Dave's blog

It seems like a long time since I posted a blog. I am sure it seems it for the very simple reason it IS a long time since I posted a blog. After such an admissio,  most bloggers will talk of how come the new year each second of their life will be documented. They will enter a new golden age and post well crafted, well honed blogs for the enjoyment of their readers.

I wish I could be doing this but I simply don’t have the bloody time.

My main preoccupation is the house I recently bought ‘in urgent need of modernisation’. The electrician is in at the moment putting in lights that turn both on and off along with a circuit board that should ensure I won’t blow up if I burn my morning toast. Other than the electrician I’ve been doing most of the work myself and have been up to my eyes for the last month.

My brain decided to rebel on me during all this by deciding this would also be a good time to write a novel. So, amongst the painting and wall demolition I have been searching for the voice of my lead character. I think I found him today at Didcot station reading a Neil Gaiman book.

Aside from this I’ve been writing new teaching courses, writing articles, pitching for new bits of work, doing bits of gardening (for other people) trying to get a community garden off the ground in Frome and looking after my son two days a week (wishing it was more). All in all pretty busy.

All this means that even though I do now have two gardens (front and back) of my very own, I haven’t had a chance to start on them yet. Paint-roller in hand I look longingly out at them going over and over designs in my head.  Birch hedging at the back, veg beds set out in a herringbone design, step over apple tree living fence, grapes or wisteria adorning the front of the house. It’s all there in my head. I am renting a place until early January, so that’s when I have to have the house ready by. After that, I can dig my spade in and get things moving, I can’t bloody wait.

As a forager, I am often asked to do all kinds of wild food and foraging days such as team building days or just large groups of friends wanting something different. For me it means I’m not only being paid for something I love, it is also a welcome change from tapping away at my computer on my own.

A couple of months ago I got an email to do a wild food walk for a hen party. I’ve been asked to do hen party’s in the past but for one reason or another they have haven’t come to anything.  Another forager’s friend had once done a hen party full of drunk and predatory high-powered women.  His description alone was enough to put anyone off for life.  I mean, let’s face it, hen nights don’t really have a good name for themselves.  They are often large gangs of women in matching skimpy costumes, drinking so much they can’t remember their own names.

I decided to chance this one, it seemed different somehow, I got a good vibe from the email exchange, and I agreed to the work. As it was due to take place on a Saturday morning, I thought there must be a limit to how drunk they could get!

Two of the hens picked me up at Temple Meads Station that morning. They seemed very affable, friendly and above all sober! We arrived at our destination and slowly the hens started to appear. As their numbers grew, it struck that this group were no different from any other wild food walk. There were no men but as I found across the day, that did mean there wasn’t a know it all in the group!

Often with large groups it turns into a bit of a performance. Today was no different, at some points it became part stand-up routine part wild food walk.  They all seemed to have fun on the walk and they all seemed to learn something in the process.

We left the foraging part and arrived at the hired kitchen.  Whilst on the walk I had split them into the teams and set them a bit of a challenge. It had now come the time to judge that challenge. Quite playful competitive streak descended on the group. I found myself in the very bizarre situation of feeling like a teacher amongst women aged 24 to 60.  It was a very odd feeling! Thankfully, the Bride’s team were a little move inventive so I didn’t have to vote for the tactically safe winner.

We cooked up lunch before the same two who picked me up dropped back off at Temple Meads. As my train left the station, I reflected on the day. None of my previous fears were founded  – I wasn’t asked to take my clothes off and I wasn’t the butt of any anti-male jokes. I smiled to myself and realised what a great job I have at times.

Have you noticed all the books and articles trying claiming there is a definitive list of things you HAVE to do before you die? It could be taking part in a South American street carnival, riding white water rapids in British Columbia or scaling a mountain in Nepal.

I would quite like to know how it is possible go to 1000 different places all over the globe if you work five days a week? These ‘life goals’ may well be achievable if you have time on your hands, zero commitments, and a limitless disposable income. However, for most, these lists are completely unrealistic. The only purpose they serve is to either get you into hopeless debt or make you feel life is somehow passing you by.

So here is my list of a few things you might think about getting round sometime. It comes with no pressure and no time limit.

