Dave's blog

My summer of not spending had to come to an end, I’ve not updated this blog for a while and I’ve been spending again for a little while, spending a lot less than I used to but spending none the less .

The whole thing lasted six weeks and I decided to have it as a series of tests to work out if it is possible to live a cashless lifestyle whilst going about my daily business.

With any lifestyle change scenarios are often imagined where it would be impossible to live that lifestyle. For example as a vegetarian I am often asked ridiculous questions like, ‘if you were on a desert island with a cow would you eat the cow?’. Hmm, what possible chain of events would bring me to the circumstance of being on a dessert island with a cow? Perhaps if I was cabin crew on a dairy ship floating through the Caribbean? How likely is this to happen for a professional writer/forager living in the UK?? Besides surely the desert island would have some edible food and if not I would probably feed the cow seaweed and live of it’s milk, this would sustain me for far longer than it would just killing the cow and eating it! Thankfully I don’t get asked twatty questions like those too much any more.

I’m extremely lucky to work the way I do and this summer proved perhaps the most enjoyable work I’ve ever done. I was booked to work at the Eden Project taking people on wild food walks as part of their summer programme which focused on survival. The theme seemed pretty apt as I took a gamble and didn’t quite bring enough food for the whole weekend and instead decided to find a lot of my food either from skips or foraged from the wilds of Cornwall.

We were booked into a farm house/hostel owned by the project and inside the Eden site itself. As luck would have it right by the farms entrance wild currants were growing alongside wild strawberries and blackberries. I found some sugar inside and made a single pot of microwave jam. I’d never tried this before but it is incredibly simple, I put the fruit in a small bowl and microwaved it for a minute, then added the sugar, stirred and put on for a minute longer. That was it, near instant jam!

I’d been doing some voluntary work for the botanic gardens in Bristol before going to Eden and developed a taste for the sugar cane I was weeding out. It was a bonus to forage not only UK grown sugar cane but banana leaves to cook tamales with all sourced free from with the Bristol city limits.

At Eden my taste for the exotic continued, I again munched on sugar cane but this time from the rather international looking compost heap. During my stay there I feasted on UK grown tangerines and bananas left for the staff to eat. I befriended one of the gardeners in the Mediterranean biome who also had a passion for foraging and as a result took home fresh tomatoes, fresh cabbage, and beetroot. The canteen would allow staff to take home sandwiches and fruit at the end of each day rather than binning it so I ended up taking stuff back home with me. It really did live up to it’s name and rather than being forced into spending it was a garden of Eden for anyone working there. After the weeks preceding it felt almost like I was living in the mythical land of Cockayne where food is abundant at every turn.

Andy and I took full advantage of this land of Cockayne and dug up some Burdock root to roast. This was going to make part of a roast dinner to cement a friendship with a couple of bushcraft experts also taking part in the survival summer and camping in the field next to the house. We had a full three course meal, some foraged, some bin dived , some brought from my allotment and a very minor part bought, by the bushcraft experts, from a local shop. We could barely move by the end of it and went to bed extremely satiated.

I found some of the properties of burdock out to my cost that night. It is high in a carbohydrate called inulin which acts as a pro-biotic. Now pro-biotics encourage the growth of bacteria and bacteria in the gut produce gas. Gas in the gut means, well I don’t think I need to go on. I woke up in the middle of the night with cramps and explosive farts and from the next room could hear that Andy was going through exactly the same thing! We put it down to under cooking the root and perhaps eating too much of it as neither of us had such drastic reactions to it in the past. It made for an interesting day the next day as we both had to find quiet places to release our burdock induced gas!

On the way home I again stopped in Totnes to look at a couple of properties and had a couple of hours to kill. I was a day away from the date Ellie and I had fixed to stop our cashless experiment.
It was Ellie’s birthday coming up and I had emailed an ethical clothing company called Enamore cheekily asking if they would provide a present in return for a mention in my book. Now the book had been on sale for over a year at this point and they had no reason to help me. Thankfully they did and provided me with a mystery package to present to Ellie on her birthday. (I should say at this point Enamore did say I was incredibly cheeky and they don’t normally do anything like that!). Whilst walking round Totnes I found a book I’d never seen before on horizontal bee-keeping. It talked about a method of bee-keeping not only more in tune with how a bee natural behaves but also a method that didn’t need tonnes of expensive bee-keeping equipment. I walked around the shop with book in hand not knowing what to do. The buying of this book would help out a small independent bookshop and as it was published by a small independent publisher the writer might even see some of the money from the sale. It didn’t take me long to weigh it up and I broke the not spending bubble.

