Dave's blog

I made the decision a while ago that, rather than a typical gardening or allotment blog, I would have my blog as a kind of online diary and a place to put short stories and bits of comic writing that may not necessarily fit in with the main website. It seems to me there are plenty of gardening websites around and if you want gardening or foraging advice from me or Andy, the main website www.selfsufficientish.com has so much information there is really no need to put it in a blog.

With an online diary like this you do have to make a decision of how much of your life you add to it.  My trouble is, it is easy for me, tucked down in rural Devon, to forget that anyone reads it at all.   Which begs the question, do I really want EVERYONE knowing all my business at the click of a mouse?

Until relatively recently I didn’t really consider this, it wasn’t until  I chatted to people who seem to know a lot more about my life than I’ve told them. I felt a bit uncomfortable with this, it sounds really snobby but I couldn’t help thinking ‘well I didn’t really write that for you?’.  I mean do other bloggers out there write for the kid who serves them at their local shop or for that neighbour you nod to but know nothing about?

Aside from this I generally write if someone has pissed me off, I’m feeling sorry for myself or perhaps when I’ve come up with something silly. When things are going fine or I’m busy on some project I don’t really write much.

So, like a lot of other bloggers, not only is there a slightly skewed view of me on the net, I’m the bloody one putting it there!

Then there are the spammers. I’ve poured my heart into the odd blog post only to find comments by people selling carpets or dodgy websites.  I get an email when people comment and sometimes I think ‘oh it was that post, I hope I’ve reached someone’, then all I get back is ‘want to see xxxx girls’ from some dodgy Russian, not really what I had in mind.

I will however continue to blog, it is not only a cathartic and enjoyable experience to write, it’s nice to know people read it. I don’t care that it’s not a huge amount of people; it’s just nice to know some people do, I just sometimes wish I could choose them

Being new parents Ellie and myself have been trying to decide what we are going to do about childcare and work.  She studied at Oxford, she’s got one term of a PGCE to finish, she’s a trained gardener, she’s fluent in 3 languages, and she’s an artist and an accomplished musician.  In short she can earn a hell of a lot more than I can as a writer and a gardener.

So this has brought us to the conclusion that we will share the childcare and work either 50-50 or Ellie will take the bulk of the earning whilst I take the bulk of the childcare. This suits me really, I’m used to staying at home and I’ll try and write in the gaps in between looking after little Douglas.

I mentioned this arrangement to someone at the local college where I sometimes teach and was shocked at their response, ‘Oh I see, you will be the woman’.  I bit my tongue at the time but I’ve been fuming about it ever since.  Why the hell does it need to have a gender? Why is it the housewives role? Why is it seen as emasculating to want to look after your own child rather than entrust him to a stranger! Is money really more important than bringing a child up!!?   Where does this outmoded attitude come from?

I don’t want to be one of these fathers that never see his children and I don’t want my child to go motherless either. Sharing both responsibilities makes perfect sense and it takes the stress off both of us for both jobs.

It has always seemed to me that there are far too many needless divisions between the two sexes.  We are currently governed by a moronic old school boys’ network who not only have no idea about modern women I doubt if they really know what it is like to be a man in the modern world. Brought up divided from both women and how men relate to women they are like children with no real sense of the world. I have to wonder if it is from this backward government that this attitude is leaking into the rest of society.

I would like to think we were progressing as a society, moving forward rather than back towards attitudes of the 1950’s. Why shouldn’t a man bring up his children in a perceived woman’s role without thinking he needs to justify it. It should just be accepted as a workable arrangement and left at that. If I want to be the main person who looks after my child then do I really need to justify it!?

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!!”

364 days ago, or to put a date on it, the day after Boxing Day last year, I was traveling back from a Christmas in Somerset when I received a phone call from my landlady.  She let me know that a plumber had been called to the house on Boxing Day to stop a leak rushing from a burst pipe.

I came back to complete devastation, the carpets were soggy, water dripping from the walls, draws full of water, books wet through (including the first Self Sufficient-ish Bible off the press), the place was a mess. I was glad to be on my own so I could sort the place out at least a little and shield Ellie from the worst of it.

Things didn’t really improve that quickly, the landlady took two weeks to bring us a domestic dehumidifier. This was so ineffectual it seemed a bit like she’d asked an elderly man with a bucket to empty a very large lake. Friends and family did come to the rescue and we lent a further dehumidifier, towels to soak up the carpets and even some replacements for damaged belongings.

The house inevitably got very mouldy and it was pretty unpleasant to live there for a couple of months.  We did eventually have a carpet cleaner come round, a brilliant bloke called Adrian from the Amazing Adrian Carpet Cleaning Company, highly recommended for anyone in the South Hams! He got the house somewhat in order and we tried to continue with things.

