I'm moving!

Plot28 is moving to a new home. Actually, it's moving to 2 new homes. The 'new' Plot28 can be found at plot28.net. From now on, that's where all my general blogging and ranting will be going down. All the allotment-related stuff will be moving to allotmenteering.com. I hope this isn't too much of a chore for everyone, but the old blogger format is a bit limiting and it makes it too difficult for readers to leave comments if they don't have their own blogger account. The new sites are easy to comment on; just leave a name and email and make a comment. After I've ok'd your first comment, any subsequent comments should go straight up there. So, as Delia would say, 'Where are ya? Let's be avin' ya'.

So remember, plot28.net and allotmenteering.com from now on. I've transferred my old posts and there's already new stuff posted on P28. Like my newly planted peas, allotmenteering.com will take a few weeks, but it will be worth the wait. See you on the other side.

Jesus and chocolate

It's Easter again. Of all the ramshackle public holidays that we cling to so desperately in Britain, Easter is probably my favourite. For a nation that is more multicultural than most, it's always astounded me that the Christians have the monopoly in deciding when the national holidays are. One disadvantage of this Jesus-biased status quo, is that the holidays are all during the cold weather. Perhaps we should be a bit more ecumenical about it and look for a religion that's got an important holiday in October for us to celebrate, when we could all get a great deal on some late summer sun in the Maldives. When I was at Uni in the 1880s, I used to make it my mission to buddy-up to friends from as many different religions as possible, so that I could legitimately drink to a plethora of gods and spirits, right around the calendar. To be fair, I've found that one decent Hindu friend is all you need; you bring the gods and I'll bring the spirits.

In the meantime, before the advent of the glorious world party, we'll have to make the most of it and have it large this Easter. Trouble is, I'm not really sure what 'having it large' at Easter should entail? Obviously enough, it should involve some level of chocolate-based self-abuse. Which is great if you're a chocolate fetishist, or 'a girl' as some would define chocolate fetishism. I'm not being all blokey about it, but I'm just not genetically pre-disposed to getting my rocks off at the meandering daydreams of liquid cocoa fountains or satin sheets strewn with crumbled Flake. And that's Easter's main problem from a marketing perspective; if you're not worshiping at the temple of Mars (or Cadbury's if you're old school), then it's hard to find something to party for. Not like good old Christmas. Everyone knows that you can have a cool Yule and party on, even if you have less than a passing acquaintance with the baby Jesus, just because there is so much more iconography and symbolism associated with Xmas for you to get your teeth into. Resurrection and chocolate; silly and sickly. So why is Easter my fave hol?

I think it's because the religious aspects of Easter are so flimsy, so patently manufactured to fit a deep-felt need in all of us to recognise the arrival of spring, that you can ignore the donkey-back-empty-tomb nonsense and just enjoy some quality time at the point in the year when everything is bursting with potential and even the most cynical are forced to exercise their optimism muscles. I realise that I'm being a bit geo-centric here; my chums and readers in the southern hemisphere have a different perspective. For those of you under the Southern Cross, it's just the chocolate and bunnies. Unless you guys are actually celebrating harvest at Easter, in which case you have a load of great reasons to get with your homies and have a knees-up.

Any of you religious types reading this, please don't fume and get offended. As a committed atheist, it's important for me to wring every last drop out of each and every day of my life; I've got to get busy with the party now, because I'm not planning on rocking a fat one with the heavenly host for all eternity. So this weekend, I'll be having Easter as large as I can. From memory, next week I'll be showing my respects in the party manner for Siva the Destroyer. Wow, only a few short months to Yom Kippur. I must send out the invites. Anybody fancy a bite of my Toffee Crisp, for Jesus' sake?

Earth Hour

On Saturday night (27th March) all around the world at 8.30pm local time, it will be Earth Hour. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then the best thing to do is to click over to the link at the top of my 'Enjoying this week' link - yes, that's it, down there on the right - and find out a lot more. Just so you don't click-off mid-blog, I'll give you the heads up. For one hour every year, the whole planet is encouraged to turn off all of its lights as a reminder of the impact needless energy usage has on climate change. This has been going on for a few years, but since last year the bandwagon has been gathering pace and it's started to get the media attention it deserves. Schools are starting to work with kids to take the message home and that's all for the good.

