A View From (The Town Closest To) The Greenhouse;

I decided, as is my occasional wont, to nip into town yesterday. I intended to do a bit of shopping, get a haircut and then spend a jovial hour or so in Spoons with my old pal Forester Dave and his pals in Spoons before catching the bus home. By happy accident it also happened to be day two of the much heralded twelve day long Wetherspoons’ Beer Festival. Given that my bodies ever reducing tolerance for alcohol isn’t matched by my exuberance for trying the odd different brew, I was looking forward to trying half a dozen beers (with maybe a final half of my favourite to close proceedings) in the third of a pint glasses that come in handy on such occasions. Two beers out of the “up to” thirty was all that were available, a pleasant enough 3.4% golden from Otter Brewery called “Reggae” and a somewhat stronger, although very palatable 5% IPA from Castle Eden called “Anniversary”. Thankfully, the crack was entertaining and wide ranging, with nobody who joined in the conversation being able to understand how a small and struggling market town in the north west of England can support so many “Turkish” barber shops. I’d have complained to the management, but there didn’t seem to be any about. Still, there’s always next year!

Having metaphorically been champing at the bit whilst the B&M department was sunning itself in The Canary Islands, and consequently examining the grapes on a daily basis, the time finally arrived to harvest them. A busy morning was spent gathering an estimated eighty to a hundred pounds of high quality fruit, with much less mould (botrytus?) than I’ve seen in previous years (I’m guessing this was down to the dryness of the heat and lack of humidity during the peak growing period). A further couple of hours was spent picking through the fruit, before rinsing it and making it ready for the next step.

The next step. Following more than enough years spent processing grapes into juice using s potato masher, a jam pan, layer upon layer of muslin cloth and lots of mesh bags, we decided it was time to push out the boat and buy ourselves a fruit press. We hadn’t anticipated it arriving in kit form (although we should have, given that’s how just about everything arrives these days) but putting it together didn’t present too much of a challenge for the B&M department, who’re (thankfully) just as handy with fiddly stuff as they are with rebuilding sections of greenhouse. The pressing went well and over 50 pints of juice was extracted. A second press would have added to this, but we’d have needed to be more judicious about where we put the pulp once out of the bag. Another lesson learned. I’ll go further into this next time around. My loyal reader won’t want to miss the next, riveting chapter.

This years strawberries, even given the introduction of some new plants, haven’t been anything to write home about, both in terms of quantity and quality. I blame myself for persisting with the weed suppressant membrane which hasn’t allowed me to properly control either the feeding or the watering of the beds. Back to basics for next season, but for now I’ve liberally fed the growing medium with a rich blend of nettle based nitrogen combined with a little calcium and magnesium. I’ll dig in some potassium in the spring, which will hopefully see an overall improvement. Over 100 “runners” taken from the best of this years offshoots, are in fresh  compost. Should most of them survive I’ll have more than enough to repopulate the two main beds and maybe put some outside, just to see what happens.

I won’t dwell on the butternut squash experiment, I’ve said enough about it in the past, but everyone involved is proud of the size, quality and robustness of these splendid looking fruits. The first five have been lifted, most of them accidentally, to be fair and are hardening off in the greenhouse, waiting, I suppose, for someone to come up with an idea of what to do with them beyond soup and curry. Watch this space, although it may just be a curried soup recipe in the end.

The brassica cage did its job in terms of keeping out the cabbage whites, but I hadn’t reckoned on slugs being so much of a problem. The sprouts and the Cavalo Nero aren’t doing too bad, if a little stunted in height, but they’re taking no harm. Four out of seven cabbages were edible, with two of them being totally untouched and two more being slightly “got at”. Three were completely decimated, to the point where there wasn’t an edible leaf to be had and two of these three actually looked as if they’d made a conscious decision to not even bother growing on if it meant they didn’t have to become home to families of slugs. As loathe as I am to deploy slug pellets, there are organic ones available (another lesson learned) so, given that I’m going to put cabbages in again next year, I’ll probably combine some of these with a beer trap or two. Manns Brown Ale has to have some practical use.

T’humble radish, especially the common “French Breakfast” variety is clearly something that thrives outdoors. I’ve always previously grown them in the salad bed by the strawberries, but only ever really managed one successful sowing, subsequent ones having had a tendency to bolt. I’ve now harvested two sowings from the raised bed where the carrots once lived, with another crop well on the way. A simple enough crop, but when a radish is fresh I find both the washed leaves (when still young)  and the bulbs very tasty. A couple for a morning snack livens up the senses and delivers a proper peppery “frissance”. I knew the box of salt in the shed was there for a reason beyond sprinkling on the odd tomato.

