I’ve a list of things that I should have done or have to do but all is held up by the housework. It all started on Wednesday when the daughter’s kitchen was out of action due to plasterers working there – this produced a pile of ironing and the need to cook a meal on Thursday evening for them.

Take this morning so far! So far I have sorted out the plant pots in front, removed the dead and useless which never flourished out of the flat and swept up round them.

I collected a pile of things for transport to the allotment which will leave the house cleaner and tidier. Nice daughter has said she will give some of the stuff a lift there in her car when she brings round more ironing. However I have to catch up with her ironing before she arrives as well as hang out the washing presently in the washing machine – which will need ironing later – and nip down to the shop when it opens for business.

There’s the kitchen floor to mop, the carpets and sofa to vacuum, a window to clean – and that’s all before the weeding on the allotment starts (much more fun than housework) and an hour’s litter picking tomorrow morning (even that is more fun that housework!)

What I would really like to do is take one day out next week to go to Rothbury (yes it can be done by bus from here) but somehow I can’t see that the week will allow that. By the time the house is cleaned, the allotment is weeded and the hedges cut – well the weather will have changed and it will be raining or snowing or blowing a hooligan or something.

Yes housework is definitely the curse of the retired classes.

I know that May is still really spring, but for goodness sake we had wind, sun, heavy rain showers and hail yesterday. The only thing that you can say is that the evening turned out pleasantly. But hardly shirt sleeved weather.

Still the sun was well enough to mix a compost heap where the steaming, stinking, overly hot pigeon droppings were mostly at the bottom rather than mixed in with the generous offering of privet clippings and other green material that has been added. When turned, the heap needed watering before it was covered again. This left me with the big water butt almost empty and another smelly job to do – cleaning out the gunk that had collected at the bottom before refilling it.  But now that the compost is in order and the water butts both clean and full, there should be no more stinking jobs for the rest of the summer. Hurrah.

Having netted the strawberries I came home early rather than start upon the weeding. Today I thought would be a good day for that along sorting out the lifted daffodils, cutting some more of the hedges and cleaning out the shed. So far there is wind and intermittent rain which only makes the job of tidying the shed appealing ……

Perhaps I’ll just do the daughter’s huge pile of ironing, bake a cake and stay in out of the miserable weather.  But we all know that if the weeds are left to themselves too long they will take over the of the world.

No not what you are thinking! Saturday mornings I go down and give a hand at the gardeners association hut as I’ve said before.

Yesterday I went down all clean and shiny. Only to find that there was a small lorry load of compost and Growmore to be unloaded. Everyone had to turn out and move 60 litre sacks till the load was moved. Good thing it wasn’t a mammoth load. Trouble is that bags of compost are rarely clean on the outside. So I was dirty by lunchtime!

I’ve been given next Saturday off from the Gardener’s hut to go and help at the Community Allotment plant sale! Exciting? Well maybe but someone has to help. They’ve had enough plants off me that I haven’t needed. Yesterday there was a whole crowd of nasturtiums went the journey. 

The afternoon was spent down the allotment clipping another length of hedge. A generous soul bought me a bag of grass cuttings from his lawn and the pigeon man next door bought a bag of pigeon pooh round to add to the compost heap. It’s becoming a nicely hot pile so should soon start to rot down a treat. Mind you – it’s aromatic – pigeon pooh definitely is good for clearing the nasal passages.

There there was the fun of thinning out the lettuce and snail. One can only hope that the pricked out lettuce have recovered from the shock this morning and are all standing to attention again ready to fill out into well hearted lettuce.

There’s still plenty of hedge to clip and by the time that is finished it will be time to start again on the privet. Oh the pleasures of summer.

Today there is the half sized water butt to empty. It hasn’t been used for so long that it is growing algae in it. Maybe time to take the larger watering can from home back down to the allotment and get the job done faster. Nope it’s too heavy just to turn on its side – and the water needs to be used down the cracks on the paths at the edge of the allotment next to the hedges at the bottom of the plot. Anyway – once it’s empty I think I shall move said butt next to it’s big brother by the shed instead of leaving it under the hedge to collect leaves and cuttings. It could be smelly at the bottom I think after all this time.