1. Laugh at your own joke
2. Poo in someone else’s house
3. Drink a cup of tea outside
4. Put your clothes on backwards and try to walk backwards
5. Read a whole book (any kind, even a children’s book)
6. Smell some milk to see if it has gone off
7. Have an afternoon nap
8. Catch a cold
9. Pretend to know something about football in a conversation. (I used to use Gareth Southgate missing the penalty in Euro ‘96 but people are starting to realise that is ALL I know about football.)
10. Start writing something only to break off half way th
11. Lick a stamp
12. Put your shoes on the wrong feet then cross your legs so they look like they are on the right feet
13. Write a comment under this list
14. Measure your finger with a ruler, write down that measurement and compare that to other things around your house
15. Have an early night
16. Eat an orange
17. Make a list of things you have already done and write on the top ‘Things to do by the time you are (insert your age)’.
18. Drink a cup of tea inside
19. Put someone else’s glasses on and ask them if they suit you
20. Ride a bus and say thank you to the driver when you get off (even if they were rude to you)

I promised part two of where I garden. Well at that time I had an allotment, a plot on a farm, the garden mentioned and finally the 3 acre patch I worked at for my teaching job. So part 2,3 and 4 would have been possible.

Well it wasn’t to last. I now live up in Somerset in a small terrace house. Theory is it is a bit of breathing space before I buy a house in this area. So for the close of this year at least it will be some container growing, mushroom growing and foraging for me. I may search nearby for a plot and I might be helping out on a nearby farm. However large scale gardening looks unlikely (unless someone wants to offer me a plot of land?)

For a gardener and a garden writer there is precious little about gardening on this blog. It is not because I don’t do any but more because I sometime wonder how much interest there is in reading about someone else’s gardening.

However, maybe I’m wrong? Maybe some of you would like to hear about my gardening exploits? Please do comment if that is the case and also please tell me about your gardens. What are the challenges you face (I know my biggest one is lack of time!)?

I’m lucky enough to rent a place where we share a ¾ of an acre garden with the landlady.

It is a big but, by and large, a well set out garden with a mix of lawn areas (some with bulbs), a small orchard, some wild borders, mixed shrubs and a vegetable patch. As the space is shared at first just had a veg-patch and lawn and the landlady hires/hired a gardener for the rest.

The vegetable patch was very overgrown  despite the fact that it is situated in one of the shadiest parts of the garden. You couldn’t get to the raspberries or much of the soft fruit. Last year we tried to grow a lot of things with a really mixed success. The soil for the small vegetable area had been dug and left to leach which meant there was no life in it and very little nutrition.We did improve this by laying down card and mulching over with compost. The worm population has rocketed as a result and the weeds are more manageable.

However it is simply too dark for most things, especially those plants which prefer much sunnier climes such as tomatoes and cape gooseberries. Even our leeks and brassicas struggled.

Then there were the pests, what a hungry pheasant didn’t go for the pigeons, mice and we suspect the gardener did. When we netted over the Brussel’s sprouts we found we’d simply made a trap for small birds. Slugs were also a bit of a problem but thankfully not as bad as in some other plots I’ve had.

So equally not wanting to feed or kill off the local avian population I had a rethink about the patch. I decided that traditional vegetable growing was perhaps best somewhere else. On this plot it seemed to make sense to put in a mix of shade tolerant plants, mainly perennials as seedlings rather than seed. As we plan to move in a couple of months this makes perfect sense as I want to leave something positive behind.

So I pruned and moved the traditional perennials like blackcurrants, gooseberries, raspberries and rhubarb. They are now less prone to getting infested with weeds and they can have a tight net over them. Last year they were dotted all over the plot which not only took up room but also made it difficult to grow anything around them.

Alongside these I’ve put in some more unusual perennials such as Chinese artichokes Stachys affinis (these are very tasty and do well in the shade), oca or oxalis tuberosa,  ground ivy Glechoma hederacea (makes a good tea) and sweet cicely Myrrhis odorata. It is a work in progress and I plan to sow or plant many other things in that bed – mainly salads and herbs.

The sunny patio area outside the house now has a couple of large planters with potatoes. The tomatoes may go here but I think we’re not going to get a crop of them this year as we plan to move in July.

The landlady has let me have a bit more of a reign of the garden and I’m now planning to put in a small wildflower area using a shade tolerant wild flower mix. However I need to be careful as the gardener is quite grumpy and seems a little protective over the garden at times.

So that is garden number 1!

