Late Summer Garden Update

Overall I'm really pleased with the performace of most stuff this year, considering I did virtually everything from seed and took a punt on lots of different things. The summer launched into sweltering heat and the last few weeks have been such a contrast - not cold, but markedly cooler.

I must admit the watering has been a lot easier this year and I'm glad I did some homework on how much water different plants were going to need. We had virtually zero rain here all summer up to the last few weeks and I kept to a schedule of just giving the less needy plants - root crops like beetroot and onions etc - a watering once a week, whilst the water-intensive crops - tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, beans and squashes etc. - I have done with buried soaker-hose in an attempt to both save time and keep the water where it's needed in a controlled way. On the whole this approach seems to have worked really well.

This is tomato 'Tumbler' I have been growing in pouches on the walls:


Lovely cherry fruits these, with a good flavour - very tempting as you walk past them! Most of the cordon tomatoes have been ripening too, although just yesterday I noticed one of the ground hugging varieties showing sign of the dreaded blight, so I am preparing to launch into green tomato chutney mode if things spread sooner rather than later.


I've also grown tomatillos this year - often also called husk tomatoes and good used for salsa. This is a variety called 'Violet':


One thing that has taken a real beating is the broccoli. I love butterflies, but the cabbage white's passion for my broccoli could literally be described as 'all-consuming'.


The numbers have been so great that although repeated attempts have been made to remove caterpillars to keep numbers down, i have decided the only real solution will be to cover them in future.

I also purposely let the squashes ramble a bit, but think I might reign them in a bit in future, although the frogs have absolutely loved the shady, moist habitat they've created. I have vegetable spaghetti and butternut squash on the way - and these are a nice compact pumpkin called 'Potimarron'.


My huge collection of pepper plants are now finally coming good. I was really concerned that the sweet peppers might not have a great time outside. It was so windy after they went in, immediately followed by the extreme heat and they seemed to take a real hit. The good news is though that apparently peppers are difficult to kill off - they might go dormant for a bit and then grow on when things improve, or even be a little stunted, but they are fighters. They are in full flow now and I'm hoping to keep them going as long as I did last year. This is a sweet pepper called 'Doux Long des Landes':


And this is a sweet bell-shaped variety called 'Purple Beauty':


It's not all veg though, some flowers too - and you can't beat dahlias for an assortment of colour:


I haven't covered all the garden here so I may do another update before long. I have already been pickling cornichons and various chutneys are definitely on the cards so I might do a post on that soon too!

Tuna Vadge

I like Bournemouth. Bournemouth is quite a cosmopolitan place and seemingly moreso now that a lot of the staff in various pubs and whatnot seem to be from Eastern Europe. I guess they are part of the half a million who have allegedly turned up in the UK from that neck of the woods, a slight improvement on the 15,000 the government had estimated.

Now, I can think of worse things than being waited on in waterholes by mostly blonde, always very polite and normally fairly sexy-looking Slavs, however the girl in the pub on Friday left me speechless. She wandered over to our table with a food order and kept saying "Vadge. Vadge."

At first I thought she was making reference to some 'veggie' meal. It took the best endeavours of my less smutty side, a couple of leaps of faith and my keen eyesight to realise she was actually proffering the 'Tuna Melt Baguette' I had ordered - 'Vadge' obviously being a suitable pronunciation for baguette.

"Tuna?" I said. "Vadge!" she said.

I greeted her warmly and tucked into my lunch, addding in my best 'Allo 'Allo! style, "Compliments to the Cock!"

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 25/08/06

Another week passed has and therefore the FFFFPFF here is. Been having week of prickly IT acts so please to leave captions for the following:



Big ups and portion of on-site support for bests thanking you pleeze.

IT Observations No. 241 - Highs and Lows

Doing IT related development and support, it's interesting the variety of reactions you get from people. I always try to be polite and really helpful and often people are really nice. You do some work, solve a problem, save someone some time and effort and often they are really thankful.

