Life, the Universe and Everything

I used to have a bookshop addiction. Then I discovered online bookshops such as Amazon. Not only is Amazon cheaper - even with the postage - they rarely seem to be out of stock. And they do secondhand too. Amazon is cheaper for music as well. I got a CD I wanted for £6 including postage. The HMV shop wanted £18. I can't see how High Street bookshops can survive :-(

I've been going to this event for decades but I seem to becoming addicted. You know how on BBC Radio 4, talk programmes, the guest always uses the phrase "in my book" from time to time? Well, Cheltenham Literature Festival is just the same except less technology is involved. The audience feedback mechanism is faster though - you just wave at the guy with the roving microphone and there you are asking Michael Mansfield, Oleg Gordievsky, John Irving or some other luminary a question in real time. None of that tedious modern emailing nonsense! So, yeah, they talk about their books but the other stuff is fun too. A guy called Peter Millar told us about being in East Berlin when the Wall fell in 1989. Matthew D’Ancona talked about "Being British" and Stella Rimmington gave us her ideas on what the real security threats are today. Still to come, we have Susie Orbach, Tony Benn and Kate Adie. And many more! I'm sure there must be at least one who will not s...

My 'Ashmead's Kernel' apple tree is a proper adult now and set about 300 large fruit. The local wildlife nibbled over half of them but there's still been a lot to eat and share. About 60 look perfect enough to store. I took a bag into the office and got some rave reviews. This is only right and proper - the variety is very sweet and very sharp. I bough a Cox's Orange Pippin for comparison porposes and it was bland. The tree itself still looks weighed down even though the crop is all picked Previous post about Ashmeads Kernel

Fuchsias are popular garden plants grown mainly for their many flowers. You can get food from them too. Around this time of year, you may see small berries hanging where there was previously a flower. They look like a very small almost black cherry. They are edible. Not a lot of people know that! Mine are Ok. See here for a general introduction to Fuchsia as a food plant with suggested varieties.

The kitchen garden can start to look a bit bare this time of the If like me, you get the urge to plant something, try overwintering onions or shallots. Every time you wander down the garden this winter, something will be happening! On a more practical note, you'll get a harvest earlier next year than with the normal spring planting. Look in Garden Centres for "sets" which are actually small onion bulbs (or in the case of shallots, full sized bulbs) Check the packet to make sure the variety is suitable for winter use. Push then into soft soil about 6" (15cm) apart with the tops just poking out. Well before Christmas, green shoots emerge and by June, they're ready to harvest. Some birds think it a fine game to pull them out of the soil so chuck on some netting for the first few months. The books suggest fertilising in March. Apart from that, there's not a lot to it. They are unlikely to dry out and they're out of the ground before most of the serious weed...

I was on a bus. Not a Clapham Omnibus - that would have been too easy. No, this was the festival bus at Sidmouth. It was about midnight and the bus wasn't going anywhere. I looked out the window and saw the reason why…. Beth, the lady in the rainbow coat had captured our bus driver. She's a storyteller and was in full flow. Our bus driver (middle) was hopelessly enthralled. On the left was some random member of the public similarly engrossed. As such, a standard hazard to traffic at folk festivals along with Morris dancers and buskers. We did get back to the camp site eventually but that, as they say, is another story…

It's a potato I tried growing in a pot this year. It's a "first early" which I though meant the same as a "new" potato. So I boiled them and they fell apart! Then I looked them up properly and found that they're best for baking - indeed, Waitrose sell them as "summer bakers". According to Alan Romans, William Sim of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, bred the original "Duke of York". Then in a field somewhere in Holland, it spontaneously mutated into the red form.... Alan Romans, seed potato expert extraordinaire