I'm not gullible or starry-eyed; I don't think that just turning off a few lamps for an hour each year will solve our emissions or sustainability issues. But the idea really appeals to the culture-jammer in me. No amount of worthy reporting seems to be having any dramatic effect on the public perception of the link between energy use and climate change. What Earth Hour is attempting to do, is to jolt people out of their lethargy by offering a collective moment of thought that means something where it counts...at home. I really think that the success of the initiative will depend on how much fun we can make in our allotted hour. Here are a few suggestions to give you a start;

• Go to bed for an hour, but don't read, because you'll hurt your eyes
• Get in a hot bubbly bath with some candles and get wrinkly for an hour. Maybe take a friend
• Have a good old cockney sing-song, like we did in the blitz
• Play hide and seek. (Please note, I have no time for health and safety, so if you damage yourselves I'm accepting no responsibility)
• Tell ghost stories, but remember, if you scare yourself too much, you've got a long wait before you can put the lights back on
• Go outside and moonbathe
• Make some sandwiches and have a picnic in your lounge
• Light the candles and play shadow puppets. Yes, I know, it's always a rabbit
• Talk
• Get with the neighbours, then you'll halve the candle burning needs
• Look up at the sky and enjoy the stars for once

Let me know if you thought of something we need to share with the world for next year's Earth Hour (Plotter28@aol.com). Or maybe, we could all do it again next week? Where did I put those candles?

MP: Maximise Profit

You'd think they would have learned the lesson by now, wouldn't you? But no, not a bit of it. Not even the slightest sense of contrition or remorse. When you've had a few years of the cashmere suit, it's hard to go back to the hair shirt. Just a few short terms of celebrity sound-bite politics and we've been left with the most unwholesome of faded, jaded parliamentary detritus. Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon, Lord 'non-dom' Ashcroft and his apologist William Hague, come on down, take a bow. Caught again, nose down and butt up in the greasy trough. In these austere and chastened times, we should all take comfort from the solace that our chosen representatives are doing the best they can...for themselves.

Stephen Byers is the new star of the circus. A no-mark so lacking in charisma, talent, principles or a grasp on the rudiments of his own party's founding polemic, that his claim to 5 Grand a day 'Loreal money' (because he's worth it) would be laughable if it weren't so sickening. Wow, Steve, I really think you've set a new benchmark; a new low-tide scum mark that the others will struggle to sink to. Want to know Steve's great talent? His 'core competence', as my friends at business school would have it? If you have a corporation and you want to side-step democracy and due process, just call Steve. For 5-K-a-day, he'll get your wrinkle ironed-out. No worries. And what's Steve's big trick as an enforcer? He's a cabinet minister. That's how you get your lobbying done nowadays. Just cut out the middle-man and bribe the governor. That's another thing they were always telling me at business school, 'the best and most lucrative ideas are always the simplest'. You can't get much simpler than Stephen Byers. Greed must be his creed, because it's certainly not socialism or democracy. Perhaps it was only to be expected. When we rumbled them for screwing the expenses, how did we expect the likes of Byers to get by on £140k a year?

On Friday, it's almost certain that Gordon Brown will call an election for May 6th. And so it will begin. Again. 6 weeks of unremitting platitudes, posturing and pontification. Once again they will try to convince you that they, like Hercules, will be the only ones with the pure strength of political will to sluice clean the shit from the stable floor of Westminster. Like a bunch of self-righteous dirty protesters, they've spent 5 years fouling the walls and now they want you to trust them with the re-decoration contract. I know it's hard, but try not to get fooled again.

The Tories will have you believe that they hold the moral high ground on this one. Our memories aren't that short. It was good old Mrs Thatch herself who turned greedy self interest from a guilty anti-social failing into high-minded philosophy; into a beacon of the age. The Tories have been on the take for so long that they have even managed to have one of their number caught and banged-up for it, which takes some doing when you're your own rule-makers and rule-keepers. Failing at silver-spoon Eton-advantaged thievery. How much longer will we have to suffer that level of grasping mediocrity?

If you're eligible to vote in the UK on May 6th, please have a care. Don't just back them out of a misplaced sense of democratic duty. The suffragettes and Chartists didn't intend to 'guilt' you into voting for this bunch. After all, they were activists. I'm damn sure that they would have been out on the streets demanding a new deal, a clean social contract. For myself, I'll be writing my demands on the ballot paper. They can't call that apathy. It's a quiet protest, but it won't harm democracy. Not like Stephen Byers, anyway.

Jordan's mighty river

Dear sweet baby Jesus H Christ and all his wing-ed angels, make it stop! Make Katie 'Jordan' so-shit-they-named-her-twice-Price stop. Find a box and fetch the box. Put her in the box and take it to the place buried deep on the ocean floor, where they secretly dispose of all the Magnox radioactive waste. Put Katie and the box in the neo-equivalent of Dante's 13th level of hell, cast her down for all eternity and cut out the trawler men's tongues lest they ever reveal where she is hidden. If you feel any misguided pang of sympathy for her, then we can send Cheryl Tweedy with her, to keep her company.

