STAN SMITH ISN'T A SHOE..

Living in London and being a member of the British Library, the English Speaking Union, the Royal Academy and the Victoria & Albert Museum means that she has lots of things to do when the weather is dire or when they have something fun / interesting to watch or listen to.

On Wednesday off she went to the V&A to listen to a talk being given by Stan Smith.

No, she isn't dotty because he isn't just a name that Addidas puts on a white leather shoe, for those of a certain age, he is the young American who won the 1972 Wimbledon singles title and lots of other titles as well.

He's the man who married the first woman to wear a white sweater with the orange P, the P stands for Princeton. Margory Gengler was a phenomenal tennis player who swapped tennis for marrying Stan and having their four children.

When she saw the talk advertised in the Autumn programme of the V&A, memories flooded into her mind, memories of Andalucia in the '70s.

I have written before about her friend, his name was Lee Setomer. Lee had been a civil engineer who settled in the very early '50s in southern Spain buying a vast acreage of land to the back of Torremolinos.

His hospitality was legendary and there were always people staying and coming and going. 

And that is where she met this couple, they were engaged to be married, Margy gave her parents' address in Locust Valley but time moves on and she never did call or write to get in contact with her. 

And forty five years later.. they were going to be here in London at the V&A and he was going to talk about 'How people think I'm a shoe'.

She was early and first in line, behind her came a couple who introduced themselves, they were brother and sister, her name was Charlotte and his was John Beddington,.

When she asked them if they knew the Smiths, he smiled and said he had played tennis with Stan two weeks ago and when he asked her if she knew the Smiths she laughed and said "this will be the first time I've seen them in 45 years" and told them about meeting them all those years ago.

They were let into the museum and guided to the lecture hall, suddenly Margy was there and greeted the couple with whom she was walking and John said "And here is someone whom you haven't seen for a very long time.." 

And my mama shook her hand and said "Andalucia, the summer of 1973, Louise, your mother and you were staying with a friend of mine".. and Margy smiled and said "Yes, indeed we were, with Lee Setomer".

The lecture hall was packed.. full to the brim.. of all different ages, to listen to a man talk of his life. A man who has led a 'good' life. A man who has never disgraced his family.

She left the lecture hall and smiled as she walked home. How very pleasant to hear a talk of good and happy things that people have done with their families and for other people, for there are tennis players whose lives are train wrecks and whose behavior on and off the court leaves a great deal to be desired. 

So, take our word for it.. Stan Smith ain't just a shoe.

GeeGee Parrot.
September 21st, 2018. 

THE EASYLIFEGROUP CATALOGUE.. WHAT A WASTE OF TIME & MONEY.

Sometimes you should realise that some deals are too good to true and sadly, after paying quite a bit of money on the 5th September to the EasyLifeGroup catalogue for four items to be delivered, she realises this is true.

After waiting for over a week, she had to call them and ask "Where is my order?" A customer service representative told her that Yodel had been unable to deliver the items as the address didn't exist.. she told them in a rather sarcastic tome of voice that as DPD, ParcelForce, the Royal Mail and Uber all find this house with no problem whatsoever on a regular basis she found that really hard to believe or understand.

The EasyLifeGroup customer service woman said that the order would be delivered on Monday, 17th of September. So she put a large note on the door but guess what? Despite the large note, despite her being in ALL day and Yodel having her mobile number they failed, yet again, in the simple task of delivering this order.

And despite multiple calls and emails to the EasyLife Group customer service department on Tuesday, 18th September no one had the courtesy to respond explaining why the goods did not arrive on Monday.

So having checked to see if there were any emails from this company this morning, she gave up.. she telephoned their customer service department, there is absolutely no point in emailing them as they never respond, and waited in line on the telehone for eleven minutes and told a man that she wanted a full refund.

He said it would take at least two weeks for this to be activated.. when she asked why it would take so long, his response was it has to be sanctioned and then to go through our banking system.

You know what?

She has had it with these online virtual 'shops', their delivery company are usually rubbish, they don't deliver on time which is a waste of time and so she's going to go to WILCO - bless their hearts - on Fulham Broadway, she will look at their catalogue, place an order and get the order delivered to the shop.

Job done.. yes, she may pay pay a fraction more BUT.. she won't have to wait for over two weeks and still not have the goods for which she paid .. she'll get the goods within two days with no delivery fee.

