The gardening shoes have eventually given in after eight months of hard labour. Sole has parted with upper and the puddles have been getting in.

And to anyone suggests wellingtons or work boots, you are on the challenge to find such items which are wide and deep enough in anything under a size 9 in blokes fittings. Honest guv, I’m only a lady’s size 6 at the most and possibly half a size less in many cases.

So that will be another bill in the near future to replace the spare pair that has just been dragged out of the drawer and worked in on the allotment this afternoon. But at least the feet came home dry!

It had to be done. Having moved out the strawberries from the old bed and potted them up on Sunday, the dry weather of yesterday was the day to start the proposed bed. There are already two healthy raised beds full of thriving strawberries already but you can never have too many strawberries can you?

I had my eye on the calabrese patch as an extension to one of the strawberry beds. As all the calabrese was going straight to flower, it was no longer productive so out it came. I found strawberry runners from nearby plants merrily trailing under the calabrese and even one or two that had actually put down roots. No problem then, just clear the area, loosen the soil, add chicken pellets, water, replant runners, and add four plants from the old bed that looked as if they were worth keeping.

The old bed was sunny but a bit to exposed to make it a really good strawberry bed. When the allotment was new to us, the kids constructed a raised bed before we really knew the plot and there’s never been a good crop there. So three years on, movement was in the plans. The cleared space will be very nice for leeks next year. 

Mind you – lesson learned and a shelter belt of some sort will have to be planted next to the new strawberry area to take over from the work done by the calabrese this year. Phacelia for the bees in a band would be fun. It self seeds so would be a cut and come again so long as left to go to seed and a good addition for the compost heap. But it is only a summer plant and will not do much during late autumn, winter and early spring when the strawberry bed will also need some shelter.

I do have two cuttings from a curry plant which seem to have taken – now if these survive the winter in the pots they would be good spreaders to plant as the curry plant is large when grown. That would clear a space in the herb beds which would allow me to add something else to enlarge the variety of herbs. Now there’s an interesting thought.

The only thing to bear in mind is that I am working near apple trees so there is not much depth of soil to use – apple tree roots are never deep. And we don’t want to take goodness from the fruit trees just to shelter some strawberry plants. That is not cost effective.

But there is soil improvement to be done over the winter in the area anyway so all options can be considered. Weighing one thing against another needs to be done slowly and carefully. Rushing in does no good at all with gardening. Good ideas need thinking through. Changing the old strawberry bed and the place for the new one has been considered all summer. Defence for the new one – hmm. Now is it needed before the winter storms so that it is ready for the early spring. So many variations, so many possibilities.

It doesn’t take a year to solve problems with a guttering. We are back to damp bedrooms in both flats in the building again just the same as last August when we reported that the guttering was overflowing the first time.

It’s not our problem that the house next door is the cause of the problem, that it’s privately owned and can’t afford to have the repairs done. It’s the problem of the landlord as it’s damaging the flats in this building.

It’s not my fault that the bath upstairs (and mine for that matter) has no overflow facility to help to prevent floods due to overflows. The baths are old cast iron from heaven knows which century. At least 100 years old I’d say. If there had been an overflow fitted the damage done from the flood some ten days ago would not have been nearly so bad.

As I said to the housing officer from the housing association, I don’t see why I should pay for the damage done to the decorations caused by no fault of my own even if decorations are the responsibility of the tenant. Or why I should claim on my insurance. You claim on the housing association insurance please.

Is this an official complaint the housing officer asked. Of course it is.

Look it’s Monday, it’s taken two surveyors to get the latest guttering repairs onto the books ten days ago, the weather was wet yesterday, the damp is back in the bedrooms, and I’d just done the week’s voluntary litter picking hour. It has been busy raining again today. And the forecast is for a damp week. So wet patches will spread no doubt.