The landlord asked a number of us residents (ok tenants to anyone else but there you go) to go in to see meet the customer services team leader and the gentleman who does resident involvement to make comments on the development of the new website.

It changed shape about a year ago and has progressed fairly well from the new start till now but needed a bit of a poke to get it going further.

My previous employment left me with excellent experience of the sort of things that the website should be doing and it was nice to be able to make constructive comments on things that the rest of the group couldn’t do. Mind you some of the comments from the others were much more of the practical nature of you are confusing the users doing that and that picture looks totally wrong. It’s easy to get deep into the nitty gritty of what the government requires to be on a social housing landlord’s website, technical issues of how to find it if you don’t know it’s name and obscure details that are out of date, causing you to lose sight of what the users will want and need from said website.

But it was nice just for a change to be able to take an intelligent part in the discussions and to be able to explain why I made the suggestions.

Must remember not to get a big head over being usefully intelligent for a change.

It was a nice day enough day yesterday to creep out onto the allotment for a long session. The son-in-law who wields the hedge cutter was and is in the process of taking down the kitchen ceiling at home in readiness for the visit of the plasterer on Tuesday next week. As he has to work over the weekend and bank holiday he had to do the preparation work at home this far ahead. So I had to wield the manual hedge cutter otherwise known as the shears.

The privet was rioting and generally getting in the way of walking around the place. Five wheelbarrow’s full of green hedge clippings later, the paths were clear and the compost heap was in better state. Due to the regular offerings from the pigeon loft, the heap was short on green material and heavy on brown material – not a proper balance for getting a well rotted heap for next year until I can up it’s greens.

I ran out of time to set too with the spiky hawthorn and ivy hedges but these can wait as the tops are high and would be better done by a man with a hedge cutter up a ladder with me holding the ladder steady. Unless I get into the mood for a little more hedge trimming over the weekend – the family will be sailing as there’s some big event on at their sailing club so no help this week. Such is life.

Then I had a weed around the edge of the beetroot bed and added a packet of free seeds where there were spaces. I suspect that I will either now get crowds or that some of the seeds I used first did not germinate. Such things happen. I also thinned out the swede bed and topped up with more seeds round the edges to ensure that there were enough larger ones in the winter. And I looked at the bare patch of left over bed and thought “well the leeks left at home are not doing brilliantly” so I planted out a few fennel seeds and a few turnip seeds. The turnips are supposed to taste something like melon and be excellent grated raw with salad. I still have a small space available but it won’t be big enough for the eight runner bean plants so I may well keep it free in order to see how those leeks do. Or I might put a late sowing of lettuce there. Decisions, decisions.

A lady who has just taken an allotment down the path has had some sturdy young men clearing and moving the rubbish from her tip – oops sorry plot. I missed them Monday (day off) and Tuesday (evening visit) but saw them yesterday filling their huge white van with rubbish yet again it seems. I hope that they have returned to move the guttering that they left roadside before I return tomorrow or we have a problem – no she has a problem. But we’ll sort that out between us in friendly fashion as it was under my hedge roadside when I left but I was short of time to move it. I had a meeting in the evening to attend and meant to catch the 16:20 bus up that steep hill and was late for the 16:50 one – I saw it disappear up the hill as I walked away from the allotment gate. So I had to walk up the nasty, steep hill home – oh I do hate that hill when I’m tired! The phone was ringing off the hook when I got in,  so I dealt with the nice people whilst drinking tea before having a fast bath and trotting down the road – good thing the meeting was close to home.

Good thing that there was enough bath foam left in the last bottle for that bath though – the next job is to refill the three small empty bottles from the large container for tonight and the days to come. It’s easier to do all three at once as then I don’t have to do it so often. Laziness requires thought! To be properly lazy requires an intelligent person has been my mantra for many years. Like getting the son-in-law to use the hedge cutter as he thinks I’m not capable (he might or might not be right of course!).

