ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO GROW...

As I write these words the sun is shining and Yannie is telling me that it’s time to get out in the garden and earn my celery. Gardening, eh? Can you dig it? Back when I was a nipper in the late 1950s and early 1960s the slogan was ‘Dig For Victory,’ and the good folks of Britain were encouraged by the Ministry of Agriculture to grow their own food in times of harsh rationing. I think we might be back to those days again right now, since the cost of living is so high that it’s a miracle that 7 billion people are still paying it - maybe less if Putin has his way.

My dad was a keen gardener and we had one of the biggest gardens in Springfield Road, Westcott, until the council nicked half of it to build garages on. Every Sunday morning he’d be up with the laziest of the lark community for some pre-pub exercise tending to his runner beans, ridding his dual cabbage-way of slugs and snails, and cutting the grass to a little bit of Mow-town on the radio. We were allowed to help him salt the slugs and also fill jam jars with worms for our fishing expeditions.