As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

anguk

We've got lots of allotments around here, I think because we're an old mining area and the houses are all old terraces without gardens so most miners had an allotment to grow food. The mines have all gone and it seems like it's just old men who bother with the allotments now, many of them are unused and overgrown so I would have no problem with people having more than one.

There's some allotments behind me and some are used for growing food, some have chickens and a couple have pigeon crees! A few of the front allotments are used by the houses directly opposite and they've been turned into little gardens and are very pretty.

lizzyb1812

ginnyknit - is your mum's elusive perfect pillow the pillow of her childhood? Might it be a feather pillow, in ticking, with 2 pillowcases and well plumped up? Could the smell of the pillow and pillowcases have a part to play?

Can you tell I'm really NOT obsessive about this myself :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Molly41

My perfect pillow is a dunlopillow. Not cheap but worth it's price x

ceridwen

anguk wrote: »

We've got lots of allotments around here, I think because we're an old mining area and the houses are all old terraces without gardens so most miners had an allotment to grow food. The mines have all gone and it seems like it's just old men who bother with the allotments now, many of them are unused and overgrown so I would have no problem with people having more than one.

There's some allotments behind me and some are used for growing food, some have chickens and a couple have pigeon crees! A few of the front allotments are used by the houses directly opposite and they've been turned into little gardens and are very pretty.

Now sits here wishing again for one of those things on my Impossible List - ie to be able to instantly be anywhere I wanted to be - and I could have an allotment (or two) over there. It DOES depend on the area one is in - and if fortunate enough to live where there is zilch demand, then there isnt a problem. I think its probably urban areas that have such a problem - hence why people need to check out the length of waiting list in their area and act accordingly. In mine - its several years long...therefore not possible for anyone to have both 2 or more allotments and sit easy with their conscience (as having a second one here means someone else is having to sit and wait for years to get one).

A high house price area is also a clue that there will be a large demand for allotments. Where house prices are high - then many people will have to live in a smaller place than they decided to have and will have less land than they decided on (ie are having to make do with a matchbox size garden - when their decision is to have a normal size garden). In my area normal size gardens (ie I would say 80' x 30' or equivalent type size) are universally described as "large" by estate agents and cheapest housing has matchbox size gardens and even "keep them" level of homes often only have very small gardens (the back garden will probably only be about 15' x 15' or similar type size - and thats on a "keeper" home:eek:). We usually have to have Dream Home level homes before we get decent size gardens here (and that means £400,000 plus in this area). The only other way to have a normal size garden round here usually is to live out in a village (which many of us cant do because of the cost of transport to and from there and poor public transport anyway).

So - my own personal rule of thumb would amount to "If waiting lists for allotments are longer than 6 months in an area - then there shouldnt be any 2nd allotments". I dont think its too bad to expect people to wait up to 6 months for an allotment - but longer than that is unacceptable. The situation is so bad in my area that waiting lists in some areas were closed a while ago - in order to hide how many people are actually waiting (thus the Council is actually probably underestimating how many people are waiting). I'm a "hidden waiter" myself - as I'm in one of those areas - so I'm on the "waiting list" in my own mind - but my name isnt down on it, because they wouldnt even allow people to add their names in this particular area.

EDIT: (Darn - wish I hadnt remembered that now - as I am now feeling guilty that I didnt think to "kick up" about not even being allowed to put my name down as a "waiter" - as I've helped enable the Council to get away with hiding just how many people are actually "waiting".....darn....darn....). In my defence - I didnt realise at that time that its a common ploy to not allow "waiters" to go on the "waiting list" - so that it looks like fewer people are waiting than actually are (but have read subsequently that its a thing the NHS, for instance, sometimes does - ie making people wait to go on a waiting list....).

GreyQueen

Good morning campers, glad to catch up with the thread since I checked out at 4 pm yesterday. Always such good debate up here and lovely people posting about great books (naughty lovely people, too, and I daren't even click on those linkies in case I get a bad dose of the I wants.;) I am a repeat offender with books.)

Yesterday evening I made an 18 inch square pizza on my second baking sheet and a dozen sunflower seed rolls on the primary baking sheet, which is probably older than me and is a cast-off from Mum's kitchen. It came out well with 6 soft tommies, a can of tuna thinly spread, some leftover canned sweetcorn and a light sprinkling of grated cheddar. I ate 1/4 which was plenty and let the rest cool on a rack and have wrapped the bits in greaseproof so they don't stick to each other and plastic-bagged them in my freezer. So, instant takeaway if I find myself having a CBA day of it.

I'm pleased to report that dried yeast in foil sachets is perfectly viable 20 months past it's use-by date.:o Oh, and I cooked the pizza on the top shelf for 15 mins and when it was done the rolls still looked a bit pallid on the lower shelf, so I moved them up and gave them another 5 mins.

