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Penn national 0028
Song saver
Stormy spellReverse forecast
Just a few runners here after a string of defections.Penn national
0057
Egot A Poker Face
Win
Clear 3.5 lengths winner over this course and distance last time and could follow up again. Even at the weights the field still have to make up that winning margin to get involved.Tuesday and Wednesday were ground breaking days for me. I’ve moved right away from covering meetings and probably have changed my approach for good.
Having broken the habit and concentrating more on the outdoors. I’ve got back something I’d put to one side for sometime.
Tuesday saw me do just a small piece of work early on before spending several hours sourcing some manure.
So, with a cancellation I was looking at a days wage for little money to show for it.
Realisation that you haven’t earned enough and spent most of the day searching for horse manure, dawned on me. I took a walk along the beach to contemplate this and clear my head.
There is always something interesting like an Amber trail and Tuesday was no exception.
It didn’t take long for something huge to turn up and it came on the stretch of sand at the bottom of our street’s hill.
My fisherman who is out regularly and had cast his nets overnight and having let them run for a decent while had just pulled them in and landed a huge catch. When I passed by his was on his knees counting and gutting his blessings. COD EVERYWHERE!!! I quickly chose two cod both a decent size. The fisherman also had Brill, Dover sole, along with plenty of whiting.My partner was a fisherman’s wife in the channel isles so receiving two giant cods almost intact is no challenge. Our knives all need a visit from a traveller. They only come with tarmac and no tales nowadays. I’m guilty as I went straight for the Cod but the copious amount of Roe means she won’t mind that I didn’t “bag the brill too” 🐟 🐠 🐠
while my relationship with fish started as a youngster playing on the river Orwell on the Roman path a ancient causeway only visible at low tide when you could almost cross the river. Of course the Romans didn’t actually build it but they may well have improved it by building a straighter line over it. Lots of local ledgends and myths were passed down to us children by the old folk and it made our adventures that more exciting.
The arrival home with dinner was greeted with delight and my hunter gathering had extended beyond something good for Lottie out of a skip. The fishermen had been good enough to gut for me and I joined the grateful seagull’s in their appreciation. He has very few outlets for his catch and I’m going to utilise my delivery days to widen his net, I hope.
I built up an extensive catalogue of contacts of head chefs and catering staff. I love the kitchens and although it is a lifetime since I worked in one, returning to the kitchens on my rounds was like stepping into a tardis and walking out in 85. Nothing had changed at all. Catering is the one trade which it seems is timeless. The banter and camaraderie is excellent. The humour, the tantrums, the tight budgets. The creativity and the emotions, the smells and the arguments and the atmosphere. And the endless line of customers and suppliers.
I’m looking forward to some Brill from the fisherman.Turbot would be nice and as soon as it gets much colder the Herrings will arrive. A good storm and the Amber which sits tantalisingly at the waters edge gently washing up on the beach and gently rolling back into the sea every minute of the day will be pushed further up the beach and hook onto the strand lines illuminated by the rising sun to a keen receiving eye 👁.
Two major events yesterday.
The Squadron Leader finally got to see his tree planted 🌲. I’d been unable to rendezvous with him to deliver my promise of top soil and manure to give it the best possible start. Finally some breathing space and I dug out the hole of mostly clay and nettle roots and Fucshia roots replacing it with the good stuff. He added the final sod like the Queen 👸 at a topping out ceremony. His wife came downstairs and the lady from across came with her wheelbarrow to collect her four bags of compost so we almost had a crowd at the event. Anytime a tree is planted in this world it is an event.
The second bit of news concerned my town centre plot. I’ve had it for six years now and it sits nestled at the back of a car park an oasis of green surrounded at anytime by six or seven vehicles
🚗 🚚 🚗 🚛 . I stayed off it in the pandemic and though I’d lost it forever on my return.
It is probably the most productive piece of wasteland in the town. It is though tucked away and out of site and out of mind. Only visible in summer by a blaze of colour and a host of swaying smiling sunflowers gives away its location.Luckily my tulips have not yet been planted otherwise I’d be digging them all up again. The news that the space is needed in a packed car park to accommodate two more vehicles would have been met with utter despair 😩 just a few months ago.
But the benevolent benefactor and owner of my heavenly plot sought me out yesterday on my rounds. We gardeners( only rivalled by scaffolders) can be quite invisible as I thought I was behind a privet hedge trying to restore its long lost shape with shears and the more direct hedge strimmers. I was, but my nearby bright near kingfisher blue van gave the lie to my privet cloak of invisibility. His son parked across the road and came over “it’s not bad news Sam, but we need to clip the edge off your allotment “. It isn’t my allotment in truth it is their car park and at times I’ve been a burden when they’ve needed to place building materials or a skip on it. But these are real Suffolk people and I have built up a good working relationships with the owner and his clients, a mixture of workers shopkeepers and residents/tennants of the shops and flats he owns and rents out.
