To the Tower with the scoundrel and don't spare the horses!

"Good afternoon Mr Brown", said the friendly policeman as he handed back my passport and invitation at the main gates of Buckingham Palace last week. "Just follow that lady with the pink hat over there and go through the central entrance". As Jacquie and I walked across the Queens courtyard towards the Palace doors, my stomach churned for a moment and I began to feel a tear welling up inside. It was indeed quite an emotional experience. Reading the pages of The Royal Garden Party website it states that guests are invited because of their good works in the community.

 Thousands had been there before me, thousands have received an invitation to the Royal garden party, but I was the first of our particular line of Browns ever to enter through those gold trimmed gates and I felt honoured to be there. 

Security was tight and with very good reason, the gardens were packed with the great and the good from all over the British Isles and beyond. Marksman lined the rooftops of the Palace, the constant hum of nearby helicopters, always just within reach in case of trouble, were always just far enough away so as not to be too much of an intrusion. There was, of course, no trouble whatsoever but with every major Royal present, ex Prime Minister John Major, cabinet ministers Liam Fox and Patricia Hewitt and bundles of a,b,c and d list celebrities too numerous to mention, the Yeomen of the Guard certainly had their work cut out.

We walked arm in arm, Jacquie and I, onto the Queens lawn, ( Judges report read "a bit raggedy at the edges, well worn but with very few weeds") bathed in glorious sunshine which lasted throughout our stroll around the extensive gardens. It was reminiscent of a scene from a Sunday evening Georgian drama series, with all the cast in their finery, genteely meandering along the myriad of paths that appear to criss-cross the Palace grounds, occasionally exchanging a smile, a nod of the head or an unspoken "How do you do" as they passed like ships in the night. 

"Look at that Hydrangea!", I said to Jacquie, "My goodness that's beautiful.... it doesn't have any perfume but the colour is astounding". It was bursting with flower and fresh new buds, all of them capable of re-use as thousands of cuttings, but dare I pinch a cutting from the Palace gardens?. "Off with his head !", I could hear the cry coming from the judges bench. "To the Tower with the scoundrel and don't spare the horses !". 

After a final lap around the lake we arrived at the tea tent, just in time for tea and cakes and of course, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off (we all knew that we'd be getting those didn't we). 

The band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards played their triumphal, rabble rousingly patriotic tunes from a nearby marquee as we queued for our tea but....just before we reached the front the music stopped, everyone went deathly silent and turned away from the table which groaned with the weight of the food, "It must be the Queen", said Jacquie just as the National Anthem began to waft across the lawns. We stood, as did everyone else, in deferential silence, like human statues turned to stone before the Emperors gaze.

In a few moments the National anthem finished and we all relaxed again. The Queen made her way down the steps of the terrace and across the lawns to the Royal enclosure, stopping and chatting to her subjects as she passed. Half way along her path through the garden the heavens opened and we were all treated to a right Royal soaking, but it didn't really matter, nobody really minded, we were just all so happy to be there.

FROCK WATCH.......report............

The Queen wore a brilliant green two-piece outfit with a matching hat. The green theme was followed along with a see-through, wrap-around umbrella, which sported a matching green stripe along the bottom edge.

 Charles, Philip and Edward wore traditional tails and the ladies, Camilla, Sophie and Princess Anne wore cream, blue and magnificent ice green colours respectively. Young Pippa Middleton was there as well with her parents and she too looked as much at home as the rest of the Royal entourage in a short, dark blue flowing and billowing skirt that was, untraditionally, above the knee and showed almost no sign of that now, world famous bum.

Separated by a red rope, the two parties, the Royals and the Commoners took their tea and chatted politely until, at 5.50 the Queen left to a rapturous applause from all of her guests. It really had been a wonderful afternoon, three hours in the very heart of London and it felt as though we were hundreds of miles away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

 We were told beforehand that we couldn't take cameras with us and that mobile phones had to be switched off before entering the Palace grounds, but at five minutes to six, as we made our way back to the terrace and the doors that led to the real world beyond, we couldn't help but notice that almost every one had their phones out and were taking photo's in the grounds. "I may never get another chance to visit this garden", said one very well dressed chap standing next to me, " We have to leave the Palace in a little over three minutes and I'm sure that they won't kick me out now and anyway, how can they possibly confiscate all of the 'phones, or delete all these photos, they'd be here all night".