I finished my book, handed in the last edits of the manuscript then out of the blue my feet started to swell. A few days later, now the beginning of March I was taken into hospital with a Nephrotic condition later diagnosed as a serious kidney complaint known as Minimal Change Disease.  I came out of hospital on the Thursday and on Sunday the landlady served us an eviction order.

This was a low point.

I tentatively went back to work and slowly got better.

Then some good news, Ellie found out she was pregnant!  It was a mixed blessing as it was unplanned and at the time I was still fairly ill. Ellie had quite bad morning sickness but we muddled through and looking back the over-riding feeling was real joy that we were to soon be parents. A little scared maybe but generally happy about it.

Then more disaster as Andy got ill with the same condition as me.  The disease wasn’t thought to be genetic before so now I had two things to deal with, a sick brother and the likelihood that my unborn child may have the same condition.  I visited him and tried to phone as often as I could to reassure him through the worst of it. He too responded to the meds and he too slowly got better.

My book was released in May and we moved home to where we are now, a lovely, but slightly derelict cottage with one of the nicest landladies I’ve had.

I was still under treatment at this time and I suffered a bit from it, getting quite bad side effects from the long drawn out dose of steroids. Everyone tends to think that steroids will give a man breasts or facial hair for women but these were corticosteroids which made me manic when I was on them and just plain depressed when I came off them.

I was at a big low when Andy’s book came out which smashed sales of mine to pieces. As if to rub salt in the wound at one point I asked for my book in Waterstones, they didn’t stock it but they did stock my brother’s book, in fact it was in the top ten best sellers of that week.

You have to dig deep at times like that, I am now happy for him; he has written a book that has caught the public imagination. However I don’t mind admitting it, I was jealous as hell.

Come the end of summer, I go back to my teaching job. Not long after my return word gets to me that the job may not be there that long and I may have to reapply for it. Then this changes to a contract until November, then a few weeks later I’m told I may be there until April, then it changes back, then I’m told the place might close down.  At this point I give up worrying about my teaching job and decide it might be time to start thinking about a bit more freelance work until a more secure job turns up.

Then in November baby Douglas is born.  Nothing really prepared me for it and I still can’t quite believe it now. I find it almost impossible to put into words, it seemed like after the cloud of the preceding months there was at least a silver lining.

So now, 12 months from the start of the big pile of shit that began with a burst pipe, I can’t help feeling a little cautious of the coming year. I dread to say it can’t be as bad as last year but I really don’t want to tempt fate.  I might be plain awful, it might be amazing.

What I really want from next year is it to be uneventful, nice calm non-descript months rolling into the next.  I want this blog to have entries about the weights of vegetables I’ve picked and dug up. Perhaps a few nice baby stories, maybe even a foraging tale or two but most of all I hope it has nothing about bad health, nothing about landlords and nothing about flooding!

We both managed to sleep last night despite Ellie’s contractions. I feel slightly on a knife edge today, he is definitely  closer to showing up since yesterday, bar waters breaking Ellie is showing all the signs, including frantic nesting (she’s hovering next door as I type).

Today has been very strange; we actually went into town on the bus earlier as Ellie wanted some last minute supplies. We bumped into a friend who asked when the baby was coming, to which we replied, well probably later today!

I think the nerves are getting to me, either that or I have food poisoning.  We popped into a cafe for a cup of tea in town and I’d I had to pay two visits to the toilet. The owner gave me a bit of a glare when I came out, a bit if a ‘what have you done in there!’ look.  We left shortly afterwards and got the bus home, Ellie having contractions and me clutching my bubbly guts. Perhaps its just some kind of sympathy pain.

Throughout the day I’ve been getting bits of work come in. One editor let me know my article was due today.  I frantically put it together and considering the circumstances it wasn’t too bad.

I’ve been pretty distracted, I’ve been trying to put things together but nothing seems to be coming out (other than this blog). I can manage an invoice or two but when another editor asked me to drop her an outline for an article it made me stare at a blank curser for around 2 hours counting the gaps between Ellie’s cries of pain. I have to get her (the editor) something by the end of the week which should be an interesting prospect considering we will have a screaming infant on our hands very soon.

Ellie’s also had work in, someone wanted to talk to her about putting on a wild food walk for kids. I was about to pass the phone over when she had a really strong contraction.  She’s going to call back in a couple of weeks.

Then half an hour later someone called for me to put on another wild food walk (must be after the TV appearance I had).  I was really distracted during the call and for the life of me I can’t remember what I agreed to. No doubt putting a walk on for £2.39 and a bag of crisps.

