Puss (almost) in boots

For the last eight months we’ve both been slipping around on the patch using two of my old sets of shoes. Well, enough is enough. It’s damp and squidgy out there at this time of year, and the leeks and carrots need to be pulled, so I’ve invested in the first pair of wellies I’ve had since I was 10.

They’re my size, but absolutely huge. Compare them to the cat and you’ll see what I mean. I’m guessing that’s because you’re supposed to wear a second pair of socks inside them to protect you from the cold.

Either way, they’re a strangely exciting addition to the little row of footwear lining one of the outhouse walls.

Essex is the driest county in the United Kingdom, importing more than half of its water from neighbouring counties. So it’s good to see that Essex and Suffolk Water is doing its bit, offering 7500 customers the opportunity to get their hands on some free water-saving kit, which they’ll even come around a fit entirely gratis.

It’s not entirely altruistic; as it admits, it has a legal duty to promote water conservation, but I won’t let that put me off grabbing some of the 11 goodies on offer. They range from water butts (yes please) and hose attachments (yes, yes, yes) to crystals for your hanging baskets (hmmm…) and adaptors for your taps (which won’t fit mine).

So I’ve put my name down for a butt, the basket crystals, a trigger gun for the end of the hose and a bath measure, which may stem my over-use of water in the tub.

I’ve also suckered the free shower timer they sent with the introduction letter to the wall in the shower. That’s perhaps a little over-optimistic as it only gives you 5 minutes under the water. I can see myself turning it over a couple of times most mornings.

Christmas branch

Rather than buy a tree this year, we headed out into the woods to pick out own. It would have been wrong to hack one down, of course, so we walked through the trees until we found a pile of cut branches drying by the path, and dragged one home.

It’s spent the last couple of weeks planted in a pot full of gravel, arching gracefully over the TV. No watering, no needle drop, no temptation for the cat to climb up it and make a home in the upper branches. It’s been the perfect Christmas companion.

Things we’ve learnt this year from our first attempt:

1. Find a slender branch with a good curve to it so you have plenty of horizontal - or nearly horizontal - wood on which to hang your decorations.
2. Don’t pick anything too thick, as no matter how sturdy your base its natural tendency will be to lay flat on the floor. If you do, you’ll spend most of your Christmas propping it up.
3. Low-key decorations work best. Avoid too much sparkle and glamour and get rich deep tones and non-reflective surfaces to complement the wood.
4. Fewer lights is better. We had 80 on our branch, and it was about 30 too many. If we were starting from scratch again next year I’d look for 50 lights or fewer.

Sprouts on the scale

It’s Christmas, so we’ve started picking the sprouts. Well, it’s tradition, isn’t it.

Our crop extends to six plants in total, and on each one there must be 40 good sprouts, so we picked off 130g the other day for dinner, and took another 1.2kg today, which we prepared for Christmas lunch tomorrow.

It’s a cliche to say that your home grown veg tasted better - largely because you tell yourself that to justify all the effort, but they did taste fantastic the other night, and I have high hopes for the ones we took tomorrow.

Shopping at Sainsbury’s, that 1.33kg total would cost £2.07 at £1.56 per kilo, and I reckon we’ve taken about a fifth of the crop, so it would cost a tenner to buy all that we have grown, which is not very cost effective when you consider how much space they take up. If we’re going to be totally merciless about this whole idea of self-sufficiency then you need to think about what your land is yielding. £10 isn’t much at all when it could have been put to more profitable use through the summer growing a heavy crop of beans, which we’d now be eating from the freezer.

So, they’re very nice but I think that unless we switch to having an allotment this may be our first and last year of home grown sprouts. Either way, we’re enjoying them while they last.

I move this weekend, after eight months of doing up the house. It means I’ll be closer to town, so won’t need to use the car for the station each day. My petrol consumption - and with it the cost of running the car - should decrease rapidly, and I reckon I’ll only be filling up once every month to five weeks. At the moment it’s more or less fortnightly.

It’s got me to thinking about how I can use the car even less, though, and switch to the bike for all but the longest or most impractical journeys, which is why a little column in today’s Guardian about attaching trailers to your bike for shopping and the like caught my eye.

The appropriately-named Bikes and Trailers specialises in such things, and I see from looking at their site that they come in all shapes and sizes. It’s like adding a boot to your bike, and although you wouldn’t use it for a trip to Ikea, something like a Mini-Boy or a Bike-Hod would be far more suitable than a ruck-sack for the weekly shop, particularly as I can get to the town centre Tesco entirely on cycle paths.

In fact, the Hod is designed specifically for shopping, as you can unhook it from the bike and wheel it around the supermarket, scanning your items as you go, dropping them into the Hod, paying at the self-service till and then hooking it up to your bike again for the ride home. It all sounds very efficient.

Only trouble is, it looks like an old lady tartan shopping trolley.

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bike trolley, shopping, cycling