The heavy rains this weekend really have scuppered my plans for work next week. I'm going over to Immingham for a three day course on Woodland management on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and I was hoping to get out and do a bit of paid work at a garden in Scartho either today or tomorrow, to make up for my midweek absence from work.
Jacquie and I joined a local community group called 'The Friends of Mayflower Wood' earlier on this year, after attending a meeting of like-minded individuals at Conoco Phillips offices at Killingholme, in North East Lincolnshire. Mayflower Wood, I read last week, is the largest privately owned community woodland in England and if you ever get a spare moment, take my advice and have a walk around this massive burgeoning woodland site. There are over 70,000 trees planted here and they're all between waist to shoulder height but it'll only be a matter of a few years more and they'll be towering majestically above our heads.
We joined this friendly little group after I helped out at a couple of their intriguingly named 'Tree Spiral Removal' days last Autumn. A couple of years ago, when these young trees were first planted as 'whips' and 'heels', they were extremely vulnerable to the danger of being eaten alive during their first winter. Rabbits and deer, which live in abundance in and around these woods, always suffer from a lack of food when winter comes around and as their preferred diet of assorted fresh green leaves comes off the seasonal menu, they have to find an alternative food source in the form of the tender bark which grows on the newly planted young tree saplings. They never eat right through the trunk of the saplings and they only choose the youngest and sweetest of trees to nibble on, but once they've had a chew, the damage is done. The inner bark is very important as it's where the sap travels on its journey around the tree. Once the tree gets a little bit older and the bark gets a little more gnarled and woody, it becomes less attractive as a snack time treat.
"Excuse me!" shouted a chap out walking his dogs. "My curiosity really has got the better of me. What are you all doing?".
I stopped for a moment, straightened my back and with my hand shielding my eyes from the low lying autumn sun, I saw the stranger approaching. "Good morning", I replied. If you want to come over here I'll show you, it'd be easier than trying to explain". Before I'd even finished my sentence his two black slobbering labradors were upon me, licking, panting and bounding, with tails wagging so hard that I swear they could've been used to harvest some form of free eco energy to power the nation.
Before this visitor had arrived upon my peaceful scene, I'd been busying away, surrounded by people, yet obliviously adrift in a world of my own, removing tree spirals. "These flexible plastic shields were placed around these trees when they were first planted, to protect them from rabbits and deer. But, they've got to the stage now when the trees are big enough to look after themselves. In fact, if you look down here, you'll see that the base of this tree, where it's been surrounded by one of these tree spirals, is covered in mould caused by the build up of loads of damp leaf litter and dead insects all of which have collected inside the plastic ring.That damp rubbish has caused the mould which could, in turn, allow infections to grow and the tree to rot. That one over there", I said pointing to another young tree about 10 feet away. "That poplar has grown so quickly that it's completely outgrown its protective spiral and it's now starting to impede its growth, and stilt its progress."
"Don't I know you from somewhere?" asked my inquisitive visitor. "I'm not sure" I replied. "I do get out and about and meet a lot of people in my role as Chairman of Grimsby in Bloom, maybe we've met doing something like that?"
"Ernie Brown!" he exclaimed "You're Ernie Brown. You write that column in the Grimsby Post every week. I do enjoy reading that, it's really nice to meet you." he said, shaking me firmly by the hand before stooping and roughly patting his dogs , which were by now champing at the bit with an excited enthusiasm keen to be getting off on the journey through the woods.
"I come here every morning with these girls", he shouted back to me when he was about 20 yards away. "They need a good walk at least once every day to keep them out of mischief. Would it help if I stopped every now and then and took a few of these spiral thingies off for you?.
"Yes, thanks, just leave all of the tree spirals in a pile near the the path edge and someone will collect them. With 70,000 trees, we need all the help we can get. Thank you! Bye." I shouted to my visitor as he strode off down the hill towards his 'girls' and they bounded, full of life up the other side, doubling the distance between them and him with every pace.
