Don't bust a glut

Settle down, little ones, and hark to a lovely story. Once upon a time there was a brave but somewhat dimwitted lad called Jack, who swapped the family cow for a bag of magic beans (to the great disappointment of his mum), and sowed them, and grew a mighty beanstalk. At the top of the beanstalk lived a rich giant...
What do you mean you’ve heard it before? And what do you mean the panto season doesn’t start for at least another four months? This is serious stuff, as long as we don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Because what we’re talking about here is glut of vegetables, very much à la Jack up a Gum Tree. Or maybe even several gluts. What’s the collective noun for a glut? We already have a flock of seagulls, a parliament of owls, a piteousness of doves (look it up if you don’t believe it). Logically and self-referentially, it ought to be a glut of gluts.
Regular readers will already have been astounded by the report of the 25ft courgettes in Mrs D’s allotment, an effusion of journalistic licence which is already the subject of close scrutiny by the Press Complaints Commission. The effusion, not the allotment.
And every day it gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view. Because we now have runner beans coming out of our ears, potatoes tumbling around us every time we open the airing cupboard, onions making the mattresses all lumpy, mange-touts that aren’t getting manged. And the Attack of the Ten-Ton Pumpkins is becoming more of a reality by the day.
We’ve even heard of cases where friends have visited others’ houses and not been allowed to leave without taking at least a bushel of beetroot with them. At gunpoint.
This grow-your-own malarkey is all well and good. You commune with nature, you spend the kids’ inheritance on seeds, some of them grow, you save loads of money on greengrocers’ bills. But why does it all have to come to fruition at once?
Why can’t they use some of this gene-splicing technology that everyone’s on about’s all the rage these days to give a controlled flow of organic abundance throughout the year, rather than concentrated into a six-week period between the middle of August and the end of September?
The timing’s pretty damned inconvenient when you come to think about it, what with the kids going back to school and the ongoing redecoration programme. (On which subject, let’s not get into who has locked themselves into the bathroom how many times this week. It will only end in acrimony.)
If you still don’t recognise the extent of the horticultural glut problem, just turn back to page 22: it’s direct action time.
Last Saturday, The Bear pub on Wellsway is held the Bear Flat Glut, which as well as having a certain gloopy-sounding poetry to its name was also a sort of vegetable Swap Shop at which those with a copiousness of carrots could offload them in exchange for someone else’s munificence of marrows.
What a commendable idea. Next time they have one, if we could swap a couple of our overflowing carrier bags of runner beans for any spare beer that the pub might have lying around, then at least one of us would go home happy.
Hope, like carrots, springs eternal...

True Brit

So that’s it then. You scrimp, save and slave for 50 weeks of the year for a holiday, and before you know it, it’s all over.
Nothing left to show for it but fading memories, peeling shins (the only part of your body to have got much exposure to the elements over the last two weeks) and half an inch of sand in the boot of the car.
Before the memories fade completely, though, it’s perhaps worth noting for the record that credit-holidays in the UK can indeed be just as much fun as full-on Euro-funded beach-ball-extravaganzas – as long as you keep your upper lip stiff and your sturdy waterproof top and trousers within arm’s reach.
And even if the weather really does turn offensive, every British holiday resort worth its salt has its own swimming pool or leisure centre, and in some, the queues of prospective paddlers sheltering from the rain may only stretch a mere two or three times round the building.
What’s more, many of said resorts also offer their own hi-tech white-knuckle thrill rides and interactive entertainment zones: normally in the shape of a squeaky narrow-gauge steam railway and a dilapidated crazy golf course.
Ah, crazy golf: the saviour of many a holidaymaking parent with bored children in tow and a few pounds in their pocket.
Everyone gets a differently coloured golf ball, forestalling arguments about whose went furthest but starting them about who gets which.
Not that such arguments will be anything but academic. Because every time you whack yours with your (obligatorily bent) golfing stick, it bounces back off the windmill, tunnel, or garden gnome you’re supposed to be using your mad golfing skillz to negotiate. And hits you smack in the chops.
Even if you do somehow manage to score (20 on a par 3 if you’re lucky) you then have the delightful task of fishing for your ball in the cup, which already contains either yesterday’s rainwater or the previous players’ dog-ends.
And wherever you play, it’s always nagging in the back of your mind that the course in Victoria Park is the best in the world (official), and has a special chute to return balls to the kiosk when you finish.
No matter. On days of at least partial sunshine you can get some free entertainment by jumping in the sea. Remembering first to lever yourself into a wet suit to fend off hypothermia for the five minutes it takes you to realise that you’re never going to be any good at bodyboarding, let alone proper surfing. Whatever it was the Beach Boys were singing about, it didn’t happen in Frinton-on-Sea.
And what’s changed when you get back home? Well, there are some subtle differences. All those jobs that needed to be done before you left for two weeks of R&R have got slightly more pressing, especially as Mrs D has announced her intention to repaint the upstairs bathroom.
(Hope she doesn’t get locked in like a certain columnist did when he worked his decorative magic on the downstairs loo.)
And sticking with Mrs D for a moment longer, in her absence the courgettes have grown and grown, in some cases reaching lengths of 25 feet (subs please check, this sounds a bit too long). Before us stretches an autumn of soup...

