Lightening and Thunderbolt

Since my last post in May I have not been enjoying a deckchair in the garden , reading countless books of Detective fiction, baking Frangipane tarts , walking along the shoreline in bare feet or decorating the downstairs bathroom. I've had dozens of ideas of blogs to enthral . My spare time has of course led me to my Allotment plot a mile from my home here, where I can see the sea when I stand on the front step. 

For 5 years now I have had Dave's pristine (once) old plot as well as mine. I used to share my plot with Bernard, and I have his as well since he married Queenie in 2017. I am what John Siddle used to say was one who gardened in organized chaos. 

I cherish those words. John taught me English at my Grammar school ,Greatfield High school. Hull , in the 1960s. He came back into my life when he retired to Filey . On this day when grandchildren get English results, I don't sit here hoping I would manage my O level English Language again now; I don't need to imagine my old mentor is checking my participles , or my Latin master appreciating my understanding of the archaic language as informing my Botanical nomenclature, as I couldn't care less. Wen i text i say u and c and as long as it is understood it no longer worries me. I can't text quickly like my offspring and their offspring. I can't Word Process quickly either, I use 2 fingers. If I were back at my school I would not have taken Chemistry and PE, I would have sat in the Commercial class as it was called ,and learn to touch type to music as I used to hear them all doing, that is a skill indeed.

My organized CHAOS may be discerned by the no dig gardeners, the new  Ruth Stouts, and and present  Bob Flowerdews as an Allotment of the future times, even here in the land that time forgot, where Peat Free Compost is not sold in our allotment shop (yet ). Even here we No Dig gardeners need discernment, as the Peat Free Compost in our wonderful Reighton Nurseries is not all it seems either, as the ingredient replacing the peat is from China! 

I want to record in 2021 that even if I have to give up my plot I am trying to use Practice which though not completely in the school of Charles Dowding  is as good for the planet as I can manage . Here I put my hand up to Rat Bait in sheds,  occasional weed killer on the border with the Railway embankment, and use of Cardboard that is not always brown .

Paul Wilson , (Advanced trees and grounds) supplies me with woodchip for my paths, the grandsons are employed to barrow it up to the plot.

Firstly Im thankful for the supply of good , large pieces of cardboard brought to my plot by friends. Many days I arrive at the plot to find treasure outside the shed door as I arrive to the packaging from garden chairs, beds, flat packs and even coffee pods. Thank you all the Helens, Stuarts, Lisas  , Michaels for thinking of me,

Networking always pays off when in need of supplies for No Dig.  John and his wife in Irton used to sell me all their horse manure. They were the first of the interesting folk one meets only through cultivating the earth .

John would ring me and say he'd got a load , did I want it ? He had one old horse. The manure was straight from the field into sacks, and pure gold . It took a year to rot down and though I used to find it hard work barrowing even the sacks from the road to my plot , the two of us working together , it took half an hour , and worth it. I was upset when his old horse died and that supply ceased. Now my friend Ingrid whose daughter has a horse will bring me supplies , and if the bush telegraph works well on the site I get to hear when a free load has been dumped at the end of the road by my plot. 

That is how I met Therese and Stuart one February as we  spent a bitterly cold  morning helping ourselves to the contents of a winter  cow byre  . They are not only great suppliers of spare veg and cardboard but helpful and friendly, perfect allotmenteers. It was on that day that I met the young Syrian eye -surgeon refugee, who was waiting for his status to practice in this Country, From him I learned about the pale courgettes beloved of Syrians in their cuisine, which I now grow and pray for Syria as I tend them .

I tried to encourage my beloved to sit in my shed /greenhouse in the winter, cosy and warm next to my hotbeds , which I can get to 80F in January , February and March using straw , manure and urine and reading my book on Hotbeds , he won't, even though I have a sun lounger for him. 

The straw for my hot beds now comes from  friend Colin up above Hunmanby . He delivers straight to plot for me. I leave all the spare bales outdoor until October to get soaking wet and then it goes beautifully on top of the cardboard, with handfuls of chicken pellet fertiliser, and any donated horse manure. Colin also brings me horse manure from his field, let out to horses. This is fantastic stuff as it is already 3years rotted and  growing magic.