I truly thought that all my beetroot, from two separate plantings had failed. I’d put two rows in, at different times in amongst the kohl rabi and swede, flanked by chard and radish. The chard looks after itself and comes in many colours, but often with a red stem. Any road up, I decided it was about time I knocked some weeds back in that particular bed and also see if there was either a swede, a kohl rabi, or both that were for for eating. The butterflies had had a field day amongst the foliage, but there are several swede which have grown on and there was one kohl rabi which had filled out enough to be peeled and eaten raw. Any remaining radish had bolted! One beetroot, remained, hiding in plain sight, masquerading as a bunch of chard. Needless to say, it’s a bit woody, but it makes the swede look like amateurs. New beetroot seed next year, a little bit more attention to weeding detail and goodbye to both swede and kohl rabi, methinks.

Just this week a Somali woman named Sagal Abdi-Wali, was successful in being elected to the House Of Commons despite her truly abysmal record working as a councillor in Camden (latterly she was leader of said council) making her unsuitable, in my humble opinion, for elected office of any kind. Her record of non-achievement and abject failure to make any positive difference to the lives of Camden residents, beyond securing “Borough Of Sanctuary” accreditation in 2024 (a double edged sword for the local residents, one might assume), would naturally lead anyone looking in from outside to believe that maybe she’d not only found her level, but was actually lucky to still have any kind of a job at all. Her re-election to Camden council saw her just scrape home (The population of the borough is 38% white British, with Africans making up 10% and Bangladeshis’ 9%) , but again it seems that this matters little to a political party that views the skin colour, his or her cultural background and (possibly) religious affiliations as far more important than either their ability or any basic competence. For those interested, Wikipedia has the fuller story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagal_Abdi-Wali,. It makes for interesting reading and, like me, anyone who does read this freely available information will probably marvel at just how easy it is to achieve high political office in the UK, so long as you tick the right boxes and have the patronage of the local “Progressive Liberal” (woke Labour) cognoscenti.

Haringey (white British population under 40%), the self styled “Rebel Council” which has 27 Green councillors who run the administration, although without overall control, has been granted the honour of becoming “London Borough Of Culture” in 2027. The projects that are being partly grant funded by the council, leading up to this seminal event of creative expression and “British” culture are eclectic, to say the least. As “woke” as one might expect, one notable example is an interactive workshop style event called “Unfixed Costumes”. The aim is to explore “the long-standing connection between dolls and queer identity – from childhood experiences of being told what toys we could or couldn’t play with, to the ways dolls have offered opportunities for imagination and self-expression” https://haringey.webflow.io/news-and-programmes/meet-the-haringey-unearthed-round-1-awardees. The “straight” mind boggles. One wonders if any council executive member has ever considered  exploring the long standing connection between pointless “woke” councils and bins not getting emptied?

I owe a massive debt of gratitude to r’Andy, the reason for which, should my loyal reader care to continue, will become very clear. Age and the mists of time tend to confound the memory, and the heady days of early 2016 can seem like just over a decade ago, but, thanks to Mr.B and those lovely chaps at “The Rest Is Politics” jogging my clouded memory I decided it was about time to get back in touch with Ivan, that is if he was even still about.

On a cold dark Tuesday night in Late February 2016 I was making my way up to t’Herdwick when I was accosted outside the village hall by a man dressed all in black, although well wrapped up against the weather, I could tell he was a wiry sort of fellow. When he spoke his accent was decidedly “Baltic”. “Hello tovarisch” he said “my name is Ivan and I’m in the UK, on Vlads’ direct orders, to influence what will become known as Brexit. Should you choose to be so influenced, I will give to you a half case of Stolichnaya and a small tin of Beluga caviar.” I’d been on the fence until this point, but I’ve never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, “influence away” I replied. I gave him my phone number, he caught the X5 towards Penrith (probably had a train to catch) and, apart from a couple of texts in the run up to the referendum, saying things like “Who doesn’t love a caviar blini” and “Always keep your Stoli in the freezer” and “Vote Brexit to outfox the New World Order” that was the last I heard from him. Neither vodka or caviar arrived and, to be honest, I forgot all about how much the Rooshians had influenced me, until just this week.

I texted his number, more in hope than expectation “Hi Ivan, I never did receive my vodka and caviar”. He got back to me in seconds; “Tovarisch, how opportune, we’re just starting on the F’s now”. “Crikey” I replied, “it’s been over 10 years”.  He wasn’t long in getting back to me, “Tovarisch, have you any idea how long it takes to make up over 17 million parcels and get them shipped to the UK, especially in the middle of a war? think yourself luck your familiya name isn’t Vasiliev, like mine”, he joked. I expect my parcel will arrive any day now.
 

© Colin Cross 2026