Phoenix rising

"Hello, is that Mrs Stocks?.....My name is Ernie Brown, my wife tells me that I'm booked in to speak to your ladies group tomorrow afternoon at 2'o'clock, is our meeting still going ahead?......Good, good, is it still at the Town Hall in Grimsby?.....Okay, I'll meet you there at around 1.45pm, if that's alright with you?......I do have one small concern though, what is it you want me to talk to your group about?.....It's just that well, did you know that I'm no longer the Chairman of Grimsby in Bloom?..... ahh, I did wonder whether you'd seen the report in the paper or not. My problem is that I don't think that I should really be talking about that side of my life without their approval, but if you want, I could just talk about myself and some of my plans for the year ahead. How long do you want me to talk for?......Only 20 minutes, that shouldn't be a problem at all Mrs Stocks. In fact, you could easily find yourself having to shut me up if I go on for too long, I do tend to get a little carried away with myself once I get started.....That's great Mrs Stocks, I'll see you tomorrow, 1.45pm, at Great Grimsby Town Hall.......Goodbye for now."

I've done lots of public speaking over the past few years and the thought of standing up and chattering to the Grimsby Ladies Phoenix Group held no fears for me at all, especially as the theme of the talk was to be Ernie Brown. I couldn't fail, it is, after all is said and done, my favourite subject.

I could easily have been described as being maybe a little bit too blase' about my attitude towards the afternoons performance, a fact which became obvious to all, when I arrived in a very muddy and dishevelled state of dress at Great Grimsby Town Hall. My mud splattered overalls and the ingrained dirt covering my finger ends gave the game away, I'd clearly come straight from work. "Would you like to freshen up before we make a start, Mr Brown?...We don't mind waiting while you go and have a wash if you'd like."

"That's very kind of you Mrs Stocks" I replied, taking off my scruffy black beret and showering the Town Hall carpet with pine needles. "I've come straight from working in a garden on Humberston Avenue and as you can see from my clothes, I really need more than a quick wash so, if you truly don't mind my appearance, I'll just leave my muddy boots in the corner and carry on."

I'd brought along with me a good armful of the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and District Civic Society's local Heritage Trail booklets of  Cleethorpes and Great Grimsby town centres, which I'd written a couple of years ago. I passed the booklets around the group and explained to the ladies there, that as the Chairman of the Heritage Committee with the local Civic Society, I regularly lead guided walks for groups around both towns.

   "That should get them away from the subject of Grimsby in Bloom", I'd said to my wife earlier that morning.   We've been absolutely inundated this last few weeks with questions surrounding our bombshell resignation as Chairman and Secretary of the Gold Award winning Grimsby in Bloom committee. It's not that I don't want to talk about our sudden, unexpected departure, it's just that well, although I still feel quite negative about some aspects of it, I really don't want to be a harbinger of doom and gloom, I don't want to appear to sound negative and I definitely don't want anyone to think that I've been stuffing my face with a bowl full of sour grapes.

"Good afternoon ladies and thank you very much for that wonderful introduction Madam Chairman. I did speak to Mrs. Stocks last night and I asked her then, what she would like me to talk to you about this afternoon. For the last 3 and a half years I've been the Chairman of the Heritage Committee with the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and District Civic Society and you've all got copies of our local Heritage Trail booklets in front of you, so if you'd like me to talk about my work with the Civic Society, I can do that - or maybe, you'd like to hear about my attempt, last year, to become Great Grimsby's Member of Parliament and my relative success, polling nearly a thousand votes, making me one of the highest polling independent candidates in the country.  If you'd like, I could talk to you about my time as Chairman of the Great Grimsby Founders Festival and my journey along Alexandra Dock in a Viking long boat dressed as Grim the fisherman, the founder of Great Grimsby, carrying a shield and a battleaxe and leading a parade of 250 people through the town centre towards St. James Square, where a fierce battle for the crown of England and Denmark took place in front of Grimsby Minster."

I waited for a brief moment, looking around at both the expressions and the body language being displayed by the ladies before me.

"Grimsby in Bloom" they replied, almost in unison.   "Tell us all about Grimsby in Bloom, will it survive now that you've left and why on earth did you both leave so suddenly?"

......................................................................................................................

Get ready to wash down your work surfaces and put on a clean pinny, next week, we'll be baking bread on Ernie's latest Sunday night blog, Trivial Background Noize.

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