Gallimaufry, that’s what she said. I did a double take and immediately made a note of the word for me to look up later. It was while listening to The Archers early last week that I clearly heard Linda Snell say the word when describing her pop-up Cinderella pantomime. That amazing woman managed to stage a triumphant performance of the show in the Brookfield barn in less than a week! Casting, rehearsing, costumes, set building, and even recruiting a famous pantomime dame as an ugly sister. Ambridge never ceases to amaze me. Upon Googling the word I discovered that gallimaufry means “a confused jumble or medley of things”, which I thought fairly accurately sums up my weekly blog. It wasn’t a word that I was familiar with, but is one that I am going to file in my brainbox for strategic future use.

It got me thinking of other words that have become redundant. There were a lot of derogatory terms in fairly common parlance in my younger days that are strictly unacceptable in these enlightened times, but one that I recall from days of yore was prannet (pronounced prannit), which was directed at someone for acting stupidly – “you prannet!”, much in the same way that you would use prat, or even blockhead, dolt, bonehead or even chowderhead, all of which are fairly archaic. Ian Dury used prannet in the lyrics of his song ‘Billericay Dickie’ in 1978. And his backing group? The Blockheads.

Well January came and went in a trice and now it’s February. The 2nd of February is Candlemas Day in the Christian calendar and it signifies the return of the light. As is the case with many Christian festivals it coincidentally occurs at the same time as a Pagan one, and later Gaelic, in this case Imbolc or St Brigid’s day, which is now a public holiday in Ireland. In Pagan times it is thought that this festival marked the beginning of the lambing season. Good old Wikipedia helped me out with this.

I completed my tax return in plenty of time last week – I had 3 days to spare. It wasn’t too painful either, though I have mixed feelings on that, because it is an annual reminder of how difficult it is to make a living (haha) from growing/selling vegetables on the scale that I do. During the financial year in question I roughly calculated that I was working for approximately £2.00 per hour, I reckon a chimney sweep’s boy would earn more! It’s a good job that I enjoy it.

There were a couple of blips last week. The first was that the lemons didn’t arrive, which was a shame because I had orders for around 50 of them. The other thing was that the Avocados went from the sublime to the ridiculous, not in terms of size, though they were better in that respect. No it was with their ripeness – they were like hand grenades! I do hope that you all saw the label that I attached to your order sheet and didn’t try to use them. They need to be set to one side, pretend that they are not there, and see what happens after a week. To accelerate their ripening you can try the old banana trick. Put the avocados in a paper bag with one and the ethylene given off should speed up the process. I am hoping that this week’s batch will be more immediately edible, but I won’t know until they arrive on Wednesday.

There is a break in the availability of purple sprouting broccoli, but we have an interesting substitute this week in the form of Kalettes. They are a cross between kale and Brussels sprouts and are also know as flower sprouts – like bite-sized open leaved cabbages with a sweet and nutty flavour. Boil or steam them, or you can toss them in olive oil, season with sea salt and pepper and roast them for about 10 minutes in a hot oven. Worth a try surely? Kalettes sound like they could have been a 1960’s Phil Spector wall of sound girl band. If you are of a more conservative disposition there are Brussels sprouts and Tundra cabbage. Otherwise everything is very much the same as the past few weeks. I have emerged from my winter torpor and will make some chard and red onion pesto this week.

Good progress was made last week on the Beech hedge – I must be more than 25% through the task now! I can see it being like the Forth rail bridge, I will need to start again as soon as I have finished. Jillian asked whether I could lay the hedge in the traditional way? You must be kidding love! Most of the stems at or close to ground level are around a foot in diameter, not exactly ideal for laying, even if I had the skills to do it, and I would like to have those skills. No it’s a chainsaw job I’m afraid.

We have just got back from a very nice dog walk in the bright sunshine. It was marred only by the discovery of a dead Cormorant laying 20 metres into a crop field not more than half a mile as the Cormorant flies from home. It could of course have died of natural causes, but with the increase in reported cases of avian flu one wonders if that was the cause of its demise? Later on in the walk we passed the dead tree where the Cormorants roost, and today there were just 3 perched in it, whereas we usually see 4 or 5.

Last week there was an update to the ‘back end’ of the website, installing new versions of some of the software that powers it. I am hoping that everything works as it should – I think that it will (fingers crossed emoji).

There, that was a veritable gallimaufry of a blog. Look out for next week’s word of the week.

Phil