Northumberland became a unitary local council authority in April 2009 with debts of £62.5 million and £23 million tied up in one of the Icelandic Banks. So money saving on non core services all to come then. I suspect that the district of Tynedale where I live will have suffered more than most at this early stage.

People on certain benefits (for instance job seekers allowance, disability allowance, pension credit) who could not personally dispose of old furniture at the community tip used to ask the old Tynedale district council to take two or three items like broken old chairs and tables away free. The charge is now £15 for 1- 4 items (25% concession if you are on those benefits mention) and £10 for each white good appliance (cooker, washing machine, fridge, freezer) with no concessions any more. All white goods used to be collected free in the old Tynedale district council area. What happened in other district council areas I don’t know but I do know that it’s a nasty shock to people who were used to having the service totally free or free if on appropriate benefits to suddenly find that they have to pay.

The now non existent Tynedale Council used to provide a free collection of garden waste via a brown bin collection. The new unitary council will be charging everyone for collecting the brown garden waste recycling bins from July 2009 and we are losing three over winter collections – another free service lost and a local business affected if there is less garden waste to compost and sell. Yes I know that most areas have had charges for many years, ever since the schemes were rolled out. But it’s still a nasty shock to find that something that started out free has suddenly after so short a period (about eighteen months) attracted a charge no matter how small.  Of course there is now the cost of changing the system, collecting the payments and also the bins that people no longer want to use. Yes – even the bins have to be returned to storage. I’m not sure that I see savings here any time soon.

The over 60s here make full use of the free swimming facilities now available in our local sports centre. Notice that this scheme only runs to 2012 from the way that the website describes it and that the unitary council here can’t afford to offer free facilities to under 16s. So look for the start of the decline of leisure sports facilities because there will be fewer people using the sports centres - so it can’t be a service that the public wants! Just watch it happen. Unless, of course, the centres can find other ways of financing themselves and become charitable trusts like Blyth Arts and Leisure (who knows where some of their funding will come from now though as Blyth Valley Council no longer exists, any more than Tyndale Council does) and North Country Leisure (who are very non specific about funding) but also work with the same unitary local authority now rather than the old, now defunct, Alnwick District Council.

Local adult education classes are now definitely biased towards work based skills. Despite the excellent blurb about adult learning locally, the link to the Northumberland County Council website at the bottom of the page now leads to a page error and no information. The Northumberland County Council website is very vague on non work based classes I note. Classes in leisure subjects such as painting for fun, handicrafts, Pilates and digital photography seem to be disappearing rapidly along with any concessions that used to be available. You needs must pay or if you are older see if the University of the Third Age offers these subjects – but even this path costs money where some things might once have been free under Adult Education. Money talks. And will continue to do so until our respected unitary authority gets its finances in order (if they ever do). Where go our library services in the future I wonder? At present those in rural areas are often served by a mobile van which is expensive to run on petrol. Those libraries in smaller towns like Prudhoe already have a dearth of books and often you need to request (at a charge of course) things that you would like to read or to reserve if popular. Odds on that there will be more of this then.

Today I spotted in the Hexham bus station the new electronic signs that are supposed to tell you which bus is due in and which bus is due out (right on for a bus station with three bus stops but never mind). However the unitary council does not have the funding for the software to make the system work and they read "please use the timetables". However there seems also to be a budget problem in getting up to date timetables at bus stations and bus stops throughout the county. Now isn't that just great in a county that relies on tourism and walkers in particular for income?

It’s been noticed that an awful lot of marketing and products are directed to younger consumers rather than taking notice of the full age range of people who go shopping. Well if you are dealing with toys or children’s clothes, activity holidays for fit people and school products these are age specific. It’s another scenario of you are looking at products like food and household gadgets that are open to everyone of all ages from nine to ninety.

