Petrols in Newcastle (Fri 10th July)

I had a fantastic afternoon and evening with the Petrols in Newcaste yesterday.

It was really great to catch up with Ciaran and Ray - and to meet the other band members too. I was fortunate enough to watch the sound check and have pre-gig- dinner with soem of the guys and their tour manager/sound-man Dino (good Persian food).

The band played the O2 Academy Newcastle - though the smaller upstairs room not the larger main stage.

O2 A

I’m going to see the That Petrol Emotion tonight in Newcastle. I shall be a proper hanger-on and get along to the soundcheck and hang-out with the band :-).

Village Gala Day (Sunday)

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It's our village's annual Gala Day tomorrow. It's an important fund raiser for our village Sports Association which controls the playing fields and pavilion - providing sports facilities to local kids and adults - primarily football, cricket and bowls. After some problems and disappointing Galas in recent years this year's event should be back to full strength (info here)

Ali & I are helping by running a mini-soccer tournament for local U8 & U10 teams in the morning.

I've also been involved in some of the organisation - there's some very talented and comitted people working together to get this done - and I've been helping with some promotion.

We made a formal press release and were helped by Richmondhsire Council distributing it to local media - it's delivered us articles in local/regional press (see here - although they did manage to print the wrong day!) and promotion on local radio - with one station recording an interview with the Sports Club chairman (BobT) for broadcast on Sunday morning.

Here's hoping for decent weather tomorrow.

Off to see the Petrols this evening...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="490" caption="Petrols in Nottingham - July 09 - Credit: HughieD from TPE forums."][/caption]

I'm going to see the That Petrol Emotion tonight in Newcastle. I shall be a proper hanger-on and get along to the soundcheck and hang-out with the band :-).

Whilst the tour hasn't had any/much press coverage - the response on the band's website forum has been enthusiastic and the general feeling is that they sound better than ever. I think is what comes from getting older and becoming better musicians - a bit like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

TPE Forum

Forum post with recent pictures

I'll post a review later.

Harvest !

First of the potatoes this week - Charlottes. Charlie had some for dinner yesterday and declared them delicious, we will probably have them today. Mixed sizes from larger than expected to positively teensy, enough for a couple of family meals. Others are about ready too, foliage is dying off on first tub of each type so Anya and Juliette to try in next week or so. Should harvest a sack a week for next couple of months now :-)
*Make note for next year to grow lots more !
Still almost no strawbs making it into the house - Charlie is stripping them bare each day which is great to see. No rasps yet, still small and green but on their way.
Radishes appeared almost overnight, lettuces close behind, but a while before any for picking.
Cucumbers both doing well, as are the peas and beans, none lost, but none close to flowering yet.
Rhubarb doing well - no flowers, so just leave it to die off.
Asparagus still putting up new spears, all of which look healthier than the first skinny ones did.
Butternut has germinated about 2-3" tall, no true leaves yet. No sign of the Table Queen or the coriander.
Plum tree did the June Drop thing, still a good few tiny fruits there. Apple has 2 fruits, propped up one of the branches which was getting a bit heavy as the apple is right at the end.

Sowings this week: white lisbon salad onions, chard bright lights, more carrots (red, purple and rainbow - no boring orange !).

Jobs to do:
lime brassica beds ready to sow cabbages and swedes. Maybe brocolli and cauliflower too ?
weeding between beds
clear the empty bed where the volunteer potatoes have appeared, for summer/autumn planting.

Good Luck to the Petrols!

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My good friends Ciaran and Ray embark tonight on their first major tour for 15 years with That Petrol Emotion. They play the Birmingham Academy 2 tonight and then on for a total of 10 gigs (see list of gigs here). I will see them in Newcastle a week on Friday... can't wait!

Busy Day

Sunday 28th - my reminder of whats done, whats planted and where.

