The Idler

A Country Diary – 31

12 October 2005

I’VE JUST RETURNED from removing about one hundred slugs from the leek and brussel sprout plants. There seem to be three kinds of slug. The most dreadful is the large orangey-brown one, which oozes white entrails when speared. Then there are the long, thin black ones which somehow seem less disgusting. And then, possibly the most deadly, there are the little light brown ones, which appear in great quantity, small, curly and slimy, like a breakfast cereal from the pits of hell. Instead of murdering them all, and in any case I’d forgotten the scissors, I decided to put them in my new nappy bins. The nappies having failed to compost in my compost bins, I moved them out of the compost, one by slimy one, and dumped them in two old dustbins. Alan has suggested I attach a tap at the bottom of the bins to allow super nappy liquid to drain out. His other idea was to dig a deep hole and throw them in it, which would be excellent advice if we had any land here. The real way to do it is to buy a wormery, but they cost eighty pounds and I have an ethical objection to spending a lot of money on growing things which are supposed to save you money. So let’s hope the slugs will destroy the nappies rather than my brassicas.

“A TOUCH OF THE allotment about it,” was my neighbour J.’s comment when I showed her my progress on the vegetable patch. She was implying that my self-built compost bins were a trifle ramshackle, amateurish, higgledy-piggledy. I explained that I was trying to do this whole thing on a budget of nought pounds, hence the charmingly rough and ready appearance of the composting system. I decided to move on to the leeks. Surely there’d be nothing to criticize about those proud specimens. But even though I thought I had followed her advice on leeks to the letter, it appears I’d done it wrong. “There are my leeks. I planted them in little holes, like you said!” I reported in triumph. “Well,” J. replied. “You don’t have nearly enough. And where have the holes gone?” “Well,” I said. “I thought you were supposed to earth them up. That’s what my book said.” “I’ve never seen any book that tells you to earth them up,” she replied. “They’ll get full of dirt.” She was kinder about my parsnips but withering about my carrots. “They’re tiny,” she scoffed, looking at the green shoots in the carrot patch. “Ours are enormous.” We inspected the compost. I had just piled up a layer of dying pea plants at the bottom of the new one, thinking I had created the perfect first layer. “Well, that’s no good,” she said. “They’re far too twiggy. They’ll never rot.” “But I thought pea plants were full of potassium or something?” I said, “That’s the roots. There’s nothing good in the plants. Just a waste. Why don’t you get a shredder? Then you can shred any twiggy stuff so it composts properly.” More cost. Surely if William Cobbett managed without a shredder, then nor should I be seduced by modern machinery. I showed her the denappied compost at the bottom of my first bin. “That’s not compost,” she said. Well, that’s a shame, because I had just used a load of it to create a new bed, using the mulch system recommended by Permaculturist and Idler gardening correspondent Graham Burnett. What you do is this: chop down the weeds and soak with water. Lay overlapping pieces of cardboard over the weeds. Cover with a six inch layer of compost, and then top with a layer of straw. The idea is that you can plant large seeded vegetables straight into the mulch. Surely that would impress Juliet, I thought? I showed my new Permaculture bed. “Why the straw?” she asked. “I’ve no idea,” I admitted. “Weeds?” “Yes, but you’re going to have problems with all those nettles behind the bed there,” she pointed out. “Still, ” she added. “It’s a big improvement on last year. Well done.” I cheered inside.

USING BITS of the broken National Trust gate, I started to build a treehouse in the vegetable patch. My idea is to provide an inducement for the kids to come up there and play, so I can combine the dreaded childcare with some useful and enjoyable work. The plan is to build a flat-topped structure about four foot high alongside the compost bins, to provide a viewing platform combined with a tool-store. We got as far as clearing the brambles and hawthorn and I placed two boards on top of the old wall for the children to sit on. They seemed to enjoy it. I also nailed in a couple of planks to make a walkway from the wall platforms to where the treehouse section will be. If I can build something fun enough, then perhaps we won’t have to drive to blimmin Bumper Back Yard and spend money on horrible food and sit on plastic chairs while they graze their elbows on plastic slides and instead we’ll have our own bumper back yard in our own back yard. I’ve started also to think about tyres, old tyres. They would seem to have so many uses, from flower or vegetable pots to children’s seats to effective holder of things down. Maybe you could put them around broccoli plants? Or take a tractor tyre, put a plastic sheet over it, fill it with water, and hey presto, a pond. On the pond issue, by the way, I put the old butler sink in the wheelbarrow, wheeled it up to the vegetable patch, put it along the side and Arthur filled it with water ferried up form the house in the watering can. Apparently it is a good idea to have a pond in your garden. I think because it attracts frogs which eat slugs but there may be other reasons.

THANKS to everyone who gave me composting advice. Clearly this is a complex subject. Thanks also for the village hall advice. We’re going to go ahead and have a private party in the village hall rather than a ceilidh, so at least we can get the place used a bit.

