Chelsea

My favourite week in the gardening calandar has arrived!

For those of you heading to Chelsea, perhaps for the first time, i have compiled a survival guide to making the most of your day.

1. Get there early. In fact, get there when it opens. Not only will you be able to get round the show gardens whilst most people are still having their breakfast you’ll also have the chance to see the BBC filming their coverage. This brings me nicely onto point two...

2. Play BBC presenter Bingo. Main targets are Alan Titchmarsh, Joe Swift (normally wearing a Panama), Jekka McVicar (normally manning her stand in the Pavilion) and Carol Klein. Bonus points for spotting two of them together. Marvel at how much make-up Alan is wearing.

3. Pack your own lunch. This may seem tight but the Chelsea showground is a parallel universe where everything is quadruple the price of anywhere else.

4. Ignoring point three for a second - splash out on a glass of Pimms. It’s Chelsea, you deserve it!

5. Control your impulse to buy multiple bits of gardening tat. You don’t need a decorative string holder however much you think you do. Same goes for lace-up wellies, pink watering cans and plastic garden clogs with a ‘wacky’ tomato design. I’m speaking from bitter experience here.

6. Take change for seed catalogues in the Pavilion. The exhibitors will look at you with the contempt you deserve when you offer up a tenner for a 20p brochure.

7. Take lots of photos and ask lots of questions.

8. Finally, get a cab back to your main transport hub (Victoria in my case). There’s no point in being a martyr trying to carry home all those impulse buys on the tube.

Behold......

.....the fruits of my labour at Oh Sew Brixton’s ‘Make a skirt’ workshop last Monday.

The tutor described my seams as ‘perfectly straight and neat’; I almost cried with joy.

Just need the weather to improve so it can get its first outing. For the meantime I will stick to trying it on once a day and marvelling at how un-handmade it looks.

Where's my cat?

From time to time you hear tales of how attempts to rescue an animal in distress, normally a dog in the sea, can lead to the death of several people. We experienced something a little similar at RCC over the weekend (thankfully without the deaths).


I won’t go into too many details out of respect for my lovely neighbours but needless to say an incident last Saturday with a missing kitten lead to an injured leg and a visit from the paramedics, fire brigade and six police officers.

So, the moral of this story is - cats are a pain in the arse.

No excuses

I’m not going to bother apologising for the shockingly long time that has elapse between posts. My only excuse is I’ve been busy doing things in order to write about them. Swings and roundabouts, people. Swings and roundabouts.

First up is my new found love of sewing. You’re all aware of my inability to knit so it stands to reason that there must be one craft on the planet that i can take to, even on an elementary level. Having been inspired by the quilting exhibition at the V&A I am now the proud (?) owner of an Argos value sewing machine – a snip at £60. It’s hardly the most sophisticated piece of kit (I’ve already discovered it won’t do a decent satin stitch) but given my tendency to start crafts only to discover I’m rubbish at them a nanosecond later it seemed like a sensible level of expenditure.

Having played around for a week on my own it was blatantly obvious it was time to call in the professionals, so i enrolled on a beginners course at Oh Sew Brixton run by a lovely lady called Fiona. The result of her beginners course was the lovely bag below – i am so proud of myself (and Fiona for having the patience to push me to the finish).

In other news, i helped out Omlet (the Eglu makers) at the Ideal Home Exhibition. It was great to spend a day talking chickens. The level of interest from the general public was incredible; we were swamped with enquiries all day and i chatted to interested novices and experienced urban hen keepers alike. I managed to sell a couple of Eglus so, clearly impressed with my sales patter, Omlet have invited me to work for them at the Grand Designs Live exhibition. I’ll be there on 8th and 9th May - if you’re going please come along and say hi.

Everything at RCC is in full spring mode, but shamefully I am lagging behind the in garden. One of the reasons for this is the hens have eaten everything I’ve planted so far. They’ve launched a full scale attack on the strawberry plants, reducing them to stalks, and trampled the rocket and lettuce into submission. There was no other alternative but to curtail their free-ranging to the bottom third of the garden with some chicken fencing. This, as expected, went down like a lead balloon - cue angry clucking and much giving of the evil, beady chicken-eye.

