Mind the gap / Uwaga na przerwę

Accessibility is important these days, particularly with regard to public buildings and services. To find a town hall or school without hand rails for the inform, Braille pads for the blind or wheelchair ramps for the disabled is almost impossible thanks to the 2005 Disability Discrimination Act that (and I paraphrase here) said these bodies have a duty to provide for a disabled person’s need. In addition, companies not covered by the act, such as bus and train operators, were given a deadline to make sure wheelchair users and other disabled people could use services normally.

That’s the UK. Abroad, it’s different, natch. So it was with a general sense of disbelief that we witnessed the logic of Kraków’s transport strategy to get people from Balice airport into the main railway station. The powers that be have invested in several brand new trains, smartly painted in red, white and yellow and spotless inside, with staff verging on the polite. When you get off the plane you take a bus to the station (ok, so they didn’t really understand the meaning of ‘integrated transport strategy’) and after a few minutes this sleek, polished train glides in, the doors swish open and passengers board. Twenty minutes later you arrive at Kraków Główny station. No problems there you think. But wait, what’s this? The doors open and…
A gap, and (wait for it)...
A step up.
Someone somewhere needs a good hard kick up the arse. I mean a really good hard kick. Or better still, put them in a wheelchair and get them to try and get in or out of the train at this station. It is hard enough trying to lift a heavy suitcase in and the lady with the pushchair had to unceremoniously throw the whole thing out, to the obvious distress of the child.

So who is responsible? In Poland everyone blames everyone else, but it is obvious that somewhere along the line someone didn’t think that train and platform have to be compatible. One solution would have been to build a new, lower, platform but that costs money. The official response? We didn’t ask but I would guess if you complained they would shrug, and then order you a taxi.

Czutni chutzpah...

I grew up in a family where tomatoes were a staple over the summer. I have vague memories of my mum selling them to people in brown paper bags, price unknown, and I think this has influenced my growing habits in later life.

After last year’s disastrous harvest of exactly no tomatoes, this year has proved to be a much better deal. Having put up a greenhouse on the allotment and transferred plants there early on, the results have been much better than I expected and we still have fruit in the yard just beginning to ripen. One truss has thirty fruits on it, but the worry is the summer will end (ha, did it ever start?) before they’re ripe.
Above, some of the many plum tomatoes, variety San Marzano
And the ordinary variety, Shirley. The Polish ones, Kmicic, are still green although a couple have now started to turn and will be red before too long.

So what to do with the masses of tomatoes? Well, some have been traded for eggs from local chickens (Thanks Henrietta) and the rest have been eaten in take-to-work salads, made into tomato sauce for pasta, using home grown onions and garlic, and then frozen, or boiled up with more onions, dates, sugar and vinegar to make chutney. Now we have to wait six weeks before testing, so I hope it's ok. We'll see.

Farnworth jest fajne (część 2)

We had run out of milk. I say we, but it's Agnieszka who drinks it. Even on a good day I don't like it that much but particularly not the steri she insists we get from Aldi. But that's another story.

As we hadn't a drop in, we decided reluctantly to walk over to Aldi and, if that was shut, to Asda to get some more. However, on reaching Market Street we noticed the newsagents by the bus stop was still open and, as it was closer than either of the others, we decided to go in and see if they had anything. Many of the shelves were bare and when I asked the woman if they had any milk she did what Farnworth people do in lieu of a greeting and pretended not to hear me. Luckily Agnieszka spotted some right at the back of an open fridge and after a short debate about the sell-by date (the 12th, giving us only four days) we decided to take it.

We put it on the counter and the woman said: 'Just check it's alright. We've had some brought back.'

With that she broke the seal, took off the top, stuck her nose right up close and had a good sniff.

'Seems ok,' she said. 'Here, you try it.'

With that she handed it to Agnieszka who dutifully sniffed it, declared it ok, gave her the money and we left.

Jagody madness

A couple of weeks ago, on a walk around Affetside, we found a patch of blueberries (jagody in Polish) that were just about ripe enough to pick. Mid-way through our scrumping, a police car went past and, seeing us mid-scrump, stopped to ask us if we'd seen anyone thereabouts 'stealing berries'. We said no, but we'd let them know if we did. The urge to ask if they'd seen any police doing some crime prevention was on the tip of my tongue but I managed to keep the words inside. What a patrol car was doing up there, so far off a main road was anybody's guess but when you're on double-bubble of a Sunday, any time-wasting exercise will do. Pardon my cynicism.

