Last year, the lid on the travel mug I’d been using died and while technically it still worked it was becoming awkward to use. As soon as I’d bought it, I realised my mistake because it didn’t fit under coffee machines and while it was leak proof it was always tricky to open and use on the train.
In use at the office
Enter this Circular and Co cup, it’s leakproof, the size of a paper coffee cup, has a lid that you just pop up and down. I also appreciate the symmetry of some of it being made from old paper cups.
Finally, if you break the lid or the cup you can just replace the lid or the cup and not have to throw the whole thing away and there are instructions on how to take the lid apart and deep clean it.
These links are the culmination of at least a month of me collecting them and then forgetting to hit publish so some may be a little out of date!
Israeli forces kill at least nine Palestinians in West Bank raids. Israel won’t stop until someone (the US) stops them. They are gunning for genocide and calling criticism anti-semitic. It’s not anti-semitic to point out when people are wrong, the reasons for it are complex but it needs to stop. Take away their arms, sanction them, do to them what the West does to other states like Iran. No more playing favourites, the Israeli state is not moral it is refusing to compromise and blaming Palestinians for it. Enough.
East German culture has been ignored for too long. Until we embrace it, our country will remain dangerously divided. I grew up with the idea that West Germany spent a great deal of the post war years, addressing Nazism and that East Germany had not. And I suspect that assumption meant that when AfD started to rise that this was why. The old ‘those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it’ cliché. Given all things that are happening here, I think that’s too simple an assumption but somehow I’m not surprised to discover that the people behind AfD are not from where their supports are..
More than a million unpaid UK carers living in poverty, research finds. This is something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Fortunately, I won’t need give up work to care for my Mum, she’s doesn’t need full time care, just some help. So, I’ll juggle work a bit if there’s an emergency, I’ll use up leave to go to appointments with her, everything else will fit around the evenings and weekends. I know so many people who have done or are doing that. I don’t expect to be paid for looking after my mum, I recognise the privilege of having a parent that has been alive long enough to require help as she ages.
However, there is financial cost for caring, for me that the cost of travel and having to give up a day every weekend, this year I bought extra holiday and as I’ve used most of it on mum’s appointments that will continue next year. I’m lucky, I’m relatively well paid (for London) and I work in a company and have a manager who understand and give me time. Also Ma isn’t struggling for money, we can afford it (although if anyone would like to argue for a free bus pass for carers, I’m here for that!). If you can’t, there’s carer’s allowance.
Well, that’s the theory, but to qualify for the £4,258.80 pounds a year carer’s allowance, you need to earn less than £151.00 per week. Which is £7,852 a year. How many people do you know that can live on that? If you must give up work to care for someone and have a spouse who supports you, carer’s allowance will help to offset the cost of caring, if you don’t need to work for money, carer’s allowance is great. If you are single or if you and your partner both work, then you can’t claim carers allowance. 35 hours a week at minimum wage is £20,820.80. If you’re earning that, money is probably already tight, you need all the help you can get but you can’t get any help. Which means probably one of you giving up work and then everyone struggling. People who have full time jobs can’t claim carers allowance as they juggle the emotional and financial cost of caring for others and save the country a massive amount of money in care fees and NHS costs. It’s a ‘benefit’ designed for the 1950’s not for the 2000’s. We need to massively rethink how we view caring for sick, disabled, or elderly people. As part of the re-think we need to think give carers the same rights as parents to vary hours or take time out when required and we should increase the threshold of what you can earn before you can claim carer’s allowance. I think that if you are the primary support for someone who is claiming disability living allowance then you should get carers allowance regardless of how much you earn and we should perhaps define the role a bit better, looking after a disabled child, an elderly parent or a elderly parent with dementia are all very difference experiences with different tasks and we really need to look at how we choose to support people.
Ministers launch pension credit campaign after restricting winter fuel payments. I get why they did away with universal winter fuel payments but I really dislike taking a universal benefit and restricting it. The state pension is about £11k a year and the pension tax credit only takes it to the state pension, also that cliff edge of people who are about £500 a year over the pension tax credit threshold worries me too. I want to see this government raise capital gains tax (unearned wealth) instead of playing about with tax and benefits of working and/or poor people.