Because I've helped out on a few of these voluntary events and because we joined the 'Friends' group we were offered the opportunity to go on next weeks Woodland Management course at no cost to myself and as I keep saying, a bit of free knowledge should never be turned down.
As a maintenance gardener, I'm not a complete stranger to the practice of woodland management. For the last couple of years, one of my regular customers has been Healing Manor on Stallingborough Road near Great Grimsby.
Most gardeners really struggle to find enough work to keep them in full employment through the long, barren winter months when the drastic drop in temperatures means a drastic drop in the growth rates, no more grass to cut, no more hedges to trim and no more weeds to pluck from their secret undergrowth hiding places.
Last November, the unusually early snow fell thick and fast and lay heavy upon the ground for weeks on end, not leaving the lawns of Northern Lincolnshire until the middle of January. For the first two weeks I couldn't even get the car out of the courtyard in Caistor until finally, after a mammoth community 'dig out' we all broke free from our snowy shackles. Fortunately, once out of the courtyard the roads were reasonably clear and I was able to continue my work in the 20 acres of neglected and ancient woodlands at Healing Manor, where I managed, even when the snow was knee deep, to find plenty to do to keep myself busy.
The woodlands at Healing Manor haven't been properly looked after in many, many years and in this, my third winter at the Manor, I've been able to continue my own quiet woodland management scheme. During my first winter I re-opened nearly all of the major pathways around the ancient woodlands surrounding this medieval moated manor estate. During my second winter I started to clear the brambles and elder shrubs which were beginning to take over in a couple of the larger clearings. This, in turn, let a lot more sunlight shine down onto the ground level and during last spring I was rewarded with a fantastic display of spring flowering plants from snowdrops to bluebells and every narcissus in between. This winter, I spent my time in the woods coppicing the many years of growth that has been accumulating around the bases of scores of Lime trees around the estate and curtailing the phenomenal growth of ivy on just about every tree, again to let in more light, so that hopefully, we'll get even more spring flowers this coming season.
The ivy was really out of control. Even in the depths of winter, when the leafy canopy of these major trees had all been thrown to the ground, the all invasive ivy continued to shade the woodland floor. Its branches reached high into the loftiest branches of tallest ash trees, over 250 ft into the air. They needed curtailing before they begin to pull the trees down with their weight. During the winter, when we have the strongest, harshest winds, the trees are bereft of their summer complement of leaves, helping them to ride out the worst of the storms. With a full dressing of ivy foliage to act as a sail, the winds are able to catch and pull the weakest, uppermost branches causing lots of damage to the trees. So, out came my bow saw, my loppers and my secateurs and with the snow lying above the tops of my wellies I began my journey around the hundreds of trees on the Healing Manor estate.
It was a lovely time, when the snow lay thick on the ground, to be out in the woods working. The peace, the silence, the solitude, it really was a beautiful place to work. There were the occasional dog walkers and the odd poacher or two and one lady who jogged around the pathways every morning. We all greeted each other with a smile and a wave but nothing was said, we were all happy in our own individual little worlds. My sister and her husband came along as well one morning, a couple of weeks before Christmas. They'd come, with permission of the owner of course, to collect some greenery to decorate the chalet where they live on Humberston Fitties, ready for Christmas. I showed them where all of the best and easiest to harvest holly, ivy, yew and laurel plants were and gave them my secateurs, while I got on with my work behind the 'rose walk', on the edge of the medieval moat.
When they'd finished, they came back across to where I was working. As I watched them trudging knee deep through the snow with arms full of black bins bags bulging with green plant matter they looked to all the world like the ancient 'Stickers', granted permission from the landowner to collect fallen firewood for their winters hearth.
A police helicopter suddenly swooped down low above us and hovered just above our heads for what felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds. As I said earlier, I've worked at Healing Manor for just over two and a half years now and I'm quite used to it being on the police helicopter flight path between Kirmington and Great Grimsby. It passes over twice, sometimes three times a day, you tend to get used to it. But this time, for the first time ever, it stopped, came much, much lower, waited and watched us, before flying off in ever increasing circles into the distance and was gone, out of sight beyond the treetops. "That was odd", I said to my sister as she and her husband stood next to me, each of them clutching a brace of black bin liners filled to the brim with fresh, green holly boughs and ivy trails. "They must've wondered what on earth we were up to on such a cold day".
