The Evening Standard: grammar’s not an issue. Looks like spelling could do with some work, though.

Apart from decorating the dining room (and the less said about that, the better), Sunday was a day of garden maintenance. The vegetables had reached the point where they needed some serious attention, which was duly given.

For starters, the first two potato crops were in grave danger of turned into a swampy mulch by a weekend of almost unbroken rain. They are growing in a dustbin and a trug, neither of which has good drainage, and so had to be moved under the garden table to get them out of the downpour. It would be a shame to lose them now, as the tallest are now approaching four feet (most of it under ground after two months of earthing up) and are on the cusp of flowering.

The remaining four potato crops are growing in dedicated potato bags, specifically designed for the task in hand and sporting good drainage, so they were moved out of the greenhouse to stop them from shooting up too far before they’d had a chance to produce any veg.

They have now been sat down beside the runner beans, which in turn have been joined by five French bean plants. They were planted at the same time as the runners but are only half as high as their non-continental companions. Still, I’ve given them their own climbing frame, and am hoping they’ll thrive in the slightly cooler air, as the runners have really taken to being outside. They’re shooting along the bamboo cross-bar I’ve tied across the top of their wigwam canes and are starting to show signs of early flowers.

That all made room for the tomatoes to be transplanted into decent sized pots and set down where the potatoes and beans once lived. The tallest are about a foot tall now, and they’re going to need some stakes for support.

Everything else was just a matter of making sure it was happily watered and rotated for even growth, although I did put straw under the strawberries, as they’re now fruiting quite well (three of the berries are fat and red, the rest green) and they’d rot if they lay on the soil too long.

Assuming I can keep the slugs and snails at bay after all this rain, things are looking fairly good right now. I’m happy to write off the disastrous adventures with mushrooms and mint (perhaps it’s an ‘m’ thing) if the rest of my crops continue so well.

Saturday saw us head to France. I’ve not been since last September, so my language was a little bit mangled, but as I only had to use it in the restaurant and we all got what we wanted to eat anyway, I think I got away with it.

We took Le Shuttle, or Eurotunnel or whatever they call it these days, which is the only civilised way to take a car to France. It’s far quicker, easier and less choppy than the ferry. I’m also assuming it’s better for the planet.

So, after a leisurely breakfast we pootled down to Folkstone, ate sandwiches on the train and emerged into a drizzly, grey French day, much like it was back home. And while the more responsible members of our party spent their time making savings in the hypermarket, Rich and I spent the afternoon taking pictures in the old town.

Between us we went home with several dozen snaps, but my favourite was the last photo of the day, taken on the car deck of our half-empty Shuttle back home, courtesy of a fisheye lens.

Inside Le Shuttle

Kylie’s dressing room

Kylie Minogue really is tiny. Everyone who knows her says she is, but it’s not until you see her clothes that you realise quite how tiny she is.

We went to see Kylie – The Exhbition at the V&A, where two large rooms have been given over to displaying a selection from her vast wardrobe. Kylie herself credits the collection to her parents, who saved almost everything she has worn on stage or in videos over the last 20-plus years, claiming that if it were not for them the collection, drawn from her donation to a Melbourne museum, would easily fit into a suitcase.

In fairness, the clothes are so small, they would probably fit into a shoe bag.

It is slightly surreal seeing her larger than life as her videos are projected onto a massive white wall and then turning to see the same clothes as she’s wearing in the films in pico form beside you. Her waist can’t be more than 24in around, and her various shorts, that in the video reach well below her hips, are just a couple of inches deep in real life.

Heels are high, corsets are tight, head-dresses look heavy and unwieldy, and it’s a wonder she can move at all on stage, much less actually dance.

It was a fascinating night out, particularly when you could leaf through designers’ notes, see the annotated running orders pasted up behind the scenes, or peer into a faithful re-creation of her dressing room, and even if you’re a Kylie fan, rather than a fanatic, it’s an excellent introduction to a world I thought I’d never find so engaging – the world of fashion.

Visit London has grassed over Trafalgar Square. It’s really quite lovely. A bit damp where the fountains are being caught in the wind and blown onto the turf, but quite lovely. So much nicer than the usual grey slabs, that are temporarily hidden underneath.

Of course, London is filled with parks, squares and gardens, but there was something special about this. Perhaps its transience. Perhaps the fact that it’s in the middle of a big sweep of roads. Perhaps the fact it was sunny, and that by tomorrow it will all be gone.

Whatever it was that made it so nice, the crowds there certainly approved. I wish they’d dig up the square permanently and do this full time.