GeeGee Parrot.
September 20th, 2018.

EVEN GREENER.. WHISTL & HERMES.. THREE COMPANIES THAT ARE A NIGHTMARE TO DEAL WITH..

Regular readers of my blog will know that she works a couple of allotments on which she grows most of what we eat in the way of fruit and vegetables. She is constantly adding things to improve and replenish the soil by way of compost, horse manure and wood chippings and recently, she has added / introduced Bokashi bins to the set-up as well.

Bokashi works on all food waste by way of fermentation and it is speedy! So she contacted a company called Even Greener who supply Bokashi bins and the fermented bran which does the fermenting process.

The two pairs of bins arrived but they were incomplete. Each pair of bins is supposed to have an two inner trays, two taps, two lids, a bag of bran, a scoop and a padle with which to flatten down the food waste. She was missing a lot of these items and complained to their customer service.

They said replacement items would be sent out. Then she got an email saying that the goods were delivered two Saturdays ago.. to which she replied "Not possible, there wasn't anyone here at the house. Send me my goods for which I have paid".

So they agreed to send another delivery, she received an email from Even Greener this morning saying delivery would be attempted today.. so she took a book, a cushion, a mug of coffee and went upstairs to wait for the delivery. Then she was told at 15.00 that the delivery would be between 16.00 & 20.00 hours, so she stayed upstairs reading her book on the steps until 20.30.

Havin received no delivery, she contacted Whistl on their Chat line and was told that they had subcontracted the delivery out and that the item had been delivered.. by an Hermes courier.. oh groan.. for they are renowned for being the worlds worst possible courier company and there on the Hermes website it said.. 'delivered to recption at 18.26'.

What a load of crap.. we don't live in an office block or a hotel or a block of flats.. the driver has either ditched the package or delivered it to a wrong address.. go and have a look at what customers write on Facebook about Hermes as a delivery company, I promise you it will make your hair turn white instantly.. forget about over night!

So she took photographic evidence of her 'Chats' with Whistl who suddenly said "we can only talk with the account holders and not the person to whom the delivery is going to.." so she has sent these photos back to customer service dept at Even Greener and wonders if they will repay her some money.. for she will never ever do business with them again and neither will she ever buy anything from a company who use Whistl or Hermes as their delivery agents.

ParcelForce.. how she lurves these guys and girls.. you pay your money and the goods arrive.. always on time and.. sometimes before the due time.. sigh.

But at least it was a good book.. it was the latest Quentin Jardine 'Bob Skinner' thriller. Pity he doesn't write faster..

GeeGee Parrot.
September 13th, 2018.

SPINYAPPLES AKA PINEAPPLES ARE BACK.

Oh.. the joy! She went and had her new tooth fitted yesterday.. it isn't great. Her old dentist Doctor George Taylor would be horrified by it and so too would Doctor Crease, who did all the dental work when she was a child, but these two lovely men who were brilliant dentists are now both dead and she cannot go around just with that ugly stump for ever, can she?

So put up with it, she must.

However, her day got considerably better when she walked up the North End Road and came across Geoff and Sally's fruit and veg stall selling the most gloriously ripe spinyapples - you know them as Pineapples - at two for £1.50!

So she spent the huge sum of £4.00 and left with three ruby grapefruits, a huge bowl of bananas and two spiny jobs.

On up the road she went to see and talk to David, he always has fresh beetroot, so she slid £2.00 into his hand and he slid a bowl of small beetroot and six lemons into her basket. For a total of £6.00 she now had lots of fresh fruit and beetroots.

Off up the road she continued. Only to see something sad on the side of the road by St.John's church. It was a beautifully marked pigeon lying on its' back with not a trace of blood, the body was still warm and soft. She put her bags down and picked the body up, walked into the churchyard and laid it down on its tummy underneath a tree.

And her thoughts flashed back of holding Dagga as he died in her hands.. Poor pigeon. We know that people don't like them but we do and having had Tumbling Doves when she was a child and Peter-the-Pigeon for seven years, she knows how funny and intelligent they are.

Oi vey..

Next into Holland & Barrett which is a health food store, only to discover that they didn't stock pure Vit C, their products had all manner of evil fillers and, God forbid, sweetners in them! No wonder people are obese and overweight. These wretched manuafacturers slip ghastly things into everything.. fillers made of corn and wheat. Both of which trip off hives and sore swollen joints within half an hour of her ingesting them.

