The Idler

Country Diary: 50

10 January 2007
MY FRIEND Oli Claridge came down just before Christmas to build us a treehouse. We were lucky weatherwise: the three days he was here came just after a period of non-stop rain and just before a period of bitter cold. We spent about fifty pounds on materials, the basic beams, the screws and [...]

A Country Diary - 49

16 November 2006
MY BRASSICAS are disappointing me. There is one brussels sprout plant which has reached a reasonable height but the other two are barely a foot off the ground. Then there are the broccoli plants which I put in months ago. They seem stuck at dwarf level. When I look over fences at other [...]

A Country Diary - 48

21 September 2006

IT’S BEEN three months since the last country diary. How slack I have been. Must try harder. I resolve henceforward to write them weekly. The summer was long and hot and we had a great visit from Crass founders Penny and Bron, who completely renovated our front garden, planted an apple tree, built [...]

A Country Diary - 47

3 July 2006
TODAY I wandered though my raised beds in my little edible garden, marvelling at the bounty hanging from the branches, and those lines from Andrew Marvell’s The Garden came to mind: “The nectarine and curious peach, into my hands themselves do reach.” The peas have reached over six feet and many pods are [...]

A Country Diary - 46

7 June 2006
THANK GOD for the hot weather at last. I was beginning to grow extremely miserable. The endless winter was very depressing. Is this strange weather something to do with global warming and climate change? I sometimes ask a friend to explain it all to me but it never really sinks in. The vegetables [...]

A Country Diary - 45

15 May 2006
I HAVE VERY SAD NEWS to report about Rosie Blossom Brownpatch, our lovely bunny. Rosie had been a great companion and provided hours of fun for adults and kids alike. We had grown quite attached to her. She had recently moved from the kitchen to the wilder environment of the yard, where she [...]

A Country Diary - 44

24 April 2006
EVERY NOW AND THEN you read a book which is so inspiring and such a pleasure to read that you feel impelled to buy multiple copies, give them to your friends, and stride down Barnstaple High Street shouting “read this!”. You want to tell your girlfriend, the postman, the landlord and your neighbour. [...]

A Country Diary - 43

5 April 2006
AT LONG LAST Spring has arrived. We were beginning to think it would never come. The winter seemed to last for five months. It is still a bit cold, in fact there was a frost last night, and my toes are cold, but the sun is shining.
WE HAD a very enjoyable and instructive [...]

A Country Diary - 42

17 March 2006
TODAY I AM very sad. We have lost Rosie Blossom Brownpatch, our lovely fluffy bunny. Ten days ago we bought the rabbit, a white dwarf English T Rex, from the pet shop for Delilah’s birthday. Since then she has been a great source of fun, living in a basket in the corner of [...]

A Country Diary - 41

9 March 2006
A WORD ON varieties. To be able to choose your own variety of vegetable and therefore to free yourself of the narrow choice available in the supermarkets is one of the great pleasures of growing your own vegetables. In the first year I couldn’t get my head round all the different varieties and [...]

A Country Diary - 40

2 March 2006
THERE IS STILL snow on the ground, little hail-like white spheres are scattered about the place. They look like those awful polystyrene balls that fill beanbags. Even beanbags, it seems, are made of oil-based products these days. What happened to beans? Does anyone know the difference between the sprout and the bean? (a [...]

A Country Diary - 39

7 February 2006
THIS WEEK I have been mainly mulching. I bought a superb book called Organic Gardening by the appropriately and alliterativeley named Pauline Pears and Sue Stickland (Mitchell Beazley, £8.99). The authors are from the wonderful Henry Doubleday Research Centre, the organic gardening association started by the pionering Laurence D. Holmes. Brilliantly written and [...]

A Country Diary - 38

11 January 2005
YESTERDAY I WAS up in front of the beak for my driving offences. I had tried to mitigate the sentence by taking all my documents, MOT, licence, insurance, into the police station last week and filling in a form. The policewoman on duty put a note on the form to the effect that [...]

A Country Diary - 37

19 December 2005
THE FRONT GARDEN, while a mess, does at least have some colour in it. The three hellebores I planted last year are starting to flower. The primroses in the bed outside the kitchen window seem to flower perpetually. There is an alpine thing of some sort with lots of little pink flowers that [...]

A Country Diary - 36

7 December 2005
MORE PROBLEMS WITH cars. This morning I received a summons, asking me to attend a court appearance in January where I would be accused of driving without insurance and failing to produce my driving license and MOT when asked to by police. This relates to my car crash in the summer, when I [...]

A Country Diary - 35

29 November 2005
IT’S BEEN COLD, very cold. Last Friday young Arthur rushed into my room and said, “it snowed!” I opened the curtains and saw that he was right. School was cancelled, we made a snowman, and after lunch, we took the boogie board sledging. Surfboards make fantastic sledges. They go like the clappers. This [...]

A Country Diary - 34

21 November 2005
WE’VE HAD SOME deliciously cold and frosty mornings, lately. It’s been like a Ready Brek ad, walking Arthur up to the well by the church in the mornings where the school bus picks him up. I think I’m supposed to bring the geraniums indoors now but I keep forgetting. On the vegetable front, [...]

A Country Diary - 33

10 November 2005
FOR A WHILE NOW, I have been entertaining idle fancies of owning a Land Rover. My American Day Van doesn’t seem to fit down here any more. It’s too bourgeois and townie. Too flash. Land Rovers, however, are possessed of a special something. In embracing total utility, they created their own very attractive [...]

A Country Diary - 32

1 November 2005
IT’S JUST PAST TEN AM and I’ve already sowed sixty four broad bean seeds, a variety called Imperial Green Longpod. I carefully read Lawrence D. Hills on the subject, and Dr Heyasson. Then I came back to the house and read them again, and realised I’d done it wrong: you’re supposed to stagger [...]

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, [...]