June 16th, 2010 by Rich
The other thing I did last night was to book two nights away in Brussels as a birthday present for Lou. After much fiddling around the cheapest way to book it was to get the Eurostar tickets direct and have them from/to Reading, the hotel was then booked elsewhere. Doing it this way saved me about £75 of train fare to get to St Pancras and back, I still find it odd that the Eurostar website will allow you to book a hotel and train combo but only from St Pancras or you can book the train direct from your home town but not with a hotel.
Not for the first time I found myself questioning why all travel websites are so user unfriendly, surely with the money they make they could invest some in making the websites more sensible!
August 28th, 2009 by Rich
It’s festivale time! What does this mean? Well, being questioned everytime I go to the allotment by security guards and dodging guasrd dogs on the bike! Other than that plenty of young ladies wandering around and a few beers. If the weather is ok then bbq time it is. I may even find the time to give you a real update on the lottie and chicken club!
August 26th, 2009 by Rich
Well isn’t the news ever so exciting, today I have learnt the following:
Football: a sport played by thick people, paid too much money to sexually or physically assault the public and get away with it. Supported by even more retarded people that think a bit of a riot is a good way to show who they support. This is truly a noble game.
Big Brother: finally channel 4 has realised what anyone with more than one brain cell has said for years, the program is shit and boring and doesn’t deserve the airtime. If we can just get rid of the rest of the reality/celebutard crap off the box I will be happier.
Peter Mandelson: is a complete slimey shit that deserves to be killed, can’t we send him to Helmand Province? How has this thoroughly evil little turd faced cnut(sic) , (who by the way is not elected in any shape whatsoever) has so much control over government policy? If you needed another reason to boot NuLiebour out come the general election there you have it. (I must admit this is a cheat ~ I didnt actually learn this one today but it just bugged me further!)
July 28th, 2009 by Rich
Since I last posted we have been harvesting courgettes like there is no tomorrow, it is proving quite tricky to eat them all! Hmm I wonder six plants – two adults, too many? nah 
We have been doing the usual things with them, plenty of fried up with garlic and served with pasta, courgette frittatas, courgette on pizza (yes it does work!). We have also been looking for some new ways to use them, one recipe we have found is creamy courgette lasagne which is brilliant. When I have it to hand I will try to post it on here.
In other news, my shoulder continues to give me grief so I went to the doctors to get it checked out, this ended up being a complete waste of time. After waiting 25 minutes past my appointment time (in addition to the 10 minutes that I waited for due to arriving in plenty of time) I finally went in to see the doctor and it was a rubbish experience. I personally expect a doctor to be able to listen to what I say, to be able to read information off of a computer screen and understand I am talking about an accident 5 weeks ago NOT last year!!!! I was then asked what I wanted her to do, WTF you’re the doctor with the years of training! Needless to say I ended up leaving with no real idea how it was healing and with no treatment. If I need to go back I shall make sure I don’t get that doctor again.
In other news, I will be taking a test ride on a new bike this week, a Ridgeback Flight 05, this ticks all the boxes for me so I hope it rides well. Sadly my employers don’t participate in the cycle to work scheme so I will have to pay full price. I really don’t understand why they don’t do it, the amount of effort required is minimal, in fact as a government scheme I think it should be mandatory for companies to take part if employees want to get a bike on the scheme.
When I rule the world it will be different!
July 15th, 2009 by Rich
Hmmm it’s been a while hasn’t it! What has been going on since I last posted …. from the lottie side of things we have been happily harvesting cucumbers, courgettes, runner beans, potatoes, peas, garlic, broad beans even a few raspberries and strawberries. The feeding is good but we are starting to hit the usual “argh not courgettes for dinner again” point, this means I will have to dig out he courgette recipe book to find new and interesting things to do with them!
Our harvests to date have been good and we are mainly happy but we have come to the realisation that some crops just aren’t for us and top of that list are peas. Every year we spend time and money trying to grow peas, fresh peas off the plant are a simple pleasure in life that we enjoy. Sadly every year we end up pea moth problems, as a conservative estimate I would say we end up composting something like 75% of the peas we grow as they are riddled with the little maggoty buggers. So that is it, we give up on peas and will use the space normally allocated for something else, after all we seem to struggle for space every year!
On a non allotment note, I had a great night out drinking high quality smokey beer from zero degrees wishing a work colleague a farewell, I then cycled home and right outside the door fell off. The next day I went to casualty as I decided shoulders shouldn’t look like mine did. Ended up that I had a severe sprained shoulder, the x-ray made me laugh, this was not the reaction the doctor was expecting! That was several weeks ago, it is healing and getting stronger but still gives me some grief. I really don’t understand what happened … after all as a teenager we were all protected but the god of drunk cyclists and never came to harm, shockingly our god has deserted us!!!
Erm what else ….. we spent some enjoyable time down in Cornwall visiting the oldies who treated us to a lovely meal at The Three Mackerel in Falmouth. The food was brilliant, the service friendly and the young waitresses in tight leggings with pert behinds and no vpl ~ does it get any better? 
In breaking news I can also reveal that Chicken Club has been given the go ahead from the council, now we need to do a bunch of stuff to make it happen but more on that another time.
