Saturday 31 August 2013

Should a station be aesthetically pleasing?

They are working on Peterborough railway station and have been for about a year.
More people are using trains and so the train operators want to run more services and (for commuters like me) they want to run longer trains, too.
Main problem at Peterborough station is that there are not enough platforms, so you often have to wait outside the station until one is available; also many platforms are too short. Only Platform 2 can accommodate a 12-coach First Capital Connect train and this must cause all kinds of problems.
Often my train comes from King’s Cross to Peterborough in an hour and 10 minutes, but then can wait for up to 10 minutes on the bridge just outside the station until there’s a platform free. People who are catching the Birmingham train to go on to Stamford or hoping to get the bus to Norwich get increasingly fidgety as they see their connection broken.
So it’s good that they are working on the station. There’s a new platform (or two) being created and they are also extending a number of platforms. That’s good news, but what’s not so good is the shoddy job they are making of it.
Tom and I were waiting on Platform 2, looking across at the work being done on extending Platform 3 and Tom thought the extension they have put in was a temporary structure. He couldn’t believe that was the final job.



Basically, they have extended a concrete and brick platform with prefabricated decking (which is clearly purpose-built for the job), but which comprises galvanised steel supports and steel decking (with a textured surface) clipped on top. The front of the structure is covered with steel mesh and, at the back, there are railings. There’s not a spot of paint on the whole structure and it looks a complete mess.
Where it meets the old platform, they’ve left the ramp in place, but cut a chunk out of the top, so the new structure can meet it on the level. It looks a mess and it’s been done at the cheapest price possible.
There’s an argument to be had between form and function. The new platform will do the job, it allows people to stand on it in safety and it will accommodate the longer trains required, thus relieving congestion. But it looks awful.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the whole platform was the same exposed galvanised steel structure, or if they’d taken more care to blend together the old and the new, or if they’d designed the new structure to look more pleasing (perhaps oval supports instead of angle-iron?).
This makes the breeze-block and concrete structures at places like Stevenage look almost beautiful in comparison. This makes you want to spray obscenities on it.
Peterborough is a historic railway town; its prosperity and growth in engineering and food processing depended upon the railways. We should have a splendid railway station, look at York or Darlington further up the east coast main line or March (a much smaller and poorer town in the same county). Those are Victorian structures and the Victorians did understand that it is important for people using a structure to be able to view it and be pleased by what they saw.
King’s Cross station (admittedly a much bigger, more prestigious project) is a place of beauty that pleases me every time I walk into the main concourse with its fan-like steel roof. No angle iron there, it’s made of beautifully shaped and crafted steel. Tourists are often taking pictures of it. No-one, except me for this blog, has taken pictures of Peterborough station.
It doesn’t take much. Down the main line, little stations like Hornsey, have brick bases where the builder has created a simple pattern in the brick, just by stepping them outwards at the top. It’s not hard.
Passengers at Peterborough will, consciously or sub-consciously, cringe every time they see their new, improved station. Thank goodness I won’t have to experience it for very much longer.