Up onto the Broadway to catch a bus home, stopping off at our Lebanese friends house to have a coffee and show them the new tooth, they were polite but Myra rolled her eyes.. which said it all.

Next stop home.. I was waiting for her on the top of our bedroom door and she reached up to stroke me and said that we had a huge treat for tea. Tea? We never have tea, I thought, I wonder what she has brought home.

She took off her jacket and shoes and went into yumyum taking the big bag with her. There was the sound of chopping and then I smelt.. SPINYAPPLE! Oh, yum.. we haven't had a fresh and properly ripe ones for ages.. WHAT A TREAT!

Peeled and chopped into bite sized pieces she brought the big plate into the bedroom and we both slid up onto the bed. She had the wisdom to bring a towel and she draped it over her left shoulder whereupon up I hopped and we settled down to eat this, one of the most delicious of all fruits, it was truly delicious and tasty.. Scrummydumptious.. and Slurpicious in fact.

And so we say "Thank you Geoff for running such a great fruit and veg stall".

GeeGee Parrot.
September 13th, 2018.

FRIDGE PICKERS WEAR BIGGER KNICKERS..

Yes, they do! So it's a good thing that I don't know how to open chilly white larder, isn't it? For it always has got something tasty tucked away inside, she eats twice a day, we share our morning fast breaking meal.. you know this as breakfast.. it is always features boiled eggs, sometimes cheese if she has any of our own cucumbers or fruit.

But before this, when she first wakes up at some hideous hour, she makes a mug of LapySang tea and so that's what she starts her day with. She'll have been into the bathroom and put in her first lot of eye drops. They make her eyesight a bit 'dodgy' for a while so she has trained herself to wake up early in order to take this medication and then she goes back to bed with her tea and lies still whilst her eyes absorb the liquid.

I get up much later.. I don't like waking up early, we parrots like a full twelve hours sleep and get grumpy if we don't get it! I wake up to the sounds of activity in yumyum hq, water being boiled, the rattle of eggs boiling in a pan, chilly larder's door being opened, cutlery on china, all good sounds I'm sure that you'll agree.

She's trim to the point of being slim but not thin, she has too much muscle to be thin. You cannot work as physically hard as she does for the hours that she does if you are unfit or fat. Surprisingly for other people but not for her, she finds her body works best in hot weather, really hot weather!

This summer was perfect! She made new vegetable beds, cleared the terrace of invasive herbs and yes, it wasn't glamourous to have sweat dripping off her nose but she did a huge amount of work.

Then she comes home and we eat our supper together, I may, of course, been with her and she always makes sure that I have a full bowl of delicious things but she only eats apples and drinks water whilst she works at the plots, sometimes she'll make a pot of coffee if Joska or Corinne are there but usually she works all through the day without a break.

Supper is usually some meat or fish with whatever she has picked from the allotment. A courgette, a lettuce, chard, spinach, chicory and sometimes it is just vegetable, a huge bowl of steamed vegetables ith olive oil and herbs with garlic and maybe an apple with a sliver of cheese and a piece of dark chocolate as a HUGE treat.

Which brings me back to the title of this post.. she doesn't ever pick at what's in the fridge but she did find a breathtakingly wondrously good treat in the store cupboard last week!

You may well be aware of the way that some companies have changed the size of their packaging so that the contents are smaller .. with the prices remaining the same.. so about a year ago there was great excitement in a shop called PoundWorld, sadly no longer in operation, because it had the DARK chocolate Toblerones.. IN THE BIG BAR SIZE for £1.00!

She couldn't remember when she had last seen the dark edition of this chocolate on sale anywhere, so went 'Banco' and bought several bars and carried these treasures home. She ate one.. not all in one go I hasten to add.. and put the others most carefully away up high on a shelf in the store room well out of the reach of Mr. Mouse.. And forgot about them!

So you can imagine the surprise and pleasure she experienced when she went into the storeroom last Saturday to get a bottle of her favourite herb mix which she gets from The Spice Maker and to tidy and dust shelves and lookie lookie, she came across her stash of chocolate!

I don't know if Toblerone make the dark chocolate edition throughout the year or if it is a special edition but it's certainly a special treat for her. I am never given chocolate as it is poisonous for all animals and birds, she only eats one piece at a time.. very slowly and licks her lips.