The strangely limp and dull looking note left my canvas wallet after spending a summer sitting in there in all weather. I looked at this crumpled note as if it was foreign currency. It was unfamiliar, like money can be when you’ve been away travelling for months on end. I felt like I should mentally convert pounds back into the countries currency I had been living in for the last six weeks. Only that country was this one but the currency was favours, bartering and good will
It felt odd to part with the money and I felt like shouting out to the woman in the bookshop what the buying of this book meant. ‘Do you realise how long it is since I’ve spent money!, do you realise what this system is doing for the planet and what a meaningful life you can have if you let go of material wealth even for a short time!?’ I didn’t say this of course I just said, ‘thanks very much’ and ‘no, I don’t need a bag’

For the avid festival goer in the UK there are at least three large festivals to choose from every weekend from June to the end of August. The weekend just gone (24th – 26th July) there was the Womad festival, Camp Bestival, Truck Festival and Secret Garden Party, all now established and all over 10, 000 people! They are huge money spinners for the organisers and retailers alike as the average spend on a festival weekend is now

Yes that’s right SIX HUNDRED POUNDS! £600 is more than I live off in month, even before this experiment! If £600 is the average, this means some people spend more! Unless I became a cocaine addict with a passion for hiring sports cars I don’t think I could every spend that much in a single weekend. So if £600 is the average could it be possible to do an entire festival for nothing?
I has a head start on most as early this year I emailed loads of festivals to try and do some workshops. A few got back to me but then working at the Eden project meant I had to cancel some of them. One I could do as it was in July rather than August was Camp Bestival down in Lulworth Cove. It’s a fantastic part of the country and somewhere I would go on holiday even without a festival taking place, so getting a free pair of tickets to do a wild food walk was a real bonus.

After putting messages all over the internet on car-share schemes and even this very site weeks in advance it got closer to the date and no-one was coming forward to drive us. In despair I emailed the woman who booked me in the first place to see if she had any ideas. She put me in touch with someone who was driving down on the Friday (who quite by chance lived around two minutes walk from my house).

Our companions for the trip down to Dorset were due to join their wives and children who had set up on the festival site a few days before to run a stall. They were really friendly and the journey down flew by just chatting about what we all respectively did for a living and generally getting to know each other. They were TV music producers and by the sounds of things quite busy and skilled at their trade. We didn’t mention our no-money experiment and as we’d already agreed to pay for travel if essential – Our plan was to offer petrol money, or if they asked we would give them it. On arrival we had the usual great British politeness stand off – ‘are you sure you don’t want any petrol money?’ ‘go on please take it’ etc, etc. In the end we agreed to give them £10 for parking.

As we set foot into the festival we’d spent £5 each rather than the £410 the average person had already spent at this point. Some might see this as a defeat but our no-money rules meant we only spent money transport (when unable to travel by bike), bills, rent and tax – Dorset is a 2-3 day cycle and Ellie couldn’t get that time off work. To me this experiment is more to do with self-reliance than blagging off someone else; so paying someone kind enough to drive us on a 6 hour round trip just ten pounds didn’t seem like a defeat to us!

The first night was easy, we had a gas hob, food to cook on it (pasta from the coffee barter) and some booze we had in the back of the cupboard. It’s amazing really just what you can find lying around your home that is perfectly edible or drinkable. I think alcohol is one of those things that most will have a bottle or two of something lying around. Booze is often left for years and years before a brave (or alcoholic) friend turns up and drinks it all. A friend of mine told me a story of his near alcoholic mate turning up at his parents house and drinking a bottle of whiskey with a label reading ‘by appointment to his majesty the King’. So later that night we watched Mercury Rev and for the first time in what seemed like months, both of us were feeling a little tipsy.

Our easy ride of Friday began to wain a little as whilst boiling water for tea the gas burner ran out of gas! I was feeling a little fuzzy from the night before at this point and just wanted a caffeine hit to get me started. The water was half way to boiling when it died so we did at least have luke warm tea and instead of porridge we ate the last of the croissants we’d gleaned the week before from a Tesco bin.

