On Thursday evening I was taken by surprise at Beavers when George was given his “swimming up” ceremony from Beavers to cubs. This was unannounced and I was expecting it at least a couple of weeks after George’s Birthday on the 25th. Alas, due to family logistics on Tuesday evenings he cannot attend the 3rd & 4th Norwich Cubs. However, the 35th Norwich Sea Scouts Cub Pack meets on Thursday evenings.
On our way home from Beavers last Thursday evening George and I called in on the 35th’s Cub Pack meeting and I spoke directly to Nikki, the pack’s Akela. George still in his Beavers uniform and with his good manners made a suitable impression, and I was offered a place in the 35th Norwich Sea Scouts Cub Pack for George, which I immediately accepted.
The Queen’s funeral was Monday the 19th and like almost all of the rest of the country I watched the live coverage on the BBC. However, I kept flicking from the TV to social media post on my Kindle to read peoples reaction to all of the pomp and ceremony and one of the more poignant comments on Facebook was that the Gov’t had the money and the will to pay for and arrange such a grandiose affair at very short notice but cannot find the money to deal with the UK’s homeless situation which would have cost less than half what the funeral did.
On Tuesday morning the material for my fully funded TQUK online course was unlocked and officially my Level 2 Mental Health Awareness course began. I am a now a part time distance learner assigned to the Bridgewater and Taunton college in Somerset. I think this course will benefit my volunteer work with Community Chaplaincy Norfolk.
The Community chaplaincy course is going well, although we are only in as far as week three and it is only really an attendance course. The other attendees are becoming familiar to me and they are a pleasure to speak with socially during the short in the middle break time.
Back at the beginning of September I became rather irate with owner/admin of a UK Cast Iron Cooking Facebook page that I was a member. Basically he kept deleting the photos and posts I was putting up claiming them to be commercial, so I went in deep and deleted every post I had made on the page and then started my own Facebook Page called Cast iron Cookware, Grilling and Outdoor Cooking and as I have now decide to incorporate Cast Iron and Outdoor Cooking as regular features on my Go with Gareth YouTube page, I will use my new Facebook page to promote my endeavours in this direction.
I have managed to drag my Wolf 3 tine cultivator through my little 5sq/mtr veg patch and till the soil. Even though over the last 4 years I have put over 500 litres (volume) of cow manure, lawn clippings, home-made compost, hot trenched vegetable peelings and at least 200 litres of finely chipped leylandii brash on to this plot and yet all of this organic matter has still not held any moisture in the soil. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a fair bit of rain and all 2000 litres capacity of our water butts and tanks are full, but only 2″ down the soil was still bone dry.
Steadily with rests between each task I got it tilled. levelled and raked. The tar section has been heavily sown with alternating very close rows of (supermarket) dried green peas, mustard, pre-sprouted broad beans, mustard, peas, mustard, broad beans and mustard in 2″ deep drills.
The bottom part of this plot has been very heavily and indiscriminately broadcast sown with green peas and mustard seeds and then covered with a layer of last autumn’s bean tree chippings. Alas I was too tired to finish scattering the bean tree chippings on the far section.
This has all been done as no-maintenance cover crop to over winter and it will be cut and turned into green manure for a no-dig & strip-tilled rotation next year. Although hopefully the Broad Beans will survive the winter and continue on, hopefully cropping in the late spring, but I don’t expect the peas to survive the late February and March frosts we usually experience.
Saturday I spent a wet day at the Grapes Hill Community Garden Arts open day running Gareth’s Glorious Games free of charge for entertainment purposes only. It rained heavily, Norwich City FC were playing at home and the city roads were gridlocked from the usual cause of motorists queuing on the carriageways because the car parks were already full and all of these reflected upon the low public attendance at the community garden. However, I had my flask of tea with me and I did enjoy conversation with others displaying their art and wares and off course the free music performed by various local musicians including my friends Jon Fennel and Peter Turrell.
4½ hours on Sunday were spent at Trowse Primary School fete running Gareth’s Glorious Games. This is the school that young George currently attends, but that was not the reason I was there; I was there because either me and my games or my games and someone from the PTA have run them at this school’s annual fete for about 8 years I think. However, the day seriously tired me out and brought on another serious bout of gastric troubles that knocked me down for the rest of the week. Subsequently I was too ill to attend my Community Chaplaincy course on Tuesday Night.
We have been manually flushing the toilet using my 8 litre Maslin pan for a couple of days as I attempted to get the internal insulation for the ceramic cistern sorted out. It has been out. On Monday, the first day it was remove the cistern from the wall, scrape out the previous mess I made with silicone sealer that refused to cure and to dry everything out. Tuesday I decide to try doing the job with solvent based contact adhesive of which I so at home, but not enough to do the job, so Lois nipped out to Toolstation and came back with a spray can of solvent based contact adhesive. I stuck the newly shaped piece of Yoga liner to the inside bottom of the cistern using the old tin of spreadable contact adhesive and left it for a few hours to set. It worked so we called it a day on that job. Wednesday was spent cutting and shaping the inside front, back and sides of the cistern and sticking them in place with the spray on adhesive and they stuck, so I decided to leave it over night for the solvent adhesive to dry fully and cure properly. On Thursday morning I stuck a piece of Yoga mat onto the outside rear of the ceramic cistern to insulate it from the tiled bathroom wall and then I reassembled it all, fixed it to the wall and check for leaks and all was well.
On Thursday evening I felt well enough and I did manage to take George to Cubs, do the necessary running around in the car to collect his Scouts progress paperwork from the 3rd & 4th Norwich Beavers and deliver it to the 35th Norwich Cubs which he now attends, this was because the 3rd & 4th do not utilise the Online Scout Manager system; OSM.
Friday was another awful day for me, continuing serious gastric problems preventing me from visiting Sister Mary as I had planned, nipping around to have a cuppa with Clive Byers and then going to the Friday afternoon Softly Softly Yoga session. Instead I limited my travels to no more than 5 metres away from the toilet and just suffered with the horrendous intestinal pains and the many uncontrollable bowel movements; fortunately our toilet now flushed and we were not manually bailing water into it.
Late Friday afternoon I received the devastating news that Jurnet’s bar which had been closed from the beginning of the first Covid lockdown will now remain permanently closed due to water ingress during the lockdown period and the uncontrollable damp and mould this situation created. Of course this occurence had absolutely nothing to do with the road improvements directly outside of Wensum Lodge and the burst water main caused by the contractors just metres from the outside wall of the bar’s undercroft.
Saturday I was ill again and all I managed to do was to spread some semi rotted wood chip on the second half of my 5sq/metre vegetable plot. The mustard that was sown 7 days earlier has germinated well, but neither the peas or Broad beans that were sown in drills have poked up above the soil, but the broadcast peas sitting on the surface have germinated and are pushing roots down into the soil. I decided that as this is all an over winter cover crop and spring green manure that I would broadcast sow 50g of dried mung beans across the whole plot. Although the mung beans will not survive the cold and frosts they could provide ground cover along with mustard and green peas and possibly encourage invertebrates up on warm days that hungry birds may feast upon.
Lois however took me completely by surprise and in a return to her hippy socialist younger days she decided to go out to stand and sing in protest with other union members on the picket lines outside the Royal Mail sorting office and the Norwich Thorpe Railway Station.
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