I say that if you design packaging with old people in mind specifically you will lose sales. The rest of the market won’t want to buy old people’s jam – bit too like buying incontinence pads …. All anyone will want is a pot of nice jam which everyone can open. There are people with poor sight, weak wrists, arthritis and dementia in all age groups. So if you make packaging user friendly for all ages then you solve the pensioner issue at the same time. As designers found when looking at some of the problems of packaging - Twist and Shout applies over many age groups so that packaging needs to be thought through from basics upwards. User friendly rather than age friendly should be the mantra. But at least the matter is being studied at university level and often this sort of thing can go on to produce new businesses so who knows? I’m not sure how many companies will find it worth going through a costly accreditation process in the present economic climate to have goods marked Age OK rather than an accreditation that would be specific to a wider market.

As for using a computer and going shopping on the internet, there are older people who can't and older people who won't as the study says. Some will, some won’t, some don’t want to do so but that goes with a lot of people of any age. With older people, there’s the “what do I want to bother with that for at my age syndrome” and the “I’ve never had it so I won’t miss it” syndrome. I’d say that not using a computer is a life style choice like I choose not to go swimming despite not having to pay for it at the local sports centre now (water comes hot with bubbles in a bath my dear and I can’t swim). But certainly for those of us who want to use the gadgets on the market – computers, mobile telephone, iPod, MP3 player, games boxes - instruction manuals need to be written by users for users not translated by someone who is not fluent in the language of the user. Geek speak and bad translation are is at the bottom of many problems with new gadgets. And that goes for all ages not just for a specific age group.

So I’d say that marketing shouldn’t be age specific with the majority of products for sale. Neither should it be said that design precludes anyone using it. Just a thought in passing.

People do only hear what they want to here. But it’s only 'odds on for a barbecue summer' in 2009 and not guaranteed despite all the hype over a few words.

We have yet to get to summer and just look at the weather forecast today! Loads of rain, hooligan showers and there’s a gusty wind as well. We’ve had high winds for weeks now and dry weather. So May is still spring but it seems to be a long time to the end of the month and the start of the summer.

How is one supposed to get the garden or allotment up to scratch and in full glow of crops and flowers with a spring like this? It will never be a good backdrop to the barbeque later in the year if the weather now doesn’t get it’s act together now.

We had a cold winter – nearly a proper winter – but certainly in the North East February, March and April were very dry months. Hose pipe ban later in the year anyone?

I pricked out the little tomatoes too early when I think back and then watered them far too much. They drowned. I think it was drowning but it was also a very humid few days at the time when they died. I’m not sure that the peat pots were the greatest idea that ever there was either. Methinks that I shall use a selection of the small pots that I have gathered from various places next year if I decide to try again with tomatoes. In the end, I went to the garden centre to buy three so that I have some to plant out as by the time my sowing failed it was too late for me to try again at home.

I’ve also heard the nasty word blight mentioned by some of the more experienced gardeners on one of the allotment forums. It seems that there has been the first reported case of blight in Cornwall. Also on the same allotment boards there is mention of the dreaded Smiths Periods. These are a measurement used by the potato council as guidance to famers on the need to apply fungicide to the potato crop to prevent blight. Potatoes? Yes well tomatoes are in the same family of plants as potatoes. So both will be affected by some of the same diseases. Here ends the technical gardening lesson for today.

I also had a failure with the courgettes, marrows and cucumbers at the same time. I’ve planted a further four marrows and four cucumbers from the spare seeds that I had left over and have been very careful with the watering of these. I’m hoping that we do not get another humid period as these are just coming along nicely. I’m being very careful with the watering! Also I shall plant them out as soon as they are big enough and the weather is kind enough. Next year I shall pop seeds into pots a little later in the season.

I chickened out and bought a couple of courgette plants from the garden centre as this was cheaper than buying another packet of seeds and compost. These are thriving, huge and definitely ready to go outside if the weather is friendly over the next few days.

