Word Gets Round, Like My Stomach

Though our garden is thoroughly secluded our next door neighbours must have noticed me cutting lopped branches into wood for the burner, as they offered me the stuff left by a tree surgeon who sorted out a few of their unloved apple trees. It's a pity that the burner is sealed as applewood smells lovely on an open fire.

Cutting wood is about the only exercise I do these days, but it makes me want to do more as the lift you get afterwards - all those endorphins doubtless - is great. Sunday was spent cutting out-of-place branches from the fruit trees on our allotment, sawing worthwhile bits down into more firewood. Trouble is for all it is a great heart-pumping-muscle-straining-aerobic-workout it gives me a healthier appetite than normal. Add to that it was Mothers' Day so a special meal was called for, any calories burned replaced and then some. Eaten outside though, which in mid-March is pretty wonderful. My patent kale-and-everything bruschetta, lentil salad with the remains of Friday's daube cut into it, a ripe tomato salad, roast chicken with potatoes done beneath it plus PSB fresh-picked, green salad to mop up the juices and bought in cheesecake to finish. Plus two half bots from Adnams. Would have needed to fell a whole tree and turn it into firewood to nullify that lot.

Back to Blogging

I was so impressed by the blog of one of my former classmates at UCLAN's Magazine Journalism MA, the brilliant Johanna Derry, that I felt inspired to begin blogging again. Too many of the other blogs I have read previously have been semi-literate, self-indulgent and less than informative. So fired with new enthusiasm for the medium I will give it another go.

As a freelance there have to be compensations for (relative) lack of money, and the foremost of them for me is variety. Recently I spent one day of a trip to East Anglia on research for three separate pieces: in the morning I went to Potter Heigham to take new pix of the Wherry Albion, and chat to a few of the members of the trust keeping her afloat. The early afternoon was spent on a tour of the Adnams Distillery in Southwold, which proved throughly enjoyable though driving kept me from any real tasting. Following that I met John Miller, a former Reuters correspondent in Moscow (whose book All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening I can heartily recommend) regarding a gardening feature about George Orwell that I hope will appear in Grow Your Own (the curse of the unconnected and even after five years unknown writer is the "write it and we'll see" offer). That is variety.

The Adnams visit was in response to an offer, at the time feeling more like a threat, after I had given a poor review to their First Rate Gin, and has generated a commisison for Harpers Wine and Spirit, and in turn another for them, which says something for getting out of the office.