Dry - or it Could Be Wet

Five or six years ago every gardening section of the Sundays and every green-fingered programme on TV here would feature ways to prepare your patch for drought. Experts would suggest plants that needed little water, come up with methods of saving the few drops that fell from the skies, and visit sun-drenched lands for insights into dealing with dryness.

Since then it has poured down every bloody summer. Much of the rest of the year too.

It is not just the domestic gardener who is suffering of course, commercial growers have had poor yields: wheat crops too wet to cut; drowned fields of cabbages and carrots; orchards whose blossom and the hope of a harvest has washed away.

The upshot for us is that we're wondering about a polytunnel again. Not for the allotment, as sadly they offer too tempting a target for vandals who think slashing the plastic while nobody is around is the height of daring. They are not things of beauty, but we love growing our own food, and maybe could camouflage it to avoid it being seen from the house, our garden being helpfully long.

It is the second half of May, and we already worry that this year's harvest will be poor. Nature has a way of fighting back, but if the cold weather - we lit a fire yesterday and it was very welcome - and the daily rain continue then potatoes and strawberries will rot again, courgettes struggle to get started, and salads look bruised and battered.

British weather is seeing higher peaks and lower troughs, the extreme weather events of newsroom cliche. Given the choice I'd prefer dry to drown though.

Save the Planet, Wear a Hat

There are innumerable small things we can do to reduce our energy use (and thus costs, reliance on Russia and the Middle East, etc etc), thereby lessening our impact on the environment. It seems to me that wearing hats during cold weather is one of the easiest.

I bought a Scrooge-style nightcap for my father the other day, not in his case really for warmth, his house being generally over-heated, but for comfort - and it has helped him sleep better. As he is almost as bald as me, maybe it is something to do with keeping his head as warm as his duvet-covered body.



Our house is a tougher prospect to heat, being somewhat larger and having four rather than two storeys. The central heating here can be all on or all off, so rather than heat the entire house while my family is out, we have the radiators off in the middle of the day, and I wear a jumper. This is no sacrifice, it is cosy. If it gets colder I make sure the wood-burner is fired up to keep the chill off the place, and put on slippers and a smoking cap - quickly taken off if the postman or couriers arrive. If I venture out I wear gloves. This is not a difficult concept to master.

When did we start thinking that we should roam the home in shirtsleeves or less all the time? Pepys I recall (though I didn't know him personally) wore a waistcoat in bed until the spring weather arrived. It used to bug me travelling in the USA when I ran a company there that in summer the offices you visited were freezing, and in winter they were boiling, defying the elements and then some. When I drove with salesmen I wore a sweater to combat the aircon which was set at something Scott would have jibbed at. The attitude seemed to be deliberately wasteful of energy. Here in Preston I have noticed over the last couple of years that even in winter many men out shopping wear shorts or cargo pants, and women have jeggings and micro-shorts.



Is it too much of a sacrifice to don a hat and a woolly in winter, provided you have the means to own such? By not having the central heating on all day we must cut our energy bills significantly. Happily, unless I am imagining it, hats are becoming slightly more fashionable again. Or maybe people have cottoned on to how warm they keep us?


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