It’s now the evening, things are still as they were. It’s become a new normal. Just waiting…

Ellie woke me up at six am today to say she’d been having contractions. It’s now 11.05 and I’ve just been mopping the floor of the room she wants to give birth in and generally getting things ready. I’m just taking five minutes out to speed type and record it all.  It could well be a false alarm, more false contractions or as they are better known, Braxton hicks contractions (Which I can’t help calling Higgs Boson contractions).

Even so I am VERY excited. We know it’s going to be a boy and judging by the recent measurements he’ll be a big baby too.  If he’s not coming today, then he has to be close and pretty soon my world is going to change quite dramatically.

Right, back to it, there are things to do. More later…

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.

I grew up in a place that not only have many people have never been to but a place that, given the chance, most wouldn’t even contemplate going to. Some say they’ve passed through it, some may have watched a rugby or cricket match there but most find it is a town best avoided. I feel the same about many places I go to, I try not visit Swindon much, Luton isn’t in my top ten and neither is Didcot.

I can now add one more place to the list, a place both myself and Ellie found so dire we both said we would actually prefer to spend a week in my home town of Northampton rather than an afternoon there. The town I am referring to is Bridport in the South West of England.  It’s hard to put your finger on why it was so bad, the people aren’t rude but then again they aren’t really friendly either. The town centre wasn’t full of boarded up shops or blokes with dogs on chains but what was there was pretty uninspiring, the usual chains mixed in with charity shops and banks.  We wandered in to what was supposed to be a veggie friendly cafe for lunch and I ended up having a supermarket bread roll with a few raw bits of pepper put in. What it was supposed to be was quite beyond me! I could have walked into the Coop and made it myself for a quarter of the price they charged.

I can only presume people choose to go on holiday there so they can leave. It’s a place to base yourself and move on rather than stay. Most must go to places like nearby Lyme Regis (well worth a visit, especially in low season), down to the coast or walking around the countryside.

However, if you don’t drive a car you don’t have that choice, you can’t get up and leave when you want to. There is a bus going into Bridport and out again but the timetable for it seems to be more of a ‘serving suggestion’ than anything else. It’s just a rough guess, a stab in the dark at the approximate time it may turn up but little more than that. This seems to be universal with the First bus company wherever they are in the world. The conspiracy theorists often claim First are deliberately running a bad service as they are owned by an oil company and they really want everyone to drive a car. For once the conspiracy theorists might be right!

So this bus, the 31 service from Weymouth to Axeminster seems to run on its own timetable. It’s hard to say if it is 10 minutes late, half an hour or, when on the rare occurrence it seems early, it is really so ridiculously late it is actually the bus from an hour before masquerading as an early bus. I even contemplated the idea that the evening buses didn’t show the times they were due to set off but the year they started trying to complete the Weymouth to Axeminster route. So the 19.05 actually set off in the year 1905. So by the time it anyone with the sense to try and get out of Bridport it had been though two world wars, watch the beetles form, disband and die* and had seen Simon Cowell somehow become one of the highest paid individuals on television.

Part of what made Bridport such an uncomfortable experience is I was carrying a Yacon plant with me. I had been given the Yacon at Monkton Wylde Court (Thanks to everyone there if any of you are reading this), a community we had decided to go and stay with as B and B  guests for a few days (well worth the visit). It’s amazing really we seemed to leave Schumacher College (where I work and sometimes seem to live) for a very similar place just a few miles North East. Anyway this large plant, in a large pot made everything a bit of a chore. What made things worse is I couldn’t really complain about what a chore this was as Ellie is now carrying a seven month foetus inside her. So there we were both struggling with our chosen and not so chosen weights with us wandering around Bridport. It made an imperfect end to a perfect holiday.

I now have the Yacon in my porch at home and I’m wondering what to do with it. It’s a root crop which will act as a perennial if you don’t dig out the roots. Trouble is I’m not sure where I’ll be living perennially. Ellie and I would like to buy a house to set up home in but the bank seems to have other thoughts, it seems they will only lend us enough money to buy either a shed in Devon or a two bedroom house in Hull or the Rhonda Valley. There are various self build schemes going on in Devon but these are slow moving and seem to come with a very long list of requirements or rules we don’t always match or feel comfortable with.

So where do I plant my perennial root crops? Am I doomed to be a nomadic gardener? Only ever planting brief annuals or at worse briefer salad crops?  I don’t know but I do know one thing, there isn’t a chance in hell I’ll be buying a place in Bridport!

*The good half anyway

A few months back I posted an account of my kidney problems, I had developed a rare condition called Minimal Change Disease. The name of the disease is a bit misleading; it refers to a minimal change under an electron microscope rather than a minimal change in the kidney.

