Here we go again!

It doesn't seem 5 minutes since I was washing veg for my last show last October but this weekend was my first show of this season in the Notts village of Keyworth. And I picked up my first red cards of the season as well as trophies for most points in the veg section and the best veg or fruit exhibit.

I had plenty of good globe beet 'Pablo' to choose from. These were grown in the ground but I still managed to extract reasonably long thin tap roots which is about as likely as finding a teacher with a sense of humour. My globe beet for the big shows are being grown in deep raised beds with finely sieved compost to ensure long thin taps.

I was very happy with the way these Casablanca spuds cleaned up. They were absolutely gleaming and didn't have a blemish of any description on them anywhere. I hope my main sowings in the bags come up like these and hopefully bigger. These were only about 4oz so they were very small....but good enough to win.

Best veg went to my carrots Caradec. I was very disappointed with these when I pulled them.....they should be stumps! A lady approached me at the end and said she thought they were amazing. If only she knew! Still they cleaned up very well and hopefully my remaining roots of this variety growing in some small tubes on a greenhouse border will develop a stump end in due course!

I also won the class calling for a tray of garden produce. I arranged this at the show myself with absolutely no help on this occasion from Leesa. Waddya mean...'it shows!'...???





And here is another result that i'm sure will have my Scottish friends shitting themselves as I walked off with a third for peas. I think I was beaten by the local hairdresser and butcher! As I work in sales and marketing I'll put a positive spin on it by saying '2011 National pea champion gets creditable third in his National build-up'. No....I'm not buying it either!

One side point on that....all the pods only had 7 peas in them. There are three possible reasons for this.

1) I'm a shite grower (unlikely)

2) I didn't grow them very well (possibly)

3) I've been shafted!

And finally every now and again it comes to your attention that there are some really sad, lonely individuals out there. Some people may not agree with some of the things I say on here but this is my little blog, where I can say what I like when I like on subjects that get my gander. I know that won't change the World but it changes the World in me and makes me feel a little bit better for saying it. I was once accused of being racist for publishing a photo of some martians carrying a banner declaring "Muslims f*** off!" It had been sent to me by an asian friend. I have many asian friends. My neighbours are asian. My grandson is half-caste. The photo was simply funny. Period! I know there is a difference between my indian friends and muslims but there was no difference between the photo reading "Muslims f*** off or "Scots f*** off" or "Welsh f*** off!" etc etc. In this PC World we supposed to be careful about what we say and do. Well not this Brit baby. And if you really cannot stomach what I say there's this magic little cross in the top right hand corner of your computer screen, and if you press it I f*** off as if by magic.

So, it made me laugh today to think that someone could go to such lengths to stop me from doing something that would ultimately benefit them and their organisation just because they took such offence at my views. Something I'd been asked to do because no-one else seemed to want to do it and I was relucantly persuaded to give it a go to help them out. That person must now think i'm gutted to be denied. Well i'm not. I shall now have four weekends a year back again to do what I want rather than have to spend them bombing up the motorway to boring meetings, and I'll be able to spend countless evenings sowing, planting, spraying and cropping rather writing minutes. Don't bother asking me ever again.