Yes, we took photo's inside too, but they're a bit too blurry for publication. As for the cuttings.........did we get any?..........well, that would be telling...... you never know we might just get asked to the Palace again.

Ernie's Pitstop

Sitting at home in my comfy chair this weekend, revisiting the final lines from my previous Blog, I've come to the realisation that I really do need to start writing something a little bit different from this standard diary of 'What Ernie did this week'. It could go on for ever, there's always going to be something, interesting or not, to write about.

I could go on, (as you're probably aware by now) for hours about Jacquie and I watching the clear night sky from our bedroom window in Caistor a couple of weeks ago and seeing, with our bare eyes, the space shuttle Discovery, after disconnecting from its mother ship, embarking on its final journey towards our planet, leaving the International Space Station to orbit the Earth ad infinitum.

Equally, I could quite easily go on about Jacquie replying to a Facebook offer last week and winning two tickets to see comedian Boothby Graffoe at the Ropery Hall in Barton upon Humber last night, or our early evening visit to Grimsby Minster to see the fantastic Lightworks event last friday.

I could rabbit on for hours about my return to working in the extensive gardens at Healing Manor especially after all of the extraordinary events that have been taking place there over the past few months, or I could regale you with comical tales of a couple of talks which I gave to the Caistor Flower Lovers Club and the New Waltham Methodist Wives group last week, but would you really, honestly, be interested ?

You might like to know that Jacquie and I have been given the invitation date for our trip to Buckingham Palace for an afternoons tea party with Her Majesty the Queen in July and I'm sure that you'd really like to hear about my latest attempt at TV presenting, appearing on a series of four mens health programmes called 'Ernie Pit Stop' ........but, to be perfectly honest with you  I' don't believe that I'm going anywhere with this blog so I'm going to give it a rest for a while.

"Write it down", I said. "Get it all of your chest", I implored, as I finished writing episode 9 of my Trivial Background Noize blog. But it's only now, after rereading all of the episodes together, that I've realised that that's exactly what I've been doing and that was really what the whole elaborate escapade has been all about......... getting things off my chest.

It definitely was a wrench, almost three months ago, when I walked away from the highly enjoyable pastime of running Grimsby in Bloom. But, it really was hard work and  it really was all-consuming in its demands upon my time. Its constant requests for my attention in a way, forced me to become a slave to its master, leaving me no time at all, to even earn a crust some weeks.

This strangely named blog of the last 10 weeks ( I was the singer in a local punk rock group in the late 1970's with the same name), has really helped me to recapture the thrill of seeing a blank page before me. It has helped me to refocus my sights on the more important things in life. It has also helped me to break free from the shackles of continuity which I forged in haste, 3 and a half years ago. The next part of my lifes' journey does not need a running commentary to accompany it and for that reason, I'll not be writing my blog for the next few weeks or even more.

That doesn't mean that I won't be writing stuff. Just that I'll stop writing it all down in diary form for you all to read. I'm now toying with the idea of changing my style and stretching myself with an attempt at writing some poetry as a means of expressing myself. Maybe that will become my literary outlet, who knows?

Thanks for reading Trivial Background Noize over the last 10 weeks and I hope that you've enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Just for a laugh, if you've got a moment in your busy schedule, please have a look at the series of mens health programmes called 'Ernie's Pit Stop, which appeared on Channel 7's website a couple of days ago. My youngest, Leon, couldn't even bear to watch past the opening credits. He saw the first few moments, up until the point where his oh so embarrassing dad begins to play air guitar with a mucky old sweeping brush and it suddenly became to much for his sensitive teenage sensibilities and he ran, groaning from the living room.

click here for link to Ernie's Pitstop

Have a look for yourself, you deserve a laugh.

 Let me know what you think!

Take care everyone, I'll be back again in another literary form sometime soon I hope, but for now, thank you very much for reading Trivial Background Noize.

Ernie x

The Lay of Havelok the Dane

"Now sailed for England, Denmark's King
And with a mighty following
They landed at Grimsby, on England's strand
To gain for Goldborough, her own dear land"

My overly loud and often excessively flamboyant rehearsals have meant that I've been banished to the far flung reaches of the kitchen this week and all because of a neighbours' request of me to read my favourite poem, out loud, to the townspeople of Caistor.