The housing officer has ten days at the most to get things in motion, given that both the surveyors concerned are on holiday. In ten days they will both be back. If the result is some tins of paint and brushes, or it takes too long, I shall escalate the official complaint. As the housing officer did observe, tins of paint and brushes are of little use to a pensioner with weak ankles who doesn’t climb ladders to do ceilings. If this goes all the way to the Ombudsman, so be it.

Do I sound cross? Good – I am.

“Oh I shan’t be there for litter picking on Monday, we’re doing allotment inspections” says the nice lady who gave me a lift down to the plot yesterday evening.

Well isn’t it nice to have advance warning of such things? Just the day after the rubbish had been removed to the tip and two days after the hedges had been severely pruned but with a lot of things looking sorrowful with the continuing high winds.

I spent the remaining daylight with rake in hand clearing up under the last part of the hedge, folding up the large plastic sheet into some semblance of order, stacking spare plastic sheeting neatly, doing some cosmetic weeding and making a note of jobs around the edges that need doing over the weekend. Folding up the plastic single handed with the help of the wind was an interesting occupation.

The trouble with not being a plot holder who organises tidy paths and plants in rows, the plot has a much more casual look with seeds sown on the scatter principle in small areas. It’s productive, uses the space effectively and walkways for weeding are planks from the wood pile which take up less growing space and which can be moved as required.

But of course the committee will give out the £25 prize for the best plot to someone with neat rows, proper paths and maybe organised raised beds. Oh and bigger onions and better cabbages …… Now that £25 will pay the rent for a full plot for someone for next year. Very nice for the lucky person eh?

Today should be a reasonable working day according to the weather forecast which means that I ought be able to plant out  the few winter cabbages and cauliflowers from tubs into the prepared space after weeding it. That would fill up some bare ground. After all it is only the third week of August and there should still be some crops in place for the committee to see. But guess what – there’s rain in that gusty wind and not much sign of blue sky at present. Saturday is of course partly spoken for with time down the gardeners association shed. Do you think the secretary would be very pleased if I asked him for time off to tidy up the plot for Monday? I think not. The forecast for Sunday is very wet indeed so no last minute chances to do cosmetic work there then.

A set of loppers with extendable handles is, to me, a common item in the garden like the trowel, fork, spade or hoe. It’s a useful tool for reaching that branch sticking out that you would otherwise have to fetch the ladders out to prune.

Mine have come to the point in life where one of the handles will extend but then instantly collapses back to short again. Not a lot of use for the external battle with the fast growing elder bushes in the prickly hawthorn hedges down the allotment.

I thought that any garden centre worth it’s salt that sold more than plants would have such a basic tool on the shelves. It has been raining heavy showers so off down to the local, independent garden centre to replace the poorly, worn out set. Loppers I could find of various sorts. But none of them were extending ones. So off to see the garden centre manager and ask him where said item was hiding. Good start, he knew what I wanted and said had I seen the ones in the corner on special offer with some other fancy blade as well. Nope, I had not spotted those and didn’t really want the fancy blade either.

But when he came to extend the handles to show me what the garden centre had to offer, there was a problem. They did not extend. Hmm – I think that he had ordered them thinking that they did from the mutterings involved. Not a happy manager. Said he will have to get some ordered.

Shop local? Twice in a week there has been a failure then. But at least the service here was capable and knew the trade, polite, helpful and not threatening to walk out. The fact that it could be that the wrong stock had been bought was slightly unnerving. Here was me thinking that this garden centre was slightly better than average if a little pricey. But pricey describes an awful lot of garden centres. Could be that a visit to the nearest B&Q is required – next bus out perhaps to the smaller one some 8 or 9 miles away then …..

But at least they had tree ties and stakes for the emergency support for the stake that had broken next to the cooking apple tree. Such a windy day that the emergency overnight bamboo cane structure was re really not the ideal thing to take the weight. Oh and there were some rather expensive compostable bags which claim to be biodegradable within 45 days along with the contents on the compost heap. You can try a lot of things just once. These could have some uses so we will try them and see.

