly huge. It is a big show with a great many rooms, and after an hour and forty minutes our brains were full and our legs tired, and we had to totter off, but it was worth the effort. The RA still haven't got their ticketing sorted out, though. On arriving at Somerset House I had to queue at the members desk with my computer booking printout to get actual tickets, which seems a pointless extra step. The British Museum just checks your home printed proof of purchase at the door as you go into the exhibition. They don't have enough loos either. We didn't even attempt to use the Friends room after our viewing, and went for a cup of tea at Pret a Manger, which was much more civilised.
Then we walked to the Courtauld Gallery to see the Mondrian and Nicholson exhibition, and about half way along the Strand my mother asked plaintively if it was much further. When we got to the end of the road leading down to Waterloo Bridge we were engulfed in a sea of French school children, and glimpsing the end of Somerset house and panicking at the quantity of children she suggested that we head down towards the bridge, so we entered Somerset House by the river entrance, and found that the courtyard was occupied by a large, noisy marquee surrounded by trendy young people and photographers, and that we were in part of London fashion week. I ploughed on round the edge of the tent, on the grounds that we hadn't crashed through any barrier to get into the courtyard, and that you can walk through all sorts of places if you look confident and keep going. Nobody wanted to photograph us, though I read in the Evening Standard on the way home that shearling is coming back into fashion, which is handy as I'm still wearing a shearling coat from twelve years ago.
Mondrian and Nicholson were friends, who had adjacent studios in Hampstead for a few years. There must have been some tricky moments when Nicholson left the first Mrs Nicholson, who was a close friend and patron of Mondrian, to take up with the second Mrs Nicholson, who was Barbara Hepworth, but they seem to have weathered them. I really like both of their work, and if I had to choose I'd give Nicholson the edge, because it is less strictly geometric and more 3-D. I loved some of his white carved wood reliefs, and liked the domestic detail that one of the larger ones was cut from a leaf of a mahogany table he bought in Camden Market. As the people were saying in the RA, I could live with that.
Then we looked at some of the permanent collection and made use of the seats, which are very comfortable. One of the advantages of the Courtauld for visitors to London on cheap day returns is that it stays open until six, and is a civilised place to wait until the off-peak trains start again. We got a bus back to Liverpool Street, slightly too early because my mother was nervous about missing the train. One of the reasons why I normally travel from Colchester and not Wivenhoe is that there are more trains, and one of the reasons why I tend to walk around central London, unless it's raining hard, is that I know how long it will take. Getting on the bus I found that my Oyster card had run out.
For once I've been to exhibitions early in their run, so you have plenty of time to go and see them. Both are well worthwhile. You need to allow plenty of time for the Hockney. It is big.
The Hockney exhibition is very large, and good. Enough art critics have said enough about it that I am not going to join in and even hazard a guess whether or not he is the natural successor to Lucien Freud (OK, he's not), but if you like extremely big, brilliantly colourful evocations of the English landscape you'll like this. Lots of people do. You could tell that from the length of time they spent in front of individual pictures and groups of pictures, and the conversations that were going on. Anybody from Yorkshire was in triumphant mode, able to inform their companions how like the real place the picture was, and I heard the comment 'I could live with that' oftener than, say, at Gerhard Richter (actually, I don't think anybody expressed the desire in my hearing to live with a Gerhard Richter). Hockney paints Yorkshire with warmth and love, and people respond to his warmth. I did myself.
Various critics had mentioned the drawings made on his iPad, and I thought the RA missed a trick in not having a small display somewhere explaining how exactly you do draw on a tablet. I don't have one and I hadn't a clue. I managed to gather the basics (or at least a version of them that may turn out to quite misleading when I look it up) from an overheard conversation between some fellow visitors, and a helpful security guard who showed us the iPhone equivalent. Apparently a stylus and a colour menu are involved, plus the ability to visualise what something done on a tablet is going to look like when it's blown up to be 4 metres high. I liked the scribbly, graphic quality of the iPad drawings. And I liked his two early paintings, done when he was 19 (and included to show how far his style had progressed), though if he had continued as he began he would now be having a nice retrospective at the Minories Gallery in Colchester rather than the Royal Academy. And I enjoyed the video installations shot from multiple viewpoints, though my mother said they made her feel seasick.
It was rather a bun fight, but fortunately most people were pretty sensible about staying back from the walls so that we could all see the paintings, and the paintings were mostly huge. It is a big show with a great many rooms, and after an hour and forty minutes our brains were full and our legs tired, and we had to totter off, but it was worth the effort. The RA still haven't got their ticketing sorted out, though. On arriving at Somerset House I had to queue at the members desk with my computer booking printout to get actual tickets, which seems a pointless extra step. The British Museum just checks your home printed proof of purchase at the door as you go into the exhibition. They don't have enough loos either. We didn't even attempt to use the Friends room after our viewing, and went for a cup of tea at Pret a Manger, which was much more civilised.
Then we walked to the Courtauld Gallery to see the Mondrian and Nicholson exhibition, and about half way along the Strand my mother asked plaintively if it was much further. When we got to the end of the road leading down to Waterloo Bridge we were engulfed in a sea of French school children, and glimpsing the end of Somerset house and panicking at the quantity of children she suggested that we head down towards the bridge, so we entered Somerset House by the river entrance, and found that the courtyard was occupied by a large, noisy marquee surrounded by trendy young people and photographers, and that we were in part of London fashion week. I ploughed on round the edge of the tent, on the grounds that we hadn't crashed through any barrier to get into the courtyard, and that you can walk through all sorts of places if you look confident and keep going. Nobody wanted to photograph us, though I read in the Evening Standard on the way home that shearling is coming back into fashion, which is handy as I'm still wearing a shearling coat from twelve years ago.
Mondrian and Nicholson were friends, who had adjacent studios in Hampstead for a few years. There must have been some tricky moments when Nicholson left the first Mrs Nicholson, who was a close friend and patron of Mondrian, to take up with the second Mrs Nicholson, who was Barbara Hepworth, but they seem to have weathered them. I really like both of their work, and if I had to choose I'd give Nicholson the edge, because it is less strictly geometric and more 3-D. I loved some of his white carved wood reliefs, and liked the domestic detail that one of the larger ones was cut from a leaf of a mahogany table he bought in Camden Market. As the people were saying in the RA, I could live with that.
Then we looked at some of the permanent collection and made use of the seats, which are very comfortable. One of the advantages of the Courtauld for visitors to London on cheap day returns is that it stays open until six, and is a civilised place to wait until the off-peak trains start again. We got a bus back to Liverpool Street, slightly too early because my mother was nervous about missing the train. One of the reasons why I normally travel from Colchester and not Wivenhoe is that there are more trains, and one of the reasons why I tend to walk around central London, unless it's raining hard, is that I know how long it will take. Getting on the bus I found that my Oyster card had run out.
For once I've been to exhibitions early in their run, so you have plenty of time to go and see them. Both are well worthwhile. You need to allow plenty of time for the Hockney. It is big.
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