Saturday, 29th December

Well, I went on our little walk today and what a lovely morning for walking it was. There was only half a dozen of us and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves walking over a variety of terrain: woodland, pavement, seashore, fields,......... and the weather behaved itself. Only along the shoreline did it provide a challenge in the from of a biting wind but the rest of the walk was accomplished in windless, pleasant sunshine as you can see from the photos which you can view from clicking here. I'm sure it did us a power of good as well but I put that right when we got back to the Bull by sinking a pint of Harvey's and scoffing a club sandwich containing chicken, bacon, cheese, salad and stuff in a hefty baguette. Strangely I haven't felt much like eating since.
Talking of food, have you got your Association Dinner tickets yet? They're flying off the shelves OK but I feel duty bound to remind you as money has to be in by the 11th January.

Friday, 28th December

Have you got over Christmas yet? I know I haven't. All that eating and drinking and there's still loads of it left. But I love it! And there's still New Year to come to get rid of all the leftovers. Amongst other things I got slippers, scarves and quite a few bottles of intoxicating liquor. I'm pretty sure one of the scarves will be put to good use tomorrow when we go on the Association Christmas Walk (see below) and attempt to shed some of the pounds we put on over Christmas before putting it all on again over the New Year. Come and join us, 10.30am at the Bull. I'm hoping to grab a bite to eat there afterwards as well.

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Wednesday, 19th December

The Bull(?) in Goring

Hooray! I've finished my Christmas shopping so now I can take it easy for a week. I celebrated with a little walk in the sunshine this afternoon with our walking group. I didn't think many would turn up as it was a bit chilly but I was wrong, maybe because it was our last one of the year. Don't forget our Gardeners' Walk though: we meet at 10.30am on Saturday, 29th December at the Bull in Goring although I see it's now changed its name to the Bull's Head. The walk is about 5 miles long so we should get back to the pub around lunch-time. What a coincidence! Hope to see you there; apart from the fun remember it's good for you.

Monday, 17th December

a load of manure

I had a phone call this morning, a tip-off: "There's just been a load of manure delivered to the West Tarring allotments." I was down there in five minutes. There were already 2 other blokes heaving it into their wheelbarrows and before I left another 2 had arrived in a van. Very efficient this jungle telegraph. The annoying thing was the wind which meant that as the bloke to my left was loading the strawy manure into his barrow it was blowing into my face. And then as I was wheeling it back to my plot - at the other end of the site, of course - the biting cold wind cutting into my face started to make my nose run. I don't want to paint too graphic a picture but I couldn't keep stopping to wipe my nose, it would have taken ages to complete the job. I had just got to the dwindling heap of manure for the last time when I realised I'd left my shovel on my plot and had to go back for it. Still, no pain no gain I believe they say and on the way back to the car I picked up a cabbage for dinner. Then when I got home for lunch I had a bowl of warming home-made squash soup. Ah, the joys of owning an allotment! Sometimes it's worth all the hassle.

Thursday, 13th December

Today I actually did some gardening. I hadn't got round to pruning my summer fruiting raspberries in the Autumn so I thought I'd better get on with it. Trouble is - I have 2 rows of rapberries, one summer fruiting and one autumn fruiting and I don't know which is which. The good news is that when I put them in I did a plan; the bad news is that I didn't mark North and South on it so it just tells me I've got a row of each which I knew in the first place. Luckily a neighbouring allotmenteer helped sort them out and I'd nearly finished the job before my trusty old secateurs finally gave up the ghost and fell to bits. By then it was nearly one o'clock so I just pulled a few carrots and came home for lunch. But there's more ......... this afternoon I pulled up my cosmos at last amd my calendulas. The latter where still flowering but were smothering the primroses which are also in flower. What's going on? I've got primroses, calendulas, mahonia, roses, pelargoniums, fuchsias and choisya all in flower at the same time, in December. On top of that there was a bumble bee flying about amongst them. How can some people still deny that climate change is going on? I know it's not my fault - I've got energy-saving light bulbs and I don't leave the telly on standby.

