I am killed!!!

I'm sure it didn't hurt as much last week! The "Studio Resistance Training" - weightlifting to you, that is.

What with yoga yesterday (that went well) and a quick trip to the market this morning I was ready for anything. By halfway through the class I was in pain and sweating like a hot cheese! I'm only writing this in the middle of the day 'cos I can't move.

Oh, and I went to the allotment too on the way home. We have loads of potato plants right now and need some for dinner tomorrow and some for the Harvest Festival at school - I hope they accept them and not demand them scrubbed clean and sealed in plastic!!!

We've had the allotment for nearly two years now. It's 12 poles/perches/rods - 300 square metres in European - and in the shape of a right-angled triangle, which makes planning the beds a bit of a challenge. We have a shed, complete with tools, Gaz stove and kettle and all the usual debris of a garden shed and compost heaps (quite full right now) and a completely useless corner which doesn't get any sun at all - any suggestions would be appreciated!! We inherited the raspberry canes from the previous tenant and they burgeon every year with fruit the size of my thumb! It's a great way of unwinding and once I've summoned up the will to drive/walk to it (it's the other side of town) and start working it I could just stay all day. It's a nice place to take Leo too, though he does protest occasionally, but there are trains running right by and a good view of the historic aircraft on a flying day.

The first year we hadn't a clue what we were doing! Folks bought us two books each on "how to..." and we read them from cover to cover, but I'm certain it's one of those skills you're either born with or learn over time. We just couldn't get on top of the weeds and resorted to a brushcutter and a load of old carpet foraged from behind the carpet shop in the High Street - we did have permission!!! We did get quite a healthy crop of potatoes in 2008, but everything else we planted was munched by ninja slugs and other creatures in the dead of night. Over that first year we got chatting to other allotment holders and gradually picked up ideas and tips for planting/growing/weeding and keeping on top of the slugs/wireworm/birds/illegal immigrants. Seriously!!! Apparently they scale the gates and nick your produce - obviously ours isn't particularly appealing as our only thieves leave bite marks and the roots.

This year we attacked it with renewed vigour!! The carpets had done the job of keeping the weeds down and we set to digging over the beds (now marked out with old paving slabs) and by Easter had 140 seed potatoes in neat little heaped-up rows: Desiree, Maris Peer, Charlottes and my favourite of all Pink Fir Apple - those knobbly ones that cost an arm and a leg in Sainsbury's. I'm now digging up about 1 kilo of potatoes for every plant!!

Patty pans were propagated at home and have yielded quite well really (these two monsters were the result of all the rain while we were on holiday!!) and then there's sweetcorn, red and white onions, carrots, rocket (nothing eats rocket except us!!) and, just for the hell of it, a bed of pretty pink, purple and white stocks. Leo has his own bit with 6 of the potato plants (ones he's planted himself) and a few pumpkin plants, but only two small pumpkins to show for his efforts. They're very cute!! It's not been all plain sailing though - our fortnight en France saw everything deluged by rain and we returned to maHOUssive weeds everywhere, which hid the fatal damage to every single one of our bean plants and took weeks to clear. No two-week holidays next year!!!

On a side note it's three weeks until Rowan comes home. He's been travelling the States since 20th August following two months working at a summer camp in Pennsylvania: quiltysquestusa.blogspot.com It's been very quiet here without him and Leo and Saffie (and the rest of us!!) miss him very much. If I even hint at being worried about him when we MSN he calls me a "clingy weirdo". At the moment he's being cosseted by two very good friends in Seattle. I'm meeting him at Heathrow on the 21st October at crack-of-dawn - wonder if he'll notice any difference since I took up the weight training and yoga?

In the beginning...

So, this is blogging huh? I've been thinking about writing one for a while, but was stuck for a specific subject. There's just SO much I could cover. At first the allotment seemed like a good project - and indeed it IS a good project, but I'm not sure I'd want to write about it every day!! And then there's the cooking and the sewing and the exercising and the historical re-enactment (yes, really!) so it seems the best idea to just write about "stuff" as it happens. Lets face it - every day's an adventure! Mostly.

Today Lara came over for lunch and crabapple picking (the edible variety to make jelly) and we got talking about the latest craziness to hit the world of motherhood. Yes, that's right. You cannot choose who looks after your kids anymore - apparently you never could! It's OK for any relative (regardless of their motivations) to look after your kids, but a trusted friend in a reciprocal arrangement? No way!!! You can't help but wonder what the real motivation in the hallowed halls of Ofsted really is. Do they really want what's best for our kids or what's best for their targets?

Of course, anyone providing a childcare service (and I emphasise the word service) should be regulated, though I'd have thought social services would have been the best people to do this rather than a bunch of Whitehall pen-pushers. Educational establishments should provide the best possible education and, because of an archaic law passed when anyone with money dumped their kids at private school, a good pastoral care system too - unlike anywhere else in the world! But a sound, practical and effective arrangements between two friends? Aren't most parents the best equipped to judge what works best for their children? Well, that begs a question too. A local childminder was recently shopped to the powers that be for drinking four pints of beer/lager on the local pub while "looking after" her charges. She is regularly seen with a large number of kids in tow plus a HUGE double buggy and must be absolutely raking it in. Amazingly she's still in business!!!! It's a bit trite to say "bureaucracy gone mad" but it really has!

I'll get off my soapbox now. I wonder if anyone will be interested in the ramblings of a forty-something broad, but I guess we'll find out!! By the way, the "alpha" reference was adopted after a friend said recently that I wasn't at all bossy, just "alpha". Heh, heh!!