We were ill-prepared last week, which meant we had to eat what we picked. Hence the new Goth look of black lipstick sported by Agnieszka:

This week, we set out specifically to pick some and were armed with two boxes and a couple of bags. The sun was beating down as we spent two hours picking up near Belmont and we came back with a kilo and a half, or approximately three pounds in old money.

Checking supermarket websites that night, I found out something quite interesting. I tried Tesco first, but the website won't let you browse without registering. Three attempts to get around this got my back up so I sacked it off in favour of somewhere else. In Asda, you can buy 125g of organic blueberries for £1.98. Sainsbury's were on offer at £1.99 for 225g, although they were normally £3.99 for the same weight. If we had bought the same weight at the supermarket, it would have cost us over £25. I will think of that every night this week as I chomp my way through fresh, succulent, sweet-smelling blueberries that cost us a couple of miles of diesel and two hours in the sun. What hardship.

Looking for a queen on a hot summer's day...

For this week's hive inspection I took along my mentor, Pippa, from Manchester Beekeepers. She has kindly agreed to look after me in the first few months of my beekeeping and is a very nice, very laid back person and great around the hive. Not like some of them on a Monday night at Heaton Park, banging things around and squashing bees through ham-fisted carelessness. I mean, I know eventually I will get stung but the longer it goes when it doesn't happen, the better and I certainly don't want to get the fallout from someone else's clumsy handling.

Anyway, this week was very hot and even with shorts and a t-shirt under the bee suit it was very warm. Sweat trickling down your face doesn't help and because of the veil in the way, you're not able to wipe it away so must suffer. We were met at the gate by one of the allotment holders, who asked if the bees had made any honey. She went on to ask me twice more, and Pippa once, if they'd made any honey and proudly said there were more bees (wasps, it turned out) in one of the compost bins.

The hive looks quite at home now, in the midst of the allotments and the windbreak fence is helping to lift the bees up to a safe height so they don't bother other allotment holders. The posts are sagging slightly so I will have to keep an eye on that as time goes on. The choice of colour was a good one, and unless you know it's there, you can hardly spot it.

There was plenty of activity, lots of brood, stores, eggs and larvae and a lot of bees coming in and going out of the hive. In another week it will be time for a super and hopefully we will have a bit of honey at the end of September. More importantly, the colony should be big enough to over-winter safely and start next spring in good condition. The queen, marked in this picture, is doing well and laying a nice brood pattern and there are plenty of young bees.

They do seem to be using a fair amount of syrup though, and it's starting to become expensive, purchasing sugar to feed them, but it has to be done. Without it they couldn't produce wax to make comb and therefore nowhere for the queen to lay. Aside from worrying about them when I am not there, and resisting the urge to open the hive every five minutes, they are getting on with business without me interfering. It is very pleasant to sit and watch them gliding in and taking off, bringing bags full of pollen and crops full of nectar and generally just enjoying watching them flying about. The next job now will be to name them all...

After we left and I had dropped Pippa off at her house, she gave me some redcurrants which I used even more sugar to turn into redcurrant jelly. Such sweet pastimes!

Pierwszy dzien pszczelarza

It wasn't without some nerves that I went up to Harwood on Saturday night to collect my very first colony of bees. They'd been left outside on a table and, when I removed the lid, they were all sat quietly, helped by the dull and cool evening air. When I picked them up, they started to buzz but a gentle kind of murmur rather than an angry whine. Settling them into the boot we set off for the allotments and their new home, me driving carefully so as not to upset them, Agnieszka quiet, saying occasionally that she could hear a buzzing, both of us checking in case any escaped.

Luckily none of them did and we arrived safely and, after donning my full gear (and feeling a bit of a tit as the bees were so quiet and uninterested), I installed them in their new position. As soon as I took out the foam block and replaced it with the entrance block bees came out, flying backwards to check the position of the hive before going round and round it to imprint its position on their memories. A slightly nervous night followed, where I worried about their safety: were they ok? Taking the sugar syrup? Finding their own nectar? I needn't have worried, as my next visit on the Monday night showed they'd definitely found, and emptied, the feeder, and were happily bussing in and out of the hive. Now all I have to do is keep them from swarming and hopefully they'll produce a frame or two of honey for us later in the year.
The box in the back of the car after jolting its way from Bolton. A few dead ones in the bottom but generally they seemed ok.

The hive on its stand on the allotment site, ready to have the travelling screen and foam travelling block removed and the feeder added.
Getting ready to go in. As it turned out, I didn't need all the gear on, but as a beginner it is better to be safe than sorry I think.
Giving them some smoke before taking off the screen and re-assembling the hive.

Since then I have visited only once, to top up the sugar syrup and look forward to doing my first proper inspection this weekend. If only the weather would improve, then they can get on with what they do best - making honey.