Ceridwen, yor home area sounds not unalike mine in terms of the double-curse of high house prices/ rents and low wages. Provincial City is a lovely place to visit and you find tourists from all over the world coo-ing over the historic buildings and the darling little cafes and boutique shops in the city centre.

However, what the visitors, and even some of the more priviledged residents in the better neighbourhoods, don't see is the suburbs of council estates which have levels of deprivation which rate high on Europe-wide indices of such things. There is a whole neighbourhood on the edge of the city, a mixture of council and housing association homes, which has just been granted extra funding from a major utilty company, in partnership with the council, to put in insulation etc.

There are a lot of people in this city who are cold every winter despite putting a huge chunk of their income into their pre-payment meters. When they run out of money, they just have to be cold, and no one in authority has to be embarrassed by looking at the statitistics for disconnections because they have effectively disconnected themselves.

I'm very fortunate in that whilst my block of flats has no sound insulation to speak of (the environmental health officer who analysed the recordings was gobsmacked and horrified) it does have very good thermal insulation and my flat, being minute, is like a wee oven. Or possibly a slow-cooker or haybox.

Fugalista well done on getting your plot of land and how fabulous that it came with gooseberry bush pre-installed. I'm sure the ultimate veg and fruit patch is going to be happening shortly....

maryb it sounds like you got your overgrown lottie about the same time as I got mine (2008 for me). I have had lots of trials bringing back something which had been neglected for over a decade into good condition. A lot of it wasn't strictly gardening, it was things like the whole blasted plot being covered with waffle-rubber carpet underlay, buried several inches deep. I've almost cried at times with the frustration of wrestling with couch grass/ underlay/ chickenwire sandwiches on cold winter days in the howling wind.

I, too, feel guilty that my lottie isn't better and that there is a patch of untouched (but regularly trimmed) rough ground full of rubbish (not mine!) at the top. In mitigation, I've had a horrible year with almost no sleep and this has impacted on the lottie and I'd booked a big chunk of my 2010 annual leave in the autumn specifically to virtually live on the lottie and really get to grips with the Rough and then my Mum was diagnosed with cancer at the start of September.....

I've had to learn to cut myself some slack and accept that I cannot compete with the quality of the allotments of retired persons, esp retired men with wives at home holding the fort and doing the domestic round. However, I will be staycationing at the lottie again this autumn and, light willing, will get that mattock into The Rough with extreme prejudice......I can see fruit bushes and herbs.....focus on the end result, not the pain of getting there......

Oops, time's a-passing, must get porridge and more tea and go to w*rk.......have a good day, everyone.

Skint_but_Optimistic

Thats it, I want an allotment. No more lambs lettuce on the windowsill for me!!

My name is going on the list!!

Softstuff

Boy I'd love an allotment here, but sadly no go. There's a couple of community gardens, but they're much further than walking distance away. Land sharing doesn't really happen within a walking distance either, since the area is predominantly rich or touristy. Good news I read here is that this year fruit crop has been fantastic, and that fruit prices, bananas in particular, are set to plummet. Also going to give MIL some seeds, and tell her to get growing on her new land!! I would go and tend that too, but it's a half hour drive away.

Have had a lovely day of tying up loose ends here. Piccies are mounted, frames are up, a new airer has been rigged over the hot water tank, plants are potted and more. I'm all nesty at the moment.

Another non-os confession, I bought hubby a choccy birthday cake. In my defense it was because I'm baking a carrot cake and home made pizzas tomorrow for when his friend comes over, making sushi for 6 on sunday, and didn't think I'd have time to do that as well. Or I couldn't bring myself to. Since I'm too busy vacuuming each day now....

Red_Doe

I don`t much post on MSE, but do lurk and read threads like this one and the getting ready for winter one.
Just wanted to say, if Ceridwen and Grey Queen haven`t already, I wish they would write blogs or books because their posts are always either full of info, or encouragement for others, or are fascinating to read accounts of life/gardening/cooking etc.

kidcat

Softstuff - thank you, the info on banana prices has cheered me right up, its been a very long week and I am not sleeping at all well, but my DS7 loves bananas and eats lods per day - our banana costs are very high so any price drop would be a very welcome relief.

Skint_but_Optimistic

Its insider info on the Banana situation!

I had a craving for them when pregnant with DS. I ate over 6 every day, and took them to bed under the pillow, so I could have one during the night if the mood took me.

I would also rub the inside of the skin on my wrists / back of my hand so I could sniff it, and get past the craving.

I was a banana junkie.

No wonder DS is a little monkey.

Im over it now, but still have the odd one. :-)