Friday Links: Pandemic Tired

Posted on March 26, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

Rising from the rubble: London pub rebuilt brick by brick after illegal bulldozing

Tips and tricks for the tastiest tomatoes. I’m still holding off sowing mine, but this is quite interesting, I do a lot of leaf removal of my tomato plants. I basically strip all of the leaves below the first truss of tomatoes and don’t cut all of the leaves away but at least half. Mostly so I don’t water the leaves and to increase airflow to prevent disease.

Punctured, pecked and stolen: hot tubs leave home insurer drained. They don’t seem to be that popular in Ealing, I suspect that we don’t have big enough gardens.

Italian army accused of fowl play after tank accidentally fires rounds into chicken farm

The questioning of women. Boris Johnson and his inability to answer a question.

I think this is about where I stand on this…

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Allotment Adventures: That difficult patch of weeds

Posted on March 24, 2021 by nicdempsey

I finally got to the weeds next to the squash bed. It also required dismantling the squash bed but it’s done.

I took most of the sides off and used them to create, one side of the ‘new’ bed. It’ll be deeper that the original, to help smother the weeds and half the width (90cm by 360cm), I’ll finish building it next week, when I do the others!

That done, this is what I needed to clear.

I did think about just covering it with cardboard but there were two small raised beds on that path, so I needed to level it too. So I weeded it, it took a while.

Then I covered the space with cardboard and woodchip.

At some point before May, I’ll build another bed of the same size the other side of the weeding chair and we’ll put some kind of arch or arches up to grow beans and little pumpkins up.

That’s pretty much all I managed. Next weekend is bed building and sowing and I’ll have some time off over Easter to crack on with weeding under the apple tree, strimming the grass paths and all the other jobs including sowing tomatoes and ordering more compost and wood for the last of the raised beds.

Work is never done, but we’ll so close to having all of this year’s planned changes sorted and then we can concentrate on food production. Because it’s on it’s way.

Gooseberry blossom
Cabbages

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Monday Miscellany: Spring

Posted on March 22, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!

Despite having walking issues this morning (heavy day at the plot yesterday!) The Spring Equinox was on Saturday and next week in the UK the clocks go forward. Spring is on it’s way!

Not my dog!

Last week wasn’t great, no major drama, just a bit blah. I was due to have the afternoon off, but we had deadline that stretched a tad and I decided to move it to this afternoon. I was ok but it threw me a bit.

I spent the weekend with a headache. Not a migraine, just a headache, but as I’m in my monthly migraine window, I decided to have a lazy Saturday and an early night. It didn’t work so on Sunday, I took myself and my headache to the plot. It didn’t help the headache (it’s still with me) but I felt better about myself!

I also got to have a chat with Jo and Ms T, modern technology is amazing, there they are in Keyna and we get to have a real time conversation while I’m on the allotment!

So plans for the week, well it’s still lockdown and life is unlikely to change until it’s not and I’m vaccinated and honestly I’m not holding my breath! So the usual – plot, house and lots of work. I’m stretching the Easter Bank holiday a bit so I won’t be doing a full work week until the mid April, which means I need to spend time now, so I can go on leave with a clear conscience!

I’m also counting down to the end of Lent, I want to eat all the sweets right now but I shall resist until Easter Sunday!

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Friday Links:

Posted on March 19, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

I was supposed to take this afternoon off, but something came up! It’s been that kind of a week. Here are this week’s links

My father was famous as John le Carré. My mother was his crucial, covert collaborator. I just love this, a son making sure that his mother isn’t overlooked as just ‘the wife’.

Johnson wants to move on from Covid – 125,000 deaths shows why we need an inquiry

Why can’t Britain handle the truth about Winston Churchill?. Because overall, it can’t really stand the truth about itself. It’s hard to think of yourself as an oppressor, I don’t feel that any of my ancestors particularly benefitted from Empire, but rising tides do raise all boats. Did my working class family struggle, yes, did we starve, not in the last couple of generations. But it’s hard to look at your efforts and struggle, and see privilege. It’s much easy to be a victim, if people would understand how hard you’ve worked. That also means that everything you have, you worked for, it’s not as a result of your privilege. So you cling unreasonably to the ideas that are about your greatness, about what makes you right and hard done by. If Churchill was racist, what else about what you think of yourself is wrong? It’s not right and I’m not sure that I have an answer for it but it’s pretty easy to understand.