Numbers 2, 3 and 4 coming soon…

The prose below first appeared in Alan Moore’s underground magazine Dodgem Logic back in 2010. Dodgem still stands as my favourite publication I’ve ever worked for. I felt humbled as I wrote alongside the likes of Josie Long, Graham Linehan, Stewart Lee and of course the great Alan Moore himself.  I feel privileged that  I am one of few, if not the only writer, to have worked for a comic book legend like Alan and BBC Gardener’s World magazine. 

Sadly the magazine is no longer being printed, there was talk of an online edition but alas nothing has, of yet come of it.

Well, enough of my rambling, I hope you enjoy it and I promise I will write about gardening in the next blog!

One cell of a guy

Imagine you are a being for whom life moves incredibly slowly.  So slow in fact, that four billion years for us humans would feel like just 24 hours to you. Perhaps you are an incredibly slow being in a culture remarkably like ours; it might sound implausible but does make explaining vast expanses of time rather easy.

So as this incredibly slow life form, you decide to go on a 24 hour, epoch stretching drinking binge. It New Year on your slow moving planet and you intend to celebrate. You roll up at a bar on New Year’s Eve at 12 midnight, a good 24 hours before the clocks are set to strike and herald in the New Year. You notice a screen is showing a rolling news programme called ‘Planet Watch’.  All that seems to be showing on the screen is a planet of newly formed rock, inhabitants of which will later call earth.  Not much seems to be happening on the surface cam down on earth, the planet looks pretty hostile.

You sink your first beer slowly (even for you), you look up at the screen; the planet now seems to have solidified and water flows over the surface.  You find a newspaper to kill a bit of time, it’s still the small hours of the morning and the bar is all but empty, there’s only you and a pale, unfriendly barman in a faded t-shirt.

After two hours of crosswords, sudukos and another beer you gaze back up at the screen, you notice a clock on the corner reads 3.12am.  At last there seems to be something happening on the surface cam.  Something seems to be swimming about in the water, well floating at least and it kind of looks alive.  The miserable barman has the sound turned down on the TV so he can read his book.  You approach him to ask to turn it up; he shakes his head and lifts up his hand, not moving his eyes up from the page.  You slump back down in your seat, defeated.

You strike up a conversation with an old guy who’s just wandered in, it’s 3.44am. A Newsflash appears on the screen, ‘LIFE MAKES ENERGY FROM THE SUN’, there’s some expert talking in the studio about how monumental this is for the life of the planet.  You miss most of what’s being said as the old guy seems intent on telling you all the brands of cigarettes he’s ever smoked and how their packet designs have changed over the years.

At 5.20am you look up and the screen reads ‘ONE CELL OF A GUY’, the bar staff has now changed over, the sound has been turned up once again.  You watch for a while as an expert explains how there is bacteria on the new planet.

Nothing seems to happen for hours and the news programme keeps repeating the same footage over and over. The same tired interview with the same scientist plays again and again. It gets to the point where you can repeat it word for word, which you do so to anyone who walks in the bar, this doesn’t make you very popular, by now you’re quite drunk.  It gets to lunch time and the screen is still showing the same footage, nothing has happened.   By 3pm you are really drunk and you fall asleep in a quiet corner.  You awake to find the same interview and the same footage, nothing has happened, you think you must have only dozed off for a second but the clock reads 7.30pm, its been the same for hours!

The evening begins and the bar starts to fill, by now you are shit-faced and you order some food and a coffee – the food and caffeine sobers you a little and gives you just about enough clarity to focus again on the screen,  it’s a little after 9pm and the planet looks frozen.

It’s now 9.07 the planet thaws, it looks like things have finally changed, something with more than one cell is wandering the earth – animal life has begun.

You sink another couple of beers the night really begins, you get lost in conversation, somehow despite the amount of alcohol in your system you have command of the table you’ve been sat at all day and all night and the time just flies.  ‘IT’S A RAT RACE – THE FIRST MAMMALS ARE HERE’ flashes on the screen but by now you’re caught up in the bar, singing away with your new found friends.  Out the corner of your eye you see at 11.40pm dinosaurs have become extinct ‘god, that seemed quick’ you think to yourself as the jukebox plays your favourite song.

The countdown to the New Year begins, it’s 11.59 you catch your last glimpse of the rolling news, ‘MAN APPEARS’ it reads.  The clocks strike midnight, the planet is bang up to the modern age and you’re hugging complete strangers.  You never get to see what happens next as someone turns the TV off.