I did have my storm kettle as a back up for the gas burner but unsure of the fire regulations and as security seemed to be quite tight (we got told off quite a lot on Friday night for various very minor misdemeanor’s – like being in the wrong field at the wrong time!) we decided it best to leave the festival site to cook our lunch and dinner.

Camp Bestival is a festival by the sea, so for those inclined, a good day’s foraging could be had. On the Friday we had already foraged nettle tops, jelly ear fungus and a few other bits and bobs from the festival perimeter but on the Saturday we decided to take a walk down to the cove and see what diverse goodies Lulworth had to offer.
We were not disappointed, on the two mile walk to the beach we found the last of the wild cherries, cherry plums, horse mushrooms, sorrel and some fat hen! The cove itself was full of coastal favourites like sea beet and rock samphire.

We made a delicious one pot pasta meal on the base of the storm kettle and sat eating our bartered and foraged feast looking out to sea as the sun was setting (whilst removing stinging ants from various parts of our body).

We arrived back at the festival for P J Harvey and some obscure Mexican aniseed, honey booze I pulled from the back of the cupboard at home. Perhaps it was the lack of anything else to drink rather than being as bad as I remembered (hence being left in the cupboard for months) it was actually really nice. It was also incredibly strong – a little like a Mexican ouzo.

By the Sunday we thought ‘sod it’ to security and decided to cook on the storm kettle inside the perimeter. We were in Crew camping which meant security were in the same field as us and every security guard at the festival had to walk past our tent. Whilst boiling up our morning cuppa using scraps of wood and discarded cardboard I started to rouse a little attention. Rather than tell me off security were fascinated by the workings of the storm kettle. One even jotted down the name of the company that made them and swore he would buy one for the next festival he was working at.
It also attracted the attention of a festival geek, he spotted it from across the field and ran over in an affected ‘kooky’ manner.
‘wow, what’s that, is it a milk churn, is it a …..’
I cut him off mid flow, ‘It’s a storm kettle, it boils water quickly with very little fuel’
‘oh, well, yeah, I just thought it looked weird, I know you’ve told me what it is but it looks weird, I mean is it a puzzle, a jug within a jug’
‘Are you a dickhead within a wanker’ I felt like replying but bit my tongue and grinned.

I’m not surprised it got so much attention as they are a very useful bits of kit, the kettle itself sits on what is essentially a portable container for a fire. It also needs very little fuel to burn and will boil 1.5 litres of water in very little time.

Sunday lunch was a high point, we cooked up a noodle soup using the rock samphire, a small piece of block coconut cream, curry powder, some jelly ear, sorrel, beet spinach, nettles and a little bit of a half bottle of wine we found discarded as someone had left the festival. It was absolutely delicious and set me up for the wild food walk I was set to do that afternoon.

By evening we were feeling a little smug as heavy rain was forecast the next day and we’d done it, we’d gone through a whole festival without spending a penny! We had timed it well also as we had just a Tupperware box of turnip curry left to have that evening. As we packed up the tent we gave the curry a little sniff to see what we had in store for later and both of us nearly retched. Nearly three days in the Dorset sun had not done good things to this humble turnip meal and against all of our principals we were forced to throw away this fermenting box of veggies.