A day at the races

Off to Bath Races with a small but select group of colleagues for an evening of fun and – we hope – profit.

The weather isn't propitious. Low storm clouds scurry over the heights of Lansdown. Flaming June has mutated into wallowing July, there's a pre-autumnal chill in the air, but are we downhearted?

Not a bit of it. We're under cover and the going is relatively good, even if our equine prediction skills are somewhat shaky.

Fascinating fact about Bath Races Number One: at 780 feet above sea level, it's the highest (or perhaps most elevated) racecourse in England. So it's scenic, but it's also exposed to the elements: strong gusts of wind off the Bristol Channel hold back horses and riders in the stiff uphill finish.

And because rainwater drains away quickly through the limestone, the going rarely gets heavy.

All this and much more needs to be taken into account as we settle down with our form guides and pens to work out how we can convert our humble journalists' salaries into a little something extra through the magic of charging horseflesh.

How to decide on the steed that will carry your hopes to glory? The form guide tells you all you need to know about every horse in every race – but in so much detail that things do start to get just a little confusing.

The initial impression is of a jumble of numbers: each horse's previous performance, its age, the weight it will carry, its BHA rating, which has something to do with handicapping but none of us can work out what.

Then there's its parentage and ownership, its trainer and breeder, and whether it's won here before.

Throw all that together with a pithy pen portrait of each horse's past achievements and an assessment of its chances – couched in positive terms like "Not without a chance," "Shouldn't be inconvenienced" or "It was reported that the horse ran flat" – and you have all the data at your fingertips to make an informed decision about who's going to win.

The trouble is, of course, that you don't have to scan all this info for just one horse, but for every single horse in every single race. And with six races over the course of the evening, and up to 10 horses in some of those races, you're going to be hard-pressed to make any sense of it all, unless you've got previous experience.

Which none of us has.

It's time to follow our hearts, not our heads. One horse has lots of threes next to its name in the Form Guide: surely it stands a chance. La Fortunata? Hah!

One horse's jockey sports fetching cerise and purple hoops: your favourite colours, and definitely worth a punt. No again – serves you right for your lack of taste.

One horse is heavily backed by a colleague who won £18 on the first race: maybe they know what they're doing. But their luck doesn't last, and yours hasn't even got started.

One horse has a preposterous name – Quaker Parrot – and thus can't have a chance. It wins by a good length.

Nothing seems to work – Tote Placepots fizzle out after two races, each way trebles are too confusing to be countenanced – until the last race.

The horse is Desperate Dan. Course and distance winner, odds tempting at 10-1. And we know a Desperate Dan, don't we? A couple of quid on the nose, and a winner in the end.

Fascinating fact about Bath Races Number Two: you may not get rich, but you will have a lot of fun.