Occasionally though, people can be really quite horrible, obstructive, or frankly aggressive. I normally put this down to office work being inherently unhealthy. I think a lot of people with desk jobs just don't get out from behind them enough. Having seen IT related problems from both sides for years I endeavour to see things from a user's point of view as well as a creative or problem solving one.

One thing that intrigues me most is the departments within companies. I suppose their behaviour is like that of any defined social group. They are like packs - often with obvious alphas/controllers and lots of other different roles. It amazes me how different one department or team can be from another - and how often the behaviour or mannerisms of those in charge can affect that of the rest of the group. I guess, in the end, we all do what we have to do to fit in, manage or survive, regardless of the habitat.

Too Much Choice

One thing future generations are probably going to be amazed about is the amount of consumer choice we currently have in everyday life. The scale of modern market economies means we can be presented with a bewildering selection of whatever you want, 20 different types of baked beans in the supermarket, myriad ever-so-slightly-different electrical items competing for your attention, financial products, healthcare, education. You name it, choice is apparently the way ahead.

My problem with that is it's a load of wasteful, elitist bollocks isn't it? For all the supposed economies of scale of goods distribution, for example, it really means, in the UK, that for nine months of the year your apples come from South America, you can take a wildly polluting weekend break from your local airport to 20 European destinations on a whim and a staggeringly large proportion of everything else we buy, from potentially practical flat-pack furniture, to shit, throwaway plastic fancy goods, are shipped half way round the world from China.

I have touched on this before - True Cost Economics and the lack of it.

Locally, on the news today I saw a story about how children somewhere in England couldn't get places in their local school because it was full. I have no idea why, but I understand this could easily be because a load of parents from 20 miles away decided this was the right kind of school for little Tarquin and Fluffy and got in first. Resulting, of course, in said parents driving the children 20 miles to school every day, probably by 4x4, whilst the local parents were potentially forced to do something similar because the concept of choice had actually taken away their chance of having their children educated locally.

One of the Labour Government's keywords has been choice. This means that you can supposedly choose where to go to hospital and where your kids are educated. Our 'upper' schools are currently being turned into 'Centres of Excellence' - meaning they specialise in science or languages or whatnot. Why schools cannot be raised to a reasonable level of overall provision, without dressing them up with all sorts of bollocks I really don't know. I know for certain that in rural areas there is very little choice for the masses, parents have to accept what's available unless educating their children privately.

I don't even think humans can cope with the amount of choice we have now. I don't think we are gentically capable of dealing with it. How many times have you wandered into a café and been overwhelmed with the choice when wanting a simple cup of coffee? Or pleasantly surprised when the choice was limited to the realms of the sensible?

Interestingly, regardless of what was on view or on a menu, I have always found that, in the past, shops would always offer you what they were able to, whilst now if it isn't on the list it can be difficult to deal with. Almost anything you buy has to have a barcode, or a button on the till with it on, or it causes confusion because the poor schmuck pressing the buttons is a slave to the system too. Often poorly educated in whatever they are selling, they are an extension of the corporate machine.

This is the crux of it though. We have choice without choice. We have the choice some business and logistics demons have made up based on the scientifically studied hard coding of the human psyche. (That is one reason why we are a nation of fat bastards. They are forever drilling at our weaknesses.) This has become such an artform that they can frequently sell us shit, just by pressing a few psychological buttons. That's why they can confidently order up several million of something from China - because they can be sure of tempting you into buying it. That's why your supermarket now has a dedicated 'seasonal goods' aisle and you are strangely drawn to it.

That isn't choice, it's madness. And long term, it isn't sustainable. What we have now is management of the world by vast, corporate, money-grabbing pimps, with unprecedented knowledge of how people tick, who have few desires beyond amassing their own personal fortunes.

This is what free trade has brought us here in the UK. That's how we sit globally. Warms your heart doesn't it? Imagine what it would be like meeting with the people who make the stuff we buy and eat every day. Because you can bet that in most cases, whether they are British farmers, or Chinese factory workers, they are probably holding the shitty end of the stick.

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 18/08/06

Oooh, we appear to have stumbled upon a FFFFPFF! Today, in honour of all the wasteful people, your captions are invited for this please, courtesy of Recycle Western Riverside in that there London.

