My Dad's Diary : Tues 3rd June 1947

"Dull today. 

Fitted new cotters to bike. Garden at night - put runner bean net up.

Rained."

My Dad's Diary : Mon 5th May 1947

"Fine morning but clouded over later one.

Garden - put in Runner Beans and Sweet Wms."

Slug Pellet Story

The Martock Beans are looking very sorry for themselves. They were doing fine until very recently - three nice shiny pods and some flowers which would hopefully produce more.

Then came the wet weather and the Attack of the Monster Slugs from Hell.

Within 24 hours they'd reduced the plants to skeletons and even had a go at one of the pods. I was out of slug pellets and didn't have the time to get into Newcastle to buy more.

Then I remembered the little shop on the local high street I'd passed umpteen times before . A pokey little place with a shabby exterior, some plants and rabbit hutches outside. Walking by, it was impossible to see anything inside.

I had to go past it again the other day, so I thought, what the hell, give it a try. Nothing to lose but our Martocks.

Once my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I realised it was TARDIS-like. Much larger on the inside than the outside. But every square inch of it was crammed with stuff - household, gardening, pets. In fact, because it was nearly closing time, it was also crammed with the stuff which normally sits on the pavement outside.

I could see a small box of slug pellets sitting on a shelf, but I couldn't figure out how I was going to get to them past the piles of other things.

"Can I help you, mate?" came a voice from the darkness at the back of the shop.

"I'm after slug pellets," I said, "but can't figure out how to get round to them."

"Divven't worry, Aa'll fetch them oot."

And from out of the realms of darkness and the past came Rod Stewart!

It was the Rod Stewart of the Faces days, with a big hooter and a ridiculous kind of mullety hairdo. And a limp. And a Geordie accent.

So perhaps it wasn't Rod the Mod. On the other hand, maybe he's tired of his life of fame and riches. Maybe he's gone back to being the down-to-earth guy he used to be and has taken on an old persona. Maybe he really is selling slug pellets in Gateshead.

And could that have been Maggie May he was humming as I walked out the door?

Dead & Buried

In my efforts to create a more "natural" garden, I've left things to grow as they will; to run wild, in fact, much to the chagrin of Lucy Smooth next door who sees it as her Mediterranean duty to use the land as profitably as possible. My crops of grass and brambles threaten her more carefully tended beans, lettuces, garlic and artichokes, and the Martock Bean Enclosure must look like a sick joke to her.

Alas, the thickening undergrowth has also proven the undoing of one of the less bright avian ground feeders. I discovered the remains of a collared dove under the bushes this morning. I say "remains", but frankly it was virtually intact. Just dead and a bit defeathered. Bloody cats again.

I dug a hole for it next to the garden wall. In the process, I uncovered a very active ant colony which I thought I'd persuaded into non-existence a couple of years ago.

They're now going to have to decide whether the presence of a rather large bird carcass presents insurmountable rebuilding problems, or simply incorporate a considerable food reserve into a remodelled colony.

Oh to be at the council meeting.

Arm and Hammer

It's been a funny couple of days. Yesterday was taken up with yet more paper-clearing. One of the annoying things about clearing kipple (a fine word coined by Philip K Dick for accumulated paper) is that when you open something and decide to tear it up, it almost inevitably involves doing something else before you can actually tear it up. So, if you don't do that required thing, you have to put the original piece of paper back into another pile.

Regarding this as self-defeating (and acknowledging that this is what contributes to the huge piles of kipple in the first place), I decided to make sure that all the chains of requirement were carried through to the end.

Even if this led to the wrath of Patsy123 who was waiting for me to help with assembling various bits of IKEA flatpackery.

Which it did.......but we'll not dwell on that.

Anyway, I finished assembling her new computer desk with the aid of a hammer. This rare item of toolbox gimmickry was something Patsy123 doesn't have. My friend CJ doesn't have a pair of pliers. How do women get along without hammers and pliers (he generalised)?

After seeing her off to London again, I wandered home and sweltered a little in the garden. A turn about the Martock Bean Enclosure shows that three whole bean pods have developed and there may be more to come if I can remember to buy some slug pellets.

And then it was a bit of a slump in front of, alternately, the tv and the monitor. Should have stuck with the monitor, but instead I half-heartedly watched a 1987 movie called Over the Top.

Made by Golan-Globus, in fact directed by Menahem Golan, it starred Sly Stallone and featured him as former loser making good in the world of boxing. No, sorry, what made me say that? In the world of armwrestling.

