Farnworth jest fajne!

Having bought a great head of broccoli in Asda last Friday, we decided to steam it with a few potatoes and cover the lot in a cheese sauce. Agnieszka pointed out we only had ordinary cheese in the fridge, so I said I’d go to Aldi on Market Street and see if they had anything more interesting. They had. Gorgonzola for 99p.

I took it to the till. The girl looked at it, scanned it, looked at it again.

‘Is it alright, that?’ she asked, looking a bit wary.

‘It is,’ I said.

‘Is it supposed to be like that?’ She said, still looking closely at the packet.

‘It makes great cheese sauce,’ I said, wondering how long this would go on for.

She looked more closely, almost touching the packet with her nose.

‘But… but… it’s FURRY!’ She exclaimed.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘If it kills me, I won’t be back.’

I wandered home thinking about how it can be possible that people go through life not knowing about the delights of blue cheese. But then, this is Farnworth.

On a different note, after weeks of faffing, I finally finished pointing the wall. All that remains is to seal it with pva adhesive and then paint it white. The idea being that the sun, if we get any, will reflect heat and light into the yard and make it warmer and drier. That’s the theory anyway

What's brown and sounds like a bell?

There seems to be something of the ritual about our weekends at the moment. Saturdays we do little jobs, like shopping in shops other than the supermarket, and Sundays are for walks in the countryside. This last weekend was no different, although for some reason we were both awake and up around 8am. Not unheard of for us, but not the usual nine o’clock rising.

I love my weekends. They are a time when I don’t think about work and forget all about Manchester and the walk down Oxford Road. Instead I think of my life away from the job and my life with my wife. That is worth spending time on. Unfortunately, two days of a weekend is nowhere near long enough. Still, it’s all we have at the moment and we make the most of it.

That’s why, after coffee and breakfast, we headed first to Lidl – oh, such excitement on a Saturday morning – and then to Wynsors for me a pair of wellies. Five quid for a pair seems pretty good to me and I know they’re going to get plenty of wear. Plus they have elastic, rather than string, to attahc them to each other, so walking is not quite so restricted.

So what did we do at the plot? Well, the huge pile of dung is still just sitting there, smelling, sprouting non-edible mushrooms. While my dad put some on the rhubarb, me and Agnieszka got busy clearing the last large space.

Shovelling some shite.

Then moving it...

I piled some muck onto the cleared soil, then we covered it over. I think we’re pretty much ready now apart from small clearing jobs and then it should be the usual round of hoeing and light weeding. I found some arches made from pipe so I will attempt to make a small polytunnel to give the tomatoes a better chance this year.

Where the potatoes will go in a few weeks.

The apparent chaos that hides a well-tended allotment.

Roll me over, in the clover...

After the last few days it is hard to believe that last year was such a washout. The air has been clear and fresh, the ground white with frost and the days filled with bright sunshine. The nights do, however, get a bit cold, but only just under zero, not the minus twenty Polish winter that was a feature of the last couple of years.

Because of all the moving that went on in 2007, my parents’ allotment got a bit neglected. So we said we’d take over half of it and try to help them out while, at the same time, get somewhere for our own produce and therefore reduce the risk of a crappy non-existent tomato harvest like we had over the previous summer. The last couple of weeks have been perfect for gardening. The sun warms the ground and, by the time we manage to get there in the early afternoon, the earth has warmed up enough to allow for some gentle digging.

How it looked before we started.

Last week we managed to plant most of our onions, and our garlic and they are sitting there neatly in the freshly turned ground. Trenches have been dug for the potatoes and were filled with some of the steaming great pile of dung delivered during the week. We have plans to add tomatoes and beans and also add a couple of patches of flower colour, to attract a few hoverflies – which eat aphids – and bees – which pollinate the flowers of any fruit and vegetables.

Sharing the plot is ok, but not ideal and there have already been minor clashes about what we’re doing and where, but a smile and a nod of agreement keeps things cool before we go off and do our own thing again. If the weather holds over the summer then I am sure we’ll spend plenty of time on the plot. Not ours, but enough to whet the appetite.

From the first weeks of digging. Agnieszka in her plastic bag overshoes before we bought some wellies.

2008 and all that...

Already it is February and I haven’t written anything here. I just don’t seem to have the inclination at the moment, and finding the time to sit down and churn something out seems pointless. Life seems to be a series of tasks to get from one to the next and plod along like that. No real excitement and no really interesting things to report.

Maybe I am being too negative. We do nice things. For me, work is a bind, a chore. I don’t like it. I am looking for something else but so far haven’t been successful. A couple of interviews, but nothing more. I need to concentrate my efforts. So the week tends to be a waiting game. Wait until Friday. At 3pm on a Friday I leave work, get the train back to Farnworth, jump in the car and go to Lidl, then Asda, then to Silverwell Lane to pick Agnieszka up from work. Then our weekend begins.

Saturday is a day for jobs. Trips to the tip or to the dreaded B&Q. It is also the day when we go over to my parents’ and dig on the allotment. We don’t spend a lot of time there, mainly because it’s an hour each way, but we do try to get an afternoon’s digging in. Last weekend we planted the onion set and some garlic but ran out of room. Reading up this week I think we planted them too far apart but I’m comforted by the fact that we can plant some carrots in between the rows and make a better use of the space. This will, of course, be commented on by Les, my uncle who has the plot adjoining, and my dad. I long for a plot of my own and was cheered yesterday by news that, after a year of mithering, I have now been added to the waiting list for one in Farnworth. Only another couple of years to wait I expect, before I become a plotholder myself.

So what have we done for the first six weeks of the year? A potted history:

• We celebrated Wigilia on Christmas Eve with barszcz and uchy plus some pierogi that we had in the freezer. On Christmas Day we entertained my parents and had our second dinner, giving them trout, boiled potatoes and veg as a mix of Polish and English dinners. On Boxing Day we went to my brother’s and had a third dinner, but traditionally English.
• A trip to Katowice at the end of January to celebrate Christmas again with Agnieszka’s family. A hectic time, trying to cram in business (trips to the town hall and bank) and pleasure (fizzy wine in a bar in Tychy), while at the same time relaxing. Not all achieved but it was good to get away. Not too cold either, although we did get snow on the Sunday, which was nice.
• We discovered a few new places to walk. A trip up to Sunderland near Morecambe to walk on the shore of Morecambe Bay, marvel at the size of Heysham nu-killer power station and watch black clouds drifting out at sea, spraying rain there rather than on us. Clifton country park, ok for emergencies. Heaton Park, bleak and cold but probably nice in summer with great views over Manchester. Chipping, which will forever be known as the muddy sheep walk.
• I took my beekeepers theory course, which was excellent. As we sat in the bowling hut in Heaton Park on the first morning, by a sign that read ‘no lobing [sic] or alehouse bowling’ and a table full of Nationwide Bowler, the snow streamed past outside turning the greens completely white. Needless to say by dinner time the sun was out and the snow had gone. But it was nice while it lasted. I will have a practical course at the beginning of March and am slowly collecting equipment. I bought a beekeeping suit in Poland for half the price of the cheapest one here, so that was a plus.
  

There are probably other things too, but they are the main ones. I’m going to try and update the blog a little more regularly this year, shorter pieces more often. If I get my act together and take some photos I might even put some on. As they say, watch this space!