I have just potted on the four largest of the peppers for the second time and they are now in their final pots. I have been very sparing with the watering of these and seem to be managing these so far. They are not as far on as those in the garden centre but then I shall be very pleased if I manage to grow them far enough on for them to produce any crops.  The chilli plants seem happy enough with themselves too so perhaps I will be the proud grower of two slightly more exotic crops.  So long as the weather is kind and the watering hand is careful.

I’ve also seen the leeks that someone else has planted out in trays and kept in a plastic greenhouse by the front door just down the road. They are a mile high and almost a pencil thick but have only one main stem rather than a group of shoots like you seen on onions. Now some of my little hair like leeks are beginning to show one or two shoots but are nowhere near the thickness of a pencil. Thickness of a pencil? Ah the point at which you can plant your leeks out in the ground in the garden or allotment. Technical lesson number two. I pricked mine out too early and he has not done so at all.  Mine are still tiny hairs and his are awfully tall. It’s possible that we may both have problems with the leeks that we started from seeds then.

This all proves that you can teach the theory but you can’t teach experience or prevent the weather from spoiling the theory and adding experience that you would rather not have!

I’ve planted out the calabrese in the planned area and some purple broccoli in a spare space. I’ve kept one patch for either runner beans or more leeks. I’ll have to get the last bit of the ground ready for the sweet corn.

Question: So where am I going to put the red cabbage? Answer: I don’t know. I’ve got seven spare tubs and three tomato plants.  So that could be four red cabbages.  I must be able to find a space for 10 of them but it looks as if it could be a bit of a push at the moment! I suspect that it’s too many peas that have spoiled the planning.

Planning? Yes there was – till I planted too many peas!

I’m one of those who worked on after retirement for some eighteen months as work became available. That was nice – both the work and the money. The last payment was in October 2007 for work done in September.

I went to college from the end of September 2007 till June 2008 as I found two courses that appealed. Free of course luckily. I’ve now settled into a routine of doing a couple of hours volunteering on Monday mornings and a couple more on Saturday mornings.

The Monday mornings are outside work and subject to weather as well as Bank Holidays being free days but mainly nothing harder than litter picking and flower planting. So it’s not too strenuous physically nor too mentally taxing.

Saturday mornings could be a little more energetic than just dealing with paperwork in the future when I have to get to know the other shed and the things that are for sale. I’ve ventured in there once in an emergency and actually know that other than the weighing up, it’s not too scary. There is a big project on at the moment which will eventually involve stacking the new shelves which are nearly secured in place in the new shed - which could be fun.

The allotment is now in good order with the only hard sweat being the hedges to cut. It’s fun but no longer mammoth physical labour requiring endless days of blood, sweat and tears to get the soil in good order for the long term. I can afford to make shorter visits on a regular to keep it in hand except when the hedges are in need of working over.

The flat is probably in as good an order as it will ever be though there will be some painting work in the bedroom if the landlord can ever stop the guttering overflowing and causing a damp problem. I might try to save up and get the decorator in to put up lining paper and paint over that eventually which will save a lot of problems with the patches where damp marks will show for ever. But not till the guttering is cured. Of course.

The final trip to London for the launch of the Greener and Wiser - an older people's task force on the environment manifesto is tomorrow. I’ve done an associated interview for Yours Magazine which is due to be printed in the edition on May 29th. I doubt if the Green Alliance will actually get anything on Radio 4 but you never know. So there may be a little more to come but probably not a lot.

So what to do with life? Who knows? A coach tour or some form of visit to the Isle of Wight in the off season from gardening appeals. Shall I look for some college course come September? Who knows but definitely not volunteering in a charity shop!

My children will tell you that the family inherited furniture from relatives over the years as well as obtaining it from auctions, farm sales, skips or other second hand sources if they think about it. If they think hard, they might remember some of the things that we bought new rather than inherited. But no point in coming from a family which had furniture to spare and buying new! They also had a father who has skill of hand to touch up and make minor repairs so that older was as good as new. His trade training made him able to repair most things round the house.

