Not About Heros

The weather was against me on Sunday last, although I got some small jobs sorted and did a bit on the bike [check the BM blog for details] and I had commitments on Saturday so no allotmenting was done that day either. I did have an interesting outing on Friday evening with H. We and our friends went to the Sir John Moore Foundation at Appleby Magna to see a touring production "Not about heroes". It was a play about first world war poet Wilfred Owen and his time in an Edinburgh hospital for the shell shocked. There he met his hero, Siegfried Sassoon, who was there for his "nerves". In fact he was in hospital more for views on the war. H was seriously moved by the performance. Me much less so. I did not understand where the narrative stopped and the poems started or visa versa. I got a book of Wilf's poems and then it began to make sense. I read them few times over and only now am I beginning to understand their meaning. It was poignant to know that he was killed in the last weeks of the war, his parents receiving the telegram on Armistice Day, his poems where published by his friends after his death. It has added weight at this time of year.

I am wrote this installment of the blog on Tuesday evening from my apartment in Canary Wharf. I was down there to a meeting and another all day session the next day. So it was with great pleasure I got an email from The Chairman of the lottie to say our friendly contractors, Thornes, had completed preparing the allotment extension. Now I can not wait to get back to survey the scene. Steve say the area looks enormous. It looks like me might have stirred up the Rabbit population too. Now we only have to sort out fencing, paths, car parks and water...oh and the small matter of several hundred tonnes of top soil.

It is the Society's AGM in a few weeks so preparations are underway for this annual event. There might not be any allotmenting next week either. It is Apple pressing weekend. Despite not trying very hard we have somewhere close a a tonne of apples in the shed to press. I popped out for an hour on Sunday to have a look at Donisthorpe Orchard. I though I might pick up a few last windfall Apples. Steve had the same idea. We got some very nice apples and lots of them. The nicest are a Russett type but I have no idea what variety. Imagine the size of a potato sack and multiply by four and gives you an idea of how many apples I picked. It was nice to be outside given the week I had had and what was before me for this week.