What a creature like this could observe on our planet is very difficult for us to imagine, whole species would come and go in a blink of an eye.  Human life would barely register, ‘civilization’ as we know it would have only existed for a fraction of a second.

What is clear from seeing the world on this time scale is just how long life remained as single cell life forms.  The earth has been dominated by single cell life forms for over 3 billion years, for any observer this would have been pretty dull.  In the vast scheme of things animal life is really very recent, very newly evolved. Some could argue that despite our complexity we are still very much like our unicellular ancestors. We do share a lot of their DNA and it is thought that we carry 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. That is, we are host to countless bacteria in our guts, on our skin and in every colonisable part of our body.   Even our human cells have parts, or organelles, still very much like ancient bacteria.

What’s more our habits as a species are in a way very much like much similar organisms.  Bacteria and viruses tend to cluster around a food source, exploit it, breed like mad, exhaust it and then die or move on.  Humans, as agent Smith in the matrix put it “multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you (humans) to survive is to spread to another area.”

History is littered with this kind of behaviour. Consider the story of Easter Island, its inhabitants flourished and built up a complex and ordered society. However, they were not a society with much forethought –they stripped the once forested island of trees for fuel, building materials and to aid the building of the islands characteristic stone heads. This exposed the island to sea winds and not only eroded farmland it also prevented their only means of escape from the impoverished landscape.

Take a look at a city from the air and you can see once again our bacterial like behaviour in action. Most cities began by clustering around where food would have entered the city – the rivers, London growing up around the Thames being the prime example.

This has changed in recent years as oil has become our main resource, we rely on it and other fossil fuels for almost all facets of life.  Most importantly our food system heavily relies on fossil fuels, especially oil, and it is running out.

Just like bacteria we are breeding at a phenomenal rate but unlike these single celled life-forms we have nowhere to move to once all the resources have gone.

We Homo sapiens, the only bi-pedial great apes are capable of predicting future events such as these. We know that our days of limitless energy are numbered; we know oil is coming to an end yet at present we don’t really seem to be doing anything about it.

The burning of fossil fuels goes on unabated, changing the environment beyond measure, putting our very existence as a species at stake.  One scenario predicted by climate scientists suggests a phenomenon known as runaway climate change.  This predicts frozen methane usually locked up in the oceans, or in the permafrost of countries such as Siberia, will defrost compounding the action of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on the earth’s temperature.   This will send temperatures soaring far higher than that capable of sustaining life or, at least, far higher than temperatures capable of sustaining multi-cellular life.

Archaea, ancient bacterial like life has been found in the most inhospitable parts of the globe, in glaciers, in the hot vents of the ocean floor and even in volcanoes.

The planet was theirs for 3 billion years, and if we continue they way we are it looks like it might be theirs again in the not so distant future. Perhaps they’ve been in waiting for an idiotic species such as ours to appear to manipulate the planet and reset evolution back to their advantage?  Let’s face it there not many other rational reasons why we are act the way we do.

However, I’d like to think, we ARE more evolved than bacteria and we DO have our own will.  I’d also like to think evolution is set to play out to produce even more complex life on the planet, life beyond the current limits of our imaginations.  But in order for this to happen we have to stop acting like our ancient single cell ancestors and make the future of this planet a multi-cellular one.

Last night I took some time off and sat down in front of the TV. It was a programme about the Romans. The programme started with a full ten minutes of the presenter telling us what she was going to tell us about. Following this she told us about what she said she was going to tell us about. Then when it came to the third part, telling us what she’d just told us. At this point I dozed off.

I woke up to a world that confused me, it was a world I didn’t really understand. In front of me was a very thin blonde woman with enormous eyelashes, bright red lipstick, a beehive haircut and an electric guitar. She was strumming away to a song which I couldn’t place as rock, folk, pop or anything I’d heard before. Behind her was what looked like a masked villager from the Wickerman dancing in a way only really seen in Art rock bands. I had not come across this person before, I could say if I liked the music or not.   Something glued me to the screen – what I saw was far removed from anything I’d seen for a while. In this post nap daze an Andean forest dweller may have been less bemused by a meat raffle in a pub in Crawley. It wasn’t until the end of the song that I realised she was singing in English rather than the mix of unheard of languages I was hearing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FcUTGSUsdg

The band that followed had electric guitars and leather. I thought at least this would be something I understood. Half way through the song however I heard myself say ‘I can’t understand a bloody word they’re saying’.