We arrived at the camp-site of the bloke who drove us and instantly sensed something was afoot. We weren’t mistaken and for reasons I won’t go into here our lift was now to leave in the morning rather than in five minutes! SHIT, SHIT, SHITTY, SHIT! I thought to myself, we have nothing to eat! The rain started to pour and we sat down to gather our thoughts assuring our hosts that leaving tomorrow was no problem at all.
We were hungover, sleep deprived, tired, hungry and now a little demoralised and both decided this was time to call an end to the experiment, we had to eat!
Wandering over to the field with all the catering vans we soon realised we had no idea what food was on offer. I had seen Hugh Fernly Whitingstall the night before and recalled that he had a River Cottage stand at the festival. I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward as he passed me in a crowd, he stared at me right in the eye as if he recognised me from somewhere. I felt like talking to him but I couldn’t help but think about my Chef within a Chef blog where I suggest that you stuff Anthony Worrel Thompson straight up Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s arse! How can I say, ‘yeah, I’m quite a fan of your work, did you read that blog about shoving a short fat man up your anal passage?’. That aside River Cottage would at least be local, seasonal, organic and free range so if we were going to spend money it would at least support local farmers and not line the pockets of large oil companies or multi-nationals.
I’m not sure what I expected, It was all bloody meat, not a single veggie meal to be had or at least none that seemed worthy of breaking our not spending regime. We moved on and queued for our joint favourite – flat Italian pizza. We’d seen people eating it all weekend and now we wanted to sample it for ourselves. It seemed half the festival had the same idea and the queue didn’t budge for around half and hour. This gave us enough time to come to our senses, we could forage and cook a meal in the time it would take to get served. We headed back to get the storm kettle and on the way found a loaf of bread and some margarine left by someone vacating the festival. The festival fatigue was really getting us by this point and we thought well we’ll eat some bread then go look for some more food.
Whilst eating the bread and butter an odd thing happened, although very plain it became one of the nicest things I’d ever eaten! After a number of slices with a little foraged sorrel and rock samphire I had in my pocket from the night before we both felt strangely satisfied.
To avoid the rain that was now chucking it down we had an early night followed by a breakfast of bread and butter. The long sleepy ride home was punctuated by finding red currents in a lay-by and the rest of Monday was spent recovering gently by eating, sleeping and generally making the most of not being under canvas.

I can’t remember when the decision to stop spending money entirely came about. Since we met Ellie and myself have always been frugal but it does feel like we’re stepping up a gear at the moment. I’ve still not spent anything on food for some time and now we’re trying not to spend anything at all!

It doesn’t seem like we’re missing out either! We kept finding fruit in our infamous bin, so much so that we don’t always take it, as we can’t eat it all! This all changed last week, as we struck gold finding a discarded juicer. At first it seemingly didn’t work but I looked it up on the net to find all it needed was a pulp collector. When connected this pulp collector presses a little button at the back and the juicer springs into action. A little improvisation got it working and we now have a £90 working juicer at our disposal.

So last night we had a glass of fresh apple juice each to wash down our jacket potato (cooked in a found microwave) with rocket (weeded out from my volunteer job at Eastside roots) and skipped onion and fresh tomato.

Going back over the three weeks since we stepped up our freegan activities we’ve had some ups and downs food wise. One of the ups was finding we had a bottle of whey left in the freezer and using it to make a pizza base, two loaves of soda bread and some ricotta cheese (I’m a vegetarian freegan). The pizza used skipped mozzarella with a rocket leaf sauce, foraged mushrooms with homegrown shallots, oregano and a homegrown salad (delicious!). One of the down sides bizarrely started as a real boon. We cycled around Clifton (the posh part of Bristol) trying to find the bins of the posh supermarkets and shops (to no avail!) and instead following a tip off from Andy we foraged bags and bags of fresh plums. Having gouged ourselves on them for a couple of days we soon realised we’d eaten rather more than was good for us. Needless to say finding around 3 kilos of bananas last night might go some way to solving this problem.

A day out in Totnes and Dartington yesterday also nearly left us unstuck. We’ve found that our food is getting stranger and stranger the further back into the store cupboard we go. So after a breakfast of sorghum, quinoa, molasses and plum porridge we packed our bags with the days food and left. I was heading down for an open day for a qualification in Sustainable Horticulture at Dartington Hall and Schumacher College and Ellie had arranged a viewing on a house for us. We did have to buy a train ticket down after trying in vein on lift-share websites. It was a bit of a kick in the teeth to have to spend some money half way into the experiment but we’d sold a second hand book on Amazon which went some of the way to paying for the ticket. The only thing I can say is if there are any drivers out there travelling long distances on their own can you please start using lift-share websites. Who knows you may even make some new friends!
On the train we had some sorghum cakes made with mallow leaf infusion as an egg substitute as a snack and washed it down with a flask of tea made with milk from the buffet trolley.
On arrival to the open day I found a jar of spicy pickled ash keys, given to me from a friend, had exploded in my bag ruining a lot of the food inside. This was somewhat embarrassing but as I tried to minimise the damage to the inside of my bag a prospective student, one of the tutors and myself munched through some of these surprisingly tasty seeds around shards of glass.
Thankfully lunch was provided and I made the most of it, stuffing myself silly, Ellie even cycled up to the Hall to grab a portion. It was a delicious risotto with a salad – all of which looked homegrown. Heading back into Totnes I met up with fellow forager Robin of eatweeds.co.uk. We talked about this non-money venture of mine and after my third glass of water Robin offered me a cup of tea. After much deliberation we decided that this was a gift and as such I should except it and not see it as proxy buying.