A Waste of Shame

I was watching the BBC News this morning and they showed a location item, up in Lincolnshire, where the local residents are up in arms because their council has implemented a new system for recycling and waste collection.

Several residents were standing outside a row of houses, wheelie bins piled to overflowing with stuff - and were chanting something appropriate whilst a guy from the council was interviewed.

Basically, their 'rubbish' is only being collected once every two weeks now instead of every week. I understand, on the other week, their council is collecting their recyclables (although notably not plastic) as this is a system many councils in the UK are implementing. Indeed my local council put this system in place over a year ago.

The rather sensible idea behind this is that people think more about recycling and composting etc. in order to reduce the amount of recyclate going in their bin. Recycling goes up and waste goes down - therefore they only collect actual waste every other week. Here, the amount of material being recycled has increased quite notably and the council has shown a certain amount of flexibility depending on circumstances - if you have a huge family etc. and I imagine each council will be doing something similar. My council also offer to come out to discuss with people how they can recycle more. Amusingly, I think the suggestion is they do this by going through your bin, which hopefully might get the point across.

It's interesting that it is by no means accepted by joe public that we cannot continue to create waste in the same and indeed greater volumes than we have been. Even disregarding the atrocious waste of resources, the UK is getting pretty full as it is. Landfilling waste is a fast diminishing option.

So how do these people expect their local council to recycle more and take more waste as well? As with many environmental issues, I think some people are just too entrenched in the 'I'm all right Jack' philosophy. And when something goes wrong that finally really impacts them, when their kids are dying of asthma or the water is lapping round their ankles, it will still be someone else's fault.

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 11/08/06

Okay, so it's Saturday already. Fair enough, but why harry the joy af a good FFFFPFF with time restrictions, I say.

We haven't had a nun for a while, so this week your captions are invited for this religious experience:


A suitably large portion of absolution free to every lucky winner.

The Recruiting Officer is One Today!!!

Yes, it's one whole year since I decided to take the plunge into the blogosphere and The Recruiting Officer was born. In that time we have covered various different subjects and have had just over 4,000 visits (about 5,300 hits). Hopefully at least some of our fledgling collective, whether you have read or also commented, have felt welcome. I like to hope we've all learned something occasionally, taken some action perhaps, or just had a laugh or two as a result of its existence.

Thank you for reading!!!

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 04/08/06

As a mark of respect for yesterday's story link to the dog who massacred all the teddies, I was looking for a nice picture of a dog with a toy for this week's FFFFPFF and came up with this.


I don't know if you can find something funny to say about it, however Wikipedia says it is the absolute definition of cuteness.

Stuffing Escape and Sand Ingress

For anyone who needs further proof of the madness and intrigue that lies within the south-west of England I offer you two delightful pieces of recent evidence. Oh - and they are laugh out loud funny, too. Unless you were there. Probably.

1. "Bear Bits Everywhere"
Guard dog savages priceless teddy bear collection...

2. "We accept you could have been removing sand from your genitalia."
Naturist's proposition results in friction...

Am I Green Or Orange?

I find consumer gullibility amazing these days, wrapped up as it is in a heady cocktail of brand chic and coolness. It's often another good example of how 'twas always probably thus, but now we can exploit a lot more resources on doing it.

You may be familiar with the phone company Orange (other telecom companies are available). Their latest TV advert amuses me because they recruited lots of their customers to go on a jaunt with them to erect scaffolding in the middle of nowhere, atop which they placed large inflatable orange creatures: a dolphin, a panther, a racoon and a canary to be precise.

The point of this? I quote, well paraphrase actually, "From a distance people all look alike, but when you get up close, you realise that everyone is different. That's why we've created four different talk plans to cater to everyone's needs."

Ummm... that doesn't make sense does it? If they said everyone is different and therefore that's why they are going to get a human being to ring you up and offer you an entirely bespoke call package based on your requirements, that would be treating you like an individual. But to say we are all individual as long as we fall into one of four large, inflatable, animal-like orange stereotypes is surely taking the piss?