Stop press: it’s the very last Evening Standard in London today. And that tells us a lot about Britain in 2024. We used to get the Evening Standard every day, Dad used it for jobs and I’ve done that too. I learned to cook in part from the Nigel Slater and Lindsey Bareham columns, for years Ma had the ‘Thatcher Resigns’ front page framed. I still pick one up for Mum when I go into the offie, so she can do the crossword. It’ll be strange not to have it around…
Why stop at breakfast? We paediatricians think all of England’s primary pupils should have lunch for free. I do think that universal free school meals are the way to go. However, as a child of the 1970’s and 80’s who went to schools that were full of working-class kids (ILEA so we still got the free school milk in primary), there weren’t that many of us that couldn’t afford school dinner or packed lunch. There were a couple, and it was a smallish school, we all knew why. There was a disabled parent, a single parent, there were a couple of kids who probably should have been or were under social services. But for most of us, food wasn’t something we thought about, I can’t remember school dinners, I had a packed lunch which was a sandwich, a yoghurt, fruit and veg (I really liked to take a carrot instead of an apple!), maybe some crisps and some form of biscuit bar all through my school life (Grandad was the provider of fruit and biscuits because he was a feeder, a trait I definitely inherited). Most of my class did the same and there were variations, I came from a not much added sugar household, my cousins didn’t. Some of the kids ate more exciting food than the standard white working-class diet of the 70’s and 80’s but there was always food, enough of it and healthy enough. So, I have to ask what kind of society have we created where people can’t adequately feed their children? Where they don’t have the money or time or knowledge or equipment to make enough decent food for themselves or their kids? So much so that our children are getting shorter and less healthy, that they have tooth decay so bad they must have all their teeth removed? That the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is supportive of the idea of free school breakfasts and lunches? Am I living in the upside down because this is mental.
Sunscreen is taxed as a ‘cosmetic’ in the UK. As a skin cancer survivor, I’m appalled. I didn’t realise and it’s really stupid. I also use factor 50 religiously on my face and arms (generally the only bits of me I actively expose to the sun) and recommend the Altruist range because it’s inexpensive for sunscreen and designed by a NHS dermatologist. I use the sun cream (for body and face) and the primer. I’m fond of the whole range and use the moisturisers too!
This weekend, I did actually get to the plot, and worked on the plot.
First up was collection, I picked tomatoes and discovered blight on the tumbling toms, so up they came. Without Ma there to keep me on task, I get distracted and so pulling up the tomatoes turned to weeding the paths and trimming back the mint and the blackcurrant sage and removing some of the tomato plants that were done. I have ADHD on the plot but it is productive!
Then I got that tricky middle section of the plot, I weeded the paths and trimmed the tree spinach. You can now get from the main path to the asparagus and sweet potatoes without needing a machete! It’s not perfect and there is more to do, but it’s clearer from the blueberries to the blackcurrants.
BeforeAfter
The plot is clearly good for blackcurrants while I was clearing, I noticed that a branch I’d trimmed and stuck in a pot in the spring has taken root and the biggest of my blackcurrant bushes had made a baby! No I don’t know where I’d put them either!
Baby blackcurrant bush, surrounded by self seeded pansies
I topped up the old potato bed and my plan for that had been kale but I had garlic and it didn’t require me to go and find nets, so most of the garlic went in. You know when I harvested garlic in May, I said that I would plant less garlic for next season. Yeah, that’s not happening. I bought four bulbs each of extra early wight and rhapsody wight. Which broke down into 61 cloves and I had 19 cloves of elephant garlic! Right now I have a bed of elephant garlic (nine cloves) and another with 45 of the other types. The rest of the elephant garlic is going in the bed I’ve just cleared of tumbling toms but it needs a bit more of a tidy up.
New garlic bed complete with anti fox digging chicken wire
The other cloves of the rhapsody wight and extra early wight are going into the sweet potato bed when that’s finished in October. That bed as a bind weed issue so having the garlic in there will give me a reason to keep on top of it in winter and spring.
What else, I trimmed back the chamomile and alpine strawberries and topped that bed up with compost and planted some salad burnet in the corner.
Alpine strawberry bed
I also finally got round to planting out my echinacea, I want things next to the beds because I think it’s pretty and just paths would be boring, this is sunseekers rainbow. On the next bed over, I planted some santolina ‘lemon fizz’, if I’m honest, I don’t hold out much hope for them, they were delivered by Parcelforce and all of them were out of their pots when they arrived, we’ll see if they survive the winter.