1. Cucumber greenfingers x 2 moved into growbag with growpots and a mini pergola to climb up.
2. More parsnips seedlings moved from cold frame into the parsnip bed. Will put some more to germinate indoors, last set probably.
3. Topped up the paris market carrots row - there were a few gaps - only ones with poor germination.
4. Put coriander in 2 corners of the onion bed where the onions didnt take. Might be too dry - soil is very free draining there.
5. Winter squash - put butternut at one end of the onion bed, Table Queen at the other, both under bottle cloches and both x 2 per station, thin to 1 later if they both germinate. Hopefully, onion swill be out before squash becomes too big for them to share.
6. Salad bed. This had been dug up by some animal visitor, so back to square 1: sowed lambs lettuce, radishes, 3 types of lettuce to heart in the middle of the bed and 1 row of salad bowl for CCA. Still space for 1 or 2 more row of CCAs. Put a net over it !
7. On the maypole there are now 5 x runner beans, 1 x purple french beans. Sowed 2 more purple french under bottle cloches this time after 2 were dug up. 3 x waxy yellow dwarf beans in the gaps, one germinated indoors, other 2 direct.
8. Kids square - replaced some paris market carrots - theirs were patchy germination too. Added a few more dwarf/bush peas.
9. Weeded everything.
10. Summer rasps not all looking happy, some have died off after the leaves started to brown from the outside edge, drying out and leaving a dead stick. Adjacent canes thriving, no sign of aphids/beetles and no idea yet of cause.
11. Our postcode area is in a full Smith Period now, so need to watch potatoes for blight. At least early blight gives some warning and you can still get a crop.
12. Stevie dug a path the whole way along, beside the rasps. This needs to be levelled a bit more then covered with weed fabric and a mulch, poss large gravel, need to check prices at local quarry.

About a dozen baby frogs and toads were out in the garden today - they came out after the heavy rain and were extremely cute.

We Can Haz Strawberries !

Our first few strawbs are fat and red and certainly look delicious. Sadly, I will never get to taste them as they are in the 'kids corner'. This is the raised bed donated to a few of Charlies friends who have helped in the garden. They have a 1m square bed with strawberries, multi-coloured carrots and a couple of dwarf peas, just for themselves. They chose the seeds, sowed them and come and weed/water it a bit, I keep an eye on it for them.
So, they need to visit after school asap and pick these strawbs before the slugs do.

Our main strawberry bed is a little way behind but will get there soon and a few rasps are just starting to take shape now too for late summer.

Today should be sowing salad leaves and more carrots but there are thick black clouds and I can feel the pressure dropping - rain is gonna come. Soon.

No Surprises (na na na na...)

The pea/bean things are runner beans ! I was confused yesterday as when I sorted through my boxes of seed packets none of them prompted a reminder. Until today - as soon as I saw the runner beans packet (not put back into the box) I remembered sowing them. Good, now we know..
Sowed some more today - dwarf french beans (waxy yellow ones) and climbing french, purple/green. Both sets in a propagator for a few days to germinate then out they will go in their little loo roll towers.

Some of the latest parsnips have now germinated, a bit scrawny to go out yet, need another week or maybe two indoors but not covered or they will be too leggy. I will also put them in the cold frame for a week before planting out fully.

Both greenfinger cucumbers are on 2 leaves each, they will go into a grow bag I think, next to the spuds, after a spell in the cold frame to harden off.

the weather forecast is for some unpleasant combination of heavy rain, thunder, hail, flash floods in the next 48 hours. Fingers crossed it doesnt destroy anything - except the rabbit warren, I am hoping that floods and forces them further away from our carrots !

Garden Surprises

I have done a daft thing (what, just the one, dear ?) I planted some seeds in paper pots in the propagator and now I cant remember quite what they are ! A type of pea or bean certainly - but they could be any of half a dozen varieties, colours, tall or bush type. I have put them outside with a 'maypole' to grow up, so we shall have to wait and see what surprises us in a few weeks time.

Something, an animal, has been making mischief this week. The newly sown salad seeds, carefully marked with little wooden pegs have been scratched about and the marker pegs were found about 4 feet away from the bed. It must be pidgeons or a cat, cant think of anything else that would/could do this but not do anything else. There were a couple of shallots pulled up, one of them is over the fence and in the field... Please not the rabbits - dont let them find us !