Friday 30 August 2013

Probably nothing to worry about

I’ve likened my body to a 10-year-old car. I’ve got over 100,000 miles on the clock and I’m not in too bad a condition. I could keep going for years, but the next service could reveal a string of problems and the scrapyard.
Well, it’s been one of those years when, if I was a car, you might be thinking it’s time to think about a part-exchange.
I’ve been getting a bit slow starting in the morning, which is one reason behind my decision to retire at the end of the year, but I’ve also had a couple of health scares.
I was having my morning shower, giving the crown jewels a good clean and thinking happily that I was hung like a bull - not bad for a 59-year-old - but then I realised something wasn’t quite right. I’d always had two and now there were three! Time for a visit to the doctor ...
“There’s a large mass in there and a number of smaller ones, probably nothing to worry about.”
“Probably?” Doctors never say “definitely” nothing to worry about, but now I’m on one of the NHS conveyor belts towards diagnosis and remedy. There’s a visit to Yaxley for an ultra-sound scan, where the operator shows me a picture of the inside of my testicles and tells me that there’s around a dozen lumps, some of the size of a pinhead, but there are also a couple of large walnuts. She’s surprised I’d not noticed earlier.
I didn’t want to tell her that I’d taken my extended nut-sack as a sign of good health and virility.
Back to the doctor and “probably nothing to worry about but we’ll book you in with a specialist.” The good news was that the lumps were epididymal cysts, lumps which are full of fluid and completely benign.
The specialist confirmed the diagnosis, said they were very common and (yes) there was probably nothying to worry about. I asked about treatment and he said I should just leave them alone. They might not get any bigger, but they weren’t causing me any discomfort and he confided that surgery would definitely be something to worry about as it would cause considerable discomfort. It would also have to be done in two parts - one side, then the other with a gap of a couple of months in between.
I said I was retiring at the end of the year and wouldn’t have private health insurance in 2014. Was that a reason to get it done immediately?
He said he’d do it on the NHS quickly if the need arose (there wasn’t a long wait); it would be exactly the same procedure, but I wouldn’t have a room of my own. I wondered how big they might get before I needed surgery? “I’ve seen them the size of a large orange,” he told me.
It seems epididymal cysts are described by the medical profession in terms of fruit. Mine are walnuts, so I’ve several stages to go through to reach oranges. I’ve missed peas and grapes, but I do have limes, kiwi fruit, lemons and apples to go. I wondered what to do. Doctor’s advice was nothing. Sam said one of his patients had only finally come to see him when he couldn’t cross his legs any more, so I guess that’s one yardstick.
One scare goes and another arrives ...
I was at the Isle of Man TT at the start of June and I was having a shower (my health scares always seem to start in the shower) when I felt a large spot on the side of my neck just under my left ear. I gave it a bit of an extra scrub, like you do when you’ve got a spot and emerged from the shower to find it bleeding. A dab of toilet tissue and I got dressed only for Tom to say my neck was bleeding. I cleaned it up and was careful not to knock it for a few days and promptly forgot about it for a few weeks. It’s unusual to have a spot for very long and because this one was hanging around, I was thinking that I should get it checked out.
At Max’s wedding, Sam sat next to me and asked how long I’d had that thing on my neck. He said I should get it checked out quickly. I said I had been meaning to and he said I should do it next week. What did he think it was?
“It looks like a basal cell carcinoma, a slow-growing form of skin cancer, probably nothing to worry about, but get it checked.”
The doctor didn’t know whether it was a basal cell carcinoma, but thought it should be checked and he’d book me in with a specialist, so I jumped on another medical conveyor. I had an appointment double quick with a plastic surgeon, which caused BUPA some concern - they seemed to think I might be having a facelift on the side.
The specialist was slightly more definitive, it was skin cancer, probably a basal cell carcinoma, which is slow growing, not especially invasive and if he removed it, there was a 95 per cent chance that I’d have no further trouble. If it did come back, it would come back in the same place. There was a chance it might be a squamous cell carcinoma, which was slightly worse than a basal cell variety, but still not particularly aggressive. He said squamous cells bled very easily and, as if to prove a point, my suspicious spot bled as soon as the touched it.
The course of action determined was to remove the lesion and get it sent away for analysis, which is what happened. The trouble is, as soon as anyone mentions cancer, your anxiety level jumps towards the top of the scale.
I was booked in the next week for it to be removed, a fairly quick and painless process done under local anaesthetic. I was stitched up and told to come back in two weeks for the results. The lesion had appeared on the scar of a previous operation which I’d had when I was 30 to remove a perotid gland in my neck because benign tumors had appeared on it. Although the tumors were benign, the specialist had recommended a course of radiotherapy to kill any remaining “daughter” tumors and prevent further problems.
This specialist was interested to hear the story and suggested that skin cancers often appear on areas which have been treated with radiotherapy. Being red-headed and fair-skinned, I’m more susceptible anyway and he explained that skin cancer wasn’t triggered by a single event, but by regular exposure to sun. I need to wear sun-block and to check myself regularly for any suspicious spots.
The final biopsy report confirmed that it was a basal cell carcinoma, no further visits or treatment is required.
The information (below) was from this site:
Basal Cell Carcinoma- The most commonly diagnosed skin cancer. Tumors often develop on regions of the body that receive regular sun exposure such as the face and hands. Due to its slow growth rate, basal cell carcinoma rarely spreads and is usually treatable. A common form of basal cell carcinoma is nodular basal cell. Lesions appear as a pearly nodules in various colors including brown, black and blue.

Squamous Cell Carcinoma- Appears on body parts that experience increased levels of sun exposure such as the face, lips and back. This cancer is more likely to spread than basal cell carcinoma. The cancerous lesions have numerous forms. They may be rough, scaly, lumpy or flat. Blood vessels may appear at the edge of a lesion causing it to bleed easily.

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Lunch 33 storeys high

Lowry at the Tate Britain was the first of Margaret’s birthday treats. I hadn’t told her where we’d be going and when I said we were off to London for a surprise birthday treat, she thought that I had got tickets for the third day of the final Ashes test at the Oval.
That might have been a good present, but as it happened the cricket was awful - England struggled against tight bowling and I think the run rate was less than two an over. She had a lucky escape.
I’d also kept it a secret where we were having lunch and as we walked along Millbank to get the Jubilee line from Westminster to London Bridge, I remarked that I could see where we were going to have lunch.
I’d booked one of the three restaurants in the Shard, a Chinese called Hutong. The restaurant wasn’t at the top, but it was on the 33rd floor (about halfway up and certainly the highest meal I’ve eaten in London). The lift whips you up there in seconds and the restaurant complex makes full use of the views. There’s a cocktail bar looking down on Tower Bridge, The Thames and HMS Belfast; while Hutong offers views west, south and east.
We had a table right up against the glass facing west and north, so we could see the city, London Bridge Station, Borough Market and Southwark Cathedral. There was a particularly fine view of St Paul’s and, as the river bend round, the Millennium Wheel and Big Ben.
Southwark Cathedral below us and St Paul's across the river.