Women killed: 118. Statues ‘killed’: 1. So guess which is the national priority?

There Is No Vaccine for Grief. Like the buffalo, I like to minimise the time I’m in discomfort!

What Happened to Christian Pulisic? The last couple of weeks, the reaction in the US to the Sussex drama and this article have really highlighted how culturally different the US and the UK are…

What Sarah Everard’s Murder Illuminates—And Might Obscure

Women Aren’t Nags—We’re Just Fed Up. This is one of the many reasons I’m single. I carry that kind of labour as part of my job. Living alone means that if my house is a mess, it’s down to me and I’m the only one that can fix it. Having to do that work at home for other people would drive me demented.

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Allotment Adventures: She’s back!

Posted on March 17, 2021 by nicdempsey

There she is, the lesser spotted weeder. She’s was back for a brief time on the plot. She decided it was too windy to weed so we finished woodchipping the main path and topped up two more of the beds.

I also finished edging the rose garden/pond area. I’m happier that this is done as it’s a marker between the woodchip and the bed, eventually we’ll put a table and chairs up here so we have somewhere to sit and entertain or at least to admire the view! Though I’m hopeful that the thyme, campanula, eryngium and centaurea montana will take up some space, I’ll probably sow some other annuals in that bed to fill it out a bit more.

Edged

This coming weekend I’m on my own again because Ma needs to rest her knee, so I really need to sow broad beans and peas and get on with sorting out the squash bed and it’s next door weeds. They are the only things on my list because they really need doing. I have some time off over Easter so the aim is to have the plot ready by then because that is the weekend that the potatoes (all 12 pots of them) will be planted up and the start of my seed sowing extraganza, Easter weekend will be tomatoes, two weeks after that, I go mad with the summer and winter squash! To say nothing of the things that need to be sown outside…

It’s all happening!

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Monday Miscellany: Mother’s Ruin

Posted on March 15, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!

Hopefully, we are all starting this week full of the joys of Spring and if you celebrate it, Mother’s Day was what you hoped for and not too painful. We celebrated on Saturday, and it was the first time I’d seen my mother in the flesh since January, so it was lovely to have a hug! Gin was consumed, because I know how to make my mother happy!

This week is just like last week, but with my great Aunt’s funeral, which I will be watching rather than attending and some Spring cleaning because once there is more daylight, either it’s easier to see the dirt or my brain is more awake and notices the dirt. Whatever the cause, I need to do some cleaning!

I also need to identify who has my copy of Sprig Muslin, which I wanted to read this weekend and couldn’t!

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Friday Links: Not All Men, but Enough

Posted on March 12, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

I generally start collecting links for this the weekend before it’s published and last weekend, they were looking for Sarah Everard. This week they may have found her body and they have arrested two people (one of them a serving police officer). She was just trying to walk home. This week the hashtag #notallmen started trending as women started to talk about being harassed and assaulted.

I have dealt with men approaching me at night to tell me I’m pretty and then been called a bitch for asking to be left alone, more than once. At school when all the girls started to wear bras, the boys in class pulled our bra straps and I remember a bunch of them trying to look up our skirts with mirrors (upskirting was a thing before digital cameras). I didn’t mention it to my parents, girls are conditioned not to complain about this behaviour, we’re told that it’s just boys being boys.

When I was 13 or 14, I was punched in school by a boy who’d been bullying me because, in a very typical Nic move, I told him that if he was going to call my names he should at least use the right grammar. It happened in school, I was bleeding, no one thought to call my parents, or even give him detention, I was expected to spend the rest of the day in school, with him and was told I had provoked him. He had spent a month calling me names, I answered back once, he punched me. Clearly my fault! I can’t remember if he was suspended, I do know I was concerned that I would get in trouble for wearing a non-uniform jumper the next day (mine had blood on it!) and asked Mum to write me a note because I was worried I would be told off for it (I was).

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please watch this…

https://twitter.com/AnnaCollinson/status/1369972777403506689?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Here are the rest of the links….

How many nurses’ salaries does it take to redecorate Downing Street?. I’m wondering how long it’ll be before they u-turn or the nurses go on strike.