John Siddle might see some chaos on the plot , but it is very organised too. I let Borage and plantains seed all over as pollinators . The Borage can grow to 3feet tall in few weeks . I don't remove it, it will seed freely for next year, and is so easy to spot may always be pulled up if necessary. Chives are the first mass bed to attract the bees, after the Woad of April, the Cowslips, Primroses  and Violas of March and the Hyacinths and Daffodils of January and February. All summer long a favourite native plant Scarlet Pimpernel creeps and flowers, I rarely weed it out as I do all the Chickweed which goes to Pete for his budgies. I like the Groundsel and Sow thistles, and remove the Flowerdew way by just pulling and leaving to rot down on the soil's surface as mulch, as with the spurges and speedwells. I can always recognize them if I have to remove . The Couch Grass and Horsetails are another thing altogether, removed and incinerated as soon as spotted. This is easy with the Horsetails , as Bernard eradicated most of them , but the Couch Grass is so hard to get out , as every little bit of underground stem if left in the ground will thrive to produce new plants, and as for Bindweed , that gorgeous 'Grandma Grandma Pop out of bed ' plant that has to be removed if possible and its underground stems look like a tube map.. 

This year has been very hard for me to keep up with removing the pernicious 'weeds ', as I do not have time . They need an army of people who do not carry I am a carer card. 

 Tagetes minutii  did not germinate well this year. It is the companion plant that exudes a toxin which slows the growth of Couch grass,  so next years first challenge . It is a wonderful plant , growing up to 5'tall and I like to make windbreaks of it. I'm growing Tansy too amongst the raspberries , same use of companion planting. 

I have been nurturing a pot of Ginger  or Tumeric all year, but now realise it is Couch grass. Its beautiful though and could do well if was marketed as a conservatory plant and watered well. It would be cheap and easily divided to give away to friends as long as not planted out, then you would be as popular as if you had given them Japanese Knotweed. Would my friend who thought I went to Roedean please ignore this advice. I never should have said to her a we drove past the school on way to Newhaven , 'there my old school' because she believed me for years I later found out . If you are from Hull you will know that Greatfield High school in 1959 to 65 was rough, and girls like me had to get tough to cope with it. 

So Ive surrendered my Thunderbolt adapter now that Ive given away my Mac air, but bought a Lightening adapter for my ipad . I shall be showing my beloved his grandson  Reubens Blog, this blog and all my photos as soon as I have him as a captive audience in front  of the TV set, just as I've trained him on the input from the remote.

Mick Ronson and the spider in my kitchen

Mural of Mick Ronson in Greenwich Avenue ,Kingston upon Hull 

There  has been a spider sitting in her web for 4 weeks in my kitchen. I'm not moving her , she can enjoy her new home with me. I am a Bruce after all and have always loved the apocryphal story about patience . Backend for me , always comes with Spiders, Green tomatoes, clearing my allotment and a backward look at the recent School Holiday. 

We've not been away , but we've enjoyed being with family and friends who have been in Yorkshire for their Summer break , and loved having the boys around the corner having their freedom from school . If one lives in a Seaside Resort like Filey the streets are swollen with slow visitors, slower Coach party day trippers who just want the shops, and thousands of Dog Owners with packs of dogs for whom this town and Country Park is heaven .Grandsons and I became trippers recently. Reuben asked if he could see the new Banksey in Hull . Hull Live is good for this, the Facebook or Twitter  pages for the Hully Daily Mail. Everything about Hull is easy for us, the buses are frequent, little cafes on Industrial sites do great cheap food for teenagers, Even their loos are always spotless. We found another great one in Spyvee Street , the  RSV cafe tacked on to a Plastics Company , and just near the Graffitti we had come to see, a signed Preg not a Banksey but just as good.

The boys and I look unlikely pedestrians in the very busy rat run  back streets . I love all the use of space, the wild flowers posing as weeds and love being in streets whose names I've known all my life and never visited. 

Who can go past the Old Windmill Pub and not love the decorative tiles? I hope its renovated , even if it becomes an Airbnb or a Caffe Nero , doubtful with its location but a shame if its demolished.  The Mick Ronson Gable end mural was great . A son of Hull , and my sons in law, both guitar players knew all about him. I had not even heard of him , but I'd much rather celebrate him than Philip Larkin , a much hyped resident only of Hull, whose dark poems are too gloomy for me even if the language is well crafted. Id rather celebrate the more upbeat and positive poetry of Sean O'Brien or Shane Rhodes if words need to do Hull a favour. 

