Runners in Crystal Palace

Known for its Athletics track, Crystal Palace is now host to a few more permanent runners in the shape of my beans, which got a good planting out yesterday. There's a definite 'Allotment Chic' look coming to the Sprouts garden now, with a wall of bamboo canes and bits of string standing tall and making it look incredibly ramshackle. I like the look though. Kind of a zen garden gone british, if you see what I mean - although my patch is a bit too lumpy to create rake patterns. The closest I get to them is when cats use my plot as a toilet and dig me nice little holes.

I'm a petrolhead. It's official

I became a petrolhead last week. Ok, so it was only for about 15 mins, but even so it was exciting. I used the petrol strimmer to trim our garden around the Sprouts plot, and suddenly I was away, loving the throttle and the smell of burning fuel. What a feeling power is!

Of course, I left a nice patch of tall grass and wilderness as a little wildlife sanctuary, so it wasn't all death and destruction. Even so, i was ready to get out the chainsaw, find myself a monster truck, and become a bona fide ROAD HOG.

And then I woke up with a spot on the end of my nose. My new found ability to wreak shock and awe was cut down in a second...

From sprouts to Volkswagens

In our efforts to be green, we've taken the next step up the ladder and bought a camper van. It's an early 80s VW - in green, of course - and will have us pootling around England over the coming year. Now, in all honesty, it does eat petrol like a total fiend, but I think it's better in many ways than flying all over the shop just to hang out on a beach with lots of annoying english folk. Might as well camp with them in Britain and be shot of it, that's what i say.

So with all the greenness that now exists out the front of my house, what's been going on out the back? The rhubarb, raspberries and blueberries are all coming along a treat. I've got rows of lettuce seedlings and rocket sprouting up too. Very little else has made its way into the ground, but that will soon change with the planting of courgettes and tomatoes.

And finally we've had some rain! So probably, next time i pop out the slugs and snails will have stripped my plot bare. I guess you have to give them their due, if they can cope with the horrid conditions, then they're better men than me. Or gastropods... or hermaphrodites... or whatever they are...

Organic food report

I've just been catching up on the government report about the production of organic food and its effects on the environment. It makes for peculiar reading, particularly when you read that the production of organic tomatoes, milk and chicken is much worse for the environment than 'conventional', ie, non organic food. Many of the points link to the energy efficiency of growing organic produce and how it takes so much more energy to come to fruition than the other 'conventional' food produce. Also, it's not necessarily the case that organic food is better for you either.

I'm sorry to sound so obvious, but of course it will take more energy and land to grow organic tomatoes, to sustain herds of cows for organic milk, and to keep chickens alive longer and so that they naturally grow properly. I could have told the government that for nothing. Unfortunately, that's the natural way of things, and it's only because we've become so hooked on quick and easy food, sold in bulk and grown artificially, that the report could consider the process of growing organic food as having bad energy efficiency.

I think it's important to know how much impact the growth of food produce has on the world, particularly with the blossoming world populous, but it's more important to be realistic about our future. We need to be realistic about what we need to eat week in week out and where we get it from; and we need to be realistic and ethical about the way we live and interact with the environment.

If the carbon footprint of growing natural, organic food is larger than 'conventional' food, then that's something we have to live and deal with. So walk to the supermarket instead of driving there to counter it's effect.

If the energy efficiency of natural and organic animal husbandry is worse than 'conventional' animal husbandry techniques (such as battery farming), don't fly to Thailand for your holiday this year - instead get the Eurostar to Paris.

I don't see how we can determine these food issues in relation to how energy efficient, or nutritionally beneficient they are - it's the ethics that count, and our principles. And they're the only thing that matter, in the end.

I lost the plot...

...but now it is found.

This weekend, I finally got into the garden. I dug over the plot, fed the birds, and even worked up a sweat, which led to me having to take off my jumper! I don't know what came over me. But it looks great out there now, kind of like discovering an old friend and seeing them every morning when I look out the window. I can't wait to get sowing...

A thief gets a good telling off!

I suddenly found some fight inside me today. Rather peculiarly, as I wandered through my hallway, I caught a glimpse of some hands on the other side of the see-through catflap. I then saw a bundle of flyers and thought little of it (this being Londinium we get so many leaflets shoved through our door, they fill our recycling bins alone!). And then I thought I'd go and bother him as I hate leafleteers, and lo and behold, as I opened the door he pegged it, with the contents of a parcel in his hands. He'd only gone and stolen some post of ours that the postman so unkindly just left on the doorstep!

So there I was, in my slippers, running up the hill after him, calling him all manner of names. And in my Herefordshire country accent too! What a sight it must have been - I can imagine the Wurzels writing a song about it. And then he stopped and started to approach me. He was much bigger than me, but my flight or fight response said "tell him off!", so I did. At first he said he hadn't taken anything, then I told him I watched him do it and asked him exactly what he thought he was doing. Eventually, he rather sheepishly pulled out the robbings from his pocket. I work for a PC magazine in my dayjob, so to see that all he'd stolen was a USB memory key that was destined for my girlfriend was rather galling (there was me putting my life on the line for something we have a gazillion of!).

He didn't say sorry, he just shrugged and I returned to my house angry and insensed. When I walked in I found the flyer he'd delivered, so I rang the place and dobbed on him - I suddenly felt like a school prefect again. (I should mention here that I did call the local police, but they put me on hold for 10 minutes, and when they connected me somehow managed to cut me off! I couldn't be bothered waiting again). The pizza place knew who he was and they said they'd tell him off, which made me feel happy. There's nothing like telling someone off in absentia.

So the moral of the day is not to hire a person to deliver leaflets about your takeaway, if the very same person is going to run a little takeaway scheme of their own at the same time. It won't get you customers, I can assure you.

Go Greenpeace!

So February's doing well for proving climate change theories, and it's also doing well for scuppering the government's plans for new nuclear power stations.

I've been a Greenpeace member for ages now, but it's when they manage to achieve things like this, it makes me happy that I was hassled by a pain-in-the-arse paid-too-much charity pedestrian botherer with a clipboard. (Well, it makes me sort of happy...)

A vegetarian convert?

I read this today on the BBC website. It's an unusual thing to hear of a vegetarian starting to eat meat again now that they rear the animals themselves. I like sensible vegetarians.

Here comes the snow again

And for once the weather folk got it right! Even Milo's been excited by the sight of all the snow outside. He even ventured forth - with a slight nudge - and almost enjoyed the experience.

London frost

The first London frost of the year. It's exciting to finally wake up to a truly cold morning. It'll be sad if our winters grow milder as the years progress - although I think the effects of climate change will eventually see us descend into a new ice age. (Glaciers gradually melt, adding fresh water to the salty sea water, affecting the North Atlantic Drift, therefore lowering the temperature of the nice winds that keep our country so unusually warm for its position.)

What would be worse, no winter or a world that resembles Narnia under the reign of the Ice Queen? One would mean our veg plots would go crazy, and the other would be incredibly pretty... hmmm