There’s so much to stare at that it’s actually quite hard to choose your food and settle down to eat it. The couple at the next table took more pictures than mouthfuls. They were from India, he was an architect, so he was very interested in the Shard and they came to London every year for their holidays.
The service and decor was first class, the views amazing and the food ... well the food was pretty standard Chinese, very nicely prepared and cooked, but still standard Chinese. We had dim-sum and spicy shredded chicken for a starter, followed by ribs, crispy beef, noodles and egg fried rice. With four glasses of wine, service and VAT it came to £110.
After the meal, I went to the loo for a wee. The toilets also had glass walls to the outside and the urinals were placed by the glass, so that you relieved yourself while enjoying the vista east and west (pissing all over Bermondsey).
Fancy a wee? Urinals at Hutong in the Shard.

Lowry re-appreciated

Margaret’s 60th birthday followed hard on the heels of mine and, like me, I think she was viewing it with some mixed feelings (let’s be honest, no fifty-something really wants to be a sixty-something).
There was some doubt about what she might like as a gift, so I decided that we’d have a treat day. I booked the day off work and bought tickets for the Lowry exhibition at Tate Britain.
Lowry tickets were £15 each, but mine was reduced to £13.25 as I was entitled to a “senior citizen” ticket being over 60 already. There are some perks due to age!
The exhibition was a chance to see more Lowry paintings in one place than you’re likely to see anywhere and these were collected from many sources, many from the Lowry gallery in Salford.
I have always been interested in Lowry’s work and have admired his art, but I hadn’t really seen any (or so many) so close. His painting are reproduced all over the place and you’re so used to seeing them that when you get chance to view them properly, up close and personal, there are some surprises.
I didn’t know that Lowry had been heavily influenced by French impressionist painters and, indeed, studied under one in Manchester (Pierre Adolphe Valette). He exhibited his work in Paris before being shown and accepted in London or Manchester. Looking at these original paintings for the first time, I was surprised by how black and white they were. His backgrounds are almost entirely white - sky and ground. I knew they weren’t colourful, but the lack of colour was a shock. In some works, of course, he does use colour (red in particular) and this provides real impact where it’s used.
Lowry clearly set out to chronicle the industrial landscape of Lancashire, but I don’t fully understand his motivation. Was it horror at the pollution and despoilment of the environment that he wanted us to see? Was it the way people seemed to be simply a commodity in the needs of industry? Was it out of anger or out of nostalgia that he created these distinctive images? Did he want these people and their way of life to be remembered? His work seemed to become more angry as he grew older and Bargoed (below) one of a series of later, large-canvas works, depicts an horrendous industrial landscape.
Bargoed
I thought Lowry was a nostalgic painter, but I very much misjudged that. There are touches of nostalgia - fairs, football matches and parades - but his work mainly depicts a landscape and a people who are despoiled by industry. The fact that the industry itself is in decline and grand social schemes (such as slum clearance and the National Health Service) are clearly not solving the problems they set out to solve, simply adds to the sense of gloom.
His most famous feature is, of course, his matchstick men. These are more sophisticated than matchstick men; they are painted with form but no features and generally with little regard for perspective or scale. Other drawings show that he was a very good technical artist and yet he completely ignores scale and perspective in many paintings. Not only does he ignore it, he twists and inverts it.
Dogs are featured in almost every painting and they are dogs as I remember them from my childhood - medium-sized, short-haired black dogs; mongrels (no designer dogs) and never on a lead. Road traffic - cars and lorries - doesn’t feature very much except in a view of Piccadilly Circus in London, where traffic is the story of the artwork. Only in some pictures - the waiting room at a hospital or a man in a bombed house - do people have features and expression.
Do I like Lowry more or less after seeing this work? I think I like his work less, because now that I understand it better it is more challenging and harder to view. However, I admire it more. It has more depth and a message, but it has a gloom and depression that I hadn’t really considered. In one painting, he depicts cripples in Manchester, a grotesque but accurate image that he clearly felt compelled to record. It’s not easy viewing.
A lot of his work is very similar, he paints the same thing over and over, so his art doesn’t seem to develop, only vary in intensity. How has Bargoed moved on from River Scene (below)? Hardly at all and yet the two paintings are 30 years apart. Did his art need to develop, to move on? Perhaps only if the subject had moved on?
River scene; Wasteland
We were about 90 minutes inside the Lowry exhibition and we had about half an hour spare before we had to move on for lunch, so we took the chance to have a wander around the exhibition rooms in the Tate, which have been reshaped and rehung to show 500 years of British art. There was some interesting stuff and it served as a little sweet course after the bitter feast of Lowry’s paintings.

The smoke and grime of Lancashire is replaced by Constable’s Suffolk, all colour and sky. Perhaps if Constable had lived in Salford instead of Suffolk, he would have gone over to the dark side.

