Soilman

Said my piece about the RHS on the Guardian today… for those who’ve not read the uncensored version already.

I was perhaps a little disappointed that the responses come, by and large, from the gardening industry; those who work in horticulture or earn a living writing about it (or work/volunteer for the RHS itself). They are influential, to be sure, but they’re not punters. Their coin is green-tinged. They must comment delicately on one of the biggest, richest and most influential players in their industry… if they intend to make a career in it.

That’s partly why I volunteered: I’m an outsider. No such worries for me.

It’s got me thinking, though, about my outsider status… which I wear as a badge of pride. Regular readers (you need psychiatric help, but thanks anyway) will know that I miss no opportunity to be vulgar, shocking and boorish. Rejoice in it, even. Kicking down folks’ expectations of the middle-class, educated, 40-something suburban gardener is an unspoken mission statement of this blog.

In case you hadn’t figured that out.

Most of the time, this suits me fine. I’m used to the outsider role. I’ve played it all my life. Like Groucho, I never want to belong to any club that would actually have me. The kicking, screaming inner child couldn’t bear it. And somebody has to throw bottles from the back.

But now and then, like today, I’m forcibly reminded of the main consequence of taking that role: Namely, that you influence nobody that matters… ever. Your views are too vulgar, too weird, or just too ‘unhelpful’ (the dread adjective that invokes, in three syllables, the full lexicon of British patrician hauteur and contempt).

Perhaps the reminder is good for my humility (there is some, honest). At the very least, it helps me with the midlife crisis problem: I suddenly remembered, today, my favourite childhood book: ‘The Outside Cat’ by Jane Thayer (scroll down a little to read it). And that’s been worth a fortune to me.

Had a quick binfire yesterday, and only just in time. It’s pouring again, and for the foreseeable.

I’ve been nervous about fires ever since a moment of inattention almost turned into a catastrophe. I decided to have a fire on the allotment in July… during that drought heatwave of 3 or 4 years ago. On a roastingly hot, windy day.

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me: I turned my back for a few seconds to do something, only to find that the little fire I’d started had been blown into a raging inferno.

And when I say inferno, I mean it: this was a huge, dangerous conflagration that took hold of some brambles and went nuclear. The flames were 4m high, and getting higher. And the noise – crackling, whooshing, hissing, roaring. Terrifying.

My pathetic efforts to douse it were utterly useless. I managed only to singe off half an eyebrow and set my trouser leg on fire.

By the grace of God, an allotment neighbour happened to be watering with a hose and came to my rescue. But it still took us 20 mins to put the fire out. I was pathetically, weepingly grateful. For a few minutes, I’d been the man responsible for burning down everyone’s allotments and several neighbouring houses.

I could see the headlines spinning in my fevered imagination: “Soilman Fucks Up Utterly”.

So I’m now cautious to the point of paranoia. Fires only happen in bins, and I stare at them so hard I barely blink. Where fires are concerned, dear Reader, I recommend Serious Care and Attention.

Here endeth the lesson.

Shock news: Many visitors to this blog come via an “allotment blog” search in Google. Obviously I’d love a slice of the “midget sex” market, too, but for now I’m stuck with allotments.

This is not a sexy Search market. Even in the peak gardening interest period (early Spring), “allotment blog” gets stuck into Google just 100 times a day. And all by Brits (source: Google insights for search).

Some of you have been blogging about allotmenteering a lot longer than me, and you’ll know what a tumbleweed trap ‘allotments’ is. It’s pathetically parochial (nobody outside the UK knows what an allotment is) and until recently it was old blokes in flat caps who’d never even seen a computer, let alone touched one.

But wow, how things change. Check it out: there are now some folks paying for Search advertising on “allotment blog”. Astonishing.

They’re mostly advertising for start-up community gardening sites, no doubt supported (eventually) by advertising from the industry. And good luck to them. It’s lovely to see anyone giving a shit about allotments… especially now there’s (apparently) a few quid in them there hills.

But you know what? I thought I’d just take this opportunity to mention – while the allotmenteering space is commercialising all around us – that if you don’t want to pay for advice, or be advertised at in return for the privilege, you don’t have to.

There’s a huge number of garden bloggers out there who, like me, do it all for free (sad bastards) and will always try to help anyone who asks… gratis. Check out my blogroll to find them.

We do it for love, laughs and a genuine desire to help (plus a bit of boasting and vainglory, on my part, when something goes right). So take advantage.

Just one small cost: You sometimes have to read a lot of shit about midget sex.

This morning I’m starting to look forward to my Christmas holiday. Which is like looking forward to sex with a dwarf. It’s probably better than no sex… but depressing and awfully short.

Actually, I’ve decided that anticipating holidays is the most enjoyable part. The holiday itself is over in seconds, and you spend at least the first five days of it waking at 6am as if it’s a work day (I do, anyway; my body clock is as inflexible and rigidly programmed as a North Korean public holiday).

The Christmas holiday has a special angst, of course. There’s the expense of gift giving… and receiving (“Gosh. A musical sock drawer tidy. Just what I always wanted”).

This year, though, is special. In fact, it’s a triumph. By dint of quiet diplomacy over 12 months, I have delicately concluded a no-gift pact with everyone I know – even family.

The momentous outcome is simply this: For the first time in 42 years, I will be buying no Christmas gifts whatsoever. Yep, you read right. That means no shopping, no queueing, no shit.

So think on that while you’re trying to decipher the inarticulate grunting of a spotty 18-year-old cashier clerk in John Lewis, or hovering over a skid-marked public toilet seat after getting caught short in Tesco.