So after this long afternoon in a café Ellie and I foraged some of the first real glut of blackberries, ate some wild leaves in a sandwich began to look around Totnes for a freegan dinner. The blackberries and leaves weren’t really staving off the hunger and after looking behind the major supermarkets and around the back of the local shops we decided our best bet was to get back on the train. We devoured the half loaf of bread I had in my bag (slightly vinegar damaged) and got two cups of hot water from the buffet car for a foraged lemon balm tea. The mixture of bread, hot water and soporific herbs made us feel full and sleepy and put off the hunger pangs until we got back home for the before mentioned jacket potato.

So now I’m writing this after a breakfast of two hash browns (made from last nights leftovers) and a mango and banana smoothie (made in a found liquidizer). I’ll soon be putting the finishing touches to our rocket stove, made from free materials, so in conjunction with our haybox oven (also made from free materials) we’ll have free energy to cook with.

Getting on for three weeks ago my girlfriend (Ellie) and myself picked around 12 Kilos of cherries growing on a country lane in the middle of the Cotswolds. These were choice, fat, sweet cherries along with morellos, Japanese yellow and a few other varieties we couldn’t name. We couldn’t believe how much the trees were producing and more importantly how much we could pick and still leave more than enough for the locals and the local wildlife. The trees were heaving and if we had time we could have picked even more!
We were looking after a friends small-holding at the time living off eggs from his hens, watercress we’d picked from a running stream along with bits of food we’d brought with us and things from his garden.
Soon the time came to leave and we loaded up our bikes with crates of cherries, I found room in my bag for a cabbage and a few other choice fruit and vegetables before heading off back to Bristol.

We decided to put a cash figure on what we took home or ate during our stay. All of the food was free range, organically grown or picked from the wild.
Watercress and other wild greens – £12
2 Cabbages – £2
12 Kilos of cherries – £120
12 Eggs (we did get egg bound!) – £4
Broccoli £1.50
Potatoes £2.50
Spinach – £1
Salad Leaves – £2
Broad Beans – £2
Blackcurrants – £4

So all in all we had over £150 worth of food in our bellies and on our bikes. We came home to a similar amount of food off my allotment, gluts of broad beans, rhubarb, gooseberries, raspberries, loads of potatoes, salad leaves, cabbages plus herbs, roots and various other bits and bobs.
On top of this we’d found a fantastic bin for skip diving, or dumpster diving as some know it. This had bananas, a whole watermelon, carrots, some moolis (big white radishes), plums and I’m sure some more things that I can remember.

We’ve been pickling, making jam, freezing things and quite frankly enjoying the abundance of food.

This abundance has prompted us to not spend a single penny on food for as long as we can. I’ve had an added bonus by doing some work for the BBC talking about freeganism and taking home a large bag of shopping they were going to just throw away!

It will be three weeks on Monday (20th July) without spending a penny, I’m even drinking water in cafés and pubs when I go out, lets see how long we can both last!

Last Years Successful Tap

It’s easy to miss the short window of time open for Birch tapping. The sap rises in the spring and if you miss it, that’s it for another year! The first tell tail sign is the new growth high in the canopy of the tree itself. When I was informed in late February the trees had started to bud early I knew I had to get on the case and get tapping. This year I was delighted to find not one but a whole row of Birches not far from my house. I thought my luck was in and this ear I would get a lot more than usual and could experiment with the stuff!
My girlfriend had been keen to get some sap and brew some birch sap wine so along with my brother Andy we went out with drill and bottles in hand to harvest some of the delicate fresh tree juice to play around with.
I use a hand drill rather than an electric one, it seems a much purer exercise and a bit kinder to the tree. The trick is to cut only a little passed the bark rather than deep within the tree. If you find yourself cutting deep into the tree without the sap oozing out then you’re either too early, too late. If this is the case and you should plug up the hole and try again later or the following year.