Before you call for the nurse to administer my usual sedative, just hear me out. This is no flippant and idle rant against the unpalatable but harmless excesses of modern trash-culture. This is a call to arms. A line in the sand. Ils ne passerant pas. I'm asking you to save all future generations from lives of wistful and wasted opportunity. For the sake of all you hold dear, stop Ms Price now, before it's too late.

She's everywhere. Every news stand and grocery store, headlining every cheap digital channel and starring in every no-brow watercooler and photocopier chat. She's inescapable. Death, taxes and Jordan. She may be the most famous woman in Britain. But for what exactly? At first, the whole 'famous for being famous' counter-iconographic phenomenon was diverting. It was kind of amusing in a non-challenging and ironic way to see Jade Goody take herself seriously. A bit cruel though, to be the only person too dumb to get the joke; but hey, she made a few quid while it (and she) lasted, so no real harm done. Or so we thought at the time. Because now it's not ironic anymore. Now the whole media genuinely think we care to know what Katie is doing now and what she's looking forward to doing next; (in case you want a clue to help you narrow it down, it won't be reading Proust).

Surely, I'm being over-judgemental about poor Katie? After all, nobody is really famous for nothing. We are told that Katie is a great business woman who has fought her way (veneer-tooth and false manicured claw) to the top of the dung-heap over all the other fake-tanned husks of lesser wannabes. She has a profession. She is a successful model. Despite the fact that without the entourage, the trappings and the pantomime make-up, you would walk past her in Tescos. As my son would have it, 'she's not all that'. Ultimately, she made it to the top of the pile, because her chest is bigger than average. Her silicon chest. Wow, famous for not growing your own tits, I bet Mrs Price senior is desperately proud. Jordan, the ultimate girl-next-door. Only if you live in a Buckinghamshire mansion. If she lived next door to me, I'd be looking for a Council Tax rebate.

So why am I bothered? The fundamental reason is that I work for a charity that tries to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to overcome huge odds and get what they need and deserve out of life. We spend a lot of time, encouraging kids to grasp nettles and to strive for their own way forward. We used to hold up examples and role models as stimuli for wavering self-confidence; especially for young women, who face the often multiple burden of sexist limitations on their expectations. But now there is a valid (and destructive) counter-argument. No-one needs to try, because you can have everything for nothing. Just look at Katie Price. QED. The only problem being that it isn't valid and the elevator door to stardom won't be opening for those kids. Katie will have to live with the weight of a million untried and unfulfilled lives on her conscience (sic). I don't suppose it will trouble her beauty sleep too much. Sisters, you're the ones buying 'Hello' and 'OK!' You're feeding the machine. These are indeed strange postmodern times, when a middle-aged man has to assume a feminist stance to make a point.

When I was a nipper, we were taught that the best thing to do when someone was showing off was to ignore them and to look the other way. I'm imploring you, look the other way. Better one unemployed model than a million unemployed young minds.

PS. If you want to comment and you don't have a Blogger account, you can always email me on Plotter28@aol.com

Growing ambition

For the allotmenteer, this is a great time of year. Yes, I know that February in Blighty is colder than a well digger's ass and your self-esteem is probably down around your ankles after taking barely 5 weeks to grind the optimism of your New Year's resolutions into powdered guilt, but when you grow stuff, all that can be put aside. For allotmenteers, none of that humdrum, run-of-the-mill midwinter fake optimism matters. We have our own New Year and it starts right now. Our hogmanay is pregnant with promises as yet unfulfilled and it really will deliver. It's seed planting time and that means the whole gob-smacking cycle of mystery is starting afresh. And I just love it.

