Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

Yes, all the broad beans are down and mostly podded, just a few left to go. Can't leave them to dry completely on the haulm or they unzip and drop their seeds on the soil. I have some more to pod which I took off today, as I was taking the spring-sown broad beans down. They are spread out in the shed to dry off a bit more, though.

I have made a drying frame on the allotment from runner bean bamboos. I made a tripod at each end, with a cross-piece, tied on. Then I ran two more bean canes length-wise down each side, tied on also.

This is to support the bundles of dead and drying broad bean haulms whilst they dry out. I can't burn anything until 1st October. It's site rules and it would be personally and professionally embarrassing for me if I breached them and got grief from the allotment officer. I plan to let them get as dry as possible this summer then cover them with a tarp until ready to burn. I have wrapped a length of binder twine around the whole thing to stop the ever-present wind blowing them off the frame.

It looks distinctly rustic up there atm. I'm sure the old timers would feel dead at home (this was a site of early Neolithic farmsteading and their stone tools are all over the place).

I do love my bonfire and gather the materials for it carefully. I have the dried pods from the broad beans, the haulms, the runner bean vines in due season, any rotted out bits of fence posts etc. They are saved in the lottie shed ready for some pyromania. Then I let the ashes cool and turn them underground.

And yes, although broad beans aren't conventionally eaten as a dried pulse in the UK, there's nothing to stop you doing it if you like.

I was chatting with a fellow plot holder and we were discussing courgettes and he told me to google courgette picnic pie, which I have done. Looks like something I shall be making. I figure I can sneak courgettes into every meal for the next month..........:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Courgettes????? I've got two dozen of the little blighters in the veg wrack, varying sizes of courgette and I've decided the only thing I can do now .......is make chutney!!! which I'll do tomorrow as I have home grown onions, and oodles of homegrown tomatoes too and even a few cooking apples along with all the sugar, vinegar and spices I'll need, even have the dried fruit in store too. There's an awful lot to be said for this prepping lark at this time of year isn't there??? Smug, smug, smug!!!

p.s. Even have the jars, never known to throw a useable jar away in this house!!!

GQ in Sweden they make exactly the same kind of drying wracks for hay, a tripod at each end and a substantial pole down the middle, then drape the dry cut hay over it to a height of about 6 feet. They look like Dougal from the magic roundabout as you pass them in the fields!

moneyistooshorttomention

I gather the latest re the Channel Tunnel is that Ministers are considering shutting it (at least at night). They've taken legal advice about it and are discussing it subsequently.

I have interpreted that as being = Typical Civil Service caution as to whether someone can legally challenge it being shut/followed by taking legal advice to see if its possible without someone or other suing and I'm guessing that legal advice was basically to the effect that we can do so? Hence why they are discussing it...

Does anyone have any details on this?

culpepper

I cant help thinking that the channel tunnel is a bit like a permanently open drawbridge.
We had the Castle (The Island of England) and we could defend it against all comers because it could be approached by only air or sea; now, we fling down the drawbridge and welcome all in and when there is a threat to well being or safety or simply from becoming over crowded and under resourced, we wring our hands and run around like headless chickens . In olden times, the castle would be able to draw up its entrance in times of danger.
Even cities used to be walled long ago, not just castles, for the very purpose of safety in times of threat.

GreyQueen

culpepper wrote: »

I cant help thinking that the channel tunnel is a bit like a permanently open drawbridge.
We had the Castle (The Island of England) and we could defend it against all comers because it could be approached by only air or sea; now, we fling down the drawbridge and welcome all in and when there is a threat to well being or safety or simply from becoming over crowded and under resourced, we wring our hands and run around like headless chickens . In olden times, the castle would be able to draw up its entrance in times of danger.
Even cities used to be walled long ago, not just castles, for the very purpose of safety in times of threat.

I wouldn't mind betting you that there has always been a plan, built into the original plans, to flood or blow it up, should the country be at serious risk of land invasion by an enemy army.

Trouble is, what is the plan for a less-than-permanantly-destructive option for temporary closures in a crisis? Seems to me that there is a bit of headless-chickening going on.

