On unlikely ways to spend a Sunday afternoon…

The allotment after being very well manured…

So, I got an allotment. What, I didn’t tell you? OK, well the thing about allotments is that they are a lot of work, and you get your hands mucky, neither of which is very conducive to writing blog posts. But in any event, here it is, in all its recently manured glory.

Now, I learned a few things about the biochemistry of plants when I was at University – sadly I can’t remember much of it now. But that’s OK, because undergraduate plant science is nigh on useless for any practical applications (ie actually growing stuff). What you quickly learn is that for allotment gardening, since you are trying to grow quite a lot on a fairly small plot, soil fertility is really important.

What’s amusing about putting manure on an allotment is that you’re basically mixing large quantities of old horse faecal matter into the soil in which you’ll (hopefully) grow lots of food. On the face of it that sounds like an odd thing to do, but considering that everything that is harvested from an allotment reduces the nutrient content of the soil, it needs to be replenished. As an added benefit, the vegetable matter (aka digested grass, and the sawdust the stables used, both well rotted) helps the soil to retain moisture, and provide food for worms. The worms aerate the soil (by eating it, basically) and improve its crumb structure.

What does need to be remembered is that the same processes that incorporate organic matter into the soil in an allotment are the same processes that have been recycling organic matter for billions of years on earth. So putting manure on an allotment is just making use of a lot of conveniently evolved soil bacteria and invertebrates to help you grow bigger potatoes.

So having convinced myself on a scientific level that I wanted to mix horse poo into the growing medium for my food, I set about moving it, with a wheelbarrow, and a shovel.  When you move a wheelbarrow worth of manure, it seems like a lot, right up to the point that you dump it on one of the beds. At this point it appears to dramatically reduce in volume, and you realise that “10 or so barrow loads” just isn’t going to cut it.

So about 25 barrow loads later, I appeared to have a very serious mole infestation! Another 15 minutes and it’s all spread out over the beds, under the fruit bushes, and around the newly planted raspberries.  Oh, and my hands, arms and back are telling me that I really need to stop now.

So what next? Soon we get to start planting things – potatoes, onions and shallots and garlic directly into the beds, and everything else from seed at home. Until next time….














So….no-one saw this coming?

So lots of people in the public sector are pretty hacked off at being told their pensions are not going to be as good as they previously thought.

This is an entirely understandable attitude, although it’s not as if this is something that people in the private sector haven’t also had to confront.

What confuses me is that to any actuary worth his or her salt, it must have been blindingly obvious decades ago that we would get to this point. The demographic shift that has been exacerbated by the ‘baby boomers’ retiring can hardly have taken anyone by surprise.

So with more people taking out of the pot, and fewer people paying in, there would come a time when pension arrangements agreed in different times became unaffordable.

It’s no consolation to anyone getting the bad news, but I’d love it if the government, just for once, could try to be honest with us and admit that this should have been addressed a long time ago.

At least if they did that I could have flying bacon sandwiches for lunch.

In which Calum muses on the nature of ‘blogs

So there’s a gazillion blogs on the web, so many that they have their own collective noun.

Why bother?

Some people write about issues that matter to them, some on behalf of their employer or some other organisation that they are involved with. Some do it for payment, some for fun, and some because it’s something they read about and thought they ought to have a go at.

It’s an odd thing really, because depending on the individual and their audience, it’s somewhere between a diary, a confessional, an advert, a sermon, or chatting down the pub.

I’m doing it because*

  • writing things down can be a powerful way of organising your thoughts, or just letting off steam
  • doing it in a way that others can respond and question stops it being a case of just yammering on to yourself
  • I’ve got far too much free time on my hands at the moment

*One of these reasons isn’t true. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess which one 😉




*For suitably small values of interesting