The finale took place in Nevada (Las Vegas, I guess, but I wasn't paying that much attention) at the World Armwrestling Championships. Inevitably, Sly done good by beating a HUGE mountain of a man, some twenty feet bigger than himself, and in so doing, won the love of his estranged son and the grudging though unstated respect of his father-in-law.

Yeah, you got it. Absolute bollocks.

But it got me to thinking: is armwrestling one of those "international" sports the Americans so love, like baseball?

So I googled it. And lo and behold, it has member organisations in just about everywhere you can think of. Even Scotland.

I didn't think it possible, but here's another sport I can add to those I already take no interest in. Wonder if I'll be ignoring it as part of the Olympics?

Red in Tooth and Claw

I came back saddened from my trip out to feed the birds this morning. Under the bushes I noticed an awful lot of feathers. It may have been a collared dove - I've lost those before - but the size and colour lead me to think that the woodpigeon who comes to hoover up every day has met an untimely death

I wouldn't mind so much if I thought he'd gone to feed a hungry urban fox, or a desperate hedgehog, but I know it'll have been a bloody well-fed domestic cat. They're on the increase round here as new families move in (don't they know the Council Rat Man is on top of the problem?) and much though I like cats, it's becoming quite a task to keep them out of the garden.

Ah well, a radical trim of the lower layers of the bushes is called for, so that the cats can't hide there.

On a lighter note, I found when I entered the Martock Bean Enclosure, that there are signs of new growth in every leaf axil. Fingers crossed, there may yet be beans aplenty to keep the Martocks off the endangered species list.

Martocks aside, I was still a little heavy-hearted when I got back to Stately Zip Mansion. But as always, I found a quick visit here was enough to set me off again with a happy heart.

In the heat of the night.....

Believe me, I should be in bed now, not tapping the old keyboard. But suddenly I felt I had to keep up the pretence of blogging every day.

So just a few lines about the day just gone.

I saw Patsy123 off at the station. Through the window of the carriage I could see her arguing with a passenger who was evidently in her seat. Tickets were compared. I did my utmost not to smirk as she then shuffled back down two carriages to what was actually her seat. She told me later she'd tried to sit in the seat shown on her ticket to Newcastle, rather than that on the return ticket.

I know smirking is wrong and most ungallant - indeed, in Eshington, it's even bad for your health - but sometimes one cannot help a smirk stealing over the Zip features. I made up for it by smiling in an extra-winning fashion and waved at least twice as the train pulled out.

Other than that, well, it was a Do Nothing kind of day. I bought some acrylic primer and lugged it home, but couldn't quite summon up the energy to do anything with it.

I checked out the Martock Beans in their Enclosure and watered them, but am concerned with their definite dwarfness. Pinching out the tops in accordance with my Bumper Fun Book of Broad Bean Etiquette seems not to have produced the desired result. They are definitely not bushing out.

I thought for a while I heard a snigger from somewhere nearby, but realising that sniggering is an ungentlemanly thing to do, coming higher than smirking on the List of Unpleasant Traits, I knew I must be mistaken.

A ham sandwich and a cup of revitalising tea, replete with guarana and acerola, were sufficient to send me instantly into an afternoon zizz, and after that, well, Do Nothing indeed.

But tomorrow, I must be up bright and early. In addition to the Transit of Venus, there's the Garden at Alnwick to see. More later.....

The Secret Garden

I fancy a monolith in my garden, it would look great and I could pop out and do a bit of worshipping on hot summer nights, said Anna, commenting in Maria-Leena Rathje's blog.

Which set me to thinking about my garden.

The borders are pretty much full of the usual sort of things: cherry trees, broom, hawthorn, raspberries, rhubarb, pyracantha, clematis, birch, and like so. But the middle has a big balding lawn which serves no purpose at all and two weed-strewn beds which occasionally play host to courgettes and now hold the Martock Bean Enclosure.

Pretty damn dull, really.

When I was up at Duntrune, I was captivated by the garden there. Whether by design or neglect, the place has fallen into a considerable state of disrepair. The croquet lawn is full of tufts and weeds and - best of all - the stonework balustrades are overgrown with moss and ivy, roses and other creepers. Here and there, small bronze figurines peer out at you from the dark bushes. There's a rill dashing through, which the chaffinches were making great play in, and a splendid pond with a winged Mercury sitting gazing sombrely into it's depths.

Magic, indeed, like Sleeping Beauty's castle garden.