Fixing a hole

It’s been a week of random and sometimes downright odd occurrences – and random and downright odd roadworks too.
They started digging up the pavements in Weston Park a couple of days ago, having stuck in some shiny new street lamps a couple of weeks before. It’s a bit hard to work out what the plan of campaign is here: there are a couple of small notices attached to the lampposts warning anyone with a powerful enough magnifying glass to read them that the road’s going to be closed for a few days some time in July. But they’re not letting on exactly when.
What we can be sure of is that the RUH overspill car park will have to be moved somewhere else for the duration.
The weirdest thing about the whole Weston Park affair, though, is the warning sign at the eastern end of the street.
Whoever wrote it has a great and apparently undiscovered talent: stating the downright obvious. “Road Works Start Here from 06/07/09. Due to roadworks.” You can see it at twitpic.com/9i85e if you’re of a web-browsing persuasion.
Now aside from the fact that the author of this gem is in two minds about how to spell “roadworks” and is more generous with their capital letters than the ambassador with their Ferrero Rocher, what a gem of concision and self-reference. A haiku for our times, a gnomic ripple in the pond of prolixity, a truly spectacular attempt to create order out of chaos.
Because in Weston Park, as everywhere, chaos and roadworks walk hand in hand.
More excavation news from Guinea Lane, which, as the estimable Mr Jenkins pointed out a couple of weeks ago, has been closed while the water/gas/electricity/telephone//sewage people (cross out whichever options do not apply this week) burrow once more for the Inca gold rumoured to lie below.
On the rare occasions that Guinea Lane is open to through-traffic, its surface is decorated with arcane hieroglyphics which are soon to be used as the basis for a new Dan Brown novel.
And when it’s closed, as it is right now, don’t rely on any signs in Julian Road to warn you about it. It’s much more fun to choose an alternative route right at the last minute.
In fact, what with these and all the other roadworks that seem to have sprouted up just in time for the last three weeks of the school term, you might be better off staying at home.
Apart from anything else, if you’re a Sky broadband customer it’ll give you a chance to read the small print in their latest mailshot which claims you’ll soon be getting a “new and improved” service.
New, undoubtedly. Improved? Not so sure. Especially if you’re on their “Mid” package, which has now been renamed as the far-more-catchy “Everyday”. Sky promises marginally faster speeds, but if you live any distance at all from your exchange you’ll already know that your broadband connection speed never gets close to the theoretical maximum figures in the adverts.
Plus – and here’s the rub – Sky has quietly reduced the monthly usage cap to a quarter of what it used to be, from 40Gb to 10Gb. So if you download a lot of games, videos or music, you may have to be more careful about going over your limit.
Either that, or you’ll have to brave those roadworks and get to the shops.

Get to the back of the NHS queue

A letter arrives from the doctors. Your optician has referred you to an NHS consultant to get your eyes checked out, pronto. Do not pass go, do not collect £200.

Ah, the delights of growing middle-aged. Rationally, after nearly five decades on this planet one has to expect some wear and tear on tendons, nerves and other working parts. When it hits home, though, you can be as rational as you like but there's still an element of worry.

At times like this, recourse to the internet is probably not the best idea.

Because as soon as you start Googling your symptoms (headache, yellow tongue, shaky hands, blurred vision, general disinclination to get out of bed – can you tell what it is yet?) you start to believe the worst. Plague, dengue fever and beriberi, all rolled into one, is what you've got. And the only consolation about this eye business, you tell yourself, is that at least they've caught it early.

The worst thing of all about the whole situation, though, is the Kafka-esque NHS bureaucracy that you have to go through to get a hospital appointment. Attached to the doctor's letter is a "Choose and Book" form to guide you through the process.

Section 1 is Your Details: name, number and surgery. So far, so good. Section 2 tells you go to Section 3 to choose your hospital. Well, the Royal United United Hospital, Bath, is just round the corner and the other option is in deepest Bristol, so RUH it is. Back to section 2. And would you like to book by: (a) phone; (b) textphone or (c) internet? It might be fun to choose options b or c, if only to find out what a textphone is. But there's a whopping great sticker over all the details telling you that there is in fact only one option: ring the NHS number in Bridgwater.