Caistors' 3rd 'Lyrical Affair' has been organised, once again by our neighbour Michael Galligan and is being held later on this evening at the local Sports and Social Club, so plenty of practice before the event is an essential prerequisite. I've really got into reading poetry over the last decade or so. It's just so easy to pick up a poetry book and dive straight in, whenever a spare moment arises in my busy schedule. With poetry, I'm not confronted by dozens of hard to believe characters or convoluted plot lines, nor do I run the risk of losing the thread of the story when I inevitably have to put the book down and get on with my work. But choosing a favourite poem from amongst the thousands available is not an easy task.

Poetry, for me, is a very personal adventure. Inward looking, quietly considered and often romantically inclined, it never really strikes me a being the theme for an evening of public performance art. If I'd wanted to entertain only myself, I would probably have chosen one of the 1st World War poets, maybe Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen, or I might have gone for the early 19C 'Peasant poet', John Clare, with his insightful, descriptive verses, bearing with them the transience of the English countryside, red sometimes in tooth and claw, right into the heart of my comfortable chair. But, would any of these great 'classics' really be suitable for a public performance in front of a hundred people on a Saturday night in Caistor?

I was also asked, last October, to participate in Caistors first ever 'Lyrical Affair', when this very same problem again raised its ugly head. As a little boy, going to Barcroft Street Junior School in Cleethorpes during the late 60's, early 70's, I clearly remember our year group being asked to write a poem to celebrate the installation of Sir John Betjeman as the nations Poet Laureate. It was one of the few times that I really enjoyed my junior school life. I'd been asked to use my imagination and play with words, what rebellious fun that was in those days.

My mother, really proud of my first steps into the world of poetry, bought me a copy of Edward Lear's' Complete Book Of Nonsense, by way of a reward for my bravery in reading out my poem to the whole school and that was when I discovered 'The Jumblies'.

Far and few, far and few are the lands where the Jumblies live
Their heads are green and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.

The daftness of the poem just enthralled me.The words made absolutely no sense at all, yet the musical rhythm of the stanza's were absolutely compelling to me as a child. As an adult, I recalled that childhood thrill of reading The Jumblies out loud when I began to read it with my own children. Even today, as our youngest child begins his departure from being a teenager to a young adult, it still manages to strike a chord with them all. I only have to enlarge my voice and release the first line and they all join in with the rest, automatically, from the heart, because they too, in their youth, experienced the joy that dwells within the heart of this poem. It has become part of their being, part of what they have become as adults.

It was the perfect poem to read out to the 100 people who packed their way into the Caistor Sports and Social Club late last year. First I read out the chorus... " Far and few, far and few......" then after asking my audience to join in after every verse, I began my recital.

" No, no, no" I said, as I stopped midway through the first line of the chorus. "You all need to join in, not just those of you over there at the back. Right, let's try again." This time about half the room joined in and by the end of my recital, everyone was taking part, enjoying themselves and feeling as though they too had played a part in this unusual, but well attended, community event. So, when Michael Galligan came to see if I would read out another poem at Caistor's 3rd Lyrical Affair event, I immediately said yes, but I didn't quite know at that moment, which poem I'd be reading.

It had been really heartening to see so many people enjoying the 'thrill' of public poetry reading and I didn't want to dampen anybody's fun night out with poems of bright yellow buttercups, unrequited love or moribund grief. I wanted them to be involved, excited and enthused by the event, not lulled into a somnolent torpor or worse still, get bored to tears and begin chattering amongst themselves.

I remember standing in the centre of the room during that last poetry reading 4 months ago. I couldn't move about very much as there were children sat all around my feet, their parents and older relatives behind them and the rest of the community fanned out, encircling me almost as though in a scene from the days of old when all the villagers would have sat around the communal fire, keeping warm during the long dark winters nights when tales of romance, death, greed and lust where told to entertain and educate.

During the Dark Ages, before history was written down to preserve its accuracy, communities told these campfire tales to preserve traditions and to pass on items of community history. A famous warrior would have had his tale retold around many a village fire, the story changing and adapting itself to the morals of the day, characters added and taken away and battle scenes reallocated to new venues until the early medieval age brought with it the gift of the written word.

One of these tales, first written down in the 13th Century during the time of King John, is 'The lay of Havelok the Dane'. It tells the tale of Grim the Fisherman and his flight from Denmark with the infant Havelok, heir to the Danish throne and their founding of the town of Great Grimsby on Lincolnshires' North Sea coast.