Wednesday 21 August 2013

2013 in the garden

The past year has been a challenge for anyone growing plants - farmers and gardeners alike.
2012 began with a drought and ended as one of the wettest on record and then we had a particularly cold, wet winter.
Crops in the field didn’t germinate properly and then lots of winter-standing crops, such as winter wheat and oilseed rape, were waterlogged and died. Lots of fields have huge bare patches where the ground doesn’t drain very well and many farmers simply gave up with the crop, ploughed it in during spring and sowed something that would produce a crop in the same year.
There are lots of fields of peas and lots of sweetcorn being grown. There’s an immense field of corn just south of Huntingdon, which I pass on the train each morning, and right now (late August) it’s standing really tall and lush with the male flowers at the top of the plants fully rampant. David, a farmer who lives in our road, ploughed up some of his oilseed rape and replaced it with linseed, which he says has done quite well.
Challenges facing farmers are much more demanding than my problems in the garden., but the weather has influenced my choices.
This year, I decided not to grow any salad crops because I’ve done quite badly with them. Between the weather and the dogs, last year was really poor and this year (as regular readers will know) there was a challenge to grow a good crop of sunflowers for Max and Inna’s wedding. A large part of the border between ours and my sister’s garden was given over to sunflowers. I had a tall variety called Prado Yellow, a mid-range size called Choco Sun and Little Dorrit, a dwarf.
For cut flowers, we used secondary flowers on the tall and dwarf plants. The medium-sized ones, even though the plants themselves were not too tall, had absolutely enormous flower heads - 8-10 inches across - and were totally unsuitable for cut flowers. Also, they didn’t have many secondary flower heads, so not really much use. They didn’t even look that good in the garden because they held their huge flowers heads downwards so they couldn’t be seen very well. I shall not grow them again, but their one redeeming feature is that they seem to have set seed very well, so I’ll just leave them to dry and mature so the birds can pick the seed from the heads during the late summer and autumn.
I’ll do the same with the other, remaining, sunflowers although they are (and have been) giving us a better show. I’d fenced off the border where they’re growing with wire netting to discourage the dogs, but it’s meant that we’ve not really been able to get in and weed. Margaret spent some time this Sunday getting out the larger weeds and it’s made a big difference.
This is the first year I’ve kept dahlia tubers over winter. I’d bought a dwarf variety and two taller varieties last year and overwintered the tubers in the garage. Previously, when I’ve grown dahlias, I’ve left them in the ground and during a mild winter they get by quite well and sprout good and strong the next year. The past few hard winters have done for the dahlias (and the agave) and the wetter conditions have also encouraged slugs, who think there’s nothing more tasty than a young dahlia shoot. I think they are often eaten even before they break through the ground, so you can’t be certain whether the frost has killed them or the slugs. Well during the winter of 2012-13 mine were dried and kept in boxes in the garage. It worked well: I checked them a couple of times, removed some soil (and the odd slug) from the tubers as they dried and then, later in the winter, moistened them to prevent them from drying out too much. The garage is frost-free, but possibly a little too warm.
I planted them first in pots in the summerhouse to give them a slug-free start and then in the garden with a good ball of compost around the tubers. The dwarfs have been a major disappointment, they’ve had lush foliage all year (quite an attractive dark green) but the flowers have been really poor and I think that one plant has completely failed to produce any flowers so far. The main reason I grew them was for the flowers (of course) but also as part of a plan to plant flowers that would attract bees and other nectar-loving insects. Like the other dahlias, they are a single variety and when they have flowered, they haven’t proved that attractive to bees. The taller ones have been better. They’re flowering profusely now and they are attracting bees. One, in particular, is a real magnet and bees will often sit on its flower head for 5-10 minutes. We see the same in the gourd flowers, which are spectacular, large, yellow trumpets that last only for a day. Bees get inside, right down into the flower, and almost seem to become inebriated on the nectar.
Bee on gourd flower. They stay there for ages and almost seem drunk on the nectar.
The gourds are something of a labour of love - Margaret’s favourite thing in the garden. Over the years, we’ve honed our method of growing them. We now put them in pots alongside the hedge and encourage them to climb along the hedge. This saves space and allows the fruit to hang clear of the ground so it doesn’t rot.
Last year, I saved my own seed and it worked well in that there was a good germination rate, but we didn’t really get the same variation and variety in the fruit. There were only three types of fruit and the predominant one was like a large, pale green pear - not massively attractive, although they did look good when varnished and glittered up for Christmas.
This year, I bought three varieties from Thompson and Morgan - a mixed packet, some swan-necked gourds and some bishops’ hats. We shared the seed with Lucy, Sam’s wife, who introduced us to gourds having grown them in Switzerland when she lived there with her parents for a short period. There has been some friendly competition this year to see who gets the best fruit. Lucy has the advantage of a conservatory for getting the seed off to an early start, but their garden space is restricted and her ‘evil’ plan is to grow a crop in her sister’s garden.
