Freshly dug carrots

If I’ve been a bit quiet lately it’s because I have been moving house. All the pots and pans and the batterie de cuisine have been boxed up and moved a few miles down the road to a market town called Shepton Mallet. It has a market cross, winding streets and cobbles. It has been badly neglected for about twenty years, but an enormous Tesco has just landed in the turnip field and things look set for a big change. I shall document the goings on as they occur.

Meanwhile there were fourteen boxes to unpack into the kitchen and much heartache and weeping because it wouldn’t all fit. The charity shops have benefited, but I have kept all the strange and battered things that I think look great. So many I could go into business.

And the best thing was that my name came to the top of the allotment waiting list, so I am now the proud guardian of a piece of the earth, and today I planted a row of spring cabbage. Somebody kindly lent me their wheelbarrow to move a bag of horse manure (yes, that serious!) and gave me a bunch of carrots he had grown. So we will have them for dinner, with a good free range chicken, all with their funny rude shapes and wonderful carroty smell.

Until broadband gets plugged in I am on wind-up internet, so things will be short, but I am definitely back in touch and have lots to write about as the mellow mists of autumn sweep in.