Then it dawned on me, I am getting old! There’s no doubting it. I’ll be 40 in a little over 2 years. I’m a father and a teacher, a grown up!

I’m not the irresponsible teenager I used to be.

How did this happen? When did music stop sounding like the Pixies, the Stone Roses and Jesus and Marychain? When did I get old?

I don’t mind so much, getting older has its benefits. I don’t have the hangovers I used to. Mainly because I don’t drink like I used to! I can’t, any more than half a pint gives me a two to three day hangover. It’s much easier for me to drink juice or water and wake up clear headed.

I no longer feel the need to go to a gig, jump in the mosh pit or stage dive and wake up bruised and battered.

I don’t go to parties in the middle of nowhere with no real plan of how I’m going to get home.

There hasn’t been a time in the last few years where I have woken up at a festival surrounded by strangers that all knew my name.

I don’t work in a crappy job only really living for the weekends.

No, none of these things happen anymore. I don’t miss these times but I do look back fondly to some of them.

Getting older means I can enjoy time with my son without thinking I’m missing out on something else. It means I can enjoy spending time in the garden or going on country walks. I can enjoy a slower pace of life.

Although perhaps I might do one more solo gig, go to one more festival, I might even meet up with friends and have a bit of a party this summer. I mean a couple of drinks might not hurt, 40 is the new 20 after all…

This featured in the Source magazine a  year or two ago, a recent forum post prompted me to resurrect it – hope you enjoy.

Last summer I visited Monkey World, a picturesque Dorset home to mistreated apes and monkeys from across the globe. To my amazement I saw Capuchin monkeys picking blackberries and an Orang-Utan sifting through a lawn of mixed weeds, including noxious creeping buttercups, to pick out harmless clover.

I was amazed by this as Orang-Utans are native to Borneo & Sumatra and the Capuchin to Central or South America, yet they can pick out plants seemingly unfamiliar to them and recognize them as food. Add this to the fact that both the primates in question were in captivity for most of their lives and it begs the question, how do they know what to eat?

Coming from a species of higher ape, more commonly known as human, I have to wonder how I and my species would fare in the jungles of Borneo? Would I be able to distinguish food plants from poisonous ones?

It is tragic that we seem to have all but lost touch with this ability. At one time we would have perhaps innately known what was food and what might have us running for the nearest toilet, or worse still, the nearest hospital. I have heard rather dubious claims that people are ‘drawn’ to plants, yet I have known people ‘drawn’ to groundsel and ragwort – both highly poisonous plants! The truth is perhaps has a lot more to do trial and error than it does with a ‘magical’ connection to plants. Although I would not recommend it, picking a little at a time, not so much it would poison us and waiting to see the effects would be a perfect way of finding what was edible and what definitely wasn’t. We must have got it wrong at times but those who did cut themselves out of the gene pool and wouldn’t have passed that information down to their offspring.

Add this passed on knowledge to the lack of outside distraction, no TV, no internet, magazines or even books and our ancestors would have been able to be much more ‘in tune’ with their surroundings. Subtle clues plants give us would have not been lost on them. As we fill our heads with the latest celebrity gossip or how to use our mobile phones, theirs would have been buzzing with seasonal knowledge of the plants around them (and no doubt who was sleeping with who in the next tribe!)

So what can we do to regain this lost knowledge? Well the way I learned was to walk around with an expert who’s Grandfather had taught him. This triggered off more study and I bought myself Richard Mabley’s Food for Free and a few field guides of wild flowers, mushrooms and trees. I would cross reference my finds in as many books as possible and would use websites such Google images as a visual resource and plants for a future as a written one. Plants for a future is a fantastic website, any plant imaginable is on there, it’s where I learned you could eat both Himalayan honeysuckle berries (not to be mistaken with regular honeysuckle!) and fuchsia berries.

I now teach wild food and run courses in Totnes, Devon. For me it is a fascinating subject and when I’m hanging from a tree filling a bag full of fruit I know I’m in touch with my inner monkey!

A couple of day’s ago Emma Cooper posted this blog asking for pieces of new writing, fiction or non-fiction inspired by fire. Well, it had been a long time since I have written a short story but I felt like stepping up to the challenge. So here is my story, set in the not so distant future in a time where fire is outlawed. It is a little silly in places but I hope you like it.