The garden is really getting carried away with itself now. For the first few weeks it all seemed to be nice and controlled and refined, with little bits of growth here and there. Shoots, hints of green, few enough leaves for each new one to still be an excitement. Now it’s a race between me and the plants and, I have to admit, they’re winning.

The potatoes can’t be earthed over any more (they’re already under a mound of compost and manure three feet deep, and still growing), the tomato plants are about six inches high, and the strawberries are still green, but multiplying by the day.

So it was that I went to work two days ago when the beans were a good six inches shorter than the roof of the greenhouse, and yet when I come home that night… zip… they’ve shot right up and are touching the uppermost panes of glass.

That meant, of course, that they’ve had to be moved outside, where I’ve built them a bamboo climbing frame to play on. They’re my first proper outdoor crops, apart from the mushrooms which are being distinctly quiet and boring, so I’m a little worried about how they might accommodate such an abrupt change.

So, I’ve topped them up with some more compost, heaped on the manure and given them a good drink in the hope they’ll survive. Really, though, they should think themselves lucky. The vegetable plot proper is still not ready, and so they’ll be staying in their pots until the end of the season. Taking your home into the outside world with you like that is kind of the plant equivalent of camping. So, that should make them happy. And happy beans means many beans. I feel some bagging and freezing coming on.

I know what you’re thinking. I went trans-Atlantic for the weekend and this is the latest weapon in Fortress America’s armoury (no pun intended). Well I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Instead it was the Friskomatic on Southwold Pier (‘prepare to be frisked like you’ve never been frisked before’).

It’s part of the Under the Pier Show which is both decidedly not a show, nor actually under the pier, but it is a lot of fun nonetheless. Populated by the bizarre and slightly disturbing mechanical creations of one Tim Hunkin, it’s the place to go if you want to experience an instant eclipse, go on an ecological holiday without ever leaving your arm chair, or enter the booth of truth to have your fortune told by a trainee behind an auto-closing curtain.

We plumped for the latter, and gave the Friskomatic a wide berth. There are people who would pay good money to have inflatable gloves pat their intimate areas. They’re just never there when you need them.

Health and Safety can really spoil your enjoyment of the day’s first brew. My mug this morning:

I’ve never been left unmoved by a Bryson book. Mother Tongue was fascinating. Down Under, awe inspiring. A Short History of Nearly Everything, depressing.

And Lost Continent, which I’ve just finished… boring.

It’s not Bryson’s fault. He wrote a good book, he made me laugh, he reminded me of the fortnight I spent driving solo through the deserted plains between Kentucky and Illinois, or three weeks around New England.

And yet his experiences were so singularly uninspiring that you get to the end of it quite happy to read of his car pulling up into the driveway for the last time, and relieved on his behalf that he can now turn his back on America, put up his feet and do something… well, less boring for a while.

The book is a litany of rude service, bad food, expensive yet dull tourist attractions, second-rate hotels and the growing homogenisation of America. It mourns the loss of character from the smallest towns and the killing off of a happier and more fulfilling way of life.

Perhaps Bryson was just jaded after transplanting himself in the UK, or perhaps the book is blighted by the almost total omission of the big cities (its whole premise) but the picture he paints is of an utterly undesirable and unsympathetic country that few would ever want to visit.

I think he and I, these days, may well be in agreement.

‘If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable, but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate,’ said Paul Goalby, corporate affairs manager for Masterfoods.
Source: BBC News

Masterfoods has gone temporarily insane. Actually, I suspect it’s a less than temporary measure, as it’s a cost-saver, but it is nonetheless very disappointing, and that quote from Paul Goalby, above, shows just how little the company understands what vegetarianism is about.

The company has made the decision to start using calves stomachs in its products – specifically Mars Bars, Bounty, Twix, Snickers, Milky Way and Malteesers. How they can think that ‘less strict’ vegetarians would continue eating them, I don’t know, since the whole idea of being a vegetarian is that you don’t eat animals, not just that you don’t eat them if the bit you’re eating still looks like a liver or rump (or, in the case of burgers, an eyelid, scrotum or spleen).

So, if you boycott Nestle because you don’t believe its activities in the developing world are ethical (and so don’t eat KitKat, After Eight, Crunch, Smarties, Quality Street, Lion Bar, Drifter, Yorkie, Animal Bar, Walnut Whip, Toffee Crisp, Milky Bar, Caramac, Rolo, Munchies, Toffo, Black Magic, Dairy Box, Matchmakers, Polo, Fruit Pastilles, Breakaway, Blue Ribband or the new ‘Heaven’ range), then you may as well drop chocolate altogether and start a lifelong Lenten fast.