And this is why she only wears a size 10 UK - USA 6 jeans!

GeeGee Parrot.
September 12th, 2018.

9.11.. DAGGA DIED 14 YEARS AGO.

9.11 is a dreadful date.. One that invokes anger, disbelief, horror and great sadness. It is also the date that Dagga-the-Parrot died.

So it was a quiet morning here in deepest Knightsbridge, she spoke with a couple of friends and then asked me if I wanted to go to the allotments. "Neh" I said and flew off speedily in the opposite direction.

So off she trudged to catch several buses and to wreck havoc on an unsuspecting clematis which had gobbled up a plum tree.

Poor little plum tree, an evil blackberry shoot which had shot up and grown through the tree had enabled the clematis to climb up and twist itself all through the upper branches. The growth was so thick that you couldn't see daylight if you stood at the base of the tree.

But strong hands, a good pair of secaturs and two hours later little tree was free and naughty clematis clippings were in the incinerator and she had pruned the tree at the same time.

She then sat at the table and looked at where she buried her most beloved bird.. wrapped in a shroud of red felt, his body had been placed into the grave that Stephen, a fellow plot holder and parrot lover who had Douglas, an Orange Winged Amazon, had dug for her.

There aren't any words to describe how you feel when a much beloved animal dies.. they had been together for sixteen years. Yes, your maths are correct, she has had African Greys aka CAG (Congolese African Grey) parrots in her life for over thirty years.

Today she has an appointment to have her new crown fitted.. she hopes for her dentists sake that it fits and looks better than the last one he made for her which was dreadful. So dreadful that the Senior Consultant at Guys Dental Hospital was visibly appalled at the shoddy work and she wrote a very strongly worded letter to her dentist, a copy of which she received.

It is a dull day here, the sky is the colour of dirty dishwater with not a trace of sunlight to be seen. She will come back home after the dental appointment as there is housework to be done and it looks as if the skies could open at any minute and pour buckets of rain down.

Tomorrows post will be more cheerful.. it will be about food and fridges.. nope, Beaky is shut, you'll have to read the blog tomorrow to know what I'm talking about. PipPip.

GeeGee parrot.
September 12th, 2018.

HER LEFT SMALL TOE IS BROKEN, SHE'S GOT A VERRUCA & THERE ARE APPLE TREES TO ORDER & PLANT..

Grrrr.. Ouch.. That hurt breaking her little toe. In fact both of her feet were mighty painful for three weeks but now the swelling has gone down from around her broken toe, life is not quite so gruesome.

You can't put a small toe into plaster, what they did was strap it to her next toe and recommend that she take Knitbone, a proven Homeopathic remedy which assists in the healing of broken bones.

And as if not to be left out, underneath her right foot, absolutely in the middle of the ball of her foot, is a verruca! The first one she has ever had and she is at a complete loss as to how she got it. 

But.. however she got it.. it's mighty sore. She has to treat it twice a day and wear a pad to prevent the bandage being rubbed.

This makes wearing either her gardening boots or shoes absolutely impossible, she's only able to wear sandals and with the departure of summer, the weather is becoming cooler and it's rained a few times..  so grrr is her favourite expression at the moment!  

Never mind, it hasn't stopped her from 'cracking on' with her intensive plans for changing plots number 35 and 37.

She cut back two of her oldest roses, they had grown too leggy and a couple of blackberries had grown up through them, so as soon as the fruit ripened, she cut the roses down by two thirds.

In the long bed in front of these roses she plans to plant a couple of Apple trees. One will certainly be a Russet but which variety of russet is what she has to decide.

There are two apple trees at the entrance to the plots, one is Temptation, which is a late variety and the other has two varieties on the same tree, one of which is a variety of russet, but which russet is it? 

She thinks it could be an Egremont Russet as the skin is entirely 'khaki' coloured and rough to touch, the flesh is dense, creamy coloured and it tastes divine but she has noticed that it sometimes has a disease called Bitter Pit.

However, she has come across a website called Garden Focus and this gives good, very detailed information upon the care and prevention of this and other apple tree diseases.

The other variety will be a James Grieve, one of which she already has, it's partially self-fertile, as is Egremont Russet and they'll be each others' pollination partners.

She will order these two bare rooted trees from a company called Victoriana Nursery Garden, they will be delivered in October / November time, so she had better shake a leg and get the ground ready to receive these two new babies. 