Echinacea sunseekers rainbow
Finally, I potted up the heath pearlwort. I was going to plant it in the ground but was reading about making it bigger by potting up so it’ll cover more area when it goes in. Fingers crossed.
Heath pearlwort
That was it for work, I did collect purple sprouting broccoli and some summer squash and I watered the poly.
Next week, I want to move the compost to the back, finish weeding under the plum tree, sort out what I’m doing with my bucket of bulbs and start on sorting out the strawberry towers. If I have time and the weather is good I need to paint the shed too. It’s gonna need a couple of coats and clear out before winter!
September is a struggle month, it’s the same month every year and every year I have to relearn how to be in September. Yesterday, I was talking to Sarah about how I’m coming to terms with life at the moment, Ma and I are working out the new dynamic to our relationship and I’m working out how to re-arrange my life with the circumstances. I’m doing that and coping with the autumn of it all!
At work, I’m booking things for Christmas already and we’re deep into planning for next year, it’s true time speeds up as you get older!
Right now, I’m not winning but I am holding life to a draw, which is pretty good for September. I very un-excitingly had to re-arrange my days in the office to Weds/Thurs for for the auditors. It’s weird but good for an audit team to be auditing, no one enjoys it but it gives us an understanding of what it’s like when the shoe is on the other foot, but I hope our guys are more organised..
I had a migraine on Friday, which is never a good time and on Saturday Ma and I had haircuts. We were both quite nervous about it but the only way to get over something is to do what makes you nervous and not being able to see past my fringe and getting to see Jane are good motivators! No mothers were harmed this time!
I found a spider in my bath!
Post haircuts, we did Ma’s shopping and sorted out her new mattress. All good things. Not so good was the three hours it took me to get home! I spent the rest of the weekend sorting out the flat and the plot and as a consequence, threw my back out! I’m in my fifties, this is apparently what happens.
This week just as interesting.
Work, exercise and stretching are top of my list for back related reasons. The only plans I have are to get the ironing done, attend the allotment AGM on Thursday night and take Ma to the Farmers Market on Saturday.
I don’t know what these flowers are and they won’t last into winter but they are so pretty!
I didn’t do much on the plot this week. I did collect produce and get the green bit emptied. so I’m ready for the weekend.
2.6kgs of tomatoes, psb, crookneck squash, pardon peppers, not bad for 20 minutes work!
I also got news that the garlic is arriving this week. Which I’d forgotten about because I ordered it the day Ma knocked herself out and trauma wiped it from my brain! Also I’ve gone rogue for my garlic this year and ordered it from the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm because the garlic last year wasn’t great so new suppliers for this year.
What I can’t do is tell you what I bought but I think it was 4 bulbs of early wight because in the plot the earlier I can harvest the better. So this weekend I need to plant garlic and elephant garlic and I feel like the 2025 season starts, even though I haven’t finished 2024 and I’m not even close to being ready!
We are out of August and into the last four months of the year, 2024 is going quickly.
This was last week at about 8:30 pm. I was not amused
September always feels like a new start because it was always the start of the school year and I tend to use it as a kick off to really start to think about surviving the darkness. Sunset is before 8pm now and this morning lights were needed as I got ready for the office, it’s time for the light lamp and for thinking about how to improve my mood as autumn and winter advance.
One of the things I’ve been sorting out in my head is new ways of doing things. I know I’ve been wanging on about it for a while but perimenopause has scrambled my brain a bit. I’m struggling with getting things done. Last week, when I was off work, I managed by just accepting that it would take some time to get me to move. When I’m actually working, it’s harder. Because work has been full on this year and not likely to get any quieter if this week is anything to go by.
Work isn’t the only thing, there’s Mum, who will get her balance and confidence back but it won’t happen overnight, so I’m looking at a day a week (or more when there are appointments) to help with her stuff and just to see her because she’s still herself and fun to be around. The added thing that I need to factor in, is that Ma can’t come to me and help on the plot so I’m handling that by myself, and I do have my own housework to handle and my need for both company AND solitude.