I live in what was a medieval walled city. Walls are long gone, as the city spilled over them and they were pulled down centuries ago.There are a few knee-high fragments if you know where to look. Nowadays, we rely on the complexity of the one-way system and the savagery of the traffic wardens to keep strangers out.:rotfl:

moneyistooshorttomention

Probably the only flooding or blowing-up plans around GQ are those possibly milling around in the heads of a couple of nationalist groups that come to mind.....:cool:

But...yes...it is like a permanently open drawbridge and I rather think that Tunnel got brought into being with an informal alliance of business hoping for profit from it/ well-meaning (but naïve) people who didn't think through a "No Borders" policy in effect properly/eurocrats who wanted to be able to push a potential problem on towards Britain readily.

I think the well-meaning (but naïve) contingent were probably in the majority on that.

Goodness knows - this is another reason where the "kitchen sink" School of Politics I tend to subscribe to (ie start at the micro level working out what makes sense - ie that of an individual household) and then work up from there with similar principles for the macro level (ie of government).

Down at our own personal little level - and some of us find we have to defend our own little "castles" (against planners/neighbours/etc) that have Plans for our property if they can. Now if we know we often have to defend our own personal little "castle" - then how much more so is that likely to be the case on a macro level (ie for the whole country)?

GreyQueen

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Probably the only flooding or blowing-up plans around GQ are those possibly milling around in the heads of a couple of nationalist groups that come to mind.....:cool:

I do disagree with you on that. I doubt the military top brass would have ignored such an obvious risk. I expect the exact places to put explosives into the tunnel are already mapped, with the exact charges worked out already. The destruction-points would have been built-in to the original design.

The trouble with kitchen-sinking as a world view is that not everything scales up. Say Jo Householder doesn't want to give up her homestead to facilitate a development which would be greatly beneficial to thousands, or even tens of thousands, of other people? Do we say that Jo's rights as a property owner should trump all other concerns? Nope, we say, sell freely or be compulsarily-purchased - outcome will be the same.

[Deleted User]

Siege mentality just isn't an option in 2015. No matter how safe we would feel should the tunnel be permanently closed we have so much unprotected coastline that determined migrants who have braved the crossing of the Mediterranean I'm certain would not balk at crossing the channel in a bathtub to gain access to what they see as the promised land. At the moment they focus on the tunnel and ferry port at Calais as the 'easier' (I know it's not easy, just the least difficult)perceived way of achieving their objective. What is really needed is to give them the reality of life in the UK today, it will contain many things they only dream of but also many more things that they have never heard of and that would make their dream of utopia shrivel and die in the cold light of day. All the time they can only see the sunlit fields of their dreams they will continue to keep on trying to get here, poor things.

moneyistooshorttomention

Well it certainly also makes sense to tell them the reality of life here is likely to be "beds in sheds", NMW jobs (if they can get one), etc, etc on a practical level.

It probably literally hasn't occurred to many of them just how much their viewpoints will probably have been shaped by where they grew up. Having moved within the same country personally - its certainly clear to me that my viewpoints are very typically not just British, but the English variant of British at that. You name it - and I've discovered I will have the general specifically English viewpoint on it. So to actually move to a different country (and such a different one at that) will be more of a shock than they realise.

nuatha

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Probably the only flooding or blowing-up plans around GQ are those possibly milling around in the heads of a couple of nationalist groups that come to mind.....:cool:

GreyQueen wrote: »

I do disagree with you on that. I doubt the military top brass would have ignored such an obvious risk. I expect the exact places to put explosives into the tunnel are already mapped, with the exact charges worked out already. The destruction-points would have been built-in to the original design.

In 2005 papers were released under the 30 year rule that discuss various defence options relating to the tunnel from nukes to flooding. Though the 1974 initiative didn't proceed, it seems unlikely that contingencies weren't put in place following the Treaty of Canterbury - particularly as the major ground work had already been done.

Mrs LW is correct. illegal migration didn't start with the opening of the tunnel nor will it end with its closure - if such a thing is considered practical. Given the seemingly random nature of drug and tobacco smuggling intercepts (ie at almost any point around the coast) then I assume people smuggling is also happening around the coast.

Incidentally, despite what the media seem to focus on, the UK is far from the major destination for those seeking asylum or even for economic migrants. Perhaps the reality of life in the UK is starting to be seen, more likely the UK was never the most attractive destination.