The three of us took it in turns to tap the trees and using string and parcel tape we attached bottles to the trees so the sap would drip into to collect in them. There are methods where you suspend a can on a nail dug into the tree or even make a container out of the tree bark itself. I have a box full of plastic bottles I keep meaning to take to the recycling bank, so it seemed pointless to spend all afternoon fashioning a vessel from tree bark.

Whilst tapping the final tree we noticed someone had been there before as they’d left a cork bunged into the trunk of the tree. If they were tapping it for sap there really is no need for the hole to be this big. The cork looked like one that would fit a demijohn and the hole only needs to be the diameter of a drinking straw!!!! Having said that cork is one of the best ways to seal up the tree as it expands to fit the size of the hole and can be removed for next years tap.
Without cork to hand I use a twig and sometimes tap it in with a hammer to make sure it is a proper seal.

It is important to reseal the hole as the sap would simply leach from it and never reach the canopy to feed the tree for the year to come, thus the tree would literally ‘bleed’ to death.

We left it over night and came back the following afternoon. I looked down the line of trees and all our containers looked empty. Sap seemed to ooze down the tree but not into our containers. I looked more closely and it looked like they’d all been tampered with. Spotting a large hole nearby it seems a fox; badger or even rabbit could have seen the containers and out of curiosity knocked them all.

Well this is what I thought until I closely examined container 5. Instead of the characteristic clear watery colour birch sap the milk bottle was full of a yellowy brown liquid*See Note.  Now this is where the small mammal theory breaks down! For a fox to disturb all five containers, and then jump on it’s hind legs and piss into a recently emptied one would be a feat even for an anthropomorphic animal with the dexterity of a Wind in the Willows or Pooh bear character! Even Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox wouldn’t be skilled enough to aim into a milk carton half way up a tree.

One assumption from this situation is that foragers might at times be very territorial, pissing in my bottles could be a sign for me not to go near their patch. Either that or some kids thought it might be funny to knock a load of bottles around then piss into one. Either way, I’m finding slightly less urban birches to tap!

Note - As a forager or indeed in any aspect of life you are constantly revising what you’ve learned.  I have since found out if the sap comes yellow or yellow/brown then there is a bacteria present in the sap and you should not drink it.  Also the downy birch looks very similar to the silver birch but the sap has a bitter taste and therefore it is not advisable to tap a downy birch.

All in all it’s been a strange few days. Thursday started off normal enough, some bits of writing in the morning, then down the allotment in the afternoon to prepare for spring. I started digging out a fallow piece of land that the previous owner had his shed on. The more I dug, the more I crap I found, tin cans, corrugated iron, broken glass, plastic bottles and bags etc, etc –so, what was supposed to be a job for an afternoon I had to abandon to finish another day.

I came home tired and aching and thought I’d treat myself to a nice relaxing bath, I felt like I deserved a long hot soak. Half way through my watery meditation the phone rang, I didn’t move a muscle knowing that if it were important they would leave a message or call back.

An unknown number flashed on the screen, must be work I thought to myself.

‘Hi this is Astra from the BBC, we wondered if you wanted to come and talk about allotments on News 24 tonight?’

My heart started racing, ‘tonight!’, I thought to myself now panicking a little.

I called back and she informed me that I was to have a car turn up in 2 hours to take me up to BBC Bristol in Clifton.

I spent the next couple of hours nervously wandering about, swatting up on allotments. At one point I had to go to the local shop just to get some of the nervous energy out of my system.
Up to that point I’d been on – BBC Breakfast, ITV Weather, BBC Inside Out West, Radio 4’s Today Programme and Working Lunch not to mention countless local radio appearances. So this was to be my fourth live television appearance and yet I was still shitting it.

I was dropped off at BBC Clifton at about 8pm. The lights were off and the whole place looked closed for the night, I began to think the whole thing was a hoax and reached for my mobile phone. Thankfully, all was made clear after a couple of phone calls. I was told to head for the vehicle entrance and wait in the security office for a bloke called Peter. Forty minutes of shivering next to an open door in a semi-dark room Peter turned up with obligatory clipboard in hand. I think the only information on these clipboards is the guest’s name as the usual action, and Peter was no exception, is to nod and point to a page on the clipboard before uttering, ‘Dave Hamilton?’