The 'Lay' is an early middle English version of the original spoken tale, written in rhyming couplets. In 1980 it was translated into modern English by Bill Baines, who was then Head of Whitgift School in Grimsby. It takes about 3 hours to read in full, a gargantuan event which would take up a whole evening.

But yes, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense and I resolved to read the final battle scene from the 'Lay', as abridged by Dr Alan Dowling in 2010. I'll begin my recital from the point where Havelok has been crowned as the King of Denmark and sails with his army, back across the North Sea to Grimsby to fight the evil Earl Godrich for the throne of England. It's a fierce and bloody battle scene and I'll tell it as though I'm recounting recent history to a community sat around the campfire on a long winters evening.

Anyway, back to the kitchen to rehearse my lines, Jacquie's getting fed up with my ferocious bellowing, I can see it in her face.

Now you've heard the tale right through
of Havelok and Goldborough too
how they were born and how they were taken
from their parents and forsaken

Plagued in youth with treachery
with treason and with felony
and how villains robbed them quite
of all truly theirs by right

And in the story I did tell
how Grim the fisherman served them well
and how they were avenged at last
as I've explained in hours past.

Let's bake some bread

 "We'd better get to the shops to buy some bread before they sell out" said my wife Jacquie, "You remember what happened last winter when it snowed really heavily".

Our family live in the centre of Caistor, a tiny but very pretty little market town, nested into a fold on the western edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds with magnificent views across the Ancholme valley below. Its lofty position with unobscured views of the major conurbation of Great Grimsby with it's 300 ft Dock Tower and further over to Spurn Point in the East, Lincoln Cathedral and the smoke stacks of Gainsborough to the South and West and the twin spires of the Humber Bridge to the north, our home town, perched high on top of the Lincolnshire Wolds always gets the full brunt of the weather, which ever direction it comes from. When it snows in Lincolnshire it always falls on Caistor first and heaviest.

We've lived here for just over 4 years now and if it wasn't for the constant travelling between here and the coastal towns of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes for work, pleasure or entertainment and the fact that I don't drive, I think that we'd probably have settled in Caistor. Anyway, as I was saying, last November, unexpectedly the snow storms came early, thick, fast, and heavy, settling with a vengeance in deep drifts across the main road. There was no way that I could get out of the drive to work and obviously there's not much call for a self-employed gardener when the snow is 3ft deep on the ground so for the next two weeks I used my time perfecting a simple recipe for home-made bread.

We'd been much too late in organising our gruelling trek across the icy Lincolnshire tundra, panic buying had set in by the time we arrived at the shops and all that was left on the shelves was a slightly squashed pack of 6 soft white buns.

" Why don't you buy some yeast and make your own bread", Jacquie suggested.

 It wasn't as far fetched as it might sound. I first made bread many years ago, as a schoolboy in Cleethorpes during a domestic science lesson. Yes, surprisingly boys were allowed to do cookery in the 70's, but none of them, except for me, of course, wanted to take such a soft and girly subject. "You'll be the only boy in a class full of girls Brown do you realise that? You won't be able to stick it y'know, they'll eat you alive", scoffed the woodwork teacher, not yet realising that with my departure he'd lose his least talented and most challenging of pupils. Having just entered my teenage years, I knew where I'd rather be and the choice between studying sawing techniques while learning how to bang home a two inch nail alongside a gaggle of other noisy, smelly, pushing and shoving, testosterone fuelled boys, over-excitedly throwing chunks of wood around the room and my other option of being in a friendly, warm, calm, sweet smelling kitchen, packed to the gunwales with all manner of tastes, colours, shapes and most importantly for me as a fourteen year old boy, girls, lots of girls, yep....there was only one choice.
My first introduction to baking was certainly a pleasant one, I learnt how to bake bread and how to chat to girls, two things which have stood me in good stead all along my journey through life.
A few years later, during my late teens and early twenties, I worked in kitchens all over the country baking far more than my fair share of bread, and chatting up far more than my fair share of girls, but it was during a period of stability, brought on by the love of a good woman, during my early thirties and with a young family to feed that I really started to stretch and grow my baking repertoire. Croissants, pitta bread,sour dough, rye bread, wholemeal buns and pizza bases were hastily dragged from the oven by our hoard of ravenous kids and all because of the price. It was so cheap to make my own bread. At the time, the Tesco value 3lb packets of plain flour were only 12p each. Yes you read that right, only 4p per pound and that was in the 1990's not the 1930's. Baking became not only a fantastically cheap way to feed the family, it also warmed the kitchen and filled the house with the most delicious of smells.