I very nearly bought a property from him a beachside flat on top of a cafe down near the beach station, But we had a dog and it wasn’t yet time to leave my career and run a cafe by day pizza shop at night. It was a really nice price but we didn’t go for it but remained friends with the owners, which led to me being commissioned many years later to clear an overgrown patch of wasteland which was blighting his car park in Town.
I’ll end up with a perfect square and a blank canvas to reconfigure the parcel of land to maximise productivity. It really is a good thing because both parties will be happy here. I’d collected lots and lots of cardboard to build no dig beds and they can be relocated to my bigger more conventional site and the top soil and bed I was making can be shift over making much higher raised beds. The big leaf store I’d made can go now and a simpler compost bin can replace it and all I have to do is realign and redesign the path I had laid out. It will make the plot much more accessible and essentially much better. Much of the accessories are surplus to requirements and opportunities abound now to totally transform the plot over the coming months…..That was the big news the other day and I’ve overlapped the fabric and content of this thread by posting a huge passage on the meydan thread, covering yesterday.
I’ve had a few in depth chats with strangers I’ve met out walking about why I’m promoting horse manure no dig gardening and the flower trade and why I’m encouraging people to resist buying cut flowers that have been grown thousands of miles away and how this trade can damage our own ecology and economy.
I’ve pointed out the fantastic ecological miracle of the three Rivers and it’s amazing effect on the weather in the immediate area.
I’ve made the point that by planting flowers in amongst my vegetables I’m enhancing not just my allotment, but I’m inviting wildlife to come onto my plot to reap the benefits, sample and pollinate my plants. In doing so the unique micro climate is enhanced and it’s fragile existence enhanced.
I’m encouraging people to buy local produce and to take advantage of the cheap and affordable bouquets at the hospice shop they are undoubtedly enhancing the local environment. They won’t yet realise how, and the idea is to raise awareness of all of the above by the Sale of locally cut flowers.
It’s fair to say my daytime activities revolving around racing have been totally curtailed and I’m outside every daylight hour now.
The other highlight was the planting of another tree 🌲.
This one belongs to the squadron leader and he had surgery last week (sucessfull) delaying the planting. Yesterday and Wednesday (Thursday) Molly Roberts’s next door neighbour had his hedges trimmed. I worked into the darkness and swept up a lot of gold dust soil created by falling privet leaves over several years.
The soil is bound for the nearest allotment to top over the new beds on the re-configured parcel of land.Swept into the local Gallery last thing yesterday and met a brilliant artist.
She uses maps and invites visitors to sign their own map as they please.
The drawings and illustrations were excellent and the interaction with nature and visitors different to any exhibition I’d seen.
Often artists set themselves aloof from their observers seeing them as potential customers and fail miserably to make any kind of impression or contact with passers by as a result. This was very different indeed.
Right now is my “golden hour” tea choccie biscuit ( any biscuit 🍪) walk the dog 🐶 and see the sunrise. I’ve ordered the racing post for four Saturdays and the paperboy who is fifty if he’s a day will read it from cover to cover before popping it ironed out through my door.
Last Saturday’s issue remained unread so was a financial millstone as a result. All it has to do is pay for itself with a winner.
As I pass him on my way down to the beach I might stop and ask him for his three main tips. But I won’t disturb him as he looks engrossed leaning over his crossbar reading my bloody paper. I never had a paper round and I put my brother’s current chronic back trouble down to the builder’s bag sized sacks he had to balance on his handlebars in the seventies on a Sunday morning with the times and the news of the screws anchoring him to the kerb. I did help him and always checked my subsequent bulging biceps in the mirror after each round 💪.
I wonder if the paperboy uses draw data and physics. I won’t ask him, he looks like he’s just read one of those Alistair Down novels….
Assuming He’s delivered it by the time I’ve done a circuit.
In the golden hour which starts in25 minutes I’ll actually get to read the post before I head out to actually work again and earn some Arthur. ( ASHE)Bless him .Golden hour becomes golden hour and a half as the inner retriever in my mutt switches to overdrive. He turns the beach into a scene stolen from the high street. As dog raids fisherman’s catch consisting of two whiting one dead one nearer his maker than expected and makes off sausages and butcher’slike off the beach and off up imaginary high street with two fish in jaws,line ,weights, tackle bait and hook 🪝 mercifully on the end of his string in trail along with pursuing said fisherman and laughing me in tow. How does one dog get all this in his mouth??