Today, Stevie dug and I weeded, put out the pea/bean things, put straw under the strawbs, weeded again, made a frame to net the salad.

Tomorrow (Sun) will be put the nets/mesh over strawbs, salad and carrots, direct sow yellow beans at the maypole, redo the salad leaves, tidy the flower borders, water everything.

Weather permitting (wind speed) we will also spray nasty stuff on the jungle of weeds in preparation for putting down grass seed to get it under control for the summer. Might put our tent up there for some family friends to visit if its a bit easier and safer to walk on than it is now !

CVJFC Presentation Night

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We had our footy club annual presentation night yesterday evening. All our U8's Saturday morning Soccer Club go medals and took part in a penalty competition.

CVJFC Website News Item

Photos on Flickr

Psychopathic Personalities...

I listened to this morning's Desert Island Discs with the loathsome Piers Morgan. He comes across as a bright and determined person - clearly his career and successes reflect this. His access to rich and powerful people has enabled him to collect (and polish?)  a number of interesting and genuinely amusing anecdotes (e.g. his interview on the beach with a barefooted Rupert Murdoch prior to being made editor of the News of the World at 28 years old) - his choice of songs was quite interesting and varied - as a PR exercise he did very well.

However - listening to him attempt to justify his role and participation in the stupidest and nastiest parts of the media and his double standards on "privacy" (his is important - other people's isn't) -  put me in mind of this from the much missed Kurt Vonnegut back in 2003 - read it all...:

"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!"

via Kurt Vonnegut vs. the &#@ -- In These Times.

Most of us are in no position to make real diagnoses of PP in an individual, especially somebody we only know of via the media. Yet so many of the most successful leaders in government and business appear (to me) to conform to the stereotype.

I think the PP lens is an effective tool for comprehension of incomprehensible times .

The question remains - why do we let these people assume power over us?

Doubley Toothless Charlie!

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The Tooth Fairy is being kept busy by Charlie... as his second top-front tooth came out this evening at the FA skills football session in a freak "running/drink-bottle" incident.

THAT PETROL EMOTION - Great Photos

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The TPE guys linked to some great photos from last year's Electric picnic gig - as they gear up for their series of gigs in July.

via Time to get excited. | THAT PETROL EMOTION.

Best pictures of the football season

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I enjoyed this selection of the best pictures of the football season by the Guardian's photographer Tom Jenkins.

I particularly love this one of Messi with his European Cup winners meddle. I was thinking how childlike he looks - just like a 12 year old kid - Jenkins' own comments reflect this too:

"At this moment as he wraps his winners medal round his head, the best footballer in the world looks like a proud, little boy showing off his prize from the school sports day."

Link to Tom Jenkins's best pictures of the football season

Early June in the garden

Most of the asparagus is progressing well – Backlim is shoulder height, just starting to fern, Ariane (early variety) made it to above knee height and is quite ferny with berries, but the Purple Stewart isn’t happy – lost 2 crowns entirely, the rest has a bit of fern, but is skinny, shriveled, you wouldn’t want to eat it. Main concern now is keeping the stems upright in the strong winds. Have put a Heath-Robinson frame up but it needs to be more substantial and able to be dropped into place each year. Will blunder along this season hoping nothing snaps off and get something organised for next spring.

Onion sets all seem to be okay, we have lost a couple at most. Main job is to keep the bed weeded and to deter the soddin cat that confuses a raised bed with a litter tray. I think I will try 2 things, bits of spiky twig laid around on the soil – lots of that available in the hawthorn hedge and perhaps a net surround – cats don’t like to jump over things apparently, just onto things, so that might help. Also thinking of some evil solutions if the humane ones don’t work, as I am not prepared to sacrifice our food just to be kind to someone elses cat.

Strawberries have coped well with being moved from a planter to a permanent bed. No idea which variety is which any more, but some are clearly going to fruit sooner than others, so that might help me work it out. Added half a dozen alpine/woodland plants which may not fruit this year but will be delicious when they do.