He opened up the instant fire and poured it onto the carbon logs in the fire place.  The flames began to dance, lightening up the corners of the room. It provided no heat, just a light glow as the microscopic particles reacted to the oxygen in the room. He remembered the fires of his childhood before they were outlawed. Real flames and real heat, heat that burnt logs, logs that could give you splinters or break your back if you were eager to pick up a large one.  Not like the wood of today, logs made from reconstituted carbon that never burnt because no real fire would ever touch them.

He glanced at his phone, “You’re going to be late Charlie” it said to him after registering his eye movement. He always had to have the latest gadget, this phone was advertised as the ‘Best friend you never knew you needed”, it virtually read your mind. It picked up on subtle changes in heart rate, pupil dilation, increased fidgeting all those small subconscious signals you wouldn’t even know you were making. It tried to fulfil all the needs you never consciously knew you had.

“I’m fine, I know what I’m doing”, he retorted, slightly indignant that a machine was giving him orders once again.

“No, you were day dreaming, you will be late, it normally takes you 5 minutes 43 to get out the door from the state of unreadiness you are in, judging by the weather and the traffic report the journey will take you 14 minutes 24, you need to be there in 15 minutes, you must sacrifice brushing your hair to get there in time”

“I’m not going, shut up!” said Charlie, his eyes fixed on the fireplace.

“He’ll be waiting, you made this appointment a long time ago”, the phone answered in its usual chirpy way, always helpful, always knowing and ALWAYS a pain in the arse.

“OFF” he commanded, smiling to himself that his electronic tyrant could be silenced.

A raindrop spiralled down one of his thick grey curls building in size until it left its human host for the surface of one of the cafes bright orange plastic chairs. He looked up from the cracked screen of his ancient phone melancholically staring out of the rain soaked window.  Rubbing his calloused fingers over his thumb rhythmically he wondered how long he should wait and if he had enough credit on his phone to check Charlie’s whereabouts.

“Credit status” he said into his phone expectantly.

Welcome to Tesco phones for you, I think you would you like to check your credit status?

“Correct” He answered as if he were speaking the lines of a well-rehearsed play.

Would you like to hear abo…

“No latest offers” he butted in before the phone could finish

“Wo…”

“No”

“What, abou…”

“No”

“Then how abo”

“No”

He sighed and waited knowing what was about to come next, his hands covered the phones speakers but still a muffled sound could just about be made through the hard skin and ingrained dirt.

“Brusha, brusha, brush our teeth, brush our teeth…” the phone sang, he closed his eyes and waited for it to finish before taking a sharp intake of breath only to exhale,

“Option 1, Credit Status”

“You have no credit”

He dropped his head into his hands, head-butting the phone as he did so.

The sun had now set completely, he looked up at the clock it clicked on the hour telling him it had just turned five o’clock. He remembered back when he worked the same hours as the rest of humanity. He would pray for the days when it got dark after five, when the city streets were lit by the rays of the sun rather than the incandescent glow of the street lamp. He wouldn’t have to drive, he felt safe to walk home in the light, and there were fewer places to hide in the daylight, the city felt safer.  The fake flames licked the fake logs and he remembered, he remembered meeting him for the first time, when things were somehow worse but somehow much better than they are now…

“What’s this?” he asked looking at the knobbly tuber with the numbers one to twelve written on it.

“It’s a potato clock?”

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“Well, every morning I get a potato clock, I’ve got a draw full of them so now I’m giving them to you”

The screen flickered across his face; it was a face of confusion

“You get a potato clock every day, who gives them to you?”

“You’ve got that data-entry glow haven’t you, how many hours have you been on that screen?”

He looked up at the strange curly haired figure in front of him, his dark eyes looked mischievous and alert, a rarity in this place. He studied the figure longer, his clothes looked like they’d come out of a charity shop bargain bin. His shirt was brown with a bold stripe across the front, a tennis t-shirt rather than the regulation white most wore in the office. He looked down to see a pair of corduroy black trousers rather than cotton and dark trainers rather than shoes.

“HELLO!” a voice came from above the shoes, “Every morning I get up at eight o’clock, a potato clock, up at eight, a pot tate” He breathed a sigh, “Jesus, why do I bother”

“Ha, ha, ha”, the laugh came from nowhere, he giggled uncontrollably, he started to cry with laughter.