In the meantime, she's lots to do before it gets to be real autumnal weather, multiple barrowloads of manure have to be carted down the track and put around all the existing fruit trees as a mulch.

More barrowloads of manure has to go onto all the raised beds mixed together with huge amounts of wood chippings. Mr. & Mrs.Worm love this, it makes their home very snug and they repay her by turning both into excellent top soil.

All the fruit trees and bushes have to be pruned, it is a massive job but if you want a more than just a decent crop of fruit it has to be done! 

And she hard prunes her roses each time a flower dies, she always has glorious roses well into December, Compassion, Pristine, Royal William  and Savoy Hotel being four varieties that respond incredibly well to being treated in this fashion.

Fashion! Huh.. we aren't very fashionable! She has to get rid of this evil thing, it is a virus and her much beloved Homeopath, Maggie Dixon, told her how to treat it. 

So off we go.. I want an egg and hummus and she want eggs, cheese and coffee.. pip pip.

GeeGee Parrot.
September 8th, 2018.
PostScript: 
Victoriana Nursery Gardens.
www.victoriananursery.co.uk
Tel # 01233 740529.

UPON BEING DISAPPOINTED BY PEOPLE.. AND REALLY RAISED BEDS!

Ah.. I know we / she / I haven't posted for a month but life has been a trifle (to put it mildly) strange around here!

The main source of strangeness was someone whom she has known for many a year and had never had any reason to think or voice a cross thing about.

A sequence of weird things that happened has resulted in her having to cease having anything to do with this person and to ask them to return any keys and not to come to the allotment ever again. She informed Denis, the allotment manager, and his rsponse was something that really shocked her..

"Did you never think it was them that took your cherries and those apples, they were certainly here very early a couple of times with their car". And no.. she had never thought that but it did explain how no one had seen anyone 'strange' around and about.. because the person wasn't strange.

Anyway, the 'cirfuffle' upset her greatly but she has done as Denis suggested.. "Never mind, just change every lock and if we see them we will tell them that trespassing is illegal". And bless his heart, he turmed up with four new padlocks for her that afternoon.

Onto much happier things..

One morning she met up with a small bunch of gardening friends and had a guided tour of the kitchen gardens at Hampton Court Palace with Vicki Cooke, the Keeper of the Kitchen Gardens.. what a wonderful title to have!

Not a weed was in sight.. but what was on the site and IN sight were replicas of 1700 century melon pits!

She couldn't get to Hitchcocks & Kings (timber merchants) fast enough! And she's transformed the 'slightly sad little' plot number 35 into what will be a highly productive place for melons and deep rooted vegetables.

The REALLY raised beds are of two sizes, down the middle, facing the clematis and rose walk, are a trio of big guys, length of 2 metres with a depth of 90 cms, the back height is 70 cms, the front height is 50 cms, flanking them on both sides and facing inwards are two pairs of slighly shorter beds.

She covered the entire plot several weeks ago with sheets of thick cardboard on which she piled vast amounts of wood chips and even though the ground was dry with our lack of rain and high temperatures in June and July, our dearest friends, Mr and Mrs. Worm, have already started to break down the cardboard and to munch the chippings.

Draught.. what draught?

We've now had copious amounts of lubbly-jubbly rain. The grass is as green as ever, so too is Mr. Weed and Evil Slug and Snail are back but never mind, the birds are happy and Old Thrush is estatic!

The boxes will be filled with compost, wood chippings and the fermented stuff from her brilliant Bokashi bins, we recycle ALL our food waste and have our Lebanese friends and our upstairs neighbours saving theirs as well, we supplied each family with several airtight buckets and either they leave them on our doorstep late at night or we collect the buckets every other day.

Bartek, our wonderful Polish Deli, are thrilled to give us their buckets! She collects them once a week, sometimes they have lots & lots of them, sometimes there are only a few but they said they always felt awful putting them out for the rubbish trucks and having explained to them why she wanted them.. other people are now keeping their food waste and giving it to neighbours who have allotments or have composting bins in their gardens.

It is exactly like this.. a small idea that creates a change and we no longer have a wiff of anything from our dutbins as paper and plastic have no smell!

And it stops food waste going to landfill!