Basket cases...

I'm not very good with flowers, having neither the patience nor the knowledge to sow a border and make it look good. In Farnworth I don't have much choice as we have no borders so I am limited to hanging baskets. These are pretty much my first attempts and I am quite pleased with them. Fuchsias and trailing lobelia. There is supposed to be a trailing begonia in there too, but it doesn't seem to have come up...

Digging the dirt...

Last weekend’s visit to the allotment left us with plenty of foodstuffs and severely extended stomachs. We picked 2kg of blackcurrants, which are now sitting in eight jars in the kitchen,

some raspberries, which disappeared almost as soon as we got in, and some spinach, which I made into a pasta dish on the Monday. We also dug a few potatoes and got some beans off the straggly plants – both spuds and beans tasted fantastic.

Other jobs included lifting all the onions and garlic, which has started to get mildew and had to be taken out so we didn’t lose it all. Some of them haven’t fattened up but there should be enough for a couple of months and the garlic looks very tasty. That won't last long at all in our house.
The radishes, which were planted three or four weeks ago. These are grated and then mixed with plain cottage cheese for a tangy breakfast treat.

My planning has gone a bit awry, however, as we now have nothing to plant for autumn cropping which made me a bit mad, but we'll try and get some winter veg in before it's too late.

Help wanted, bring your own matches...

The following advert appeared in the Manchester Evening News last week and it seemed worthy of a post.

I agree that it's a unique opportunity but I do have some reservations about the rest of the job. For a start, what do they mean by 'optimum productivity' and, later, 'bonus opportunities'? If you're a few dogs short of your bonus one month, can you use cats? How many rabbits would you need to equal one horse? Would you put lots of pets into one box, thus cutting down on fuel for the pyre and earning yourself 'technical ability' points? If no-one was booked in, would you go out at night seeing what you could run over?

The other thing I thought was interesting was they ask, obviously, for people who have experience of working in a crematorium. Failing that, you could work in a waste management / incinerator business. Now, just bear with me for a second, but isn't that reducing the last rites for a much beloved family pet down to a 'shove it on the fire' attitude? Would Granny Clamp's moggie just be another tick on the bonus sheet? Little Johnny's stick insects merely extra heat...

I suppose I'm curious about the whole set-up. If you do fancy applying, I left the details on the advert. Do let me know how you get on...

A grave matter...

In recent weeks I've been to two funerals, both of uncles, and returned from France to find out a friend from Liverpool, who was only a year older than me, had been found dead in his house only a few days before. It made me think of how vulnerable and soft people are, how easy it seems to be to snuff out the light of life, and how coping with death can be a difficult and painful process.

In Bayeux, we passed a funeral shop and were smiling at the stones available to adorn graves. At first I thought they were ridiculous, but having reflected on it for a few days, why shouldn't people have images on the stones that portray their life-long loves and hobbies? Here are a selection of the ones in the window:

For the gambler, an unbeatable poker hand to give them a good start in the next world.

For the farmer, a reminder of all those early starts with only the occasional pat on the back.

And for the motorist, chugging along heaven's highways in an upturned pram.

Nests of a different kind

On the return from our week in Brittany we had a couple of days in Bayeux. It's a lovely town, albeit slightly over-run by American tourists doing the whole Normandy beach thing. You could see them at bars and cafés around the centre, retelling the stories of death and glory. Our charming bed and breakfast was close to a museum and one of the war cemeteries where so many of their comrades ended up. We walked around part of it one day, the rows of white stones bright in the late afternoon sun. A group of English school kids were coming in as we were leaving and I heard one lad say vehemently, 'It's not nice, it's depressing' and that was exactly what it was.

So it was with more positive feelings that we saw this tank, parked outside the museum. Inside the end of the gun turret, a pair of sparrows had built a nest and the parent birds were busy going to and fro feeding their family. If only all gun barrels could house a family of birds then maybe there wouldn't be so many sad stories in the world.

From Farnworth to France in one day...

A week in France was just the ticket. A break from the routine of work and daily life and far away from the hell hole that is Farnworth. We drove down to Portsmouth, taking the ferry to Le Havre overnight. It was Le Mans weekend so we were accompanied on the boat by every red-blooded, car-mad, testosterone-filled bloke from the south coast, eager to show off their driving skills to the French public, none of whom give a toss about driving. Or skills.

For the first night we stayed within sight of Mont St Michel but were so knackered after the ferry that we crashed out at 8pm and didn’t surface for twelve hours. A week in a gite followed; a week of morning coffee, fried fish, salad, bread, chilled cider, cold wine and the greatest discovery of recent times – mayonnaise and mustard. Mixed. In one jar.