By now, you've probably got me pegged as some ruddy-faced extra from 'The Wicker Man', blithely singing my way through a few nonchalant human sacrifices on my way to an easy self-satisfied harvest. Not a bit of it. Being the chief decision-maker for a small scale agri-business like P28 is no stress-free breeze. Way before I get to worry about pesky molluscs and the vagaries of the British weather, I have to face the toughest of decisions as to what should be on the seed menu this year. And that's no seed-bed of roses. Do I stick to growing the things that we eat the most? Should I concentrate on nurturing the fruit and vegetables at which I and my soil have proved to be successful in the past? Or maybe I should have a go at raising produce that I would otherwise struggle to buy in the shops, even if their lack of popularity would seem to be a bit of a marketing own goal)? Given the amount of produce I give away, perhaps I should survey the neighbours to see if they favour beans or beetroot? So far, I've settled on a mixed strategy and I've tried to cover all of my bets. My 'lady sub-gardener' isn't so keen on broad beans, so only one row this year. Carrots are a bugger to grow, but we get through loads and I've ordered twice the amount of seed that I planted last time. Asparagus beds are the big new investment on P28 this spring; you've got to have patience though, because the first spear to be thrown into the pot won't be ready until April 2012. I have made one passing nod to the fashion of growing obscure examples (just to show off to dinner guests), and if you get invited round make sure you make appreciative noises about the purple carrots. They're even more of a bugger to grow than the regular orange ones, but they're purple and that's got to make them worth it.

If you've never planted a seed at this time of year and planned to be amazed at nature's perennial trick, then you really have missed out on something fundamentally important. The seeds we have at our disposal now, and the fantastic variety of hyper-productive plants and goodies they generate, are the result of 10,000 years of trial, error, luck, care and toil. Ever since the last Ice Age, our forbears have improved the seed stock and it is our most important shared legacy. The harvesting of that legacy has shaped most of our societies, religions, language and cultural festivals. Some sunday-suplement armchair observers may have you believe that 'growing your own' is a recent fad - a lifestyle choice, as they would put it. They're wrong. On a planet of growing food shortage that desperately needs some global TLC, planting seeds is not a personal choice. It's a moral responsibility. This is no disposable Jimmy Choo philosophy. This is a 10,000 year-old fashion that will last out the season. To plant is to be human. It's one of the reasons you're here.

Go on, give it a go. I promise you, it's easier than you'd think. You can impress your friends and neighbours and appear a la mode, as well as saving the planet. Wait till you get a load of my pink paisley broccoli, darling. It's soooo this year.

No more for the road

I've quit drinking. After 30 years together, drinking and I are going to call it a day. We're parting as friends, before familiarity breeds any contempt. The party's over and it's definitely time to clear up the empties. I'd like to think that, a few years down the line, we'll bump into each other again (probably in a bar somewhere) and feel that warm glow of a past close friend regained. But for the time being, drinking's off on his lonesome to all tomorrow's parties and I'm going to let him.

It's fair to say that we don't owe each other anything. Looking back, I've enjoyed every single dram of it. Well, almost. My first ever hangover (lasted 36 hours and involved watching the TV premiere of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in sunglasses) wasn't a highpoint. Nor was supping my weight in lager the night Barry McGuigan won his world championship, and then falling and wedging myself bollock naked between two wardrobes, requiring the emergency services of my father to pull me out. All relationships have their ups and downs. I can think of many more ups than downs.

Like sipping Singapore Slings in Raffles Long Bar and marvelling at the carpet of discarded peanut shells that fill the floor. Or gulping down schooners of Toohey's in Bundeena RSL (NSW), knee-deep in Aussie testosterone, while watching England begin to win the Ashes. Or maybe going head-to-head in a drinking competition in 1985 with my old mate John Carrott in the Spread Eagle on Walmgate in York; for the statisticians amongst you, John won by a fall and a submission, 13 pints of Theakstone's XB to 12. Or, perhaps, my annual Christmas Day binge with my father, especially the one that lasted 15 hours and reached the bizarre crescendo of a bottle of red wine mixed with half of a bottle of dark rum; (please don't try it, because it's foul and pioneers like me have only taken the time to go on ahead to check it out in order to save you the discomfort). What about my ground-breaking experimentation with a cocktail called 'Windolene', (made with champagne, vodka, cointreau and blue curacao), that turned out to be more intoxicating than actually drinking proprietary glass cleaner? And all those pubs. Such fantastic hostelries. The George and Dragon in Wentworth, the John Bull in York and the oasis that was a pint of black-and-tan in the Cleaver in Rotherham. Most of those pubs have long since morphed into faceless Starbucks, a fact that should now make me feel grateful, but it doesn't. If proper pubs still existed, (places where old-hands taught adolescent greenhorns to handle their sherbet), we would have less on-street kamikaze drinking. But it's too late to turn back that clock. It was swept aside in a tidal wave of Bacardi Breezer and 16-cans-for-a-tenner deals. And for me, it's taken too much of the fun out of it.

So, what was the last tipple? As it goes, it was a serious measure of Talisker single malt. 45.8% of fiery peatiness. Well, I wouldn't want my drinking legend and legacy to be ruined by rumours that I'd lost it at the end. Would I? Mine's a diet coke, please.