No answer to that response, either!!!  Military display of assumed bodily prowess is all very interesting - psychologically speaking, I mean. Reminds me of that old book, The Naked Ape. Meant to intimidate rather than anything else, I suppose. It actually makes me want to laugh - all those silly helmets and what have you. Those jaunty little caps rather let down the French in your picture - they all look as if they are about to burst into song...

Not sure what effect the green and maroon berets, à la British army, is meant to have on us, but I found some interesting info from the site linked below.

I had no ideas there were so many different colours. The site below won't let me copy their "Blue Bonnet" paragraph, but apparently the military beret came from France via Scotland - originated as the famous "bonnet" worn by the Scottish fighters. Bonnet, rather than beret, is an odd word - can't imagine the SAS wearing green bonnets (with or without ribbons).

Army Berets


EDIT: This bunch simply look too nice and friendly - a happy bunch of lads in their colourful berets - but not sure they would strike terror into the hearts of the Taliban, or anyone else. But maybe that's the way forward for the world (well, one can only hope).

For big, butch berets it's hard to beat those worn by the Chasseurs Alpins (elite mountain troops),



But for really crap hats how about those worn by the Ecole Polytechnique?

I love it! Can't decide whether I prefer the terrifying pancake headgear, or the curly caps.

Best laugh I've had for a while - thank you, MM!

The Chinese are the most frightening military threat in our present times. It was a relief, therefore, to find that even they can sometimes look like the Tiller Girls. Amazing co-ordination and white trousers and trainers worthy of Gucci...

Of course the French Foreign Legion would call anything that wasn't their own all-white kepi, "une casquette merde". But France doesn't have a monopoly of silly hats, what about the Scottish feathered bonnet?



It's a wonder that during the Crimean War the Russians  didnt just fall about laughing when attacked by burly men in skirts with floppy dead ostriches on their heads:

For a real Tiller Girls performance how about this, especially the high-steppin' sergeant-major who starts strutting his stuff at about 2:15 ... there are plenty of fancy hats on display too:



Meanwhile your mention of Gucci trainers reminded me of this recent bit of silliness ... 'Idiotic': Fury in Ukraine after female soldiers made to march in heels:

Oh, MM, I can't stop laughing - that is all worthy of Borat.

You have set me up for the day - thank you again!

PS Love their little lunch packs on their backs.

In that youtube of the annual military parade in Chile, the thing that impresses me is that, with all the horse shit on the ground and the high kicks, no one slips over nor do they flick crap up the back of the row of soldiers in front. I also liked the scruffy dog who tries to join in at around the two minute mark and what sounds like a mass kazoo/comb-and-paper band at around 6:40.

The Chilean army was very closely modelled on the Prussian army and so the uniforms, helmets, rifles, cavalry, horse artillery, even the music, are essentially identical to those of the Imperial German army before WW1. The Kaiser, who of course famously loved dressing up in military uniforms especially those with fancy hats, would have felt right at home.

         

But enough of such sartorial silliness - I need to change sheets in the rooms and then do some gardening.

Me too. But you can't beat the Kaiser with a pigeon on his head. Absolutely terrifying.

Meles meles wrote:

In that youtube of the annual military parade in Chile, the thing that impresses me is that, with all the horse shit on the ground and the high kicks, no one slips over nor do they flick crap up the back of the row of soldiers in front. I also liked the scruffy dog who tries to join in at around the two minute mark and what sounds like a mass kazoo/comb-and-paper band at around 6:40.

The Chilean army was very closely modelled on the Prussian army and so the uniforms, helmets, rifles, cavalry, horse artillery, even the music, are essentially identical to those of the Imperial German army before WW1. The Kaiser, who of course famously loved dressing up in military uniforms especially those with fancy hats, would have felt right at home.

But enough of such sartorial silliness - I need to change sheets in the rooms and then do some gardening.

MM,

Re the Chilean parade and their marching to and fro, I was reminded of something told in a Danish TV programme during a parade where the Guards Hussars took part, a former major of the Horse Squadron - the Danish army retains only the one - mentioned that, when starting a parade the movements of the horses would start the movements of the bowels of the horses as well, resulting in - some 100 meters later - shit.
The major claimed, and I have no reason to doubt him, that the first half kilometre or so was done within the barracks stable areas, and when the squadron had passed out, some other soldiers had to go on 'shit patrol'.
Question, haven't this bit of information been passed to the Chilean army?

