29th October 2017

Dear All,

Yesterday Kate and I drove up to Burston, north of Diss, Norfolk for a Commemoration event for Don Pollard, his obituary was in the Guardian on the 1^st September. He was married to Joy Larkcom who I have helped with the revision of some of her gardening books. We visited them when they moved to Cork in 2007 and went to Cuba with them in 2008. Don was at one time chairman of the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers Union and the driving force behind legislation to control gangmasters. He was also an active member of CND and repeatedly arrested for protesting at Lakenheath and Molesworth. The funeral had been held in Ireland but over 150 turned up at the Burston Strike school, which is famous as the scene of the longest running strike in British history and is now a museum and Union HQ (it’s all in Wikipedia!)

On Monday we were down at Hutton tidying up for Esther. She had experience a tough weekend with Kian – one of her Respite care lads as he had screamed for several hours of the night.

“Just Vegetating” this week was “Brassicas” with recipes for Kale crisps, Cauliflower rice, Cabbage stir-fry and Cauliflower curry.

Wednesday saw me at the dentist having a chipped tooth patched up – seems a frequent occupation these days! Then serious digging at the allotment as a green manure crop of mustard was dug in.

Thursday’s walk was local starting at Elsworth and circling Cambourne and Knapwell Woods. Cambourne has been designed more sympathetically than most new settlements with plenty of trees and green corridors.

Elsworth

Cambourne

Knapwell Woods

The “Biographies” topic this week was “Isaac Singer”, he was a Polish born Jew who escaped to the USA and wrote over 20 novels and many short stories eventually winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.

The vegetable patch has cropped very well this year, we are still picking tomatoes and peppers and also have decent fennel, celeriac, parsnips, cabbage, sprouts, leeks and kale.

Celeriac

Fennel

Mustard pre Digging in

Pepper harvest

Love

Mike & Kate