Having breakfast outside the gite, determined to enjoy it, even when it wasn't that warm and sunny.

The beach at Pleneven where we went a couple of times...

And the moules frites we had which were covered in garlic and made Agnieszka a bit ill.

The green man at the crossing in Erquy, hidden by signs to other things...

Us having a walk along the front at Erquy, which was tranquil and calm, if a bit cloudy.

A street in Dinard where we went for the day out and where we climbed to the top of the horological tower which made me very frightened, especially when the bell rang the quarter hour...

Leeks and other veg ready to go out into plots and gardens, spotted at a market in Lamballe.

Me trying to have a quiet slash behind the cathedral in Bayeux. It reminded me of the book, Clochemerle, where the town council builds a pissoir next to the convent and how it divides the town. Very funny in a French farce way.

And finally, Leo Sayer's older, uglier, madder brother, spotted in St Malo trying to chat up a couple of birds and, despite the leather waistcoat, hat and face like a folded napkin, doing quite well.

Messer-thingummy-branter-sums

They're actually called 'mesembryanthemums' and are a riot of colour at the moment.

Left out in the cold (frame)...

The back yard in Farnworth is a wind-blown chiller for plants, even the white painted wall hasn’t made it much warmer and drier although I think it has helped in some small way. what has been useful is the option of planting things out on an allotment and it was there I took the ogorki last week to place in the cold frame. This is a bit of a rickety structure but solid and with a plastic roof should keep out the worst of the weather and let the heat build up to produce, we hope, a bumper crop of pickleable fruits.

We have two types of ogorek: gruntowy and zaprawowy. Both should yield plenty of small, knobbly cucumbers that are perfect for pickling. Fresh they are among the best things I’ve ever eaten and would be purchased almost daily in Poland. Usually bought with strawberries although, I must point out, not eaten simultaneously.

To finish off the day at the plot, we decided to try some early potatoes. Not many to a plant, so obviously not quite ready, but the ones we did get were very tasty and lasted as long as it took to get them home, wash, boil and eat them. As the seed potato was still solid, we put it back in the ground. It might not give us any more spuds, but you never know and part of the fun of gardening is doing things that seem right at the time.

A sting in the tale...

We were warned last week about the wasp’s nest in the shed. As I am now the unofficial family expert on bees, wasps and other flying insects, I felt it my duty to go and inspect. While everyone had seen the one hanging up on the shed rafter, they were slightly unnerved to know that one enterprising wasp had built a nest on the fleece hanging up. The fleece was issued by Pilkington’s architectural glass division so maybe that was why the house of paper was constructed where it was.

Ring-a-ring-a-Ringley...

Sunday was a very warm slightly humid day, so we went for a walk along the canal and back through Ringley woods. It was lovely and I enjoyed it a lot. Such a pity the weekend is only two days long.

The wilt alternative...

Although I wouldn’t say it was my dream home, our little house in Farnworth is comfy and, since they put the insulation in, cosy. It’s big enough, except for the long thin crappy kitchen, it isn’t too full of junk and we have pretty much everything we need. Once I remove the bee hives from the front room, we’ll have space again, so all is looking good.

The yard, however, is another story. The house doesn’t face due south, so the amount of sun we get is limited and despite the wall now being as bright as I can get it, it is still chilly during the afternoon. This has affected the plants with the result that tomatoes are stunted and yellowing at the edges, the ogórek have wilted and died and some of the flowers are listless and slug food. This time last year we had a glorious crop of plants, all brought on in the garden of my parents and strong enough to survive – until the rain blighted them all away – in a sun-free yard.

It’s an almost desperate task to bring plants to maturity. The greenhouse we put up on the allotment is almost complete and I am frantic to get some of the tomatoes into it to try to get them growing properly again. Going out every morning to inspect is a sad and depressing job, as they don’t seem to be growing or even looking any stronger week on week. I’d like an allotment of our own but I read a piece in the Manchester Evening News this week that said the waiting list in Bolton was around three years. So far we’ve done three months or so. A few years back you’d walk straight onto a plot, not now. What irritates me is those people who have taken on plots in times of low demand are still managing to hold on to them despite long waiting lists. Surely it’s one each and those who have two, three or more should give them up.

One alternative is a community plot but I’m not convinced that’ll be a good thing. Have to find out more about it. Until then, I guess it’s struggle on and do what we can. Learn from experience and try to do better next year. It’s a depressing thought, though, no tomatoes for a second year.

As there are no photos of plants to look at, here's a couple of us putting up the greenhouse on the allotment.