I want my garden to be like that. I have plans for a rockery through which water cascades, then runs down a channel to the pond. The pond, of course, will have to have at least one sloping side to allow the birds to get down and bathe.

When Patsy123 was here last we went to a garden centre which had some great arbours and swinging seats. Maybe I could have one of those.

But I'm particularly keen to introduce unexpected pieces of sculpture and ancient-appearing monoliths. Like the one above, perhaps. Paths made from mosaic pebbles and broken paving stones will wind through forest glades, leading the visitor to secret places and moonlit grottoes. Water will trickle audibly here and there, and there'll be the gentle swish of bamboo and tall grasses. The scent of jasmine, lavender and roses will fill the air. Curious objects will suddenly come into view. The wildlife will scuttle and rustle as we pass by. Sagging pagodas of an indefinable origin will waft their rotting vapours at us. Dark and brooding figures of the Elder Gods will loom out of the shrubbery, and brambles and thorns will tear at our legs as we run for the safety of the patio....

But how do I go about making my monoliths? Easy. Somewhere I have a recipe of Geoff Hamilton's showing how to make a kind of biodegradable concrete out of All Bran and cement!

Wait though. All Bran and cement? That can't be right, surely.....

Will and the Beanstalks

I know I've been quiet on the subject of the wildlife on the Zip Estate. Partly this is due to my recognition that any hopes I had for the patter of tiny wings have been dashed. As I said, the collared doves gave up on the Cypress Highrise while I was gallivanting in Duntrune. But now it's clear that the blackbird I saw making frequent inspections of the Pyracantha Bijoux Apartments did not take up his option. At great personal risk I delved in among the spines today but, apart from last year's abandoned nest, there was nothing.

It seems that while this is clearly a very good place to eat, no-one wants to live here. Bugger.

I pulled out the old nest and found that it was being used as a squat by a family of woodlice. Ecch.

But news on the Special Bean front is good. Never one to move too fast, I left them in their plastic carrier bag, where they're thriving. I've had time to read the bumf that came with them from Will Barrow. It seems that, when I finally get them planted out, there's no likelihood of my finding a beanstalk to a giant's castle sprouting in the garden. Which is something of a two-edged sword, in that, while I wouldn't wish to have a giant crashing down from above, a goose that lays golden eggs would not go amiss in these days of straightened circumstances.

But no, these are Martock beans. Apparently (and I paraphrase the bumf from Will's mate Matt) they were for a long time "the traditional broad bean-type thingy" of the area round Bath (Martock being a place near Bath). They became lost because "better" varieties - whatever that means in this context - became more popular, but were rediscovered in their last growing place: the garden of the Bishop of Bath.

The object of the exercise is not to eat all the beans which hopefully will appear on the plants. This is an exercise in conservation, a "spread of custodianship." What I have to do is leave some to dry on the plant, until the pods are crackly dry, then put the beans in an envelope for next year.

Next year, of course, there will be a whole garden full of Martocks and I can stuff myself full as well as garner for posterity. And I can pass them on to other suitable custodians.

Mr Zip, Custodian of Beans. I like the sound of that.

Bean there, done that.

The trip to Leeds went off very well. Everything comes to he who waits, it seems. Will Barrow phoned to say that his licence had been reinstated, so he was able to drive me to the gallery with the five pictures. We got a little lost round about Weatherby, but that simply entailed driving through English countryside roads arrayed in glorious Spring finery, before hitting the road to Leeds again. No hardship there, and sunshine all the way.

The sky got a little miserable and wet nearer Leeds, but the journey back showed how splendid is the Tyneside area for its constant sunshine. Anyway, the pictures were well-received at the gallery and after a little quibbling over the price for one of them, I have some expectation of sales. This would certainly be a Good Thing, according to my most recent bank statement.

So there it was, a pleasant drive without surprises. Unless you count the beans Will Barrow brought me. Bean plants, that is. He tells me they are Special Beans. I know he spends a lot of his time going to markets in the area, but I don't think he ever had a cow to trade for beans, so.....what kind of Special might they be? They came with Special instructors, but I was too tired to read them when I got back.

Instead of going to the Scottish gallery preview at night, I picked up a pepperoni pizza and a bottle of £2.99 Hungarian Kekfrancos Merlot (don't try this at home - it was ghastly!) and did some comfy chair crashing. Despite the quality of the wine and my falling asleep towards the end of the evening's serial killer movie, I felt that, all in all, it had not been a bad day.