Family Visit

 Tuesday 6th October 2026

  Last weekend was quite busy, I had my brother, Derry, and his wife, Anne, staying over. They were down from Leicestershire for a party for my other brother’s (John), wife, (Jan). Jan has just turned seventy and their kids arranged a surprise party for her.  Anne and Derry came down on Friday and stayed till Sunday. Derry was born here but moved to Ashby De La Zouch with Anne when they married. They are keen walkers and have hiked all over the place. Whenever I visit them I make sure to take my walking boots because I’m sure to need them. I don’t really mind because I do enjoy walking but don’t do enough of it. Must be all those years of being a postman that puts me off it.

  So anyhoot, when they came down I took them all round the places we played in when we grew up. On the Saturday we walked through a small bit of woodland near my home. We didn’t go far as we had the party to later on. On the Sunday though, we did a lot more walking. When we were kids we always used to play in the  local woods which are called Manor Woods.  We used to walk through the woods to get to school and were always late because we played for too long, forgetting the time. The Manor Woods cover a very large area and we didn’t really venture into its darkest depths in those days. We stayed in the parts nearer our home. There are several fishing ponds over there and we often camped beside them overnight. In the morning we’d nip out of the woods to nearby houses and nick milk off of doorsteps for out tea. If we were lucky we’d get some bread too as,  back then, there were bakers delivering as well as milkmen. A lot of our youth was spent playing in those woods so it was a real memory trip for Derry. Me too, although, I’ve never moved away and have walked my dog over there on many occasions. Derry had been away for some fifty years or more so it was a pleasant walk for him. Anne is a Derbyshire girl and had never seen the place before, but it didn’t matter. As long as she was out walking she was quite happy to let us reminisce.

  During that weekend I also had to pick up my new car. It's very nice but I didn’t get much chance to get to grips with it until Anne and Derry went home. Since then I’ve been trying to shut off the beeps and bongs that it insists on chiming out. Honestly, I got a welcoming noise whenever I opened the door and another noise as I walked away and it locked itself. Then it beeped every time I edged over the speed limit by half a mile an hour. I managed to turn the damn radio off eventually. (I don’t like radio stations as they repeat themselves too often and have too much talking and adverts with not enough music.) I have all my own music collection on a memory stick which I copied from my old Ipod. There’s enough on there to keep me in music for weeks without repetition. So I’m getting to grips with the car at last. Most of the irritating noises have been turned off although I’m sure there will be more to discover as I  go.

  Wednesday 7th October 2026

  I have decided that since I sometimes write these entries over a couple of day or more, I’m gonna add the date each time I write a little more. Otherwise the date that Blogger puts at the top doesn’t always marry up. 

  Today Andy and I went to the allotment. There’s not much to do at this time of year, just a bit of maintenance and some picking if there’s anything still growing. This year, we still have some tomatoes and some runner beans coming through although things are definitely slowing down. As we got to the allotment  it began raining. We persevered for a little while but it soon turned into a downpour so we gave up and came back home. We didn’t mind too much as the rain is much needed after the recent drought. 

  Coming home early has given me some time to write so there’s always a silver lining.
  This will be our sixth year working the allotment. Andy used to have a small vegetable garden in his daughter’s garden but his daughter moved and now she only has a communal garden which he can’t use. So between us we took up a council run allotment. I offered to join him to halve the cost and, more importantly for me, to give me a little exercise. I have several  hobbies but they are all fairly sedentary so I thought the allotment will at least ensure that I got out of the house once in a while instead of sitting playing ukulele or writing or painting or reading etc. 

  We knew very little about gardening when we started although Andy was more knowledgeable than me, but we have both learned a lot over the last six years.  It’s better here as we are surrounded by other growers and some of them have been there for years. So we all pick up tips from one another. The picture you see here is three years old and things have changed since it was taken. These days the greenhouse in the pic has become a storage shed and we have a netted framework next to it instead. It seems to do better than the actual greenhouse ever did. We are not allowed to have proper glass in the greenhouse (for safety reasons, presumably), so we covered it with thick plastic sheeting but it never pulled its weight so we gave it up. We have more netting covering things too these days as the allotments attract all manner of wildlife: muntjacs; foxes; neighbourhood cats; rabbits and squirrels. And birds, of course, they like nothing more than to peck at the seeds if they aren’t covered well. 

  We don’t do too bad with  our veg. We grow a wide range of the usual stuff such as spuds; tomatoes; courgettes; runner beans; beetroot; corn on the cob; onions; garlic; shallots cucumbers, and on…  We do well with most of them although we have some regular failures too. We’ve never had any good sized carrots and the two times we’ve tried to grow mange tout they’ve been rubbish. We have two apple trees and a plum tree which serve us well, especially as we grow rhubarb too and Andy’s wife often makes an apple and rhubarb crumble. YUM!  We also have raspberries and blueberries but we haven’t managed to grow strawberries so far. They never seem to do very well.

  Okay,  that’s enough, I’m getting bored with writing about vegetables so you’re no doubt getting bored reading about them. Suffice to say though that the allotment is going well. It’s a continual learning curve every year and over the last six years I have developed a deep respect for Mother Nature. 

  Toodlepip. 

  B.x