The brutal reality which occupied my thought for most of the day was “ how the hell did that blooming dog avoid injury?”
Like all retrievers he has a one track mind. Snapping a fishing line without suffering the near inevitable related injuries of recoil and tearing is taking a cats nine lives to a different level and if they could talk in the way we communicate, he’d be lording it over his feline compatriots right now.
Like you do, I did a few calculations around his weight and the speed he tore off at once he’d won the race to the catch laying under the fishing rods and the last thing he reckoned with was the fact they ( the fish) were attached to a very strong line with a massive tension point and strength and too avoid injury he have had to get the bit right between his teeth and pull hard in one motion to avoid a flossing and the loss of vital dentures. A major slice of luck 🍀 was involved and cats 🐈 and dogs invoke luck a lot in their antics.
The list of to do’s mounts up and Sunday has a removal of goods to be tackled tomorrow two builders bags of leave heading to the allotment and all the cardboard is switching from small site to main site as I no longer need to build a no dig bed at the smaller site as I have to lose the soil covering close on fifth of the site. when a new boundary is drawn up there I’ll have huge quantities of topsoil to spread over the remainder of the plot.
I have a big challenge at the moment my current focus and roles are in question and I’ve come in for a bit of criticism.
I have no issue with questioning of my role as I had to reassess things myself on Tuesday. I’ve made some significant gains this week and whilst I prefer not to elaborate too much they will manifest themselves over the next few weeks ( I hope) I have already managed to ask and answer quite a few questions.
This exhibition I have mentioned does the same without asking you to explain yourself and without criticism. When I run into negativity I run for the hills, run for cover. The best way to express my feelings is through poetry and comment prose so here goesTHE ROLLING STONES
HACKNEY DIAMONDS
( why you wanna?). BITE MY HEAD OFFTomorrow morning (this morning) see Equinox running again. and with a career best under the belt just 28 days ago in which he demolished the course record and redefined speed in the modern era, he hold a personal best now and if suffering no ill effects from those exhertions should prove very hard to beat indeed given he is not venturing out of Japan today.
Equinox
Win
Equinox
To win by three lengths or more
6/4
The hardest thing to do is record a comfortable distance over opponents because all you need to do is beat them.
I found this to my cost last Cheltenham when nico de boinville apologised live for not pushing out constitution Hill rather showboating at Cheltenham last season. So although it’ll pay much less the emphasis will be on the win aspect.
But the price of 6-4 is the dominant factor and the cash I put in that ultimately will dwarf the return of betting against yourself at odds on. They both have their merits but I do so hope Equinnox takes full advantage of his superiority and destroys this field. If he has an off day then so be it, but on all known form he arrives at 0640 hours in prime condition and only himself can beat himself on these terms. You’d have to convince yourself he won’t be winning today and even if you were right you’d be so for all the wrong reasons. Such a conundrum of contradictions but on all known form the 6/4 and the 1/2 should be embraced like an early or late birthday present.It came to pass that Sam planted trees 🌲 in the form of small seeds and saplings and although he wasn’t there to see them flourish, they became mighty oaks and their roots were deep and they became an anchor for the soil. Their branches were far reaching and they touched many people.
Magnificent – the mighty Equinox is all class in the 2023 Japan Cup! 🇯🇵 #イクイノックス pic.twitter.com/iYM1MwpEwx
— Racing TV (@RacingTV) November 26, 2023
One regular visitor to my patch was Steve. He lived in the flats behind the fence and often came into the allotment through the gate in differing states of sobriety. But he was always welcome. He had a stormy relationship with a lady a few years previously I think she was Portuguese and they had a son. I know the boy stayed with his mother and he barely saw him. Drink took him over and he’d always be friendly and polite as he ventured onto the plot with some frank advice about my poor standard of horticulture. He’d had trials for a professional soccer club hadn’t made it ( Peterborough or some northern club anyone and anything north of Norwich is a northern club to me.
He being an adrdent Manchester United fan his always had a version of the club favours under his shellsuit. The last time I saw Steve Tyler he had fallen through a health trap door and I barely recognised him. He had a speedily degenerative condition and he was fading at a terrible pace. We spoke and he shied away. “I’m not great Sam”. and he moved away I never saw him again it was that quick. His service took place on Friday.