Peter ushered me to the newsroom, which was empty save for one bloke working a few rows away. He sat me on a high stool and put a microphone on my collar and earpiece in my ear. I faced the camera checking my hair in the monitor; it looked like it always looks, messy despite brushing it before leaving the house. With no cameraman there was nothing human to engage with, just a remote controlled eye staring at me.

The time came for my piece and I felt myself freeze up for a second or two. Like the first dump after a couple of days of painful constipation the words suddenly began to flow (I’m sure other analogies could be better there!)

I looked in the monitor to see who was asking these idiotic questions but what showed on the screen bore no resemblance to the inane chatter in my ear.

‘My wife goes up the allotment for hours and never seems to return with anything!’

My interrogator utters.

My first thought was to joke that she was more likely having an affair than digging for carrots but I think better of this and return the chatter with something equally nonsensical. The next thing I know I’m telling the country to grow more potatoes and then I’m off air.

I pull out the air-piece feeling like I’ve just been in a car-crash and Peter directs my bewildered self out into the open air.

I wait for 20-30 minutes in the cold night air on my own for the car to take me home before realising it isn’t coming. I debate walking or getting the bus but it’s getting late now so I head into the security office again to see what’s happened to my car.

After leaving messages with Peter and Astra it becomes clear that their phones are off for the night and I have to call a taxi home.

A few years ago I used to work for an employment agency in Oxford called ‘Driver Hire’, I wasn’t a driver for hire but I did work for them as a drivers mate. I would be picked up outside the agency then dropped off in whatever logistics, delivery or removal company needed a drivers mate that day. It was a one-way deal however and regardless if the company was in Cowley, Didcot or a village in the middle of no-where I would have to find my own way home.

I never thought a television appearance would echo this but I guess that’s the glamorous life of a TV pundit!

The next day I went to do a volunteer day at Eastside Roots, a community garden scheme set up on an abandoned piece of land at Stapleton Road Station in Bristol. The co-ordinator, Nick Ward, asked how I’d been so I mentioned I’d been on TV the night before to which he replied, ‘oh I was on TV on Monday, what were you on?’

He’d been short listed as one of the RHS’s Peoples Gardener and had appeared on the Alan Titchmarsh show the Monday before. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him as we could do with any extra support for the project we can get!

The following day it’s quite sunny so I head to the allotment again to finish digging out my mini landfill site. I arrive to find the plot below me teaming with people. That particular plot has been more or less empty since I got mine three years before so it came as quite a shock to see it swarming like this. Rather strangely it turns out that I know the allotment holder and I chat to her briefly as she heads home to get tea for her personal garden army.

I mention that I’ve been on TV to which she replies, ‘Oh me too, and I’m going to be on Gardener’s World Soon!’

I can’t believe it, is everyone on TV these days!!??

She’s part of an organization called Gro Fun and the plot is a community project to get people interested in gardening. Just like Nick it’s a worthy cause and I really can’t get jealous of her TV exposure!

This kind of puts things in perspective for me, my plot is for my own enjoyment rather than a community project. The closest I get to community work there is when I call up my video-making friend to free him from his editing suite or when my girlfriend pops by to do some weeding.

I finish the day feeling like an allotment holder rather than a minor-celebrity and whilst I pull out a vintage Old English Ginger Beer can from the soil I remind myself that I’m not doing this for the fame (and yes I do see the irony of writing that in a public blog!)

Last week I’d planned to put in a pond, build a shed, put in a path and erect some kind of greenhouse but my plans were dashed when down came the snow! I perhaps wouldn’t have managed all the tasks in hand, I tend to overload myself and then feel bad when I can’t do everything I planned! So at least chipping away at some of the tasks would have been good but the weather had just made it impossible; filling a pond only for it to freeze is perhaps counter productive at best.

So instead last Monday I decided to take myself off to Abergavenny to enjoy the snow in a nice hilly, country setting. It’s only an hour by train there from Bristol and it really feels like you’re out in the wilds. I’m working on a novel at the moment and some of this features snowy surroundings so if I couldn’t do practical work then a little research would perhaps be the next best thing.

I arrived in the picturesque town of Abergavenny to a near blizzard. Sensing walking could be dangerous in this weather I took myself to a nice little café to sit it out with a newspaper, a nice hot cup of tea and jacket potato.