May 22nd, 2009 by Rich
There was a time not that long ago when local press did an important job, sadly those days appear to be over. If you can find a story in local press that isn’t a just a press release being re-written you are doing well. I have the misfortune of having Martin Salter as my MP, many of you may have seen him recently seeking as much publicity as possible over the Ghurkha’s right. The Ghurkhas deserve our respect and the rights to a life in this country, they have earned the right through service to our country. However the constant self publicising grinning twat that is Martin Salter, who chairs a cross party group in Ghurkha’s right, decided he had no back bone what so ever and when the matter came to vote in the commons rather than vote on the side of a campaign he “believes in” he chose to not go against his masters (i.e. the one eyed Scottish prat destroying our country) and instead abstain. I have seen more balls on a newborn baby girl.
What really takes the biscuit is that at every available opportunity he is there in the local press saying how great it is that Ghurkhas will finally get the rights they deserve. How dare he! Meanwhile the local press (including the Reading Evening Post and Reading Chronicle) continue to ignore the fact his waste of space abstained!?!? Where are the reports on that? It’s not like they don’t know he was two faced on this issue. In days gone by I believe local press would not let the local MP get away with this pathetic behaviour but these days we get no mention at all. Let’s also not forget that Salter is standing down at the next election, so what did he have to lose by voting against the government?
The sooner we have an election and get rid of Martin Salter and this shambolic government the better. As for local press, if there sales are in decline I suggest they try looking at the “journalistic quality” of their papers. May local press return to greatness or be confined to the pits of hell!
May 19th, 2009 by Rich
If you remember way back I said we had planted four left over first earlies in a big pot, well last weekend we harvested the pot giving us our first new potatoes of the year. After emptying out and rooting about we came away with 2.4kg of spuds, not bad for the left overs that didn’t make it into the ground! I did consider taking a photo but then I figured you all know what a potato looks like
I feel I should also point out that I haven’t posted in a while, ok more than a while! Sorry about that, been busy with many things on and off the allotment. I will aim to bring you up to speed with our progress over the next few days
February 27th, 2009 by Rich
I have a confession, I missed something out of last night’s post and I will now come clean.
I said we had chosen Katy as it was in the correct pollination group, this was true, we were both convinced we had purchased a Cox’s Orange Pippin from Lidl. Thing is when we started planting the trees we discovered we were wrong, we had picked up a Jonagold. Ends up that Jonagold is in a different pollination group and to make things worse it’s a triploid, this means it requires two pollinators not the usual one. We decided to plant the trees we had and have yet to decide if we leave it chance for pollination or get more trees (this would technically be another three trees ~ I’m not convinced we have the space for that!) So there you have it I was let down by my memory again!
I thought I would show you a plan of the plot showing the stuff we have in place so far.
As you can see we have the pond, greenhouses, shed, trees, raspberries, gate and water tank marked on. The raised bed is the garlic I planted just before Christmas. The key for the trees is as follows:
P1 = Conference (pear)
P2 = Buerre Hardy (pear)
A1 = Katy (apple)
A2 = Jonagold (apple)
C = Stella (cheery)
PV = Victoria (plum)
February 9th, 2009 by Rich
Last week I took delivery of my new toys, a nice A/V Receiver and 5.1 speaker set. I felt I deserved a new toy to fully enjoy the delight of blu-ray with. The system is now all set up, speakers on walls, inputs plugged in and it sounds great (just ask the neighbours!) Over the weekend we watched a few movies but none as good as the first one but this was not down to the content of the film, let me explain…
We loaded up the disc, turned all the bits and pieces on and just as we are about to press play Seefur comes along to sit on my lap and have a sleep, nothing unusual so far. Then the film started and the fun started! Over their lives the cats have learnt all about the tv, it is shiny and they get told off if they try to scratch it, it makes noise and they will mainly ignore it. Now we have a cat in the midst of 5.1 surround and she can’t get over the fact that sound is coming from all around and what is that thing that keep flying past (the answer was Hancock ~ I highly recommend it.) This freaked Seefur out and after 10 minutes she couldn’t hack it anymore and retreated upstairs to the bed.
I’m not a cruel man but I thought this was funny as hell, if you have cats get a surround system, it will no doubt provide hours of fun!
February 3rd, 2009 by Rich
Monday was meant to be a nice lazy day for me, I had the day booked off as I knew I was unlikely to be in a fit state to work as I stayed up to watch the Superbowl so I knew bedtime would be around 4am. The game was a corker and was in the balance right up to the last 5 seconds of play when the Steelers secured their victory, it was a game the really showed why the Steelers and the Cardinals got to Superbowl, I’m glad I stayed up to watch it.
Ahhh lovely sleep, wait what’s that f*&£ing noise …. arggghhh, yes no one told Seefur that I was meant to be having a nice sleep. I managed to put up with her being a royal pain for about 2 hours and ended up getting up bleary eyed at 9am. I knew snow had been predicted but was none the less surprised when I looked out of the window to see just how much snow there was.
On a day where there is snow and schools are shut, public transport is cancelled the country is in mass hysteria, what is the first thought that comes into my head? Hmmm I should get down the allotment and get that snow off the greenhouse roof! Yes truly that is the thought I had upon seeing the snow, I guess this proves I’m a real allotment man!
The drive over there and back was a little interesting, (mainly because it appears the world is full of morons who can’t drive) whilst over there I quickly brushed off the snow off the greenhouse and the shed roof to make sure they weren’t going to get damaged by the weight of the snow. Having done that I took a quick photo and headed back to the warmth of the house and plonked myself in front of animal crossing on the wii so that I could weed and plant flowers
The difference a day can make:
This also shows nicely shows how much more wood chip we need to shift as you can see all of the paths around the raised beds