So far, we have some interesting shapes: There are a couple of monster-sized pale pears (like the ones I had last year from my own seed), some bright green and yellow fruits and some yellow-green, ribbed fruits which should look quite good. The swan necks are disappointing. I only managed one plant from my allocation. They’re quite attractive, but the twisty ‘swan neck’ has completely failed to develop. The plant set three of them and no more (so far). The bishops’ hats are doing better, but are a bit late. I think I have three of those, but they produced lots of male flowers to start with and only now are producing fruit. There are about four developing.
These have run to the top of the hedge. The plank stops the thorns spoiling the gourd.
I’ve allowed the gourds to climb up the hedge and onto the top, so we’re placing small off-cuts of planks under those to stop them being marked by the thorns. A couple of plants have decided the top of the hedge isn’t close enough to the sun and have managed to climb into trees. A bishop’s hat at the bottom is heading up the oak tree and one half-way down the garden got into the acer brilliantissima. It developed a couple of large fruit, which hung down from the tree looking very odd and we also had an acer which seemed to have sprouted large yellow flowers. Sadly, it ended in disaster. We had a really windy day on Saturday and the swaying of the branches snapped the stem between hedge and tree. The gourds do have some built-in flexibility. Their tendrils grip a point and then coil like a spring which helps given them some ‘bouncebackability’ but this was a sway too far.
There’s perhaps another six weeks growing time before reducing hours of daylight and colder nights check their growth. I hope we get a decent number of bishops’ hats and perhaps the severed gourd can sprout and make enough growth to produce some more fruit.
Nasturtiums are a mixed blessing. They are cheap and easy, they provide early colour, cover bare ground quite well and the edible flowers provide colour in a salad. However, they suffer badly from black-fly infestation and are eaten by caterpillars. Blackfly has been a problem this year and has covered nasturtiums, dahlias and roses. I don’t think I’ve seen one ladybird in the garden (which might explain why the blackfly are so prolific). The dearth of ladybirds is odd because they are lots of insects about - plenty of bees, wasps enough to spoil a breakfast of marmalade on toast, I’ve been bitten all over by mossies and there has been a spectacular display of dragonflies every day for the past fortnight. Come on ladies, get your act together, let’s be ’avin’ you!
Lots of my nasturtiums are self-seeded, but I did buy a variety which was claimed to be especially free-flowering and vibrantly coloured. They were a lovely show, but are now at that stage of the season when their leaves are yellowed from blackfly or stripped by caterpillars. Actually, I think having caterpillars eat your nasturtiums is not a bad trade-off for some nice butterflies so I don’t try to destroy the caterpillars and I leave the stripped plants in place. The plants look dreadful for a while, a mass of bare twisted stems, but then they come back with new leaves and a late show of flowers in autumn. It’s almost as if nature gives them a mid-season pruning. On one plant I counted three different types of caterpillar, all enjoying lunch. Tom put a macro lens on his camera and shot this video of Large White caterpillars on the nasturtiums. Later, he took this video of plants in the garden.
Last year, Margaret wanted me to grow Chinese lanterns so she could use them for dried flowers. I got some seed, but had a real job to get it to germinate in the cold, wet conditions. I did get about four plants and these went out in the garden. My sister also gave me a small offcut from one of hers. They have proven problematic, firstly to find somewhere to put them and then to keep them through the winter and stop the dogs from trampling them. They disappear during the winter, so it’s easy to think they’ve been lost (or forget where they are and plant something else). The upshot is that I have three plants which I think are Chinese lanterns, but may be unrelated weeds which have sneaked into my pots. I have some small flowers, but I’m waiting for a lantern to appear.
I had tried several times to germinate rudbeckia when we lived in Warrington and when we first came to Thorney, but had no joy. So a couple of years ago, I bought two plants from the garden centre in Helpston and they have been very good, flowering for a long period and with lovely, rich yellow flowers. They also attract bees. One is looking a little swamped by other plants this year, so I need to sort that for 2014, and the other had thrown out lots of side shoots which were looking a little untidy so I dug it up in spring and divided it. I wasn’t as skilled at this as I should have been, but I now have three good plants from the original one.
Margaret’s dad was always very proud of his fuchsia plants, which he used in hanging baskets. I remember thinking how much more spectacular they were compared to the small flowers on a fuchsia in my dad’s garden in Manchester Road. That was a small tree rather than a hanging-basket plant and had been planted by my uncle Tom, a keen gardener many years earlier (probably before the First World War).
When we lived in Warrington, I successfully took around three cuttings from the shrub and I brought one with me when I came to Peterborough. It has been planted in the big border for many years where it has hung on at the back, under the tulip tree somewhat starved of light and in danger of being swamped by vinca (periwinkle) coming through from my sister’s garden. It has survived every winter and always managed a few flowers, but they’ve barely been seen. So last year, when I cut down the tulip tree, I moved the fuchsia to the other border by the gate. It’s still in the shade of a tree (the acer drummondii) but has more light and has grown quite nicely this year. It’s not bad for the scion of a shrub that’s more than 100 years old.