Or that’s how it feels. After a good session on the allotment yesterday with the hedge cutter and son-law up ladders cutting tops as well as sides, he set off home with a bag full of goodies to make tea for the family so that they could go sailing in the evening. Guess who had the clearing up job?

Clearing up garnered a lot of clippings, grass cuttings from a passing generous friend, weeds from the plot, a large bag of crumpled up newspaper which was hiding in the shed, cardboard from the unwrapping of someone’s new bicycle and other goodies that could be composted.

So – turn the heap which badly needed doing, rebuild, add all the gathered donations to it and cover up with its plastic coat again. Good job done but eek! it was  not good for coming home clean.

Of course the general clearing up produced four generous bags of other rubbish and some broken tools which need to go to the tip. At the moment these are sitting on one of the benches waiting for a lift.

Gossiping was done, drinks and chocolate purchased from the passing ice cream van and consumed, nets were put over the late fruiting strawberries (won’t be many but there will be a few) and another marrow given away. When you have used eight marrows and given four, to see about another sixteen still to use – well you know that you planted too many marrows plants. Didn’t expect all of them to grow as some were distinctly frail when planted out.

Jumped on the bus just after 9 pm to come home as the light had faded so much that no more work could be done. A group of ten older ladies (some well into their 80s) jumped on the bus at the top of the hill to go home round the estates from a night out in town gossiping and giggling like a set of teenagers. Sheesh – don’t trust your granny to go home quietly after a good night out even if she’s sober it would seem.

It’s a fine aspiration to decide to support your local traders, the small independent people trying to make a living in the face of the large chain stores. But some local shops make it impossible to do so.

An instance. There’s a family requirement for a laptop for a dyslexic but academically capable teenager to take to use in the 6th form starting in September. The thought process has been second hand and not too expensive in order for it not to be worthwhile stealing and hardly a loss if it is trashed (well teenage boys and all that …).

So I walked down to the local small laptop store in next town to have a look to see what they offered. There was a very nice refurbished slightly older Aspire Gemstone model going at a price well worth paying. However after two hours of use the screen decided to malfunction. Change of power supply was recommended as apparently the wrong one was given with the machine. However this caused the screen to malfunction again and more disastrously. So back to the shop it went for the second time in two day where it refused to even boot in safe mode. At least they had a spare screen to test out what was happening.

There was no timescale on the repair (surely a week is not unreasonable?) and the offer of a replacement if it could not be done in the week. However, the new replacement was not likely to be a £700 equivalent. And to get this far required getting the boss out of bed at home at 10.30am in the morning – and his opening line was that he was just starting 2 weeks annual leave for the first time in 3 years.

On top of this, the member of staff (acoustic musician with technical IT training) dealing with the matter was in the process of making the decision to leave and the other member of staff who mans the shop on other days is a fully trained carpenter who would also like to leave if he had other work to do. And you wonder why I asked for a full refund on the machine after not a lot of careful thought.

So it’s back to major stores and buying on the internet for decent offers. To think that before moving this far north, I lived in a town where there were two shops selling and repairing PCs. You could get a reliable model, a refurbished model or just a reliable and properly trained technician who would do the repairs within 48 hours so long as there was not a long queue in front of you.

Who would be the secretary of an allotment holders association when you have to deal with tenants who have excuses such as:

1. I couldn’t work on the plot as I don’t have a spade and fork

2. I couldn’t do any gardening as I was worried about Newcastle going down.

Doubtless there is a whole book of excuses filed away in some dusty archive but those are a couple of recent real life ones. I could never keep a straight face and insist that such good folks get their act together or leave the plot concerned – I’d be laughing too hard.

I knew there was a reason why I didn’t get onto committees for such things.

The warm weather tempted the calabrese to try going to seed so it was soup, soup, soup with onions, potatoes, fennel (because that was what was in the fridge to use up) yesterday. I decided that I had enough blanched calabrese in the freezer and fancied something else.

Also the family came round for some courgettes from the fridge, some cardboard for the allotment and a request for some onions (oh and we’ll certainly have some of your soup).