Potatoes are looking good, first tubs should be ready from the end of this month then at 4-6 week intervals. We have only done Anya, Charlotte and Juliet this year.

Carrots are okay but no roots yet, just early foliage.

Parsnips I am a bit worried about. They are supposedly quite difficult to germinate so I was pleased when my first attempt was successful, but the rain and quite cool temps of the past 24 hours seems to have traumatized them a bit. One has disappeared completely, a few are wilting, only half the row looks robust enough to make it. Might put a cloche over some of them for the rest of the weekend. My second sowing of parsnips seems to have failed totally as the soil dried out, so we could end up with none ! I will put some more into pots and others direct sown to see if we can manage some for Christmas day lunch.

Rasps are coming along nicely. Autumn ones are ready to flower, summer canes have finally started sending up shoots that will fruit next year.

The rhubarb, or rather one of them, is looking lovely but we can’t eat that this year, needs to establish. The other has failed, probably the soil is too poor there so I will move it for next year. The soft fruit bushes are not doing much, a few berries/currants but should now be setup for next year.

Lots of work to do clearing space for more beds ready for summer and autumn planting and it will soon be time to put the brassicas and winter roots into their beds. Salad crops should be in but aren't, so next fine day that has to be done or we'll miss out on summer salads.

Some of what I had hoped to do will have to wait a year, it's taking a lot of time and effort to get control of what is essentially a pile of weed strewn rubble.

I forgot about the trees ! No flowers on the cherry this year, that can take a couple of years to start fruiting, loads of tiny plums - will lose most over next couple of weeks as the tree sorts out what it can sustain, a few applets (is that a word outside of IT ?) which have to go, to let the apple trees build up for next year.

Toothless Charlie!

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Charlie's first top front tooth has come out!

he is wavering on belief in the Tooth Fairy - seems to be happy to accept it for tonight.

Also check today's latest spiky haircut.

2009 election results - useful resources online

Some useful links to cover the election results as the counts are declared.

BBC Live election results map (UK wide - pick your region)


North Yorkshire County Council : 2009 election results live. (my area)

No European results until Sunday apparently - to allow all of Europe to vote.

Larry Ellison relives reveals network computer netbook dream • The Register

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Was it really so long ago...

Back in the mid-nineties I worked with for Giles and with Mark (or Grooty as I know he loves to be known). I used to travel around Europe (or was that EMEA) with a two of these devices and a server (Tadpole Sparcbook) and network rig. When we had the original and ONLY 2 N|C devices in the whole of EMEA we named them "Sandra" and "Magaret" - after two of the women who worked in our group.

It was a fun and rewarding time - and whilst the technology was somewhat flakey the principals were fine - actually even then "back to the future" as the approach was essentially the same as the well established "Sun Discless Client" workstation method (netboot via DHCP, OS and useer files on a "file server").

The devices became affectionately known as "NOTwork computers" - and over time came in various flavours (Java Stations) and from various vendors. We should remember though that back then a PC cost around a thousand dollars (without a monitor) - and often around a thousand UK pounds. Larry's vision was to forsee a tiome when devices to attach to a network (the Internet) could be simpler and significantly CHEAPER.

Larry Ellison relives reveals network computer netbook dream • The Register.

Medieval Day!

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Today is Medieval Day for KS1 at Charlie's school.
All the kids go in fancy dress and will have a packed lunch/picnic on the field.
Charlie's costume is homemade by his Mum with support from his Dad.

Click the photo or here for more photos.

Bowie vs Elvis (.. Superman, 2001, Roswell)

Wonderful insane writing linking Bowie/Elvis/Roswell/2001 A Space Odyssey/Superman:

"The alien that crashes to Earth during the supposed Roswell crash in Bowie birth year is also the starchild that evolves at the end of 2001 . Astronaut Bowman is in cryogenic suspension for 18 months and then evolves into .... something else. It is curious to note that Bowie was Ziggy Stardust for 18 months and then became .... something else. Elvis recorded at Sun Studio and was under the guidance of Sam Phillips for 18 months and then became ... something else."

link:   Bowie vs Elvis.