When the beds are full to a height of 50 cms, she'll give them a good watering, tuck a heavy sheet of black pastic over the top and leave the contents to rot down over the coming Autumn and Winter months. Come early next Spring, she'll start Melon, Persian Cucumber, Carrots, 'Hamburg' Parsley seeds and Sweet Potato slips off at home in the propogators and, when the time is right, they'll go out to the raised beds.

Each bed will be covered up with a Sun Tunnel, she bought nine of these over 14 years ago and they have been worth every penny of the £9.00 that they cost! They'll stay in place until each seedling is fully acclimatised to being planted out.

So she happy again. Corinne and Joska, who are two of our allotments neighbours, both said "Good riddance, all that person did was pick your produce and they never did any work apart from when they first started" but Corinne even went so far as to say "What DID they do, they raked windfall apples together but never picked them up and then they stupidly put plastic, broken glass, wood and weeds all together in a pile that you and I had to sort out before we could take the separate lots to the council waste dump".

Isn't it 'funny' what other people see..

Well, I see a new bowl of fruity-tootie and pumpkins seeds.. adios amigos! Yumyum calls.

GeeGee Parrot.
August 29th, 2018.

HIPHIP.. HURRAY!! I'M 14 TODAY!

None of the usual suspects have not sent me a card but as they didn't send her on her birthday which is on the seventh of July, I'm not surprised! Neither have any of the usual suspects children thanked her for their birthday presents this year. Well, they're all in for a shock next year, that's for sure.

We have spent today at home. It started to rain just before sunrise and went on through into the afternoon. You would have to be living in an isolated igloo not to know about the extreme heat that europe and we are experiencing here in the UK.

On the evening of the lunar eclipse on Friday, it rained whilst she was waiting for a bus at Hammersmith Bus Station, she was in shorts but had, luckily, taken a waterproof jacket with her, she'd been working at the allotments and her feet were dirty - read black - for she was wearing strappy sandals.

As the rain started, she lifted her head up and let it fall onto her face.. oh, how good that felt and it also washed her feet clean! Everyone else who was waiting for the little 391 was inside and it was only herself and another woman out on the bus stand getting wet.

The woman caught her eye and said "Gardener, I know you're a gardener, that look on your face is how I feel about this rain falling on my garden at home.. and you had dirty feet.. you're certainly a gardener", she laughed and confirmed that, indeed, she was a gardener and wasn't it blissful to feel cool for a change.

The allotments are in full production mode, a lot of leafy things have bolted, for it's only rocket, oakleaf lettuce, mizuna and Japanese leaves that can survive this heat.

But roses, dahlias, white carnations and sweet peas are brilliant full production mode. Courgettes in every colour and shape are busting their guts and exploding into mega growth - she picks them every three days before they turn into marrows. Jalapeños, scotch bonnets, peppers are growing very well and two varieties of Persian cucumber plants are copying Mr.Jack and the Bean Stalk!

Crisp and crunchy and dunked into either labneh or yogurt with mint.. they're sensational this year.

She gave a bbq on her birthday and we've had lots of people out to lunches or suppers because the building works are still going on at home and our sitting room is un-useable! Thick dust lies everywhere and after trying to keep on top of it, she's given up and will tackle it when the works finally finish.. in apparently another months time.. oi vey.

Thank goodness we have had the plots to escape too, for she can't open the back window to let air into our home, the level of dirt and dust which is being created just the other side of our window is appalling, she took photographic evidence and sent it to the owner to show how her builders have been treating her window and window ledge.

Lots of work has been done out there on the plots, she cleared the terrace of the massive amount of herbs gowth that had grown over the paving. Reinstated her old bbq area, for which she bought a new sink with a draining board from Screwfix for very little money!

B&Q wanted her to spend lots of money, she laughed at their prices and went off to see the lovely Lisa at ScrewFix in the Fulham Road and paid a tenner for one complete with its' drain and magic stopper!

She dug about in a cupboard back at home and pulled out her old solar shower, it holds 20 litres, you lay them flat in the sunshine, the water gets hot.. very hot with the temperatures we've been having.. then you hang it up and hey presto.. you've got HOT running water with which to wash up!

She and Dean erected a chain link fence and moved one of the three parts of the wooden fence over onto the entrance to plot 39. This was painted green with wood preservative and next to it is now a 1.80m high gate which she keeps locked.. And eureeka.. The fruit and vegetable thefts stopped immediately!

Because to get onto her plots now, you either have to have two keys and go through the new gate or if you go over or through a fence, you risk being torn to shreds by pyracantha, old blackberry briars or a very thorny rose.

