A sceptic's take on being human – or should that be virtuous?
And the star prize goes to –
Well of course it goes to the Morel which suddenly appeared at the back of the polytunnel. A quick tour around the internet – (my books only say what it is) – suggests that firstly it’s fiendishly difficult to grow artificially and secondly that it may be in a mycorrhizal relationship with the row of apples growing a few feet away. I just thought that it was a wonderful and serendipitous gift from the wild gods which will be joining some shop-bought distant cousins in a risotto tomorrow. It’s one of the rare spring fruiting fungi and I’ve never seen it before. The other spring fungus is the St George’s mushroom which we’ve gathered and eaten in the past but these days we’ve given up foraging them . In fact a couple of friends have developed strong allergies to them after many years.
An allotment update
Elsewhere on the allotment, spring seems to have sprung after a couple of false starts. While I was feeding the polytunnel strawberries which are already in flower, Madame picked an armful of rhubarb. The autumn raspberries that we planted last year are poking through their sheeps wool and wood chip mulch, and the top fruit trees are all very close to flowering – which may be a problem because we had our second real frost of the winter last night – so we hope they keep their flowers cosy and wrapped for a while yet. The soft fruit too is growing away fast, and my rescued blackberry cultivar is at last showing signs of outgrowing its infant problems. The Tayberry is, as always, growling with excitement.
After the recent wet weather the pond is full to the brim once more and the other surprise today was the amount of flower on the clematis which has sulked for five years and seems to have got its roots down at last. Notwithstanding the label it looks very like a Clematis montana to us.
The Equinox is next week and then the builders are coming to connect the kitchen and bathroom vents to the outside world – that’s after ten years of black mould and constant letters. I was beginning to wonder if we’d live to see the day!
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.
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