“That is such a bad joke” he struggled through the tears looking at the corduroy clad man.

“Okay, okay” you looked like you needed cheering up.

The friendship began there, with of all things, a potato.

He got up from the plastic chair, the chair behind him wobbled as he did so spilling tea all over a young man who could do nothing but glare at him.

“Sorry” he said in almost a whisper but the apology did not appease and the young man looked away in disgust.

He walked up to the counter finding some change in his pocket whilst being sure not to inadvertently put ALL the pockets contents on the counter. He forced a smile and walked out into the night.

They worked side by side as data entry clerks, scanning endless ‘competition forums’. Charlie dealt with the cat food contract and Daniel with the dog food.  Both contracts only differed by the animal, the data otherwise exactly the same. The pair realised it was a scam, a bogus competition to get data on the lives of unsuspecting pet owners. Someone would win a year’s supply of pet food but the data they supplied was worth a lot more than that! The tragedy was the people sending in the forms believed they would send into someone who cared.  Old women would send in pictures of their pets that had long since been dead, the photos showed a cat or dog surrounded by the fashions and the trappings of ten years earlier, or more!

The pair would stick the photos around their consoles and laugh at them, sometimes drawing on the cats or dogs, anything to break the monotony.  Management split them up like naughty school children but they just became more devious, scanning the pictures and emailing them. Then one day Charlie walked in to find a picture of his face on one of the dogs on ever console in the room.

They were both sacked on the spot.

After the job ended they signed up to a string of employment agencies, always working together but never holding a job down for long.  They packed curtain rails and got sacked for making a giant igloo out of the boxes in the middle of the warehouse.  They were sacked racing pallet trucks, crashing them into the aisles, the list went on, like a pair of uncontrollable schoolboys making up for a life of tomfoolery they’d missed out in their real youth. It didn’t take long before they became black listed and the jobs got worse and worse and worse.

There final job together was cleaning the decks of docked ship dubbed Club vomit. Every night the ship opened its doors to a visiting underage clientele from around the globe. It was well known in every language school and every 14 year old from Dusseldorf or 15 years old from Stockholm would descend on the ship for its cheap, sweet and very alcoholic booze.

The results were as obvious as they were messy.

The ship was old and wooden, a relic from a bygone age, gutted and decorated in full faux pirate splendour.  It was a tacky paradise for anyone wanting their first drunken, clumsy sexual experience in its plastic crow’s nests or life boat hideaways.

The two hated it and tried to get the sack but the boss was so grateful of any help he put up with all their bad behaviour.  There was nothing they could do wrong. They would turn up late, but the boss would just dock their pay and let them do what little they could before the club opened. They tried to break things but everything was plastic and unbreakable, even the drinks came in plastic containers impossible to break open.

Then one day something caught Charlie’s eye under the table. He couldn’t make it out at first it looked like a little cardboard box, with a picture on the front.  He crouched down to get a closer look. As he did so he landed straight into a thin line of what he hoped was a spilt drink and nothing worse.  He didn’t let this distract him, instead reaching for the little box.

. The front of the box had a pitcher of a ship, not unlike the one they were on may have looked like year before. Down one side of the box ran a small strip of sandpaper.

“It can’t be” he said to the air and shook the box next to his ear.

He hadn’t seen anything like it for a couple of years; it must have come from one of the Nordic countries.

“Matches!” said Daniel hungrily, his eyes dancing again with that mischievous glow.

“No Dan, we can’t, getting the sack is one thing but matches. These could get us ten years!”

“Oh where’s your sense of fun!”, Daniel cried out snatching the matches of him with a large grin on his face. He flipped the tap of the oversized barrel on the counter containing neat vodka it trickled a long line down the length of the boat, snaking its length as the boat gently rocked in the calm waters.

“You’re on your own with this one mate, this is dangerous and fire has been illegal since the last riots, you know that more than I do!”

His words were lost; Daniel seemed lost in a dream grinning from ear to ear.

He looked up from the fake fire, remembering what he had tried to lay buried years ago, remember the night the city last saw fire, real fire.  The boat burnt for a few brief moments before it sank beneath thick black smoke and molten plastic. He had found out later that Daniel had thrown the match from the shore, escaping with his life but not with his freedom.  CCTV cameras had caught the whole thing; there was no getting out of this one.  Perhaps that’s what he wanted? Charlie always knew Daniel never really knew when to stop, that’s what made him such equally good and bad company, you had to live on your wits, escaping or fleeing trouble not avoiding it.