It is all but cured now but I have been on steroids since the spring. I’m slowly getting weaned off them over a long period of time and should be completely off them by October. They’re not the strange steroids that body builders take, I’ve not grown boobs or a hairy back but it has led to a lot of ups and downs. I’ve gone from extreme euphoria right down to days of despair and depression at the opposite end of the scale. Thankfully things are levelling out now and I feel back to my old self.

No matter what my mood has been one thing has remained constant, people have immediately assumed it was from foraging. I’ve constantly been asked things like “Did you eat some dodgy mushrooms?” or “Is it from contaminated food?”

The answer to both is a definite ‘NO’. The disease is by and large idiopathic, which is doctor’s speak for they haven’t got a bloody clue. However, there is no evidence whatsoever it is caused by eating unusual foods. It is much more likely to be caused by ibuprofen than field mushrooms. If I had poisoned myself on mushrooms the reaction would have been very different, I would be in need of a kidney or liver transplant right now not recovering after a dose of steroids. Besides, it was February I first showed symptoms and there aren’t any mushrooms around at that time (or much other wild foods for that matter).

The only timed in my life I’ve had trouble with food has been from eating a dodgy take away or getting sick from the water whilst in India and Nepal. Rather than getting ill from wild food I was eating hawthorn leaves to recover in the spring and am still eating a lot of foraged food now! As I earn a proportion of my living from foraging, I doubt I’ll ever stop eating from the wild. I know wild food and foraged food to be far less contaminated, far fresher and far more nutritious than a lot of pre-packaged modern food. Hunter gather societies have far fewer nutrient deficiencies than their domesticated, farming counterparts. Lets face it would you rather have burdock chips and a hazelnut burger or chicken nuggets!?

Fear of food, coupled with preconceived ideas of what it should be like, seems to predominate in society as a whole, despite this it never ceases to amaze me the attitudes of some individuals.

I’ve gathered large domesticated cherries from wild growing trees and had passers-by actually ask if they are safe to eat despite them looking identical to those on sale in Marks and Spencer!  I’ve had the same with hazelnuts, wild gooseberries, black currants, walnuts and countless other wild goodies.

So, even if it is things people recognise as food and regularly eat, unless it comes in a pre packaged container or plastic bag it isn’t recognised as something safe to eat.  The worse case of this I ever saw was at a friend’s house, he had a beautiful apple tree in his garden full of rich red discovery apples. Yet on his kitchen table sat four miserable looking apples with a cellophane wrapper on them.  I asked my friend why he’d gone out and bought these four apples when outside he had a lawn full of fallen apples rotting where they fell. His answer was, ‘Those one’s outside are dirty, a bird could have shat on them!’

Sometimes things work in synergy with each other and become greater than the sum of their parts, at other times quite the opposite happens. I found this today when working out in the garden.

The garden in question is shared with our landlord who lives in the adjoining house. It is quite large and in recent years became a bit too much for its owners and as a consequence it is very over grown. This means Ellie and I have the uphill struggle of trying to renovate it.  We’ve rescued the veg bed and we’ve got some winter crops happily growing away alongside a few summer favourites like basil and tomatoes. Everything went in late as the plot was really overgrown when we moved in mid May and it took some time to get it cleared. Thankfully this year most of our food growing is on a separate site, so our garden really is just for fun rather than food.

I’ve got the compost heap started and as soon as there is a break in this blistering heat, we’re going to burn everything that can’t be composted or used as winter fuel such as brambles and hogweed roots.  The rest of the garden is now just a slog of pruning, hacking, weeding and eventually landscaping sowing and planting. It’s got to be low maintenance as we don’t know if we’re going to leave in 6 months, a year, two years or even ten years time. It’s a big job but I love doing this kind of thing, really getting stuck into a project. It’s a little like unearthing the lost gardens of Heligan as each time I cut something back a reminder of the past appears.

Where the lack of synergy in this garden comes is from my mix of professions. The gardener side of me is fine, he’s at home, after all he’s gardening. However, if I mix in the forager things begin to slow down each time I pull out and interesting root or herb, so I have to try and keep him quiet. Add this to a writer and this slows it down even further as I feel the need to document each new discovery. Add my environmentalist side as an extra layer and I have to question if my weeding will lead to a loss of habitat and if I should be doing it at all.

So take for example the common weed wood avens, or herb bennet or as it is known in latin geum urbanum. My gardener side sees it as a weed and rips it out, the forager wants to eat the roots as they act as a useful spice, the writer wants to document this and finally the environmentalist laments over the loss of seeds for over wintering animals. All these sides should work together but today they are only serving to slow me down!