Edited because of spelling

Yes, I've been told the same. When I was a student at Imperial College, London (which is on the south side of Hyde Park and very close to the barracks of the Horse Guards) I know they always took the horses that were due to stand guard outside Horseguards' Parade in Whitehall for a bit of a canter early in the morning, to give them some exercise and to "clear them out". Nevertheless the road towards central London was usually covered in horse shit for the first few hundred yards (until it was gathered up by the gardeners responsible for park's rose garden). But bowels, whether horse or human, do not always work to a strict timetable: when you've got to go, you've got to go! I wonder if that wasn't the cause of the brief hiatus yesterday during the Bastille Day parade when the last cavalry squadron of the Garde Républicaine very briefly stalled just as they turned off the Champs-Elysées in front of the main stand (at 1:30 and towards the right in this clip) although by that point they will have already have travelled several km from their stables:

Game of Thrones, (it's in the book as well)

Swallowtail Caterpillar from Ecuador which disguises itself as bird droppings:



Another Ecuadorian caterpillar, this one disguises itself as a feather;

MM, the display accompanied by the Radetsky March takes me back to Princess Anne's (first) marriage. In the bar today I'm quaffing nothing more exciting than a ginger and lemon infusion from M&S.  I may take a lesson from my cat and try and have an afternoon nap and go back to masquerading at pulling up weeds afterwards.  Sorry no intriguing caterpillar pictures (or headgear) or cavalry manouevres to post so I'll enjoy those my fellow Res Historians have posted.  I've been somewhat subdued - had a nasty bout of hayfever (it's not serious of course - more of a nuisance) and still feeling saddened that we lost one of our fellow Res Historians.  The M&S infusion also  has a ginseng listed among the ingredients which is supposed to help make one lively but I'm somewhat sluggish unfortunately.

Hoping any Res Historians in countries affected by bad flooding are managing as well as possible.

Yes, grim viewing from North West Europe:

The scenes from Europe are terrible indeed - surely this will shock us out of our complacency?

Does make the usual British hysterical hyperbole of "biblical" floods in London seem utterly ridiculous - there was indeed a watery mess in some areas of the capital this past week, but nothing like the death and devastation in Germany and the Benelux countries.

In St John’s Wood, one homeowner was left shocked as water began to splurge out of their overflowing toilet through their property.

Sorry, but an overflowing loo is surely not to be described as "biblical"?

I have absolutely no interest in sports but even so it did dawn on me about a week ago that the Olympics were due to start soon. Guessing that guests might want to watch some of the events, I thought I'd better make sure the TV was fully functioning as it's been quite a while since i even turned it on. I remember watching a presidential address and announcement of Covid restrictions way back in March 2020 but when I tried to watch coverage of the 2020 Fête Nationale the satellite decoder had by then expired. I haven't watched any TV for at least a year and so on Friday morning I finally bit the bullet to get the TV up and running again. The first task was to hack back all the nettles and brambles around the satellite dish (it's in the garden attached to a post in the ground and hidden behind a bush) and then nip out to buy a new decoder box.

When I last repointed the internet dish it took hours of frustrating fiddling around so my hopes were not high that getting the TV functioning was going to be a simple job. However, having cut back the invading plants and given the dish a brush, I plugged in the decoder and turned it all on ... and directly up popped President Macron giving a live interview from the stadium in Tokyo just before the opening ceremonies kicked off. Sometimes the gremlins are asleep and things do work correctly straight away.

I was initially surprised and intrigued by the order at which the various national teams entered the stadium. Greece entered first as is traditional but was immediately followed by Iceland, Ireland, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan. What's with that? I thought, until, D'oh! of course it's in Japanese 'alphabetic' order. Having realised this i was fascinated by the revelations, all new to me, about the Japanese language. Being resident in France I'm well used to French online drop-down menu options, for say nationality, where the UK (as Royaume-Uni) is listed after Romania (Roumanie), but I knew nothing about how Japanese was written or ordered.

The parade of the teams seems to have followed, so I have now discovered, the Gojūon order of Japanese phonemes (ie roughly analogous to alphabetical order where all the vowel sounds come before the consonants) and as written in the katagana script, which is specifically used for load words into Japanese. Hence Iceland (  アイスランド   Aisurando), Ireland (アイルランド   Airurand)  and Azerbaijan ( アゼルバイジャン Azerubaijan) led the way. A bit later Andorra (アンドラ  Andora) was followed by Yemen (イエメン   Iemen), Israel (イスラエル Isuraeru) and Italy(イタリア  Itaria). I was also interested that there isn't  a distinction between P and B sounds, but rather between Pe (or Be) and Po (or Bo), such that Peru (ペルー Perū) came between  Belize (ベリーズ Berīzu) and Belgium (ベルギー Berugī), which was then followed by Poland (ポーランド Pōrando), then Bosnia-Herzegovinia (ボスニア・ヘルツェゴビナ Bosunia Herutsegobina), Botswana ( ボツワナ Botsuwana), Bolivia (ボリビア  Boribia) and Portugal (ポルトガル Porutogaru). It must also have been nice for Zimbabwe (ジンバブエ  Shinbabue), entering between Singapore (シンガポール  Shingapōru) and Switzerland (スイス  Suisu), not to come last for once.

