Many hands, in the light, work.

In a weekend of limited allotment-time, we managed a couple of quick trips up to the plot. Hearing that there was a skip on site, Kasia and I dashed up there on Friday after work to rid our patch of some of the larger bits of detritus still littering the place. I managed a few more hours on Saturday morning, which I spent raking and bagging as much of the broken glass, plastic and dried bits of wood that still sit on top of the soil we will one day grow stuff in.

Restaurant Review: Miller and Carter, Newcastle upon Tyne

What with the recent up-tick in religious barbarism, and Europe threatening to fall apart in any one of a number of directions, you'd have thought there was enough negativity in the world at the minute without fools like me adding to it with sneering eviscerations of food outlets, and, of course, you'd be right. Yet, here we still are! The thing is, there were sufficient monumentally duff and dissonant qualities in the meal I shared with friends on a recent get-together at Miller and Carter in Newcastle that not to pass mention of it would be akin to dereliction of duty. Plus, the meal managed to somehow get even more annoying once I'd had time to - literally and figuratively - digest it. Life is short and people need to be told. That's my excuse for what follows, anyhow.

A Rake and Progress

Things are really moving along at the new site as the mass clean-up job continues apace. We've hit the total jackpot in terms of plot neighbours as our (actual house) neighbour Bob and various others have put in some serious amounts of work during the week, setting fires with the brambles we'd hacked down and raked up, laying paths and pulling up no end of the utter shit that has strewn this patch for some time. It was the most heartening thing in the world to get to the plot on Saturday and see how much had happened without us; we couldn't be more grateful.

Back In The Game!

What have have we done? Signed up for a new allotment, that's what! Or, rather, we've signed up for what will, at some point in the future, be an allotment. Right now it's a bramble-strewn former pigeon loft dumping ground. But, in its favour,  it's our bramble-strewn former pigeon loft dumping ground, and there aren't any plans to close it down. After having a look round a couple of potential plots we decided that the fact that this site in Benwell is less than 5 minutes walk from our front door trumps everything.