She's got plans for a funny concrete 'door' mat.. we have a dear friend who has a mat that she puts out around Christmas time.. it reads "We only drink good wine in this house, I trust you brought some?" She'll make a large slab out of quick drying cement and either 'write' that into the cement or she has lots of tiny mosaic tiles which would make it look even funnier!

And on that silly note.. I bid you adieu.

She's off to cook my birthday supper of Pork Belly with gren and yellow courgettes in labneh, with strawberries, merinques and double cream for pudding. Diet? I never need to and neither does she, she works 8 to 12 hour days when she's at the allotments which is mostly everyday, in fact, you'll find that very few vegetable gardeners need to diet!

Chirps to you all.

GeeGee Parrot.
July 29th, 2018.

SHE'S CONFINED TO BARRACKS BECAUSE THE WASP MAY HAVE WON THAT BATTLE BUT SHE WON THE WAR.

Ha.

Back to the beginning mes amis, for you all know that is my favourite place to start a tale.

It was Monday morning that she noticed the fine wood dust on the floor of the shack and in the afternoon she realised what it was, wasps had squeezed between the outer wall of the shed and the lining of plyboard and had built a nest.

"Oh, I'm not having that" she said to herself and picking up a very long handled fork, she banged it hard on the plyboard and out flew about twenty angry wasp

They all headed outwards into the daylight except one.. there's always one bugger who has to be different, isn't there?

He flew onto her, unfortunately bare, arm and stung her. The bastard! Luckily she was in the shed and right in front of her was a bottle of TCP, a liquid disinfectant she keeps for cuts and bramble scratches.

It stung quite a lot and went red but she went on with getting rid of the nest and the larvae out, then she soaked the nest and the surrounding area with vinegar. 

The nest was abandoned by the wasps, a couple of them came back and crawled in, only to come straight out again when they found 'no one at home'. She got on with her other work and thought no more about it.

When she got home late on Monday night, she cleaned the area with a antiseptic wash and applied neat Iodine. Do you remember being painted with this marvelous yellow stuff? 

Tuesday morning, we had an early departure with a huge amount of cardboard boxes which were given to us by builders who are installing a new kitchen in the house, we needed petrol for the lawn mower, to make a trip to the dump with broken stuff and tools that had been damaged when Big Shed's roof blew off last winter.

Lots to do in other words.

At about 4pm, she stopped for an apple and water break and looked at her arm which was, to put it mildly, now VERY red and mighty swollen.

A&E for me, she thought, so put her tools away, locked up the sheds and caught a bus to take us home. She checked my food and water and left for the hospital.

A triage nurse saw her very quickly, took her temperature and drew a line around the swelling. She was seen by a doctor who said "if it starts to swell beyond this line or if you notice a red line moving out of the swelling area, come back here immediately" and handed her a prescription.

She took the prescription to a chemist and got the pills. It made her drowsy, so we had an early supper and went to bed.

Only for her to wake up in pain at 1.30am, she turned on the light to see that the swelling was way over the line and angry looking!

Out of bed, dressed, out of the house. Down the road at a gallop into A&E, where she was seen quickly. It must have been because it was poison related and not a broken bone that wouldn't get any worse sitting in a waiting room.

However, she did have time to read the notes with the drugs which she had taken with her and realised that they were not for her! They shouldn't be given to someone with glaucoma.

The new doctor changed the pills to a different antibiotic with a more powerful dose but only one a day and told her about the 24 hour pharmacy on the junction of  the Earls Court Road and the Old Brompton Road and off she went. 

It's many a year since she walked home from anywhere in the middle of the night and it was surprising hw quiet it all was! She was glad to get home, to take a pill and get into bed.

I woke her up at 10.30am, for it was past fast breaking egg time! She's tapping out my post and lolling about, it seems  weird not to going to the allotments but she's taking notice of the doctor and not gardening for two days.

She'll get up later and do a quick but gentle trip by bus down to the market for there's very little food in the fridge.

And about those 'Thieving Bastards' who have robbed us blind at the plots, I'll write a separate tale.

In the meantime.. the Shack's clear of wasps and after what she has done to it, I doubt they'll ever contemplate making a nest in there again, for yes, although they scored a 'goal'.. she won the war.

GeeGee Parrot.
June 27th, 2018.