And now, at last, the rain has stopped and I can get a bit more work done in the garden. Don't forget to tune in next week when I'll be brewing some very tasty beer indeed.
Showing posts with label Grimsby in Bloom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grimsby in Bloom. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, 16 January 2011
The Royal Connection
I had wrongly assumed, after resigning from my post as Chairman of the gold award winning Grimsby in Bloom committee last week, that life would become a little quieter now. More time I thought, to sit and read. More time perhaps to write down some old thoughts, think up some new ones and most certainly more time to enjoy the solitude that walks hand in hand with my professional life as a self employed gardener in Northern Lincolnshire. But, it seems to have been yet another week of tying up loose ends, tedious committee meetings and flamboyant talks to Ladies Groups, all of which could easily have made their way towards becoming the theme for this weeks Sunday Night blog, but, after receiving an unexpected midweek letter a couple of days ago, I really couldn't write about anything else and when I finally get around to telling you all about it, you'll begin to understand why.
It'll be twenty years in a few weeks time, since I was incarcerated within Her Majesty's Prison, HMP Hull. I'd been attempting to smuggle cannabis into the country when I was caught by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise Officers and sentenced to twelve months in jail. "Smuggler had drugs in underpants" ran the headline in the local paper. It was, as you can imagine, a very low point in my life. Her Majesty's prisons are not at all the drink and drug drenched dens of debauchery which the media presents them to be, it was bleak and it was severe.
If ever you find yourself travelling along the main road out of Hull City Centre travelling eastwards towards Spurn Point, but before you reach Curlew Corner on the Salt End peninsular, you'll notice the large and imposing Victorian prison complex on your left hand side, it's 30ft high brick walls topped with razor wire mark the boundary between two entirely separate worlds.
It was built over 140 years ago to punish and contain wrongdoers of a very different age, in a time when the punishments didn't always fit the crimes. As part of my own punishment, I was locked into a small, grey, stinking cell for 23 hours a day, accompanied by two other petty criminals, strangers to me from the East Riding of Yorkshire. We were allowed one shower a week, one hours exercise in the prison yard a day, (if it wasn't raining) and a plastic bucket for a toilet, let me assure you, it was not a holiday camp and there were no easy chairs and television sets for every inmate, even though the very worst of the tabloids like to tell you there are.
There was one barred window, quite high up on the outside wall of our tiny, three man cell, opposite to the heavy steel door which opened every morning to the accompanying call of "C'mon now you lot, slop out time!".The window had obviously been designed with the intention of being just too high up the cell wall for inmates to look out of easily, but if we took it in turns, all three of us could spend a few moments every day, before our legs began to ache, watching real life pass by on the busy road, three floors below. By standing with one foot on the bridge of the bunk bed and the other on the flimsy, prison issue table, with our hands gripping tightly on to the bars on the window which separated us from the normal world outside, we could catch a glimpse at the life that we were missing.
As you'd imagine, with a Victorian prison, the barred window didn't have the luxury of glass and more than once a flurry of snow flakes carried on a swirling North Easterly blizzard dampened the pillow of my unfortunate disgruntled cell mate on the top bunk. Conversely, that same unforgiving wind which brought with it the snow flakes, also took away with it the unwelcome smells which came from the 3 plastic buckets with their 3 ill-fitting plastic lids, designed more to hide the contents from sight than to contain any of their smells.
I hope that I don't appear to be complaining and moaning about my lot, or anything like that. I done wrong, I knew that then and I know that now. I suppose that, in a small way my recent attempts at voluntary work over the last few years have always been founded on my need for acceptance within society.