Something to hold onto as we move into the dark months
I’m going to handle this, much like I handle anything I’m struggling, I’m going to make lists and power through it, while also giving myself some grace and some time for me. Which means that I need to set myself some goals.
This month, I need to focus on my habits.
Welcome back golden hour or more precisely, golden two hours. From 8pm to 9pm every night, I’m going to plan for the next day, I’m going to tidy the flat and kitchen, pack my lunch if I’m in the office the next day, pack bags and pick clothes. All the things that make the next morning work without disaster. 9pm to 10pm is wind down, bath, reading, bed.
Office days, I like working from home but being in the office on the regular is important for my work, my attitude, my team and everything else. So two non-negotiable days, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I will be in the office in September.
Housework. If Saturdays are for Mum, then Fridays have to be for home. Friday morning, lunchtimes and evenings are for housework, cleaning the fridge, floors, hoovering, laundry I need to break the back of it on a Friday and set myself for success for the weekend and the week.
The Plot. Four hours on a Sunday, it can happen first thing or in the afternoon but four hours, has to be done.
Wake up time. I need to be out of bed at 7.30am every day (even the weekends). Days I’m in the office that’s easy, I’m out of the house by then but weekends and work from home days then it gets tricky. I need to break the habit of picking up my kindle or phone and getting kidnapped by a book. I need to get up, get dressed and then either start work or do things that need doing in the house
Blog. Finally, this space. I have always used this space as a way to guide myself, this month I want to give myself the discipline of four posts a week. That’s most likely to be miscellany, allotment, links and either recommended or music
I’m not going to set any major health things apart from take my vitamins, get sleep and eat well.
These are my plans for September and probably October, by which time, I hope they will be habits..
Confession time, I didn’t get as much done last week as I wanted to, but I did get a lot done and the green waste bin is completely full and there are three and a half compost bags of weeds too!
I started weeding the gooseberry area. There was a lot of grass from the path and I worked up and around to the sweet potato bed and the middle area where the asparagus and sweet peas were planted. I will tackle the stuff growing through the gooseberries later (with long sleeves). I’m also going to g to weed fabric this area because I don’t want to keep weeding it!
Clearer, for now
There was a lot of weeding to do in the sweet potato bed which I did, I took up the sweet peas, and counted how many asparagus had survived of the 10 I planted earlier in the summer. Five are definitely alive and one is maybe alive. I planted another 10, so there are 15/16 in altogether. I also topped up with compost. Asparagus are heavy feeders so these will also get a top up of manure when the rhubarb does from now on. If I can keep that area, weeded and mulched and the asparagus alive, in just three years and a half years’ time, I could be eating home grown asparagus. I’ve wanted asparagus ever since I got the plot, it’s taken me 8 years to plant them but I’m glad to have finally done it.
Asparagus and a weeded sweet potato bed
There is now a path from the side path down beside the sweet potato bed into that area and I’ve bought some heath pearlwort and I’m going to grow it to make bigger pots and plant it on this path. If I need to I’ll also buy more for a nice lawny path that doesn’t need mowing. I’m enjoying having another way into the plot!
The new path
I cut back the mint bath and pulled up some more random weeds, but there is loads more to do there. I also harvested all the potatoes and watered everything.
All I need to do is keep it weeded!
It’s beginning to look a lot better. On Friday, I need to go and harvest for Mum, who wants tree spinach, tomatoes, mint, raspberries, and summer squash (if we have any). I also think I’ll give the tree spinach a big chop and work out which ones I’m leaving for seeds.
This weekend, my priorities are:
Move the compost.
Top up the ex-potato bed with compost and planting out the kale.
Compost top up for the alpine strawberry bed.
Weeding the area between the blueberries and the blackcurrants to get the worse of it sorted
Planting out the echinacea.
If there is time, finishing the weeding under the plum tree.
If there is even more time, start cutting back the rosemary and clear the two ‘hot boxes’ next to that.
Most of that is achievable, if I pull my finger out!
While I wouldn’t say this is the worse year I’ve ever had, it’s been full on and full of stuff I didn’t count on and I haven’t spent as much time on the plot as I would have liked to and as a consequence it’s not looking as good I would like!
This is July and it’s not looking great!