The Social Media promoting the popular Culture of Hull since 2017 has helped me a lot to focus on my home city. The pop up works of the Bankside Gallery are for me an outdoor joy for the eyes. Reuben wanted to go back to see  the area around the Scott Street Bridge and Maizecor, Just a short walk across North Bridge from Spyvee street , and even watching the pigeons in the unloading bay eating up  spilled maize meal captivated us all in a surreal moment .  I am thankful for teenage boys who still like simple things.

I wanted to see the permission wall houses of Preston Road, but Twitter helped here with more updates, and I had a comment from @DaveHarrison telling me that most were now demolished.So we just took a ride anyway so that I could see the site of my old School, Greatfield  just off Preston Road. Hull sister obligingly drove us all from Greenwich Avenue to Hemswell Road before driving us to Spyvee Street  . The school gates are still there , just as they were in 1959 , one road to the Bicycle shed entrance, and the main gates for staff cars and  pedestrian pupils wearing caps and berets . Detention from the awful Miss Nuttall for any miscreants with bare heads, Oh! I was scared of her !

The huge Greatfield site is now home to HULL KINGSTON ROVERS whose Craven Park ground has moved from Holderness Road  to Preston Road . I do hope it has an all weather pitch. The clay soil of our sports fields were sodden in the wet ,with huge lakes of sitting water, and sheer ice rinks in winter when below zero. The whole school would be out sliding on the ice , watched over by all the staff , including the head, all wearing their academic gowns. How I wished we had been able to take photos then , but those were the days of my best Brownie 127 , certainly not for school .

Remembering the past

So I'm listening to my favourite and oh so dated 1955 recording of the Marriage of Figaro with the Glyndebourne Chorus and Orchestra, and principals Bruscantini, Sciutti and Wallace,Stevens and Calabrese. Of course I'm remembering all the times I went to Covent Garden in the 60s as guest of a colleague , and continued my Musical Appreciation and Education started in Hull. Music, aroma ,objects trouve , and more recently Facebook Groups of Old Photos all may spark some Happy or Sad remembrances from the recent or distant past . I look at pictures of the Locarno in Hull and the Gondola Club and can still feel the upset but relief that my parents wouldn't allow me to go to either .

Last week Susanne offered me some plants from her allotment for mine , as she moves away from Filey to a huge garden . I have  a new Gooseberry Bush,  an intriguingly named Blackberry Sage (I think!); spouse enthused at my new neat bed of  Globe Artichokes , but loved more the Tea Trolley made by Susanne's Father in 1946 . I love it too as we had one just like it in Saltshouse Road during my childhood. Afternoon tea was wheeled into the lounge every Sunday . There would be bread and butter, sandwiches , maybe scones . maybe Flapjack , often cake and always a pot of Tea, a hot water jug , and china cups and saucers, never ever mugs, they were just for soup . Heavily embroidered tray cloths sat top and bottom, beautifully laundered and starched . Mother had some special ones of worked Lilacs made for her as a wedding present in 1946 . They dropped to bits eventually as post war fabric was very thin , not best linen , Mother would say . I wonder if my sisters remember those beautiful cloths, more embroidery than cloth . 

My Grandparents also had an identical trolley which was wheeled from the breakfast room to the Sitting room (known as 'the Room') every single day . It was a long way along that dark hallway , and children were not allowed to wheel it on the bumpy floorboards. When my aunt became infirm in Old age she used to use the trolley to help her to walk .

#Hull 2017
My Hull sister reminded us of the exhibition in the  Hull Truck Theatre last week to accompany the  production of Janet Platers homage to the city's fighting spirit in Play 2 of the Hull trilogy, simply called Gaul   after the factory trawler FVGaul lost with all 36 hands in 1974. A fellow Hullensian living in Filey has written of her memories of the Gaul .

It brought back many memories as the first mate on the Gaul and his family lived in the same avenue as my parents..... I invited his father to Eastfield Junior School to talk to the children about his life at sea. They enjoyed it very much-so did he. I introduced him as Mr Spurgeon  and his friends called him 'Spud'!After the tragedy the headmistress invited Mrs Spurgeon to the school as a classroom assistant to perhaps take her mind off it a little.

I remember that in my Secondary School , Greatfield High School , (1959 to 65) we sometimes  had to stand for a minutes silence during Assembly as a mark of respect for a former pupil who would have died at sea.