As I turned off the Long Melford bypass heading down into the village on Friday, I passed a hearse loaded with a coffin. My hand instinctively reached for my collar – well where my collar would be had I been wearing one. I had to hold the neckline of my top whilst on the lookout for a four legged animal, because not until seeing one was I able to release my grip. This whilst driving my van; and they say that men can’t multitask. Fortunately a dog was being walked on the green, so fellow road users were not in peril for too long.

This superstition is one that I was brought up to observe, and one that I have followed since my childhood, in the same way that I always spit 3 times if I see a lone Magpie. They are only token spits, not full-on gobs (what a revolting term), more like a dry ‘peh peh peh’, but this has to be executed if I am to avoid bad luck. Where I struggle is when I see a solo Magpie, complete the triple ‘peh’, and then immediately see another. Have I completed the sequence, so that the second bird counts as a another single one? I often triple ‘peh’ again, just to be on the safe side. Yesterday at the market I found a tiny money spider hanging from my clothing by it’s gossamer thread, so what did I do? I twirled it around my head three times of course like an idiot, what else would I do?

Some superstitions are sensible and logical, or were when they originated, like not opening an umbrella indoors – what could possibly go wrong? Don’t walk under a ladder – health and safety innit? 7 years bad luck for breaking a mirror – back in the day mirrors were expensive to make, so breaking them was to be discouraged, though there is another explanation dating back to the Romans who thought that breaking a mirror harmed your soul, and that it would take 7 years to renew it.  See a pin pick it up….to avoid it sticking into someone’s foot! They are mostly to do with bad luck, but there are some that bring you good luck, like a bird pooing on you! Oh yes, very lucky I’m sure, that’s the sort of good luck that I could happily do without. Saying “white rabbits” on the first morning of the month….but you have to say it before midday for it to bring you good luck. What tosh! Then there’s touch wood and whistle, to avoid bad luck. The first three examples I gave at the start of the blog have no logic attached to them, they are just superstitions, but still i observe them….and several of the others. I suppose they are cultural and a link to those that came before you and who passed on the lore. They are actually quite charming. Feel free to share any of your favourites.

Going back to the bird poo one. I may have told you this story before, but I have written these blogs for so long now that I can’t remember what I have and haven’t recounted. Maybe AI has a way of advising me, but I haven’t boarded that ship yet, and don’t intend to in the near future. Having said that I am using it without consciously engaging with it, like using Google maps for navigation, or having my Merlin app identify birdsong, or when asking Alexa to play me an obscure song from the 1970’s, it is becoming ubiquitous. Anyway, back to the bird poo. As a young man I was standing on a clifftop in a howling wind looking out at the white horses dancing on the boiling sea, when out of the corner of my eye I saw an airborne gull release its payload, and mesmerised I watched as it swirled and meandered in the wind as it headed, as if laser guided, directly onto my forehead! I hadn’t realised how warm bird poo was until that moment. Oh how I felt lucky.

$1,000,000,000,000 just get your heads around that. That’s one trillion. That’s what the board of Tesla has agreed to pay Elon Musk over the next 10 years, subject to him growing the company to a certain size. It makes me feel quite sick. According to the Green Party, that’s 20 billion times more than a nurse in the UK earns, though these numbers are disputed, but that’s not really the point. Once you’ve got your first billion what are you going to do with another thousand of them? What a gratuitously greedy man, he is the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) example of capitalism.

Meanwhile, back on the land in the real world, last week I finished planting up the polytunnel, so it now has 8 rows of spring cabbages, 5 rows of mixed kale and 3 rows of chard that will overwinter. I also planted a bed of Pak Choi in the greenhouse. I just have the spinach to accommodate now, but I need to clear some tomatoes before being able to do that. Outside I still haven’t planted the garlic yet, so that’s a priority in the days ahead. With the very mild temperatures and a bit of moisture the grass is still growing, but whether I will get round to giving it a final final cut remains to be seen.

In the shop this week there are Romanesco cauliflowers again, but these are now very much in the limited availability camp. There are Brussels sprouts, cavolo nero, broccoli, red and January King cabbages. Celery, leeks, mushrooms, Isle of Wight tomatoes and a choice of squash. And then there are the root crops – carrots, Jerusalem artichokes (good for your gut), beetroot, swede, onions, sweet potatoes and leeks. As well as the red Java potatoes there are Charlotte, which are a waxy boiling spud. Apples this week are D’Arcy Spice. I have held them back until now because their flavour develops the longer you keep them. It is an old Essex variety, discovered in the grounds of the Hall at Tolleshunt D’Arcy in 1785. it is not a ‘looker’, but is does have an interesting flavour. There are still some cooking apples, and there will be lemons and oranges from Spain. No avocados this week.

We have another week of unseasonably warm days ahead, but at least it’s saving on logs and heating oil. There’s not a hint of frost in the forecast, which doesn’t quite seem right for mid November. I don’t suppose that it’s any different from any other year, but there seem to be an extraordinary volume of leaves this autumn, with lots more to come.

The main photo was taken this morning of clover flowering in one of the fields behind our house that was planted to improve soil fertility. This is its second blossoming of the year. I didn’t see any with four leaves.

Right, I’m off, I have leaves to rake up and a duck pool to clean out. Oh, by the way, despite spinning the money spider around my head yesterday we did not win the lottery last night.

Phil