After half and hour or so the snow seemed to calm a little and I took myself on a route out of town, over the canal, and up a hill through a line of trees. I was so taken by the beauty of the landscape enveloped in snow I found myself taking countless pictures.

Half way up the hill I stumbled across a farmer whose land I must have been walking on. I asked him, “if I carry on walking up this way, how long before I…”

He interrupted, “how long before you die?!”

I laughed a little but saw that he was really only half joking, I’m sure dealing with a frozen corpse on your land is not a job most farmers would wish for. He advised I walk up a little to a spot where he turns the sheep out and if the fog has really set in and I can’t see much it would be for the best that I turn round and come back down.

Now I remember once whilst walking in Scotland myself and two friends aimed to climb a mountain and come back down within a day. On the ascent we met a well-seasoned walker who told us the footpath was only on our side of the mountain and our route would take us through ‘just, deer tracks and heather’. Rather than follow his advice we completely ignored it and just walked up the route we’d planed. After spending 24 longer than intended, sleeping in a tent pitched in a bog, drinking boiled snow (we’d run out of water), starving as we only packed enough food for 1 day and 1 night and twisting my ankle on the deer tracks and heather I have since then taken the advice of people who know an area better than I do!

I walked up to the area he turned the sheep out and the fog had really set in, visibility was low and I could barely walk two paces without slipping. Still something in me wanted to get to the top of the hill, it’s almost as if I have some suicidal gene that wants me to get into trouble! However, I ignored my self-destructive internal dialogue and stared heading back down the hill. I’d made quite a lot of notes for the novel and taken a lot of pictures so I’d done what I set out to do and I wandered back down.

Not wanting to cut the walk to short I wandered up and down the canal for a bit and stumbled across some velvet shank (Flammulina velutipes) growing out of a dead standing tree. It really stood out in the frost and I couldn’t resist taking a bit home to eat and taking a few pics.

Velvet shank is quite easy to identify but it can look like Galerina marginata, a particularly nasty mushroom. The toxins in Galerina margina (or Galerina autumnalis) are known as amatoxins give you bloody diarrhea and make you vomit about a day after ingestion. Then after a little bit of time you start to feel better so most hospitals will discharge you. During this brief respite your organs collapse causing a certain and very painful death. Needless to say I made darn sure I had he right mushroom before I ate them. A spore print is essential; look at the mushroom expert for more details.

Velvet shank is a bit bland so I stir fried it up with, amongst other things, some chilli, black beans, ginger and had it with tofu, broccoli, home grown Jew’s ear fungus (or jelly ear) with some soba noodles. It was pretty tasty once I flavoured it but I wonder if it’s always worth risking death for such a bland mushroom!?

The week was a bit more sedate after Monday, I felt risking death twice in 24 hours was quite enough for one week. It may be perhaps as I’ve given up smoking that I still need to be dicing with death on a daily basis. Perhaps it wasn’t the nicotine I was addicted to but the fact I was ingesting a poison.

As some readers of this blog or visitors to our main website may know I recently broke my wrist. To add insult to injury, or rather to add injury to injury yesterday I managed to burn the same hand. One of my housemates had left a plastic washing up bowl on top of the cooker and I decided to make myself a little snack of cheese on toast. A strange smell started to fill the kitchen and a strange greyish lump appeared on my toast. I poked it wondering what it was, within an instant my hand was in immense pain and I washed off the molten plastic from my thumb and forefinger.

I’m now typing this with my remaining fingers on my left hand and letting my right hand do the majority of the work. They say that bad luck comes in three’s so what’s next – am I going to loose my left arm altogether? I’m hoping that I can buck this trend of bad luck coming in threes and can’t help thinking that I’m owed some good luck for a change!

I’ve got two carrier bags full of rowans in my larder that need my attention today before I have two carrier bags full of rowan slush. I don’t eat meat so rowan jelly might not be the best plan for them – will they accompany nut roast, stuffed peppers? – Perhaps

I thought I’d make some rowan chutney, some apple and rowan sauce, maybe even some rowan jam or rowan wine. I can see myself getting used to the taste of rowan pretty quickly whatever I do with them. Can I say rowan a few more times? Rowan, rowan, rowan – it would appear so.