In horrible contrast to all your suffering, I shall be ensconced at home watching porn (perhaps Christmas-themed – “Jiggle Belles” etc) and stuffing my face with Leonidas’ best.

Cheers.

PS All comedy Christmas porn movie titles gratefully received

The non-gardening theme continues. Reason? Still pissing.

(Dear God, when will it end?)

Took a daytrip to the Slimbridge Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust today. In the rain (but of course). Didn’t have time to see it all, but enjoyed the flamingos; the first non-grey thing I’ve seen outdoors for weeks.

… and so my thoughts turn to Christmas.

I wish they wouldn’t. I loathe Christmas. It’s an ordeal that I rank up there with unblocking the lavatory, protracted root canal work and proctological examination (which last I have yet to endure, but visualising the procedure’s psychological effect demands minimal imaginative chutzpah).

There is one small glint of moonlight in the morgue, however: by some horticultural miracle, last year’s potted tree is still with us – just.

Granted, it’s lost half its foliage. But at least I can save £15 by re-using the bugger. Assuming I stand it against a wall.

It’s got me thinking about other things I could re-use. Hey, why not? If you’re hating it anyway, why not claw back a few quid on the deal?

I’m figuring a bit of glue and concentration could probably resurrect the Xmas crackers, if you remember to save the pieces. And the Christmas cake’s a dead cert. Nobody eats the fucking thing anyway, so they’ll never notice if I wheel out the same cake 10 years in a row.

I’m inspired by the Empress Dowager with her 100 dishes at every meal. The eunuchs knew she only touched the same 10 favourites every day, so the rest were served up, untouched, week after week… until they were rotting under the porcelain tops.

That’s my kind of hospitality.

Good points made by Matron in her “Food Security” post of Nov 12 (can’t link direct, but it’s a short scroll down her main page):

“There will come a time in the not too distant future when supplies of water and fuel become scarce that we will all need to grow our own food. Most people in the UK have no idea how to do that, and therefore it will be up to you and I – the food growing bloggers – to show them how, before they all starve to death!”

I wish this were melodramatic, but I don’t think it is. And it got me thinking: if I were suddenly required to help people grow food – en masse – would I be up to it?

Specifically, what could I do? What specific tips would I hand out to would-be vegetable growers in the post-oil era?

Reams of detailed, complex advice would be too much for a total beginner (remember how that felt?). But trite, obvious stuff is also clearly pointless.

After much thought, I reckon my initial, brief ‘Here’s what you need to know’ checklist would look like this:

1. Prepare to irrigate. You’ll need access to water and you’ll have to water crops MUCH more than you think
2. Get a horse, or befriend an equestrian. The only way to keep up soil fertility, when fertilisers have vanished or become too expensive (already happening), will be to add TONS of compost and manure year-round
3. KILL ALL CABBAGE WHITE BUTTERFLIES ON SIGHT

If you had to give three specific bits of help/advice to a total vegetable virgin – once the oil and fertilisers have gone – what would they be?

Some gardening and veg growing types got together in Oxford on Saturday, arranged by the indefatigable Patrick. As ever, I was on the way to somewhere else and had no time. Apologies to all for slinking off in a hurry – this is my life nowadays.

Couldn’t bring the videocamera proper, but shot this brief video with the iPhone; it’s the redoubtable Emma (of AKG Podcast fame) answering questions about keeping chickens. Thanks to Patrick for long hours he must have put into organising everything, and apologies again for my fleeting semi-presence.

I’m not usually one for posting YouTube virals, but I have to make an exception for this one. If you’ve ever worked for clients in the creative industries, in any capacity, you’re going to LOVE it. And if you haven’t… well, all I’m saying is: Don’t be the cretinous client. Please.

I’m not a big fan of the ’10 Things To Do In Sept/Oct/Nov/Whatever’ posts you see in niche publications. They’re well-meaning, of course, but usually patronising.

And the last third (desperately dredged up to hit the arbitrary 10, or 12, or 20 total) are always bollocks.

So here’s what I like to think of as the more realistic 10 Things to Do on the Allotment in September. Feel free to chip in with some of your own…

1. Get stung by a wasp while dead-heading flowers. Highly stimulating, and easily achieved with a moment’s inattention

2. Get stung by nettles… while weeding nettles. The predictability of this one only adds to the sense of achievement

3. Eat shit. The trick here is to get distracted thinking about your tax return, or some such, while spreading manure. Then when you wipe your sweaty face with the back of your shitty glove and lick your lips… bingo

4. Anally incorporate a bamboo cane. The best way to do this, I find, is to use foot-long pieces of bamboo to mark rows of vegetables. When you’re squatting to do the weeding, intense concentration on the task at hand should induce the inadvertent shuffle necessary to achieve a perfect fit

5. Provoke a furious row with your allotment neighbour by pruning the branches of his apple tree that overhang your plot

6. Feel peckish and eat the rotting, misshapen carrot you chucked on the compost heap three weeks ago. You’ll figure that you’ve eaten so much shit already (see above) that a bit more can’t hurt

7. Destroy your shed. Sounds challenging, this, but it needn’t be. When the door won’t shut properly at the end of a hard day, a determined slam should be enough to wrench it off its hinges. Then – and here’s the key thing – be sure to lose your temper and follow up with a series of kicks and/or punches. You’re aiming for a hole in the wall or roof that renders the whole structure unviable

8. Get 3rd degree burns. Again, easier than it sounds. Take a few bottles of cider to the plot on a sunny day and fall asleep/pass out. The secret here is to consciously eschew suncream, knowing you don’t need it in September.

9. [Subs to add another thing]
10. [Subs to add another thing]