I was also intrigued by the Japanese name for the Netherlands (オランダ  Oranda) which put them after Australia (オーストラリア Ōsutoraria), Austria (オーストリア   Ōsutoria) and Oman (オマーン  Omān). I presume the Japanese name for the Netherlands, Oranda, ultimately derives from either Orange or Hollanda and so reflects the long familiarity of the Japanese with the Dutch after the Seven Provinces first established trading bases on mainland Japan in the 17th century.

Anyway once I'd realised what was going on I thought it all very interesting and, at least to me, far more so than the athletes themselves, with the sole exception being that chunky guy from Tonga who was dressed in little more than a traditional bark-cloth kilt and lashings of baby oil.

At least once a Nato meeting used French names of countries when USA and UK (iirc) were at daggers drawn, and it was deemed unwise to seat the delegations together.

On second thoughts could have been council of Europe and the warring parties were Ukraine and UK.

In the General Assembly of the UN the seating order follows the English alphabetical order of country names. Accordingly I imagine there's always been some frostiness with Iran sitting next to Iraq and with Israel only separated from them by Ireland.

We have the television onto the Olympics but haven't been taking much notice of it; would probably have even less interest if it wasn't for my 10-year-old grandson being so excited about it, and at least I understand what this is about unlike Pokemon cards. And my son has given us 6 NZ athletes each (my husband, me, my three sons and their wives, the two older grandchildren) and points for each one who gets 1st, 2nd or 3rd or into finals. 
We did get interested in the women's triathlon where Bermuda won its very first gold medal. 

Unfortunately I still find Iraq and Iran muddling! Not Israel though.

Kate Bush is 63 today. Coincidentally the same birthdate, just 140 years later, as Emily Bronte author of Wuthering Heights.

Raising a tumbler of best port to the horse with sense who refused to jump. He had been there, done it and opted out of a rerun...... ta very muchley. The tearful rider may have tried whispering the magic word 'Charturie,' but it may have been a Japanese horse - do they eat horse there? In tiny chop stick sized bits, of course. So here's to Horse Sense!

I don’t know about Japan but I’m pretty sure that Belgium is known for its horse meat culture. It could just be that Belgium is so known simply because of its proximity to Britain where we tend to take a dim view of the idea of devilling Dobbin. Mind you, during the ‘horse meat scandal’ of 2013, one commentator suggested that given some of the shocking ingredients which go into processed food then a bit of decent horse meat would be one of the best things that one might find in a meat pie.

On the question of the alphabetical order of countries, then I’ve never understood why some states are listed according to their official titles while other are listed by actual name. Surely America should come between Algeria and Andorra while Great Britain & Northern Ireland should come between Ghana and Greece. That latter settlement, however, might only be temporary as way back in 1967 the newly elected MP for Hamilton, Winifred Ewing of the SNP was already anticipating Scotland taking its seat at the United Nations ‘betwixt Saudi Arabia and Senegal’.

Hmmm,

Last week one rainy day I chucked a kit packet to a bored child to make. This met with astonishment. 'I didn't know,' he said, ' that birds ate trifle.' I suggested he revised use of apostrophes. He made and then ate the trifle. ........ so I had to give the birds something else, of course.

And of Birds custard - when abroad this really happened in my witness....... many wives whose husbands were on a huge and long building project made a terrible fuss because there local supermarket did not stock things they could not live without. Birds Custard powder was no 1 on the list The CE's wife returned to England to buy up a load. The local stuff is in fact excellent but no one would try it. Bisto was next and potato mashers third on the list........

Taking out a loan? Actually, could be an RAN buff - HMAS Vampire was one of the famous "scrapiron flotilla" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjWtoFB3f30

Priscilla wrote:

Bisto was next

I was roasting a chicken last weekend and our niece (who was coming round) kindly offered to make the gravy when she arrived. I gratefully said yes but when she arrived (and to my dismay) I saw her produce a tub of Bisto granules which she had bought from a supermarket on the way over. I held my counsel, however, as it was far too late in proceedings to start giving a crash course in how to make a roux etc. Intrigued, I watched as she put a couple of tablespoonsful of the granules into a glass measuring jug and then added boiling water before whisking. She then poured in some of the chicken juices from the roasting tin and whisked again before adding a caramelised onion (also from the roasting tin) and poured it all into a gravy boat. I reserved judgement but was apprehensive as I poured (a little) of it onto the side of my plate before tasting. And here's the thing - far from being the highly salty and synthetic-tasting gunk which my snobbish prejudice had expected it was actually very well balanced and delightfully palatable. Needless to say that I then poured considerably more onto my plate the second time around.

What a humbling learning experience for you, Vizzer!

Where gravy is concerned, judge not and ye shall not be judged.