To sweeten the blow I scrounged an old tyre off our local mechanic to give the girls something new to play with. Nice idea in principle; but how on Earth was I supposed to get a car tyre and my vast collection of shopping bags back to RCC on foot? Never one to be overcome by logistical barriers i came up with the genius idea of rolling it alongside me – big mistake. All was going well until the path dipped rapidly downhill and the tyre shot off at breakneck speed towards an unsuspecting pensioner. Only the last minute intervention of the park gates prevented said man from becoming a geriatric skittle. Despite my frantic apology he was distinctly unimpressed with my blatant disregard for health and safety. I carried it the remainder of the way home, head hung in shame....

Toto, i don't think we're in Croydon anymore

This weekend, in a departure from the norm, Mr Swift and i manage to venture further than the Spar at the end of our road (shock, horror). While Mr S went to Stanford Bride to see Villa get their arse kicked 7-1, I had a thoroughly entertaining day out at a couple of new exhibitions in London-town.

The first was the Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum to commemorate the 70th anniversary of rationing. Now, this was always going to be a winner with me; digging for victory, make do and mend – right up my street!

One of the most entertaining aspects of the exhibit are the ‘Food Flashes’; brief instructional films intended to help the public in rationing food and goods during the Second World War. Some were very tongue in cheek; others had become unintentionally hilarious with the passing of time. I recommend you go for them alone.

In an unexpected twist, the museum’s cafe is serving up dishes based on Ministry of Food recipes. I treated myself to Mrs Harwood’s cheese and lentil pie, which was so delicious i would happily eat it every day for the rest of the year, and chocolate syrup cake, of which i cannot say the same.

I then ventured over to the V&A to the Quilts: 1700 – 2010 exhibition. I’ve already documented my aptitude for other crafts such as knitting, but there’s always been a part of me that’s wanted to give quilting a go. I remember my Mother making a patchwork quilt for my Grandfather, gathering material from clothes given to her from various extended family members. My Grandfather died 13 years ago but the quilt remains in the family as a snapshot of social history of the time, and more importantly as a hideous reminder of some of the terrible fashions in the 80s.

The exhibition was full of incredibly intricate quilts that were breathtaking in their execution. However, i found myself most moved by possibly the least showy quilt in the place - The Changri quilt, created in secrecy by a troup of Girl Guides who were Japanese prisoners of war. There’s a link to their story here.

Finally, if that wasn’t enough i topped the weekend off my making my first ever Easter cupcakes. I hope the hardworking staff of Post Magazine appreciate them tomorrow. Never fear Research and Policy, if no-one dies over at Incisive Media I’ll be making another dozen on Wednesday evening.

RCC's first three egg day

Well done M,T and B! I couldn't be more proud if i'd laid them myself.

Viva Spring

Yesterday was the vernal equinox, the official start of Spring. Yippie!

Eggs traditionally play a big part in celebrating the vernal equinox. They were often eaten, painted or given as presents. As I’m in the process of recovering from gastroenteritis (happy days) I gave the eating part a miss, but I was very thankful firstly for the arrival of a busy season for the garden and also for the two eggs the girls laid.

On the subject of eggs i'm still none the wiser as to the second layers secret identity. I've formulated a new theory that these eggs could be the result of not one, but two girls efforts. Why? Well, we’ve had a mystery egg for eight straight days now. Chickens take 25.5 hours to make an egg, meaning if it was a single girl she should have had a day off by now (Margot's record is six consecutive days). The plot thickens...

Finally, we appear to have a truce in the hen/cat war as today’s picture demonstrates. Eli’s doing his best to pull off a nonchalant stance, I’m sure he’s secretly terrified. Long may the casual indifference continue.

Right, off to take advantage of the weather and plant some seeds.

P.S – you may have noticed that in today’s Observer there’s is a guide to pets in which some women promoting her soon-to be-published book on chicken-keeping reiterates the nonsense that hens are as easy to keep as goldfish. For the last time people, NO THEY ARE NOT.