Happy Friday! I hope you’ve had a good week. I’m fresh from being on the the work quiz’s winning team and Chelsea beat Arsenal in the Europa. So it’s been a good week for petty victories…
Here are this week’s links
Chelsea win Europa League after Eden Hazard inspires thrashing of Arsenal. I really, really love it when we beat Arsenal (I know it’s childish, but it’s my damage)
Britain is in the grip of an existential crisis that reaches far beyond Brexit
Shocked by the rise of the right? Then you weren’t paying attention. I wasn’t surprised and I didn’t wake up to a country I didn’t recognise. Britain is a country of contradictions, we pride ourselves on the ‘mother of all parliaments’ and have an unelected Head of State. We celebrate the Battle of Cable Street but forget that it happened because fascists wanted to march. Both defenders and antagonists were British. None of this is new. I would tend to look more at economic issues than just racism, but then I probably would, I’m white and not likely to be told to ‘go home’ but when people feel insecure economically, when they feel that they don’t have much and that’s being taken away from them, and yes when they go to places that they that’s generally when racism of the type we are talking about gets more of a foothold.
Here was Nigel unplugged. His narcissism and self-deceit exposed
Instead of kicking out Alastair Campbell, Labour should listen to him
Bigmouth strikes again and again: why Morrissey fans feel so betrayed. I was never really into The Smiths, and I never liked Morrissey, he’s really not as clever as he thinks he is and he’s a racist but Johnny Marr is a god…
Speaking of celebrities making racist statements – John Cleese isn’t alone in equating ‘English’ with white. Sadly, that view is mainstream
There Are Two Types of Airport People. Oh this is interesting. Although I have a reputation for lateness, I’m not generally a late airport person. I have only rushed through with the prospect of missing my flight, twice. Once was because the trains were screwed and the other because the transfer at Charles De Gaulle took a lot longer than they said it would. Both times to see Jo, so I’m going to blame her. However, there is a running family joke about how I struggle with transition, and yes “distract and procrastinate, and next thing you know, they can’t do what they need to do to get there on time” as a way to deal with stress is exactly my M.O.
Most of us feel sleepy in the afternoon. Why can’t work fit round that?
Chick-fil-A’s many controversies, explained
Cheap and cheerful: why there’s more to Primark’s success than you thought
Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert. Nice to know that I have achieved something. Society at large spends a lot of time telling me that without spouse or children I’m worthless! So I shall just remember how much happier I am than they are!
This is based on a recipe from River Cottage Veg Every Day, which is one of my favourite cook books for inspiration. The original recipe is spinach and ricotta, but says that you can use goats cheese instead. I find for putting greens in things, chard is better as it doesn’t need to have the water squeezed out of it when it’s cooked. The pastry for this is inspired, it’s stretchy to work with but once baked lovely and tender.
First up say hello to the summer squash! This is on Joe’s plot. Three yellow courgettes, four green courgettes, 3 crookneck squash. Yes, that’s a lot of squash. The first year I had the allotment, I had six courgette plants and one week an amazing 37 courgettes. I’ve never grown as many since and we’ve only ever sown one crookneck squash which has always been sufficient for our needs. So I am aware that we’re going to be swimming in summer squash. However, the plan is that Ma and I will water, feed and weed this area but Joe can take as many as he likes and there is a list of people willing to take on excess courgette, we can give some away for the produce sale and I quite like gluts. I want to make pickle, I can freeze grated squash for cakes and sauces and 
Something we don’t feel that we’ve ever had enough of is cucumbers. This is the cucumber bed five Boothbys Blonde, three Marketmore, the gherkins didn’t make it!
We also sowed the french beans and the sweetcorn and I’ll sow dill, coriander and marigolds next week. Finally I planted out the five surviving celery plants in the bed with the sweet peas
We weeded (obvs), topped up the potatoes cleared the chard bed, picked broad beans and watered loads. Then sat with a glass of wine and admired our little plot. 
So the trick is to freeze a bottle of wine and take the frozen wine to the plot in a rapid ice. By the time you’ve stopped work, you have some really cold defrosted wine. Seriously, best thing ever…
Other good things are that another of lovely my allotment neighbours says that this year she’ll give me a boysenberry plant and some strawberry babies for next year. So my soft fruit empire plans have changed but will grow!
Happy Tuesday! If you have a office job and are in the UK (or the US), you’ve had Monday off work and today is your Monday and it’s a four day week, so it’s the week that should feel shorten but you have to fit all your work into four days AND it’s half term here so the office is a ghost town as lots of parents are on leave to look after their offspring.
So that’s where it is. I’m probably worrying about nothing and it’ll all be fine but here is a short list of what needs to get done next weekend, it’s a good thing it’s a bank holiday!
I know it’s a first world problem, and I still have a roof over my head and running water and friends who let me shower at their house (and fed me!) and that it’s May and therefore I wouldn’t have the heating on anyway, however it’s the completely rubbish project management and although I knew they were doing the works, they didn’t tell me when they would be doing the works and it was sheer co-incidence that I was working from home on Friday! I’m beginning to understand why the work planned for November 2018 is just being done in May 2019!
This week in allotment adventures the broad beans have blackfly. I can cope with having to cover all the beds because otherwise the foxes dig them up, I can more or less handle the foxes trying to treat my raised beds as toilets and the birds trying to use my chard, kale and soft fruit as an all you can eat salad and desert bar but aphids do nothing and the ants that farm the buggers really get on my wick, the little bitey buggers. Actually that’s not fair, the red ants are bitey and the black ants are the aphid farmers.
In other news, we topped up some of the potato bags (the sharpes express are really living up to their names!) all in we used 99 litres of compost and we have more topping up to do. Ma weeded because the weeds offend her. We had tea. I took up some of the chard. We were going to sow the french beans in that bed when the chard was done but given that it’s right next door to the broad beans, we aren’t going to do that now. We’ll sow them in another bed and put something else there.
Nic Dempsey 