New Idler Out Today

It is with great pleasure that today we announce the release of the new Idler. Issue 36: Your Money or Your Life features further dispatches from the edges of culture, including an interview with Joe Rush of the Mutoid Waste Company, Edward Chancellor on how it’s credit not money that makes the world go round, Penny Rimbaud on God and money and an essay on the Medieval guilds. Plus there’s Bill and Zed’s Bad Advice, Damien Hirst’s cockney alphabet and a leisurely chat with Flashman author George Macdonald Fraser.

You can order your copy by clicking on the shop above or through Amazon. The Idler is also available from bookshops.

A Country Diary – 30

4 October 2005

IN MY VILLAGE there is a village hall. From the outside it is not a particularly prepossessing building; its roof is covered in moss, the grounds are overgrown, the steps weed-covered and the walls are of unappealing granite. But inside it retains much of its 1930s charm, with wood panelling, timbered roof open to the eaves and elegant hand lettering indicating the exits. It’s full of lovely old tressle tables and chairs plus there is a little stage in one corner. Local residents have managed to update it slightly, installing a new kitchen and updating the wiring. It is dedicated to a local vicar who was killed by an African king in 1896, after he attempted to convert the natives to Christianity.

I recently joined the village hall committee. The purpose of the committee to get the hall used more often and also to look into grants for refurbishment. A Village Hall Preservation Society, if you like. Apparently you can get grants from lottery funds for community regeneration. Anyway, at a meeting in the summer I suggested the idea of putting on a barn dance or ceilidh. Everyone agreed it was a good idea, as the local community rarely gets together, simply because there is nowhere to go. So I booked a band and asked my friend who has experience in such matters if he could help with applying for the necessary licences. I thought in particular it would be good to be able to sell beer and wine in order to raise money for the hall. This turns out to be quite straightforward. A registered licensee needs to be present at the event, but you also need a Public Entertainment Licence, because of the live music and dancing. Well, I sent off to the council for the forms for a Public Entertainment Licence. The amount of bureaucracy is mind-blowing. First you need to fill in the form and send it to the council. But the form has to be accompanied by a detailed plan of the hall and an Electrical Test Certificate. You also need to put an advert in the local paper within eight days of the council receiving your application. And you need to place a yellow copy of the application outside the building in question, in case any local fun-haters have some sort of objection. And the letter from the council explaining all the interminable hassle you will have to go through just so you can have eighty people dancing to a violin and tabor, ends with the following threat: “Any person providing, or allowing land or a premises to be used for the provision of Public Entertainment without a licence, may be liable to prosecution action, and if found guilty, liable to a fine not exceeding £20,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or both.” In other words, we know this is a headache, but don’t even think of putting on your little party without getting a licence or we’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, you horrible little hedonist, and anway, what’s wrong with staying sat home and watching TV?

It’s all absolutely dizzying and stomach-churningly awful, but it gets much worse. Having booked the bands for the dance, spoken to the man at the council, started to tell people about the event, put the yellow copy outside the hall, and called the local paper to ask about deadlines for adverts, I asked an electrician to inspect the hall for its electrical certificate, which visit cost £130. Three days later I got a quote from him saying it would cost £1,400 to get the hall up to the standard required. Emergency lighting needs to be installed, apparently. Well, I think that the hall has something like £700 in its account, and that the last beetle drive raised about £250. At this rate, it’s going to take us at least two years to save up the cash needed. We simply don’t have it. I thought of getting a sponsor in – The O2 Half Term Village Ceilidh – but I don’t think I’ve got the time to create a killer Powerpoint presentation on how ceilidhs will reinforce the 02 brand vales on a local level. Therefore I’m looking at having to cancel the whole thing, a simple little community dance destroyed by the health and safety fascists, the Puritan fun-destroyers, the nay-sayers, the anti-lifers, the paper shuffling bureaucrats spreading their deadly boredom around the country like a plague.

LAST NIGHT I DREAMT I took crack with Julie Burchill.

ARTHUR AND I cleaned the chimney, well, it’s not so much a chimney as a broad tube which comes out of the back of the wood burner. We straightened out a coat hanger and tied a brush to the end of it. This allowed Arthur to brush quite effectively to a height of a bout two feet. Then I got one of those modern tent pole things, the long bendy ones that fold up neatly into shoirt lengths. I think real chimney sweeps use something similar. You can put one section of the tent pole up the chimney, push it up, snap the next one into place and so on. It must have been about fiteen or twenty feet long in the end. No brushes but I rattled it around and dislodged some of the soot. The fire since has been working brilliantly. After three years I think I am finally getting the hang of it. Not only have we got a good wood store, but I’ve realised that if you shut the vents at the front the stove will pump out a nice heat and the logs will burn very slowly. Last night I shut the vents, and this morning opened them, and the fire lit itself again. Wonderful things.

I’VE DECIDED to cancel our ceilidh, defeated by central government regulations. They really do make it difficult to do anything fun. Instead, we’ll have a small party at home and ask for donations to the Village Hall Preservation Society. Maybe one day we’ll be able to raise the money needed for the blimmin emergency blimmin lighting.