A Deep Affection For Flowers

Big Green Dispersal

Symptomatic of the times in which we live, The Big Green Gathering, near Cheddar, has been cancelled. It appears that additional conditions were forced upon the organisers at the last minute by the local council and police. It's such a chilled out, peaceful, well-established festival - the first I took my daughter to - that I'm surprised it's been smothered. Until I read suggestions that a degree of politics has come into play, relating to the Climate Camp and Plane Stupid campaigns.

Meanwhile... the cost of public transport continues to increase as the cost of motoring falls, the car scrappage scheme encourages manufacturing and consumerism over servicing and maintenance, wind turbines are regarded with more horror than nuclear power stations and the Bristol Hourbike scheme doesn't look like being a roaring success, or even getting off the ground.

Groundhog Day

A bit like Groundhog Day (which I watched again the other night) up at the allotment, where the season comes around full circle again. It's a year since I've been using a phone camera to record the growth and harvest of things and at this time of year, the last crops have been planted and there's nothing to do but wait for fruition, harvest, store and do it all over again, hopefully learning something along the way.

Animated Rose

No 'R' in July

No 'R' in the month, so rhubarb must be in season. Unless you force it and crop as early as March and get greedy and pick too much in May. This plant's recovered OK and will produce another crop next month.

A Hoya

Four years after taking a cutting, a hoya flower emerged today, looking like a cake decoration.

Iris from Holland

Close on the heels of the oxalis bulbs, the Dutch Iris are now in flower.

Borlottis

The riper ones are prettier, like aniseed balls, but it's not immediately apparent from the outside what you'll find on the inside.

Black Gold Of The Sun

First Runners

Streets Apart

Bob Hoskins, Tim Spall, Emma Friel and David Bradley - the bloke who plays Stemroach in Ideal - what an acting masterclass in The Street (Mondays BBC1). Oddly, it's made by ITV for the Beeb and despite its success, the production company has already been closed down / sold off, so Jimmy McGovern was telling me on Front Row (BBC R4) the other night.

Old Skool

So, after much pfaffing around with other music software, such as Garage Band and Ableton Live, I've reverted to using old MIDI Cubase software from the last century, versions of which I've been using since 1991, running on a 1997 Powerbook 3400c that had a friend of my daughter's in fits of giggles, as she'd never seen such an antique piece of functioning technology. I didn't introduce her to 25 year old Roland.

It brings the Akai S2000, Novation Supernova and aforementioned Roland out of retirement too, leaving plugins out of the mix until the mastering stage.



Not forgetting the old Joanna too, which sometimes gets forsaken for all the knob twiddling of digital audio.

Rack 'Em Up

Flowery Twats

For those of you who don't know and those who've forgotten, Flowery Twats is an anagram of Fawlty Towers.

Oxalis

The oxalis bulbs that I planted in March have flowered, if only briefly, as they've been battered by high winds and torrential rain.

Celery

Celery likes a lot of water, so what with all the downpours recently, I'm expecting this to grow to about a metre in height.

Mesembryanthemum

Badger-Proof Fence

Well, it might slow them down before the guards come running.

Odd

It was one of those scenes you see played out countless times on the telly. I was woken at around 4 a.m. by noises coming from downstairs. At first, I dozed off again, my brain convincing me that it was probably the neighbours. But then I woke again with a jolt. There was definitely something downstairs and something had just been knocked over.

Confused more than frightened, I got out of bed and crept downstairs. At the bottom, there was a picture frame lying on the last step. I put a light on and saw that there was a jar of flowers on the floor of the living room, water spilt over the carpet. A few ornaments had tumbled from a shelf. In the kitchen, there were things on the floor too.

As I tried to make sense of things, something scurried in my peripheral vision in the direction of the closed back door. I followed whatever it was, but it didn't want to be found. I reasoned that it was probably a cat, although not one that I knew. It must have come in earlier through an open window and was now trapped. I opened the back door and stepped back. I couldn't hear or see anything.

Still not 100% sure that it wasn't a rat, or something more wild than a cat, I stepped back and waited. Nothing happened. In the end, I left the back door ajar, closed all the others and went back to bed.

Charity Begins At Home

I was helping my daughter with her homework. There was a knock on the door. I leaned out of an upstairs window to see a young guy with a clipboard and badge. He seemed to be collecting for a charity and mentioned kids in local schools. I told him that I was sorry that I couldn't afford to contribute, neither could I spare the time to talk as I was in the middle of something, but if he had a leaflet about it, I'd be interested to read it.

He didn't have a leaflet, but undeterred, he continued, telling me that they found that usually children's education was something that was left to mum. At this point, I stopped him and bade him goodbye, explaining what I'd been doing before he'd interrupted me.

Later, I found no reference online to the charity that he claimed to represent.