Strong on rhetoric, weak on substance – so much for the ‘vision’ of Global Britain. Boris Johnson and the Stupid Boys…

In the battle of Meghan versus the Firm, who do we cheer on? How about neither… A period of silence from both sides would be welcome, I’m still up for getting rid of the lot of them.

Why are adoption numbers falling, when there are so many children in need?

All in it together? The pandemic’s losers could soon be left behind

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Allotment Adventures: A Spring Tidy

Posted on March 10, 2021 by nicdempsey

On Saturday morning, I was facing a stack of compost to wheelbarrow to the plot, but my lovely friends Sue and Richard came and rescued me with their car and by 10:30 all of the compost was at the plot.

1800 litres of compost

I used three bags topping up two beds, and then another two and a half bags, mulching the rhubarb and the flower beds.

I’ve also made the decision to remove the sides from the gooseberry beds and to use them to edge the pond and the rose garden.

That done I started to collect woodchip for the areas that hadn’t been woodchipped yet.

It was a lot, I did about 12 loads before my back had enough and I stopped.

This was the list last week:

  • Mulch the rhubarb and weed and mulch the flower beds
  • Raise the kale bed and top up with compost
  • Divide the squash bed
  • Weed the area next to the squash bed and cover with cardboard (and woodchip if any has been delivered!)
  • Close and move the chard bed, raise it a bit and top up with compost
  • Feed the onions, garlic and shallots
  • Top up beds that need it and sow broad beans, peas, beetroot and carrots.

As you can see I didn’t get much of that done. Fortunately there is always next week!

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Monday Miscellany: Back to school

Posted on March 8, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!

Can you hear that noise? That noise is the sighing of relieved parents that have either got their children back at school or know they are going back this week. This morning my Lent prompt was to pray for teachers. Which was apt, they have been under so much stress trying to arrange lessons online and for the children that have been in school and they are going ‘back to normal’ often without being vaccinated, to deal with children that have not had an easy year. It’s not going to be easy and they aren’t getting any kind of pay rise, in fact, they are taking a pay cut as they don’t even get the rate of inflation.

The news is either talking about the schools going back or the Royal Family, I’m not anyone’s side, I think everyone has behaved badly and I think a period of silence from all of them would be welcome. I also still think we should get rid of them and be a republic (and I’m not advocating public beheadings but think of the tourists it would bring in!)

As none of the relaxation of lockdown rules will have much of an impact on my life although I am extremely pleased that my friends with children get them back to school and those with family members in care homes will be able to visit them again, my plans for this week are pretty much the same as they were last week, work, sleep and try to get out everyday for a walk.

Oh and prep for Mother’s Day next weekend (Ma says that she’s not bothered, but I am!)

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Friday Links: March

Posted on March 5, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! I feel like I’m in a strange world where time moves really quickly but also very slowly. Things happened this week but at the same time, it feels like everything is exactly the same as it was last week. Here are this week’s links…

Tory London mayor hopeful says basic income would be used for ‘lots of drugs’. Shaun Bailey just can’t help himself. He’s so keen to prove that he’s ‘from the streets’ and all he ever manages to do is show that he’s as thick as mince. He’s a couple of years older than me, from roughly the same area and looking at his wikipedia entry, I realise he was at the same school and in the same year as one of my cousins. My feeling is that he’s a liar, who tells stories about where he’s from that are slightly based in truth but which he feels make him look good because he ‘got out’. It’s easy to do, when you lack critical thinking skills and you want to be exceptional. He’s not, he’s just (and I cannot emphasise this enough) not very bright…

Creating a charity to pay for PM’s flat refurb would be ‘an outrage’. Seriously, Carrie Symonds can’t live with the furniture in her 4 bedroom house in Central London and needs to be rescued from the ‘John Lewis’ nightmare. They need to go and fuck off into the sea and then fuck off some more….

If oestrogen can save women from the worst of Covid, they should be given it. If it doesn’t work on the men, the chances of women getting it are remote.

Sunak’s budget was great for estate agents, but it did nothing for generation rent

Surveillance Shopping Arrives in London as Amazon Go Heads for Ealing Broadway. Yes this is down the road from me, there are apparently, queues to get in. Weirdly, it’s opposite Morrisons who supply a bunch of its stock.

Central Texas Farmers Share the Devastating Impacts of the Winter Storm. Oh my goodness all those dead brassicas.

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