RIP Steve. 🌲.There have been several very good songs posted on the thread. I think I’ve set out my objectives and given of myself quite freely I’m not the monosyllabic poster I’d presented myself as, nor am I trapped behind a laptop 24/7. I have a message which I’ve presented eloquently and an objective which I’ve shared freely. I’ve always been open but essentially I’m private and you need to have some element of anonymity in your life. So coming out like I have whilst seemingly appearing conformtable has been quite difficult but actually quite enjoyable. My next step is to knuckle down to a multitude of tasks revolving around my allotments an element of community work and the presentation of my message about raising local awareness of of our unique environment and micro climate which affords us in the Deben peninsula an opportunity to make an impact on said environment rather than pay national and global lip service like dromedaries in a huge non turning wheel that has absolutely zero effect on anything at all.
Sarah Figlio it turns out has been a catalyst to unlocking the message I’ve tried to deliver and I’ve encouraged plenty of friends to pop to her significant art exhibition taking place between now and Wednesday at the 142 gallery Hamilton Road Felixstowe in Suffolk.
When I’ve shifted about sixty bags of manure I’ll stop as I need to get everything in place at two locations to start growing and sowing and reaching twelve months of the year production. Several people have expressed an interest in growing cut flowers so the cycle of awareness has begun. I’ve been offered use of a second home for a much needed night away for me and my partner on the back of the supply of a few bags of poo and goodwill. I’ve got an offer to edit and proof read of my novel much of the material I have safely stored in my mind and writing of is well under way. So if I continue this thread and post as frequently in the daily lays and plays as I have done then it won’t be happening. I’m as committed to the free energy the three six nine and Alexander as I have been but I’ve posted up a winner at good old sha tin in a horse called I GIVE and I really can give no more. I’ve loved the songs this thread has thrown up and I’m ending my part in this with a David Bowie song off his excellent final album black star.
The star of this thread is DRONE because he gave me the time of day and offered some of himself. The meydaners led by Hughsie Triptych and big G as ever have always inspired me with their humanity and care. My plots will at some stage next year resemble the inspiring appearance of Drone’s garden of England but as long as it is functional and productive I’ll be pleased.
So the book will be printed and released by September. I want an exhibition of sorts during the year but I’m ending my lengthy postings everywhere happy that the aptly named Equinox was a fantastic final winner on this thread and that photosynthesis was at the forefront a winner too of sorts.And David Bowie’s I can’t give everything away.
The story and the thread have not ended.
I don’t get to say when it ends. It ends itself it seems.
There are more tales to tell and more songs to play and when it is time to finish, the thread will do just that.
Sarah Figlio’s exhibition ends today and like all artists 👩🎨 She’ll move on to the next project.
It has been a groundbreaking exhibition for me and I’ve helped my own partner with her exhibitions there many times. But this is the first exhibition that I’ve been compelled to interact with and actually contribute to the Artist’s work by an Artist themselves.
Many artists have simply acted as vendors at a market stall offering their wares and hoping that any visitors dip into their pockets and purchase something.
This is very different and has stirred something which was brought out by the tree several weeks ago now.
THE 142 Gallery.
is a unique location on the corner of the High street and yet not on the end of it. Formerly this building housed the Amber shop which sold Amber jewellery and artefacts associated with the semi precious pieces of fossilised tree sap. Next door is the Hospice shop where I to and fro from with buckets of cut flowers 🌸 twice a week. It’s the nerve centre for poo 💩 sales too folk can pop in and order a bag or two before collecting it off my doorstep.
Most recently the gallery was the Wine shop van independent wine retailer run by a husband and wife duo who really did do wine runs including the beaujalais one. Through his efforts he opened up a huge niche for himself and within no time he’d moved to bigger premises across the road and his famous wine tasting nights evolved into a wine bar by night wine shop by day in the new premises.
The Amber connection goes three ways the hospice shop is run by Amber ( a genius) and both I and my partner collect and polish Amber which washes in from the sea.
The supposition that the Amber comes all the way from the Baltic is another example of generalised history which is open to question as there seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest it hasn’t travelled far at all. Local train of thought is that we have vast ancient forest systems in the North Sea itself which provides the entire eastern seaboard with huge supplies of Amber coal and jet.I’ve been off-grid and off-line though not particularly off-kilter down in deepest Devon so belated thanks for the info on Ipswich and Colchester.
An unattributed (maybe Ancient Greek) aphorism you might like:
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit
We do have a phone signal in places down here, honest! But all joking aside I hope you enjoyed your trip Drone. It’s a great place to come if you want to disconnect from everything.
We’re blessed with moor and sea, both of which take on a different character in autumn and winter. Not necessarily better or worse than in summer, just different. I love wrapping up warm and walking along a blustery seafront or deserted countryside where even in summer you’ll hardly see another living soul.
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