I haven’t taken a photo of the front of the plot for a while because it’s been a weedy, overgrown mess. The weeds and grass come from the paths and it’s just wild. There’s a bed in the front for bulbs and I’ve tried to put other plants in to add interest but the grass just comes through the woodchip and the very nice soil of the bed. There’s a rhubarb right next to the path that had a really bad year and thinking about it had been there about seven years.
The grass is always going to be a problem, so time for a change. My plan was to dig up all the bulbs, extend the bed and plant other plants. Then there were six lavender plants for £4.99 at Lidl and I thought that I could plant a hedge!
I took this week off so I could blitz the plot and started on Monday, I spent a couple of hours tending my tomatoes.
An abundance of tomatoes
Yesterday, I really started at the front, I trimmed the sage and cola plant bed, removed some borage, and weeded the front four beds and the paths around them. I topped them up with more compost and in one of the beds planted a bunch of wildflower plugs and three thyme plants, (two that have been languishing on the plot and one that Jo bought me for my birthday) and a salad burnet plant (also languishing on the plot and needing a home!).
Wildflower bed
I moved the rhubarb crown and it split into 6, so I ended up adding another rhubarb row (can never have too much), I also planted one in a bucket either for Sue if she decides to try again in her garden or if not to sell in the plant sale next year.
I tackled the weeding at the front and planted my lavender hedge with six lavender grosso plants from Lidl and one plant that had self seeded in a bed and I relocated. I also trimmed the lavender that marks the divide between the beds and the blueberry plots.
Tuesday night starting to look better LOL
Finally, I got around to watering and feeding the tomatoes, strawberries and the polytunnel, where I found padron peppers! Even when I ignore it, there is something.
Padron peppers
On Wednesday, I waited in the morning to get my plants delivered and deal with the itchy bites! On Wednesday afternoon I tackled the grass, on the one hand the soil is really good so it’s easy to pull up the grass roots, on the other, there were so many. I got a lot of bulbs up but have no idea if I got them all and I know there are probably roots I’ve missed but I did my best. I got to a point where I’d done all the weeding I could do, there was more to do but I didn’t have it in me. So I covered the ground with cardboard and compost and then planted all my plants.
In that bed are; the day lily that’s been there forever, lavenders, (two relocated from else where on the plot so probably Hidcote and the six Lidl lavender Grossos), a cola plant (that had rooted itself from the one I have so I thought I’d stick in in), three French tarragon (because I’m an optimist at heart and this is my this third attempt this year – I really want to make bernaise sauce), chamomile lawn and woolly thyme on the borders, a relocated sage, Roman chamomile that was already there, and a grapefruit mint. (Yes I know not to plant mint in the ground but that’s been there three years and hasn’t conquered the world yet).
Finally, I harvested purple sprouting broccoli, tree spinach and mint for Mum!
I still have to tackle the bit under the tree, move the compost bags and tidy and paint the shed but I’m much happier with it overall.
Tomorrow is a day off for Mother related things and then I start again on Friday. With that bit under the tree and/or the bit in middle aka the new asparagus bit, which needs weeding….this needs a list
Weed/sort under the plum tree by the hedge
Move compost
Weed/tidy/mulch the gooseberries, create the path to the sweet potato bed and asparagus bed/’wild area
Weed the sweet potato bed
Weed the asparagus bed and the ‘wild area’
Sort out the strawberries
Sort out the blueberries
Weed main paths
Weed/tidy between the blueberry and blackcurrant beds
Dig up potatoes, top up bed, plant kales
Plant chard and spinach beet for autumn/winter
Trim all the mints
Trim herbs on plot (lavender, thyme, oregano, winter savory)
Top up alpine strawberry bed
Trim the rosemary bush/old herb bed
Harvest/cut down the tree spinach
Paint Shed
Tidy Shed
Sort out the bed moved to create the asparagus bed
Sort out the iris bed
Posts and wires on the raspberry beds
Sort out the rose garden/pond section
Weed the unused squash bed (unused because overgrown!)
Weed back area before boysenberry
Sort out the rampant boysenberry currently trying to take over the world
Sort out compost bins, comfrey and roses at the back of plot
Tidy patio area
Identify beds for garlic
Hiding soo much mess
That’s a brain dump of everything I need to get done for autumn/winter. I hope to get up to ‘Trim the rosemary bush by Sunday but it is a lot, come back next week for the update!