Fuchsia grown from a cutting from a very old bush. The flowers
are very small and unspectacular by modern standards.
Cornflowers are great for attracting bees and have been an important part of my planting for the past three or four years. The bees (and other insects) absolutely love them and if you remove the dead flowers to stop them setting seed, they keep going all through the summer. Next year, I’m going to grow them in little patches scattered through the border, protected from dog-trampling by wire netting like infantry squares on a Napoleonic battlefield.
Our blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes are now into their third year and have reached a stage where we should be getting a decent crop. We had about 1lb off them in year 1, about 4lbs last year and about 10lbs this year (off the blackcurrants). I read that a mature bush should have about that on the one plant, but ours are not in a perfect position regarding light and also are planted quite close together. This year, they put on some good growth in the spring and the flowers were slightly later setting (due to the cold spring). Also, we netted the plants this year when the currants began to ripen. Last year, I think the birds snaffled a pound or two of fruit. The redcurrant (we have just one bush) was a bit of a disaster. I had wanted to pick the fruit in bunches so we could freeze it and use it to garnish sweet dishes and puddings. There was a decent crop on the bush, but just as the bunches of currants were all ripe and ready to pick, the birds beat us to it and took the riper ones off the bunch. It’s quite hard to get up earlier than a bird, so I think we’ll just have to let them have their share (the lion’s share).
A year after I planted the blackcurrants, I put in a couple of gooseberry bushes. It was the first time I’d grown gooseberries. Last year, we had a handful of fruits, but this year there was a really good crop considering the bushes are only in their second year. I think we had almost 4lbs and Tom made a pie with the first batch, which was quite nice. I deserved a piece of pie after pricking my fingers picking the fruit (gooseberries are full of long thorns). It is a satisfying crop to harvest, though; the fruit is much larger than blackcurrants.
At the same time I put in the blackcurrants, I also planted two Tayberries. These are thornless briars that produce a fruit that’s supposed to be halfway between a blackberry and a raspberry.They were a little more tart than I’d hoped and last year was a disappointing crop with most of them rotting on the plant. This year, the plants were bigger, they had a good crop of flowers and plenty of fruit set. We had a few pounds of fruit, but (like last year) so much of it just rotted on the briars. I thought it would make more sense to root out the Tayberries and replace them with thornless blackberries. We went to Crowland and selected two plants of a variety called Waldo. They were half-price, so we thought we’d got a bargain, but we also liked a variety called Oregon Thornless, which had really attractive foliage.. While we were there, Margaret snaffled a dark red gooseberry and said it was absolutely delicious - very sweet - it was tempting to swap our tart variety for a couple of those. When we got home (as often happens) we had a brainwave. Why didn’t we replace the dead clematis and the out-of-control honeysuckle on the patio with three Oregon Thornless blackberries. The foliage would look nice and we’d get fruit as a bonus. That’s exactly what we did, so we now have five blackberry plants and come 2015, we should be knee deep in them.
A few years ago, Margaret’s brother Harvey gave us a hydrangea that we’d grown from a cutting. It’s done quite well sitting in a pot and is now a size-able plant and is in full flower right now.