My mistake (and I do seem to make a lot of them with startling regularity) was never writing down any of my recipes. I baked so often, during those halcyon days living on Chichester Rd in Cleethorpes, that I could easily remember all the recipes off by heart. "I mean, they're so simple Jacquie, how on earth could I forget how to make a batch of wholemeal buns". So when the snows began to fall last November and I found myself, in my late forties, with a packet of dried yeast and a bag of flour in front of me, my mind became blanker than the snow laden skies above. I could very easily remember the process involved, but not one jot of any of the recipes needed to make a great loaf of bread, every time. It took a few weeks to get it right, trial and error alone saw me through.

 Try it out for yourself, I've written the recipe at the bottom of this blog so that you can all have a go, you'll not regret it. We've not bought a single loaf of bread from the shops for more than two months now and I generally make two loaves at a time which'll last us for about three days. The only preservative I use in my bread is salt and I can't honestly tell you how long they'll last for in the cupboard, because they've always been eaten long before they've started to go stale, they really are just so tasty.
Anyway, wash down your work surfaces, give your mucky little fingernails a good scrub and put on a clean pinny, you're about to make the nicest bread in the world.

Ingredients                                                     Tools
2lb plain flour                                                  mixing bowl
2oz wholemeal flour                                        2 loaf tins or 2 shallow baking trays
2oz marg                                                        cooling rack
2 dessert spoons salt
2dessert spoons sugar
1 sachet fast action dried yeast
1pt warm water

1  Put all of the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl and rub the margarine into the flour with your fingertips. This should only take a few minutes.

2 Add the water and holding the bowl with one hand, start to mix the contents of your bowl with the other hand. This should only take a minute or so as well.

3 Sprinkle another handful of wholemeal flour onto your work surface, turn out the contents of your mixing bowl and begin to knead your dough. The purpose of kneading ( pushing and pulling your dough with lots of pressure from the 'heel' of your  hand) is to stretch the glutens in the flour and make the bread nice and fluffy.
So, the more pressure that you use to knead your dough, the better the finished product. I generally knead my dough for about 10 minutes, with some loud raucous music for accompaniment which helps me to find a rhythm for the task. After a couple of tracks the dough is ready for putting aside and proving, (leaving in a warm place to allow the yeast to multiply and grow)

4 Cut your dough ball in half and place into greased loaf tins or alternatively work into two round balls and place in the centre of a couple of greased, shallow baking trays.

5 Sprinkle the tops of your loaves with a little more wholemeal flour. This will keep the crusts soft and improve their appearance after baking.

6 Leave in a warm place keeping the loaves covered with a clean tea towel to stop them from drying out for between three and five hours, depending on how warm the room is. Trial and error will help you to gauge the length of time to suit your home.

7 When your loaves are at least double their original size, place in a preheated oven 180 deg C, 350 deg F, Gas mark 4 and bake for 20 minutes.

8 After 20 minutes take a look at your loaves. If your oven is anything like mine, it will cook at a different speed in different parts if the oven, so you might find that you'll need to turn your loaves around to ensure that they cook evenly on all sides.

9 After another 15/20 minutes remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.

Bon appetite

New Beginnngs

Hello, my name is Ernie Brown and I'd like to thank you for visiting my first ever computer Blog.


I've been writing a regular, weekly column for local newspapers throughout Lincolnshire for the past 4 years now, but these are destined to be my first tentative steps away from the printed page and into an adventure through the deepest, darkest depths of the Blogosphere.


I'm 48 years old and married with 3 grown up children. Apart from the very barest minimum of pensmanship which was required of me to progress through the ramshackle education system that existed over a quarter of a century ago, I'd never felt the need to write down a single word, except of course for the usual job applications. That was, until the day when I was jolted from my somnolent torpor by our cash-strapped local authority! 


My life took a very different turn on Christmas Eve, 7 years ago, when our local Authority delivered a careless message through our letterbox, warning us of an impending allotment rent rise of a massive 700%. My young family of 5 was going to be badly hit by this rent rise and with my wife's help, we began a campaign to stop it. 