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Wednesday, 12th December

I'm afraid I didn't make it to the allotment today. I looked out of the window this morning at the white-frosted earth and thought, "I bet that ground's a bit hard, don't fancy that" and went to the tip instead. I had at least half a dozen bags of shrub prunings to dispose of as well as household rubbish like a dead microwave so it was a valid undertaking and en route I took the opportunity to deliver my last Association Dinner invite cards so there was some horticultural input as well. And I picked up some rubbish off the front lawn when I got back in. Plenty of gardening for today.
This afternoon was my first seasonal celebration: it was our walking group's pre-Christmas tea party. It was indoors in the warm but you had to go for a walk first. Actually it wasn't that bad for walking, better than last week when it started to rain half way through the walk and we all got wet. Don't forget our Christmas/New Year walk on the 29th December, setting off from the Bull in Goring - just the thing to work off those few extra pounds gained during the Christmas festivities.

Tuesday, 11th December

My last computer evening class last night, on webpage design would you believe? No, thought not. Honest, I have applied some of what I've learnt to this site but most of it is not very noticeable (i.e. in the background) apart from two things on the Home page:

1. a "Search" facility to find words like "recipe", "tomatoes", etc;
2. music which you'll probably never notice beacause you never have the sound switched on!

If you have any ideas for the site and how it might go forward, do get in touch. I'll try and get back to you but tomorrow I hope to get to the allotment for the first time in ages. Here's hoping they don't slap a "non-cultivation" notice on me.

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Sunday, 9th December

Visitors for the weekend. Now Worthing's hardly the most visitor-friendly place on earth out of season as it is but the recent Worthing winter weather compounded the problem of how to entertain our guests. Anything near the town centre was a no-no; even in midweek the place was choked with Christmas shoppers and there were queues for everything. Time to think outside the box. What are the features that characterise the essence of Worthing? Obviously the Dome, the pier and the beach were out of the question, the first two because I'd ruled out the town centre and the latter because it's December. So, concentrating on the quirky, first up - the painted ceiling of the Catholic church of English Martyrs in Goring-by-Sea. It took local artist Gary Bevans 7 years to paint, considerably longer than it took Michelangelo to paint the original in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. If you've never seen it, you should, it's amazing.

Second up and still in Goring, St Mary's church where they were putting on a display of about 60 decorated Christmas trees. Tree-mendous! And did I mention both of these were free? Another free venue - unless you buy something there and we did - the outrageous Christmas decorations of Country Fayre garden centre. Next, a failure. We headed for the Portuguese café, Cafe Feliz, in Angmering but there was absolutely nowhere in the village to park so we made do with a visit to Highdown Vineyard on the Littlehampton Road, not only free but free tastings as well! And in the evening what better than a middle eastern meal in the delightful surroundings of the Levant restaurant in Strand Parade? Shame there's no alcohol but the food and the decor are really good and the staff very accommodating and friendly. So there it is - mission accomplished and guests happy and impressed. Ta-da!

Wednesday 5th December

What a wretched morning! It was so foul out there I actually stayed in and did some housework. Thank goodness my wife didn't notice or she would have collapsed with shock. When it cleared up a bit this afternoon a small group of us decided to go on our usual Wednesday walk - we got a little wet but we got some fresh air, very fresh. I can't imagine when I'll be doing anything constructive on the allotment in the near future or finishing off pruning and cutting back shrubs in the back garden. On the credit side I suppose it is rather mild and those pelargoniums I decided to sacrifice to the elements rather than find space for in the greenhouse are actually doing rather well and flowering.
We've almost finished delivering the Association dinner invitations now and last night I was able to hand over the monies from our first orders to the treasurer, who assures me that if you can't get "Worthing and District Allotments and Gardens Association" on the first line of your cheque, the bank will gladly accept "Worthing Allotments Assocation". Now he tells me, after hundreds of little invitation/menu cards have been distributed with the full title on.

Sunday, 2nd December

As the wheelie bins flew across the street and the rain lashed horizontally into the car I did wonder what I was doing going to the allotment this morning. But it was an emergency, a crisis in the Ned household - we had run out of carrots. It's my own fault: what with selling raffle tickets at the surgery for hours on end and delivering hundreds of Association Dinner invitations to members scattered all over Worthing (and district!) I have not been going to the allotment much recently and the weather's not been much of an incentive either. But Sunday dinner without carrots? And company coming. I suppose there are plenty of runner beans in the freezer and there's some broccoli in the house but it's not the same. Where's the colour on the plate? So, off to the allotment it was. On the good side they did come out of the mud relatively easily - about as easily as I sank into it. Strangely there was nobody else about on the allotments or indeed on the streets on the way to ths allotments come to that. But they are good carrots, even if I say so myself and today they will taste all the better for the effort I went to to get them on the plate.

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