Rosetinted

It has been very difficult to write lately, you see I have unintentionally returned to a childhood state of fear and I know it is through no one's fault except my own. Whilst I struggle with this burden  I have rendered myself mute. After years of inwardly complaining that it is external factors that have silenced me, I have in effect put a rather large sticking plaster over my own gob. It was never my intention to turn my lockdown journals into political rants and I would rather not become too opinionated; I thought I would be the champion of light entertainment, teatime magazine posts with the odd dad joke and breezy life observations; all positioned through a rose tinted lens. Alas, as this confounded pandemic has gone on I have found myself on the precipice of something new and I fear the leap I could take. I am under no illusions - I know that right now, not one person is asking me to write my life observations and this is nothing more than a hobby. I think the few I have gath...

I have been spending much of my time watching gardening programs. What with lockdown, early spring sun and a will for green fingers, me and a bunch of other Brits have been lost imagining ourselves as Percy Thrower, or for those of you under 40, Monty Don. I do love a tour around these television gardens and I am in awe of them knocking out a 200 quid wooden planter and filling them instantly with a van full of healthy plants that they just acquired from some organic nursery. I do ask myself how realistic is this for us inner city, budget bound gardens? I have been gardening sporadically for a few years with differing degrees of success. The rot sets in for me around about October when the lack of sunlight takes my soul and whisks me to Grimsville. I usually wake from my winter coma a bit too late, plant too late and then spend the spring sun time willing everything to grow faster. I am in training this year, to become a filthy weather gardener, it is the only kind that will have any...