Was it all really a joke to him? Did he care as little as it seemed?  Perhaps

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, his felt his heart in his mouth,

‘Would he come here’, he thought to himself?

He slowly got up off the sofa, and stood motionless in the middle room wondering what to do next. The knock became more urgent.

He wandered down the stairs to his shared front door, knowing the knock was for him.  He opened the door to see a note scrawled in what looked like Daniels writing.

“Look in the brown bin”, it said in bold black letters.

He puzzled for a moment holding the note in his hands, turning it over a couple of times as if it new mysteries were about to be revealed.  When he was sure all he was instructed to do was look in the compost he made his way over to the side of the building where his compost bin was kept.  He opened it hesitantly.

There on top of festering kitchen waste another note in the same handwriting revealed a new instruction, “Not this one, try the one for number 4b”

“I could be he a while?” he said to the air hoping someone, well hoping Daniel would answer.

He crossed the street and wandered down the alley were 4a and 4b kept their bins. He open the first.

“This is 4a the note said, back of the alley”

He walked down the back of the alley, treading in something as he moved though the gloom, it reminded him of the pirate ship and he chuckled to himself.

He opened the second bin where a box sat on the kitchen waste.

“Open me!!” the box exclaimed with two exclamation marks the size of its lid.

He open the box to see a potato with two hands crudely drawn in marker pen pointing to the numbers one and eight.

“A potato clock” he said to the night, hoping Daniel would hear.

He called out a few times but only dogs and angry neighbours answered him. He soon realised it was pointless and gave up the chase making his way back up to his flat.

He put the potato on his coffee table and sat back in the sofa, reaching for his mobile as he did so.

As the phone erupted into life he glanced at the fire, he’d never seen it look so vivid, so bright, he’d never smelt it before.  The phone played its usual start up tune and he went through his usual charade.

“Play messages later, access emails later, go to address book”. The phone complied and he commanded “Call Daniel” As the phone rang the smell filled his nostrils.

“I can smell fire” he thought to himself as he looked up from the phone.

“I CAN SMELL FIRE!!”

Ever since I met my partner there has been a real problem around this time of year. It’s not as some might imagine, any of the usual problems couples face in the autumn. It is not the start of the football season that drives a wedge between us, nor is it the start of an American TV series which will have me glued to the screen for weeks to come.

No, on this front at least we at least share our main hobby as she is just as fanatically into vegetable growing as me, if not more so.  She’ll correct my Latin so I know my Daucus carota from my Pastinaca sativa and we both get excited when the latest book on unusual vegetables blesses our door mat.

There is no dragging her kicking and screaming to the plot.  At present she is very heavily pregnant but that doesn’t seem to stop her, it is often her suggestion to wander down to the plot for the harvest.  None of these things really cause the problem but they in themselves are the problem.

She is so keen on vegetables that during the autumn our house starts to fill up with them. One year we lived in a tiny maisonette barely big enough for the two of us and come harvest time it really began to cram up. We had beans on strings hanging from the ceiling, herbs drying in the windows, jars of pickles, jams, chutneys and jellies on every shelf in every cupboard and fruit leathers drying on the storage heaters.

All of these I could cope with, especially as a lot were my doing, however what I found infuriating were the squashes, the large pumpkins, butternut and marrow squashes. They were everywhere. Every time I pulled the hoover out of its cupboard one would roll out and hit me on the head, if I closed the curtains too quickly the same would happen with those perched on the valance box above them. They were a danger to us and to the squashes themselves.

Often I would feign accidents just so I could get to eat these vegetable giants. If I didn’t create these vegetable mishaps they would remain as artistic objects, mere ornaments dotted around our home. Herein lies the rub, as it does every year. I am happy to grow food, I am also happy to preserve food but, and I do insist on this, it has to be eaten! Pumpkins, as beautiful as they may be, are not ornaments and neither are jars of pickles or jams. They all need to be eaten sometime or we are just making cumbersome baubles to slowly rot in our homes.

I think this evening a little accident may happen to one of the Uchiki Kuri squash on the kitchen windowsill. I think it may be a little accident involving balsamic vinegar, basil and pasta.