The hydrangea from Harvey is thriving

One thing I am trying for the first time is Butternut Squash. My friend Andrew Knights said they won’t grow outdoors in the UK. He’d tried on his allotment a few years back and they had been a disaster. I chose Harrier from Thompson and Morgan, a variety that was recommended for growing in the UK. They germinated well and I planted them in pots to be grown against the side of the house where they would be most sheltered. They have made good growth, they’re quite compact and so far have a couple of fruits on each plant. This has been a good summer, so I don’t think that’s a brilliant performance. There are more fruits setting, so it will be interesting to see what size we get and how many; also how well they ripen (they are still quite green).


Butternut squash fruit is forming, but needs to get cracking if it is to ripen fully.

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Another Mrs Rayner - Max and Inna are married


Max and Inna were married at Kilworth House, Leicestershire, on August 3rd.
That’s all three of my children married - Sam the first, then Tom and now Max - and being the father of the bridegroom, I haven’t had to make a speech at any of them!
Sam and Lucy married at Thorney Abbey with a reception in the Bedford Hall; while Tom and Hannah were married at Bow Register Office with a reception in a restaurant in the city.
Max was christened and confirmed; Inna was born in Russia and is Jewish, so several flavours of church wedding would have been possible, but Thorney Abbey or any other religious ceremony was never really a consideration.
Max had always said that Inna wanted a small wedding and that they’d probably just elope. I’m not sure when the plans changed, but change they certainly did. The search for a venue began quite some time ago, winter of 2011-12, and having decided not to be married in church, a country house seemed favourite. Legislation licensing venues other than churches and register offices to perform marriage ceremonies came in a few years ago and weddings are now big business for country houses.
Some are better suited than others and there’s a real variation in price and quality, with the two not always synchronised as they should be. Max and Inna must have seen six or seven venues - perhaps more - and we visited three with them one cold Saturday early last year. Kilworth wasn’t one of them (they found that later) and it was an excellent choice, it has a lovely setting, it’s handy for Inna’s home in Wigston and only a hour or so drive from Thorney.
They decided on the place over a year ago and Margaret had visited it with Inna’s mother, Marina, soon after they decided. I went for the first time some months ago, when they were making the final decision about menus and we had a taster session of different dishes.
Some of the country houses we had visited were still family homes, although the owners probably live in three or four rooms in the spare wing and some look decidedly scruffy (in a grand way), others seem a little unwelcoming and, in one case, I got the sense they were somewhat resentful at having to let the proletariat through the front door.
Kilworth is a country house, but also a working hotel and therefore has to maintain a welcoming atmosphere and keep the decor spruced up. Someone told me it was owned by the lead guitarist of Black Sabbath (a heavy metal band), so no aristocrats on the board.
The wedding has been a major or lesser project for many people this year. Our part was relatively minor, but small things can become big worries. There were three particular concerns in our household:
  1. The flowers
  2. The dress (Margaret’s dress)
  3. The cake
Margaret had volunteered to provide flowers for the registrar’s table and also centrepieces for the dining tables at the reception. Our very good friend, Pauline Coakley had done the flowers for Sam’s wedding and was willing to help out again. Inna had wanted sunflowers and I had thought it would have been nice to grow them in our garden.
Thorney sunflowers (a few) in the registrar's table
So wedding planning for me centred first on whether I could get sunflowers to bloom for August 1 because, in previous years, I’ve sown them quite late and they’ve been an autumn feature in the garden. I ordered three differerent types from Thompson & Morgan (the seed company) and they were planted as early as I could in pots in the summerhouse. We spent a few weeks putting them inside at night (to prevent a frost from checking them) and carrying them outside during the day so that they wouldn’t become etiolated.
I cleared some space in our big border, fenced it off with wire netting to stop the dogs trampling on it and planted out the young sunflower plants in May. It was a terrible summer last year (extremely wet) and the winter was cold and wet, so I was concerned that we’d struggle to get them to bloom in time. Nature and the weather do what they like, of course, and as it turned out, this was a warm and dry spring - excellent growing conditions.
I had three types of sunflower - tall, medium/short and short - and they all grew strongly with the first flowers in early July. Instead of worrying about not having flowers early enough, I was now facing having too many flowers too early and the whole show being finished by wedding time.
The short ones and the tall ones all flowered ahead of time, but had smaller secondary flowers ready for the wedding. The medium short plants had absolutely massive heads (like giant sunflowers on short stems) and they wouldn’t have been at all suitable. In the end, we decided that we’d buy sufficient flowers and just use some of ours in the arrangements as available. It would have been just too stressful depending upon ours and then not having enough ready.
So the flowers came from a dealer that Pauline uses in Biggleswade or Sandy (I can’t remember which) and Margaret picked some of ours to take round to Pauline on the Thursday before the wedding. I was up to my ears in cake making, so didn’t get involved. Pauline said that our flowers had been much better than the bought ones.
It was nice to have a few home-grown Thorney sunflowers in the mix and Pauline did a good job with the flowers. She had some help from Janet Knights putting them together and she and Chris came across in two cars on Saturday morning with the arrangements laid out in the back.
The flowers were a success.
The dress proved a little more stressful than the flowers. It’s one of the rules of a wedding (for women) that there has to be a huge drama over the dress. It started good and early for Margaret with a couple of trips to Peterborough to wander around dress shops saying “I just can’t get anything to fit me.” I might have pointed out that I’ve worn the same suit - my best suit - for all three weddings, but I didn’t (well, not until now). On the subject of dresses, it’s fine to have opinions, but they are generally best kept to yourself.
At some time, Margaret’s friend Amanda (a former work colleague from Moore Stephens) offered to make the dress. I was assured that Amanda would do an amazing job, but it did involve measuring (I did that, and not terribly accurately, apparently), going to London to choose the material - purple silk lace over a purple satin inner - and numerous fittings (correcting my measurements) using a calico material to get the fit right before an exact pattern was produced to sew the final garment. It’s quite involved and hard work for Amanda, but from my perspective it was “job done”. There couldn’t be any complaints about fit, style or material because all of those factors were chosen or being crafted.