As an aside, proper, good tradesman apprenticeships that give that same skill of hand are now as rare as hen’s teeth it seems for the present generation coming out of school. We are rapidly losing the skill to make and mend which makes it very hard to make do. There are not many with such skills left to hand on. Too much academic training is not always good – some people are good with their hands and not with their brains and should be accepted as valuable just the same. Such training makes it easier to make do and mend.

The children may well remember the button tin that provided hours of fun as well as buttons for those which had to be replaced when doing the mending. One will tell you that I patched his fashionably ripped jeans from a pair he had worn out (didn’t do ripped jeans no matter what the fashion) amongst the other general mending I did. As another aside, I’m not sure that I appreciated the mother in law who, when she died, left a double wardrobe full of used wrapping paper she had save for use when giving presents. That wardrobe held the clothes for two people when emptied. Guess who had the pleasure of clearing it out. Hmm – there’s reusing, making do and being over the top.

I’m not sure that the children will remember how many of their clothes were actually made at home or second hand when they were young. They will probably only remember the new ones that they were given because of the novelty when they were smaller. They didn’t know how many of their toys were second hand or bought with green shield stamps gained from Dad’s driving work when they were younger. They just knew that they had plenty of toys. They may remember a few of the home made ones. They may well remember more the clothes out of the catalogue when they were teenagers and fashion was important. Or even the ones they bought for themselves from paper rounds and Saturday jobs.

The children will also tell splendid tales of how they were given stew for Christmas lunch. Not true but there were an awful lot of variations on home made soups which were cheap, easy and quick to make from scratch. And no two were ever the same. Fruit salad was also easy to make with whatever was going cheap in the fruit section of the supermarket. When you live in sixth floor flats and terraced town houses with no gardens you can’t always grow your own. It’s only recently I’ve had time to take on an allotment and time to preserve. It ensures that I buy only food staples that I can’t grow, takes a lot of things that are compostable which reduces my rubbish output. And ensures that I doo cook from scratch and not from the packet.

Not everyone has access to allotment or garden. Nor does everyone have the knowledge, skill, physical ability or inclination to grow their own. And it can be a full time occupation growing, preserving and cooking from scratch along with the mending, cleaning and laundry as mother would have told you.

I’m also a great user of freecycle - one of the greatest ideas on the internet. It allows you to offer items that are too good to throw out but which you no longer need free to someone who can make use of them. I’ve passed on items that I no longer use and gained many useful things (plant pots, kilner jars, books, jigsaw puzzles). I’ve not been able to make use of all the offers of furniture to replace the inherited furniture that has worn out here due to lack of transport sadly. So my new furniture may well become hand me downs for the family in the future. Well hand me downs have to start out as new at some point!

I’ve my doubts that my clothes will be much use to the charity shops in the future as most of them at present have come from there. But there is nothing unusual there then as I’ve been buying from charity shops for years where possible.

As you can see I have led a life based on making do and mending. Some of it also comes under the heading of being environmentally friendly. Some of it comes under the heading of being frugal, prudent and economical or even plain poor.

But until you take the advertising off the television and peer pressure out of the equation you will have quite a job to persuade younger people that many of the things that their grandparents did could be applicable to them now. Making do and mending is something that you do by choice because you believe that it a good way to live for ethical reasons, because you have been bought up that way and it’s natural to you or by necessity for as long as you are short of money. I think I’ve qualified under all three headings over a lifetime.

I was born in 1945 and 1 remember seeing pictures of me as a small baby in little dresses made from material cut down from clothes worn by my mother as a teenager (seen the pictures of her in the original clothes) – probably done by her mother who was a dab hand with a needle if something needed making.