As it was raining, it was a rapid visit to the allotment and everything stacked ready to add to the compost when the rain stopped.

Now I have no excuse but to settle down and make courgette soup to use up the courgettes in the fridge as I have all the ingredients required. It looks as if the morning’s rain is clearing up but Mr Weatherman has promised us showers to follow so it’s not yet time to venture out and build that compost heap. We’ll see if the clearing up is real and how heavy the showers could be – if they happen of course.

We allotment holders spend months preparing, planting, growing and then spend the summer in the kitchen working as a chef saving gluts for winter. I like gardening but have no great love of cooking even though I do like eating.

But looking back to being young on a farm, nothing was different. The summer holidays were spent gathering blackberries, fetching ingredients from the garden, running up the fields with harvest teas and giving a hand as required. Luckily mother did the cooking though.

I’ve made some beetroot chutney this morning which tastes just fine – I tried the left over spoonful that wouldn’t fit into any jars in a sandwich and it was good.

I started the marrow chutney to discover that I’m sort of the dates required in the recipe that I fancy making so it’s another trip to the allotment – and I’ll have to cut the length of privet hedge whilst I’m there. Hey ho.

There’s a lot of courgettes too so I might make this soup to freeze to get over the glut whilst I am blanching some of the excess of calabrese tonight.

It does seem to be a shame to spend so much time in the kitchen in the summer.

So it’s off to the allotment I go with the bag of peelings from the preparation work already done. And a big bag it is too.

Tomorrow is supposed to be wet so perhaps today is the day to do the jobs on the plot with some cooking left for another time.

Yes, the team leader declared that the town ground force would turn out despite the steady rain this morning and clear one of the local playing fields.

So five of us hardy souls turned up. We found one of the council employees with his lorry already tasked with littler picking on the same field. So we all buckled too and gave him a much appreciated hand.

Not only did we collect some six bags of general litter of the tin can and crisp packet variety, we retrieved metal fencing, damaged and half burned out wooden safety fencing, an old table and chair and a very large item of gymnastic equipment. That was in addition to the bags of litter that said council employee collected.

We were so effective that he had to get his mobile telephone out and ask his mate with another lorry to appear to help take away the debris.

My shoes were sodden at the end of the hour we spent working mind you. They have yet to dry out and being the work shoes,  it has not been possible to undertake an inspection of the allotment.

But to quote the last line of a famous film - well tomorrow is another day. At least the allotment was tidy enough yesterday to be allowed to stand for today.

I was going to go down to the allotment and take a turn at doing some sensible weeding, watering, cropping and generally acting the gardener this late afternoon and evening.

However, the flat is so disorganised after an interesting week that even I need to settle down and do something about the mess.

I’ve typed up the price list for the gardening association, done a pile of ironing, taken some vegetables freshly collected at lunch time over to the daughter’s house and done a pile of more washing.

The next jobs involve a tidy up, a putting away of kitchen utensils, a mopping of floors and a vacuuming of carpets.

I do believe that by the time I have sorted out the worst of the mess around the flat, it will be too dark to get down to the plot.

So first thing in the morning, just as the sun rises (well okay 8am then as it’s Sunday) I shall take myself off down to said allotment and spend most of the day there till the work is done and it sparkles with tidiness.

Not that the flat will be pristine of course as the damp stains from the flood last weekend are still drying out and will be visible for months to come. No point in worrying about the water marks in the bedroom. The surveyor who inspected on Friday will have a long job to get the lady of the house next door to undertake the required works so that the shared wall (in my bedroom) can be plastered and then decorated. Somehow I think that this saga could end the other side of never.

Anyone can walk Hadrian's Wall if they want to but some of us lazy oiks don’t want to and will just take a ride AD122 bus along the wall instead.

It costs nothing for those of us with the free bus pass and just requires change for a a cup of tea at each end of the ride.

That wasted Tuesday then when I should have been doing other things like working down on the allotment. But one has to have a holiday sometimes.

