A sceptic's take on being human – or should that be virtuous?
The Potwell Inn Quiz
I thought it was time we had a bit of a quiz to whittle away at the endless hours of freedom we once thought would be fun. The quiz will show you whether you’re a potential prime minister not.
As winter approaches do you:
Order sufficient cloches and fleece to protect your crops?
Resolve to do it sometime soon, honestly?
Yawn and pour yourself another drink?
The Met Office issues a frost warning for your area. Do you:
Cover your tender plants with fleece?
Tell yourself you’ve had enough of experts?
Reproach your head gardener for bothering you with trivial stuff like frosts?
The prediction of frost fails to materialise. Do you:
Leave the frost protection in place until the second week in May?
Take it off because weather forecasts are rubbish?
Sell the fleece at a loss in a car boot sale and buy a cigar?
The frost comes again several days later and you lose all your plants. Do you:
Replant with the spares you sowed weeks previously?
Attempt to get some more and find the website is overloaded?
Wait until it’s dark and steal them off your neighbour?
The force is with you and you have a surplus of replacement plants after the frost. Do you:
Give them to your unfortunate neighbours, hoping that they’d have done the same for you?
Chuck them on the compost because you don’t need them?
Attempt to sell them at grossly inflated prices?
A score of 5 makes you a confounded Trotskyite who should be horsewhipped
A score of 15 suggests you should start preparing yourself for higher office at once.
I've spent my life doing a lot of things, all of them interesting and many of them great fun.
When most people see my CV they probably think I'm making things up because it includes being a rather bad welder and engineering dogsbody, a potter, a groundsman and bus driver. I taught in a prison and in one of those ghastly old mental institutions as an art therapist and I spent ten years as a community artist. I was one of the founding members of Spike Island, which began life as Artspace Bristol. ! wrote a column for Bristol Evening Post (I got sacked three times, in which I take some pride) and I worked in local and network radio and then finally became an Anglican parish priest for 25 years, retiring at 68 when I realised that the institutional church and me were on different paths.
What interests me? It would be easier to list what doesn't, but I love cooking and baking with our home grown ingredients. I'm fascinated by botany and wildlife in general, and botanical illustration. We have a camper van that takes us to the wild places, we love walking, especially in the hills, and we take too many photographs.
But what really animates me is the question "what does it mean to be human?". I've spent my life exploring it in every possible way and the answer is ..... well, today it's sitting in the van in the rain and looking across Ramsey Sound towards Ramsey Island. But it might as easily be digging potatoes or making pickle, singing or finding an orchid or just sitting. But it sure as hell doesn't mean getting a promotion, beasting your co-workers or being obsequious to power, which ensured that my rise to greatness in the Church of England flatlined 30 years ago after about 2 days. But I'm still here and still searching for that elusive sweet spot, and I don't have to please anyone any more.
Over the last 50 or so years we've had a succession of gardens, some more like wildernesses when we were both working full-time, but now we're back in the game with our two allotments in Bath.
View all posts by Dave Pole
I thought it was time we had a bit of a quiz to whittle away at the endless hours of freedom we once thought would be fun. The quiz will show you whether you’re a potential prime minister not.