I suspect that Granny also made my favourite teddy called Joey who was totally made of scraps of material but who was a smashing teddy – till I was sick all over him in hospital having my tonsils out and he had to be thrown away. I loved that teddy. She would also have been the person who cut down the items from my big silver cross pram (a family hand me down) to make into bedding for my dolls pram. Meanwhile Granddad ran a small back garden that provided some food for the house in the way of basic vegetables.  Step father’s mother was a knitting granny who did socks, gloves and a very delicate darn. Mind you – knitting your own is no longer frugal, overtaken by man made fibres at a much cheaper cost which are easier to launder.

From the age of eight my memories are of mother in the farmhouse kitchen with a Rayburn lit to heat the water and also to do the bulk of the cooking. It was fired by the rubbish we could burn, fallen wood and logs acquired locally to bulk out the coal. Yes there was an electric cooker but it was little enough used except when it was too hot to run the Rayburn. The Rayburn dealt with an awful lot of rubbish. I wonder how many modern families would cope without a regular dustbin collection like we did. We didn’t buy a lot of wrapping and waste as we had to dispose of it. We used the compost heap, fed scraps to farm cats and dogs, reused jam jars, returned bottles with deposits, made our own. And we didn’t leave food or buy what we wouldn’t use.

Vegetables came from the garden, apples and pears from the orchard, red currants, black currants, strawberries and raspberries from the garden, blackberries, hips, haws, sloes and crab apples from the hedge rows. Jam was strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, apple and home made. So were most of the cakes (there were a few treats on Market Days mind). Fruit was bottled (in inherited kilner jars or ones collected from neighbours) or stored in straw for the winter along with various vegetables (I know more ways to preserve runner beans than I’d like to admit).

A lot of our meat was butchered for us off site (even then there were hygiene regulations) but not the pheasant, partridge, pigeon, hare (yuck) and chicken which slaughtered, gutted and plucked at home (woman’s job too). Meals were always from scratch and little enough came in packets or jars ready made – mainly things like Marmite, butter beans, marmalade, butter and cheese. On Sunday afternoons I made tea whilst mother patched and mended clothes for a restful sit down job!

Sure there were new clothes but you had to grow out of them or wear the old ones out to get new ones. And yes my favourite teenage dress was a hand me down from my mother that she’d had for most of my life!

The farmhouse furniture had been collected over generations and new was a cot and pram for baby brother. The budgie lived in a cage from the “junk room” which stored many strange and wonderful things that “might come in useful” and the gold fish in a large old sweetie jar from the village shop. When my mother’s parents died, their furniture was added to the collection in the farm house and eventually disposed of worn out when Mother died after it had served her in another house after Dad died. A lot of step father’s family furniture was huge Victorian farmhouse gear (they had been farmers for some generations) that was auctioned off when the farm was sold as it was never going to go into smaller, everyday town housing.

New research from Age Concern and Help the Aged reveals that almost 80 per cent of older people say they continue to rely on skills picked up during the war and post-war years to help them save money and make resources go further during the recession. 

A further 60 per cent of over 50s questioned believe the lessons of prudence and economy which many older people learnt during previously tough  economic times could help younger people survive today’s ‘credit crunch’. However, only half of 18-24 (38%) year olds strongly agreed with this statement compared to over 80%.

I’m not surprised that so few young people aged 18-24 feel that prudence and economy learnt in previous tough economic times could help them to survive the present credit crunch. They’ve grown up in a totally different world to their grandparents. It’s a world where there are clothes, household items, white goods such as washing machines and microwaves, iPods and mobile phones are there to be bought cheaply and money has been fairly freely available.

You are actually now seeing two or three generations who have grown up since the late 60s with easy living, good choice of jobs, fairly full employment most of the time and regular money from somewhere (even if only off state benefits). You are looking at people who have been able to use credit cards or buy on tick through catalogues goods that they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford because the money was not immediately available in their bank accounts (have a look at the development of credit cards since the 1960s).

To these younger people, making do and mending is a whole new concept in living and something that they have never encountered before. There is a generation gap where grandparents don’t always see the need for modern technology in many of its forms and grandchildren can’t see life without many of the modern gadgets. Somewhere there has to be a compromise. You can’t take away the gadgets but only agree on which ones are really essential when money is short. And again, a lot of older people do not understand the idea of the credit card for buying goods on the spot when you could well save up for something.