Local family spent five days walking the wall as their major holiday one year recently.  They carried all their packs of clothes too. Now that is something for the younger ones to do. Never appealed to me and I reckon it was cruelty to the teenager involved. But he survived.

I have done back packing in my time but walking 84 miles along a set of Roman ruins was never my choice of walking or back packing. I suspect that having gone to a variety of schools in my youth and having studied Roman history at most of them, it's a case of overkill on the subject.

Hey ho, but people seem to turn up and spend a few coppers on ice creams along the length of the Wall.

However walkers who camp are never going to be the most prolific of spenders in the tourist industry. Nor are people who travel on the ADD122 on a pensioner's bus pass going to add much either!

The combine harvesters and balers are working on the local hills to gather in the crops. The local allotment gardeners are storing potatoes and their wives are filling freezers for the winter, making pickles and chutneys.

The local gardeners associations are organising the produce shows and allotment holders are eyeing up the onions and leeks for those specialist classes. I might just find a marrow for the allotment association show at the start of September. Maybe.

The summer flowers are full of colour yet the berries are starting to ripen in gay profusion everywhere on the hedge rows and trees.

It must be coming to the end of summer and the start of autumn with all the work that is going on.

Farmers and gardeners alike seem to be taking full advantage of every sunny hour to gather in the harvest for the winter as if there is full expectation that tomorrow will be full of rain, wind and storm. Either that or everyone wants to watch the next Test Match in the Ashes series starting tomorrow to see if England really can defeat Australia.

We must be the lucky corner of the UK this summer as the North East has not been troubled by any great amount of rain - just by periodic strong winds which have spoiled what would otherwise have been a warm summer.

Or words to that effect when he came to check over the bathroom electrics after the flood on Saturday night.

There were a couple of minor concerns – one being that the electrics didn’t trip when flooded and the other being that the extractor fan and the lights in the bathroom were on different circuits.

He seemed to have an armful of paperwork to get through on his car seat – must be catching up with all the jobs that didn’t get done by the out of hours call out staff over the weekend.

The repairs staff were apologising profusely to all early callers – seems that they were being bombarded by grumpy tenants who said they had rung over the weekend.

But a flood in the bathroom electrics is a flood is a flood and not something that ought to be left till someone is inclined to answer the telephone. Grump, grump, grump.

The only thing that you can say is that at least the tradesman who attended was a qualified electrician – not the duty tradesman who could have been the painter if it was his turn for out of hours work.

The silly teenager in the flat upstairs turned on the bath and forgot to go to get in it. Well she was texting on her mobile and got diverted from the job in hand.

Where does water go? Downhill of course. So that was water in my bathroom electrics, water in the bathroom storage, water everywhere that I didn’t want it and too much water for Sam’s bath.

She wasn’t to know that the cupboard in my bathroom is the only storage space that I have for all sorts of things. I’ve had to rescue the jam jars that I keep for pickles, the kilner jars, the jigsaw puzzles, the 5 litre containers of cleaning fluids, shampoo and other such things, the travel bags that I have stored away, the spare duvet, the tool sets, spare lino for kitchen and bathroom ….

Well most people have somewhere that keeps essential items such as these. I know that half the items should be in the kitchen cupboard that holds the gas meter and essential connecting pipe work but you can’t have everything.

Now whilst the cupboard is drying I have bottles, puzzles, luggage, cleaning materials spread around the flat with not much hope of being able to clear up till shelves and floor have dried out. Which will be some days I fear.

So instead of working on the allotment on a lovely afternoon, it’s been a case of asking Sam’s dad for a hand with drying out the electrics as the out of hours service from the housing association is switched to answering machine and no-one is there. Yep – they forgot to put it over to the out of hours service. Just wait till the morning, just wait. I hope that no-one else had a real emergency! They can expect to be chewed up tomorrow morning.

At least she had the face to take the time to apologise before she went off out to lunch with adults who might not let her flood any more bathrooms – today anyway. Flipping girls of thirteen!