Christmas New Potatoes Progress.

Thought l would show you how the new spudatoes are growing.  The  haulm or foliage look very healthy and it's looking good for Christmas  dinner if not before.  It's  amazing what a microclimate is created with a bit of plastic.  God bless the polytunnel!

We recently  watched  Alan Titchmarsh harvesting new potatoes in the summer and placing them in an empty biscuit tin and replacing the tin lid and planting them in the allotment until Christmas.  Sounds a good idea.  Anybody had success with the biscuit tin new potatoes planting method?

I know quite  a few readers have veg plots and I thought I  would show you how the spuds are doing.  The shrub and perennials cuttings are also doing well and you can still see KALE growing in the right hand corner of the olde polytunnel.  There's only me who eats it.  All I get is pull a face and "me not like" when I mention or bring it into the kitchen.  Think I won't  bother growing it again.

So what you having with the new potatoes on Christmas day Dave?  We have decided to have striploin steak and a all day buffet, "help yourself" menu with dishes full of sprouts and carrots and pigs in blankets, home made sherry trifle, sausage rolls, just general buffet stuff.  No Turkey though.  I hate left overs.  So what will you be eating on Christmas day?  Anybody growing new potatoes at the moment?  The Brussels are nearly ready too.

My Saturday Night Telly Thoughts.

Thanks for your comments on the last post.

Saturday Night Telly Thoughts. ( Anybody under forty five may not remember some of the programmes on UK television!)

What ever happened to Seaside Special and The Grumbleweeds  Radio Show on Saturday nights?  They were fun when I was growing up in the Seventies and eighties.  Then it would be Starsky and  Hutch or Kojak.  Followed my the News and Match of the Day. 

I often fell to sleep waiting for my mum to bring back something from the chip shop.  I never understand why they always gave me a pile of newspapers?

 Once I remember my mum and dad coming back with my dad’s rather posh female cousin and her even posher fiance.  Posh fiance attempted to wake me up to eat my chippy supper.  

My father thought that this would not be a good idea.  I would turn into a wasp if I was disturbed whilst dreaming of Wonder Woman. 

“Nonsense”

Said posh fiance. 

"I’ve had lots of experience in my time dealing with children”. 

He tried talking softly in my ear:

“Come on Davy boy wake up”. 

I thought:

“Why does he suddenly have an Irish accent?”     

I was not rousing from my slumber.    Posh fiance begins to shake my arm.  I suddenly wake up sounding like a leprechaun with a Poteen induced hangover:

“Piss off, piss off leave me alone!” 

Posh guests were not impressed, and  they never visited us again.  But what’s that got to do with the X Factor?  Absolutely nothing.  But it describes my Saturday nights when I was young. 

I quite like the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.  Well apart from Mickey Most or is it Simon Cowell?  Remember the New Faces?  The idea of finding some new talent from the great “unwashed” is a brilliant idea.  They do find some remarkable talent like Susan Boyle and Paul Potts.  But your not telling me that it’s a surprise when a odd looking person changes into the Next Elaine Paige or Pavarotti?   

They obviously have lots of auditions before they meet the panel? No doubt picking out the most eccentric 'Turns' to appear on the programme.  Any body average looking or acting normal with talent.  Need not bother.  It’s car crash television.  A modern day equivalent of watching somebody in the stocks!    

An old friend once told me he was stood outside the pub having a smoke and he saw two women fighting last night.  It was: 

“You bitch, you slag”.  

They were pulling hair and scratching.  One even started to punch. 

"It was bloody brilliant!.”  

Who needs the X Factor?  Wonder what's on RTE?  Perhaps I should start going to the pub again on a Saturday night?  Fancy a pint? 

The Sheepshead Way In November.

I walked fourteen miles last week.  Not every day or in one hike.  I do it mainly for my back.  I hurt my back many moons ago doing somebody a favour.  Never never try to move a double wardrobe down stairs.  They weigh 500 Kgs and do a great job at crushing people.  Any way I have the war wounds and the Irish inclement weather is great for arthritis.  So to stop the back giving me jip I go on my walking gymnasium.

It's  good  to get off the country roads and the cars and lorries whizzing past me.  Sometimes I listen to Spotify to my favourite Rock bands like Kansas, brass bands or The Beautiful South.  Yep my music taste is very eclectic.

Other times I don't listen and just take in the surroundings.  I reckon God would make a very good artist because he did an excellent job making Bantry Bay.

Some times I get down with the weather and things on the news and then I go for a walk and I fall back in love with rural Ireland.  I am lucky to live in such a beautiful place.  I just wish it didn't  rain so much!