It helps not one little bit that the government’s first reaction to the present downturn in economic activity was to try to so organise the flow of money to try and force the general public to go out and continue to shop for Britain to keep the business wheels turning.

You are also looking at a modern manufacturing system that relies on people buying new to keep factories in business producing goods and shops in business selling them. So there is going to be a certain amount of built-in obsolescence to ensure that the customer has to buy another one rather than have the old one repaired. With consumers wanting to buy cheaply, it’s not always possible to build an item that can easily be repaired. Take the washing machine which is an everyday item in almost all households - where the makers build in fast wearing out  and then think that the same will apply to cars, televisions, radios …..

I’m different in that I’ve grown up with parents and grandparents who were the genuine make do and mend type people who had to manage on a much more limited variety of goods despite being a teenager of the late 50s and early 60s. I’m not sure, though, that the wartime families were frugal because they had no money – they were frugal because there was nothing on which to spend the money that they had whilst wartime rationing was in effect into the 50s.

At the moment of course we have plenty of goods in the shops and not so much money to spend in them there because we have lost our job, taken a pay cut, can’t get the credit or are too busy paying off our debts.

No not the Scottish one, but one going south! Away from one National Park (Northumberland) to another for a day. Sunday was a trip to the Yorkshire Days.

The tour went first to Richmond for morning coffee, to Hawes for lunch and the afternoon and to Kirby Stephen for a last half hour on the way home.

Each town is attractive in its own way with things to see and do for the passing visitors. Richmond has its castle, friary ruins and the Green Howards museum.

We had hoped for half an hour at the food festival at Leyburn after leaving Richmond but there wasn’t even a spare parking space for a bicycle so busy was the village still less a large coach so we continued on our merry way to Hawes.

Hawes is very much a tourist town with it Dales museum and the Wensleydale cheese – the fish and chip shop too seemed to be very popular with the many motor bikers who were out and about in the sun.

Kirkby Stephen is a small town in the Upper Eden valley which was formerly in the old county of Westmorland, now Cumbria. Yes it is outside the Yorkshire Dales National Park but it was a pleasant stop off in the late afternoon sun.

All in all it was a pleasant drive out through nice countryside on a sunny Sunday. Home is always better for a visit elsewhere – it stops the boredom.

There’s an article on the Green and Wiser task force that I was involved with over the winter in Yours Magazine on May 29th and I’m being photographed today to go with the interview already done. Now the nice lady said she wants pictures of the allotment amongst other things and she wants colour. To remember she says – blue, black and brown are boring colours in pictures.

Oh dear. Blue and black are the staples of my wardrobe. Given a morning I expect that we can  overcome that with a bit of rapid ironing and a discovery of some of the non-allotment clothes. She then wants me to own a trug (no – even my gardening family as a child never used the trug that was in the shed in the garden), fancy wellingtons (not with my shaped feet, these aren’t made to fit them),  tool belt or gardener’s apron (without a greenhouse I have no need for these). And gardener’s aprons don’t exactly come in a range of bright colours looking around the web – neither does the trug for that matter

And she wants the allotment to flower for her today. Well perhaps there will still be some apple blossom but the plum and pear trees finished last week. The daffodils and tulips are gone, the lavender and rosemary are not yet in full flower, the wallflower is well past its best, the raspberries and tayberry are only in bud, the lupin, foxgloves and aquilegias are not yet in flower and the wild flowers under the fruit trees are still only seedlings. Madam, it’s just May and it’s a plot for growing food on not pretty flowers even if there are a goodly few tucked in corners.

It’s a good thing that the camera can be made to lie in the hands of a good photographer and a subject with a bit of know how – I mean we mustn’t let the actual facts get in the way of a good story must we? Especially as it’s one that is dear to my heart.