If you don’t have to worry about the dress, there are plenty of other things to worry about - shoes, bag and hat, to name three obvious ones. I won’t dwell on this except to say that shoes which matched the dress were sourced, a fascinator was selected from a wide choice of possible options and a bag should have been made from the same material as the dress, but wasn’t and it wasn’t a problem. There was also an interesting interlude regarding some kind of petticoat which made you look slimmer, but didn’t work. The only thing that makes you look slimmer is losing half a stone (I just wish I could lose half a stone).
The dress was delivered on the Tuesday (dramatically late) and as expected it was not plain sailing. Margaret hadn’t expected the silk lace to be sewn onto the inner (I’m not sure what else you could do), the seam wasn’t right (it looked fine to me), it didn’t lie right at the back (that’s because you’re twisting around to try to see yourself in the mirror) and one problem which I couldn’t dismiss - it made her hot. She hadn’t thought about it, but satin was hot and the sweat would be pouring off her. Even trying it on in the bedroom and wearing it for five minutes, she was sweating - ”look!”
Margaret in the dress, with Max, Inna and me
She said she couldn’t possibly wear it, I said she couldn’t possibly not wear it after Amanda had gone to so much trouble. If it was too hot, she could get changed after the ceremony into something cooler. That was the compromise that was accepted and, on the day, the dress was worn from 11am to 10pm, was admired by everyone and Margaret was quietly satisfied.
The dress was a success.
Cakes are a strange wedding tradition. In our day, it had to be a rich fruit cake and you would have it cut into very small pieces for people to eat on the day; people who you couldn’t afford to invite (or who couldn’t attend) would have been sent a small piece in a little cardboard box. The cake would have been three tiers and the top tier would have been kept for the christening.
Sam and Lucy had a traditional tiered cake. I don’t think we sent any to people who couldn’t attend but the top tier was kept for a while, not so much in the expectation of early grandchildren, but rather because it would be a shame to have thrown it away (which we had to in the end, of course). Tom and Hannah didn’t have a cake; they had cheescakes, which were very, very nice but everyone was so full of food and booze by the time they were served that most were wasted. I remember forcing a piece down, but it was a real effort!
Max and Inna had decided that they wouldn’t have a cake. Neither of them liked fruit cake and so they’d decided on cup-cakes and asked if I’d make a Victoria sandwich (Max’s favourite) so there was something to cut for the photographs.
My Victoria sandwich will feed maybe 12 people and, although this was just something to cut because there would be cup-cakes galore, I’m enough of a traditionalist to think that everyone who wants some wedding cake should be able to have some.
So began a series of experimental cake-baking, which pleased people at work no end because they (Davina in particular) got to eat the experiment. First I got a larger, square cake tin, which took the full mixture from both my normal round cake tins in one hit. By making two of those, I’d have a large, square Victoria sandwich. It worked really well, I had to adjust the cooking time by trial and error, but I’ve now made enough cakes to be comfortable to know when a cake is ready.
The big question was over the icing - should it be buttercream or proper hard wedding cake icing? Margaret suggested roll-out icing, which comes in a big block like ready-made pastry. You knead it for a while to make it pliable and then roll it out, place it over the cake and trim it to fit. My first dummy run attempt had to be abandoned, but I got it right second time and made a passable cake. The icing kept quite well, it didn’t go hard and it didn’t go gooey, so that was settled.
I then decided on a second tier using a smaller cake on top (possibly a third tier) and to decorate the white icing with heart shapes cut out of pink and blue icing. There was another dry run, which convinced me that a third tier would be a tier too far and the hearts also got vetoed as being too twee. Sunflowers were requested as an alternative and Margaret knew of someone in the village who made amazing icing-sugar flowers. I blocked that because this was my cake, but Margaret then got Barbara Moorhen involved, who (kindly) produced several books on making sugar flowers, lots of advice and some strange chemical which made the icing sugar pliable and rubbery for a while, but then made it set hard.
We had a “Just Married” banner that Inna had bought and I wanted to get a bride and groom for the top. I thought about Sylvanian family figures, but Margaret found a Playmobil bride and groom, which worked much better.
The cake, with slightly creased icing on the top tier (and the groom is still standing)
The cake bake happened on Thursday and took about five hours all told. Gravel, Holly, Max, Lucia and Margaret all enjoyed some off-cuts and the finished article looked really quite good. There was a problem with the first pass at icing the big cake. It was a really warm day and the icing was much stickier than it had been on the dummy run. Luckily, Margaret had bought more icing than we needed, so I had enough left to have a second, successful, attempt.
At the wedding, the cake had its own table and with the figures on top and the banner, it looked pretty good. The groom did keep falling over, so in the end we had to sit him down.
The cake was a success.
The wedding itself passed off really well. We had a nice dinner on the Friday evening, aside from some controversy about over-cooked pigeon, which didn’t affect me as I had risotto. Michael, Inna’s dad, had made a cake for our final course (what is it about men and making cakes?) and the private room was really good.
Friday night, pre-wedding dinner. We look like something from Downton Abbey!
The wedding was in the orangery, it was set out really well; there was some high levels of nervousness around Marina, Inna’s mum, and Inna; also some grumpiness from Max, who may have been nervous but is also often quite grumpy in a morning (especially when mum had umpteen questions for him). Inna’s chief bridesmaid, Sophie, was excellent - she was very chirpy and rooted - and Toby proved the perfect best man - serious, sensible and supportive. The pair of them were unflappable (and there was plenty of flapping going on!).
In the morning, I had a walk around the grounds and sat and read through my reading. I’d thought about memorising it, but wasn’t confident that I’d be able to manage that - no hope of me playing Shakespeare any time soon. There were lots of helpers, anything that needed doing got done and it all came together perfectly.
For the ceremony, Inna looked really lovely, Max’s speech was well received; Inna’s dad, Inna, Toby and Sophie all gave good speeches; the food was good and the wine was plentiful.
After the ceremony and the wedding breakfast, the guests dispersed around the hotel, some on the terrace, some in a central courtyard and lots in the cellar bar where the band and disco were sited. I was able to move between groups, have a chat with lots of people and it was a really nice evening.
Tom was official photographer and was busy snapping all day. He’d hired a fisheye lens to get some feature shots and there are lots of nice pictures. Inna got attacked by a wasp while she was posing on the lawns and Tom has a snap of her waving her arm to ward it off. If you blow the photo right up, you can see the little wasp (still quite sharp).
Top table through Tom's fisheye lens
Next morning, we all met for breakfast before packing up and heading home. Max and Inna were spending the night in Leicester before driving back to London and their car was decorated by Toby and Andrew (perhaps with others).



What is the matter with Inna (above). It's this pesky little wasp (see below)