A Song And Video About West Cork.

I always like reading and seeing photos of places where other bloggers live and explore.  West Cork is a beautiful part of Ireland.


A West Cork band have recently made the following video.  It even shows The Shruggs singing in Bantry Square.
Enjoy.

Christmas Hamper Ideas.

We were in a charity shop here in West Cork the other week.  The wifey picked up two wicker baskets and we both said out loud: "Hampers"!

For the princely sum of 2 euro a piece.  We purchased the two baskets.  For the last few weeks or nearly every day supermarket trip.  We have been buying "A little  bit of what you fancy".  You know: jars of sweets, bags of fudge, tins of biscuits, English Cheddar, Christmas pudding, peanuts.., you name it.  We haven't  missed them either.  Just a Euro or 3 or four.  Two Christmas hampers for next to the blink of an eye.  That's  two presents off the list.  All they need is some sellophane.

We started making our Christmas Hampers about twenty two years ago.  I was watching one of those Park hampers television adverts and remarked that I would like one of those.  We couldn't afford one though so the wife made her own Christmas Cupboard.  She started this in September.  Every week she would go in Netto and buy extra items like a bag of sugar or a jar of pickles and they would go in her 'Christmas Cupboard'.  The house rule was you can use them if you have to but they have to be replaced or "put back"!

Now it's evolved into making our own Christmas hampers.   Anybody else make or thinking of making a Christmas hampers?  You could even make your own and fill it with Watneys Party Sevens, Caramac and Maynards wine gums?  Go on have a go.  It's still not too late to make a Christmas hamper or two!

I Miss My Allotment. Thoughts About Rural Isolation.

We will have lived in Ireland  nineteen years next year.  I was thirty eight when we came over to live here.  So I suppose we have lived here half my life?  Well not half my real age of 55.  I was 38 when  we came here.  So that's  19 isn't  it..  Eh?

One thing that I really miss is watching live football, cricket, heavy rock concerts, public transport, pubs that sell real ales,  being able to buy English cans or bottled beer from the supermarkets, massive  car boot sales and also allotments.  That's ten things Dave.  I should have took off my socks and shoes and used my toes to count.

Allotment people are the salt of the earth.  They are friendly and share a common bond in cultivating the earth and growing vegetables and fruit.  They may even have a shed to escape from the missus, read their dog ears copies of "Big Girls Weekly"  or drink a few tins of beer or home brew?

I like having my own patch of Gods earth here in Ireland, especially my polytunnel.  But gosh it can be a twee bit quiet at times.  Allotments are places where you have a laugh and a joke , put the world to rights and tell people  how they are doing it all wrong.  Well they were twenty years  a go.

I wish I could paint a picture for you of a typical allotment that was next to mine: home made sheds made out of plywood, corrugated roofs with a rusty patina, lumps of concrete hold down the sheets, polytunnels made out of old plastic water pipe tubing and covered in polythene, supermarket trolleys with wheels that have a mind of their own and now the trolleys are full of drying onions, vegetables sown in lines like army regiments, an old front door for a gate..?

Rural isolation is peaceful and there are no rules or regulations or an allotment committee telling you what to do.  But there is a lot to be said for the camaraderie and mickey taking of an allotment.  Which would you prefer an allotment with other like minded gardening comrades or a patch of land of your own in the countryside where you are on your own?   Wouldn't  mind an pub like Wetherspoon's that serves real ales.  Suppose the grass is always greener on to'ther side  of  the fence?

When its rainy nearly every day and cold the rural isolation can get to you a little bit.  Thank goodness for television, radio, books, the internet and for blogs and country walks.  I have walked ten miles already this week.  The veg plot and the gardens are too wet to do anything at the moment.  Suppose one could find some potting on to do in the polytunnel?

A Jug Of Punch.

We decided  to make a pan of cider punch the other night.  It's really cheap to make and easy.  We bought ours from the German garden centre and supermarket (Lidl) for 3 Euros and seventy nine Cents a bottle.

Chop apples and oranges, star anise,  a few cloves and a pinch of ground cinnamon and a tablespoon of sugar.  Mix it all up and add to the cider that you have poured into a pan.  You could add spirits if you want to make it really strong and need to reach for the Paracetamol for that hangover cure in the morning.

Any road or anyway.  Warm it up and pour it into a cup or glass with an handle attached.   It's  very.  Any hot punch recipes please?

I was looking at some more of the old records again the other day and I  found one of my dad's old Clancy brothers albums.  When I  was growing up in Blighty my dad would often play them and his The Seekers records on the radio gram.  One song that often plays in my mental jukebox is the following.  Enjoy,