So you can imagine the smile on my face last Wednesday, almost 20 years to the day since I began my punishment within the red brick Victorian walls of Hull Jail, when I opened an unexpected letter from one of Her Majesty's Ambassadors, the Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire.
My wife Jacquie and I, the Lord Lieutenant explained, have had our names put forward to him for doing good work in the area and he wanted to know if we were available on a few dates in mid June/July as Her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth II, Queen of England would like to invite us to one of Her Summer Garden Parties held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
There are times in everyone's life when you feel as though you've reached the bottom. But, one thing I can carry from my own experience is that the dual burdens of regret and remorse are far too heavy a load for any of us to bear for a whole life time, look forward to the future and what you can become. A leopard can change its spots.
It'll be twenty years in a few weeks time, since I was incarcerated within Her Majesty's Prison, HMP Hull. I'd been attempting to smuggle cannabis into the country when I was caught by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise Officers and sentenced to twelve months in jail. "Smuggler had drugs in underpants" ran the headline in the local paper. It was, as you can imagine, a very low point in my life. Her Majesty's prisons are not at all the drink and drug drenched dens of debauchery which the media presents them to be, it was bleak and it was severe.
If ever you find yourself travelling along the main road out of Hull City Centre travelling eastwards towards Spurn Point, but before you reach Curlew Corner on the Salt End peninsular, you'll notice the large and imposing Victorian prison complex on your left hand side, it's 30ft high brick walls topped with razor wire mark the boundary between two entirely separate worlds.
It was built over 140 years ago to punish and contain wrongdoers of a very different age, in a time when the punishments didn't always fit the crimes. As part of my own punishment, I was locked into a small, grey, stinking cell for 23 hours a day, accompanied by two other petty criminals, strangers to me from the East Riding of Yorkshire. We were allowed one shower a week, one hours exercise in the prison yard a day, (if it wasn't raining) and a plastic bucket for a toilet, let me assure you, it was not a holiday camp and there were no easy chairs and television sets for every inmate, even though the very worst of the tabloids like to tell you there are.
There was one barred window, quite high up on the outside wall of our tiny, three man cell, opposite to the heavy steel door which opened every morning to the accompanying call of "C'mon now you lot, slop out time!".The window had obviously been designed with the intention of being just too high up the cell wall for inmates to look out of easily, but if we took it in turns, all three of us could spend a few moments every day, before our legs began to ache, watching real life pass by on the busy road, three floors below. By standing with one foot on the bridge of the bunk bed and the other on the flimsy, prison issue table, with our hands gripping tightly on to the bars on the window which separated us from the normal world outside, we could catch a glimpse at the life that we were missing.
As you'd imagine, with a Victorian prison, the barred window didn't have the luxury of glass and more than once a flurry of snow flakes carried on a swirling North Easterly blizzard dampened the pillow of my unfortunate disgruntled cell mate on the top bunk. Conversely, that same unforgiving wind which brought with it the snow flakes, also took away with it the unwelcome smells which came from the 3 plastic buckets with their 3 ill-fitting plastic lids, designed more to hide the contents from sight than to contain any of their smells.
I hope that I don't appear to be complaining and moaning about my lot, or anything like that. I done wrong, I knew that then and I know that now. I suppose that, in a small way my recent attempts at voluntary work over the last few years have always been founded on my need for acceptance within society.
So you can imagine the smile on my face last Wednesday, almost 20 years to the day since I began my punishment within the red brick Victorian walls of Hull Jail, when I opened an unexpected letter from one of Her Majesty's Ambassadors, the Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire.
My wife Jacquie and I, the Lord Lieutenant explained, have had our names put forward to him for doing good work in the area and he wanted to know if we were available on a few dates in mid June/July as Her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth II, Queen of England would like to invite us to one of Her Summer Garden Parties held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
There are times in everyone's life when you feel as though you've reached the bottom. But, one thing I can carry from my own experience is that the dual burdens of regret and remorse are far too heavy a load for any of us to bear for a whole life time, look forward to the future and what you can become. A leopard can change its spots.
Sunday, 9 January 2011
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)