Easily done, and you're soon listening to a recorded message telling you that not only can they sort out your appointment for you but if you ask nicely they can offer you help to give up smoking.

After a not-too-prolonged wait, a real genuine person comes on the line and checks your details. Name, address, telephone number, date of birth, shoe size: the usual stuff. And are you a smoker at all? This is damn intrusive. No, not at all, and if you want a top tip for giving up, try nicotine patches, Werther's Originals and raw carrots to keep your fingers busy. It worked perfectly well 13 years ago and there's no reason why it shouldn't still work now. And what's it got to do with lining up an NHS ophthalmologist to have a poke around inside your eyeballs, anyway?

Final question from real live person (who is not to be blamed for the above, she's only following a script): where would you like to go for your appointment? The RUH, please.

Ah well, in that case, you have to ring them on a Bath number. And you can't book online.

Now hang on. We've just spent the last ten minutes going over all these details with someone who doesn't actually need them, and all we've got is another phone number? Right.

There's nothing for it. Ring the Bath number, and be entertained by early Beatles hits while you float slowly to the top of the queue. Eventually the music stops, and you hear the rattling of keyboards, quiet coughs, general office noise. After 20 seconds, the line goes dead. Ring again, back to the bottom of the queue, more 60s chart-toppers to remind you how old you are, more bureaucracy at the end of the line. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

The only good thing about tennis is the strawberries

Can you ever get sick of strawberries? This is probably the wrong time of the year to ask, given that we’re about halfway through “How far can a Brit get at Wimbledon?” fortnight, and that the most popular pastime for the spectators in SW19 is schnarfing down as many as they can in as short a time as possible.
And chez Dixon is also the wrong place to come out with a dislike of the shiny scarlet berries, because Mrs D’s allotment is in full fruit and they’ve been coming home, if not by the bucketful then at least by the large plastic boxful.
So far, no complaints, and some members of the family have even overcome their vegetable-
avoiding tendencies to the extent that they’ve started eating freshly shucked peas. Wonders will never cease: it’ll be curly kale next.
Tennis, though, is another matter. The relationship we Brits have with the game isn’t so much love-hate as love-ignore.
For two weeks in June and July we fret and fuss about why Great Britain can’t produce a Wimbledon champion of any gender or age. We race home early from work and slump in front of the Centre Court action on telly rather than getting out into the garden and enjoying the sunshine.
We wonder why half the women in this year’s first-round draw were from eastern Europe. There must be something in the air in the Balkans or the Urals, because even one of the few Brits to get through the first round, Elena Baltacha, has Ukrainian parents. Perhaps it’s the same stuff that helps them win all those Eurovision Song Contests.
But for the rest of the year we don’t really think much about tennis, except in its more surrogate forms. Chez Dixon, for example, we are strangers to the proper game, instead investing our energies either in the Wii Sports version or in swingball.
Wii Sports, you may or may not be interested to know, is the best-selling video game of all time. As well as tennis you can play virtual versions of bowling, boxing, baseball and golf.
The tennis element is the most dangerous, involving as it does swinging the motion-sensing Wii Remote around manically, hitting your lovely wife round the back of the legs, smashing a standard lamp to smithereens and volleying the cat through the sitting room window.
It is then decided that only people who can demonstrate a basic level of skill at it (the kids) are allowed to play. Game over.
Swingball isn’t much more successful or satisfying. The first challenge here is to drive the metal pole deep enough into the compacted clay in the back garden to stop it falling over as soon as you smite the ball. The next is to find the bats (calling them rackets would give rackets a bad name) in the DIY disaster zone of the garage. And the final challenge is to engage in a rally of more than three returns without tangling the string so inextricably round the pole that further play is impossible without a large pair of scissors. Andy Murray we are not.
One place they certainly won’t be playing tennis any time soon, though, is Beauford Square by the Theatre Royal. Here the lawn has been taken over by the Bath-Argentina Twinning Association and is being developed as a home from home for lonely gauchos pining for the pampas. Residents prone to hay fever are not so happy.
New balls, please.

Daily Mail poll

The Daily Mail are holding a poll. Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue? It appears that most people think they should.