Within a couple of weeks of frantic email writing, I 'd appeared live from Beacon Hill Allotments during BBC 1's The Politics Show, spoken live on You and Yours, on BBC Radio 4 as well as written articles and quotes for loads of other magazines and newspapers throughout the country, we even featured in Gardeners World Magazine. The highpoint for me though, was watching the TV footage of our local rent rises being discussed by Parliament in the main chamber of the House of Commons, live on Sky TV.


 The campaign came to a sudden end. The local council agreed to proceed with the rent rise and we were forced to admit defeat.


 A few of us on Beacon Hill Allotments became worried about our future on the land which we'd been tending for many years. We'd all been working as individuals on a very large, 9 and a half acre site which was only 52% occupied at the time and with tenant numbers that were dwindling fast. The other, derelict and decrepit 48% of the allotment site was in a terrible state, with rubbish and untamed brambles roving wild and free for as far as the eye could see. Not a very attractive proposition for an allotment virgin to be faced with on their inaugural visit. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we gathered together a few like-minded allotmenteers, formed a fully constituted Beacon Hill Allotment and Leisure Gardeners Society and as Vice Chair, I began writing a mountain of press releases and newsletters.


 In December 2006 our family moved house to Caistor, a pretty little market town, nestled into a fold on the western edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. One day, on a midweek shopping trip to the areas only major supermarket at nearby Market Rasen, I decided to drop into the offices of the Market Rasen Mail, to see if they were interested in printing some of my more focussed, vegetable gardening scribblings. "Can you write me a weekly gardening column starting next week? I'll need the first by Monday!", said the Editor.


For the next year and a half I wrote a weekly, 600 word column, called 'Digging Deep with Ernie Brown'. It was soon being syndicated throughout all of the local Lincolnshire Newsgroup papers from Stamford to Skegness and across to Gainsborough. My column was all about vegetable gardening and even though I only got paid 2p a word, I enjoyed every moment. It was my first paid writing job and I was very proud of it. My intentions were good, 'Digging Deep' did begin as a vegetable gardening column, but I learnt very quickly how to stretch out the facts and embroider the details to make them a little bit  more interesting and, obviously by the same token, allowing me to rake in a few more of those 'golden' 2p's. I was also hoping that in the long run, I could capture the attention of those who weren't all that bothered about getting their hands dirty, but who liked to hear a good yarn. 


It was during those early years at Caistor that I was invited to become the Chair of the Heritage Committee of the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and District Civic Society. Within a few weeks, with their full support, my wife and I set up what was soon to become, the Gold Award winning Grimsby in Bloom campaign. Our local paper, the Grimsby Telegraph, whose editor Michelle Lalor was also a member of our 'Bloom' committee, asked if I would write them a regular weekly column about the progress of Grimsby in Bloom, which they could use in their weekly free distribution paper, the Target.


 I would have to do it voluntary of course, it was, after all, a free paper, but it would give me the opportunity to hone my writing skills and would also give me the soapbox from which I could promote Grimsby in Bloom...... to the hilt.


Well, that just about brings you up to date on the journey along my writing pathway. Last week, after writing 130 weekly columns for the Grimsby Telegraph sister paper. All of them containing around 700 words each, spread out over 2 and a half years and amassing over 90,000 words, my wife and I decided to resign from our voluntary posts as Chairman and Secretary of Grimsby in Bloom.


 Consequently , 'Ernies Bloom Blog' made its final appearance last week. A sad, but true fact and one which brings me neatly back around to the beginning of this computer Blog. Y'know, after 4 years of leisurely writing a weekly newspaper column on a Sunday afternoon with my feet up on the sofa, this has all come as a bit of a shock to me. I am without an audience, nobody is listening to me and I have no obvious reason to write down my thoughts, but I still feel compelled to put pen to paper and air my views. Maybe this Blog can grow to become my new outlet, it's worth a try, nothing ventured nothing gained!


Anyway, if you've been reading this Blog in the hope that I might spill the beans and reveal all of the gory details about our sudden resignation from Grimsby in Bloom, one week ago, on New Years Day 1.1.11, then I'm sorry, you'll have been disappointed. My cup is still half full and I can assure you that there's been no spilt milk to cry over. But, we all know that these things will always, always, come out in the wash......... sooner or later. 


If you would like to read any more about Beacon Hill Allotments, Ernie's Bloom Blog or even 'Digging Deep with Ernie Brown', they're all on my website, www.erniebrown.co.uk. 


Or, you could always just keep on tuning in to this Blog site and hear it all, as it happens, straight from the horses mouth! 


Thanks for listening.


Ern x