Bisto gravy is lovely - far nicer than that Oxo cube stuff. The snobby Oxo fanatics are worse than the roux people - the cubists were defeated in 1991 when Oxo granules were introduced. I'm not sure if you can still buy the original little block of God knows what. The history of gravy would be a rival thread to our lovely cheese one. Food is so interesting.

I once tried to do a posh gravy roux and I rued the day, as did everyone else.

I'll freely confess that while I do generally make my own stock and bouillabaisse etc, from the remains of fish and shellfish meals, the left-overs from a roasted chicken carcass, or the various bits after the annual butchering of the wild boar ... I do still buy Bisto granules, which are regularly stocked alongside Paxo, Oxo, Heinz beans, Birds' custard powder and other 'exotic' products, in the local Intermarché. I do sometimes fiddle around with roux and occasionally make a real, old-style English gravy, but I think we can all agree that it is much quicker, easier and often tastier, to simply add boiling water - plus optional roasting juices - to a few pre-prepared Bisto granules.

For historical interest, the original Bisto was developed in 1908 by Mr Roberts and Mr Patterson of the Cerebos salt company but was not originally an instant gravy mix but rather a neutrally-flavoured powder mix of starch, colouring and seasonings used to "Brown, season and thicken" (hence the name, BiSTo) flavoursome meat juices to improve a traditional but watery gravy. The ragamuffin 'Bisto Kids', created by cartoonist Wilf Owen, were introduced into the adverts in 1919, along with their subsequently long-lasting catchphrase, 'Aah. Bisto!'.

I was curious to find out why gravy is called gravy: it apparently is derived from the French.

GRAVY. The term "gravy" first appears in Middle English as gravé and is presumed to derive from French, since the word may be found in numerous medieval French cookbooks. The original medieval meaning was precise: the gravé consisted of the natural cooking juices that flowed from roasting meat.

Gravy as a thickened sauce, with all sorts of rich flavourings, originated in France with fancy sauce cookery, which, I believe, the French consider to be a very skilful art. I remember reading that Diane de Poitiers, the elegant and beautiful mistress of Henri II, was always on a diet (nothing new under the sun), and she instructed the young Mary, Queen  of Scots, always to abstain from "rich gravies". The original meat juices would not be fattening, surely, but if extra fat, flour, wine and goodness knows what else were used to thicken and flavour the gravy sauce, the calorie count would rocket. Poor Mary...

PS Most high-class kitchens employ a specialist chef - un saucier:

The saucier chef is responsible for the mainstay ingredient of most dishes—the sauces. A saucier chef is often the specialist of the food station they are assigned to in a kitchen. Saucier chefs prepare sauces, gravy, soups and sometimes pasta dishes for restaurants, hotels or other hospitality businesses.

Meles meles wrote:

Heinz beans

Both Heinz and Cross & Blackwell call their products 'baked beans' although some suggest that they should more properly be called stewed beans. Traditional baked beans don't really feature tomato sauce at all but rather pork and maple syrup or brown sugar or molasses. As with home-made, hand-cranked, ice-cream makers - bean pots for baking beans were, until quite recently, to be commonly found in American homes and particularly in New England:



(American bean pot)

Believed to be originally a Native American dish, baked beans are said to have been adopted by puritan settlers because of the injunction against working on Sundays. Beans and pork could be popped into a pot on a Saturday and then slow cooked ready to be eaten the next day. That said – I’m not quite sure what the exact technical difference is between baking and stewing. Something to do with the addition of liquid I’d imagine.

P.S. On the brand loyalty/snobbery side of things, I’m definitely a Crosse & Blackwell ‘Branston Baked Beans’ advocate. Heinz ‘Beanz’ are just far too sweet.

Now one can get beans with reduced sugar - and probably reduced fat and flavour some cans have things added - sausages or curry powder and becoming what my mother would have called good stuff buggered up..... written in full - sorry if it offends ... my mother was of the calling a spade a spade generation and did not do whimsical stars.
The home made beans I had cooked in American homes were never anything like canned baked beans. Local competitions for huge pots of chilli beans are common and much on a par with our biggest marrer in the show. Men often make it, delighting in their own secret ingredients - which is more than likely black treacle or similar. Thus the world spins on and people flee in terror somewhere.

Reduced salt and sugar baked beans are an abomination, like eating cottage cheese when you really want full-fat crumbly Lancashire. It's all a con, anyway - the so-called "healthy option" isn't that healthy - still loads of added salt and sugar.

Discussion on "Test Match Special" yesterday included the distinction between "gravy" and "jus". One commentator thought "jus" could be thickened with breadcrumbs, but the concensus was that gravy was thickened with flour (or cornflour) and jus was unthickened. None correctly identified the difference - an extra £10 on the final bill.

Yes,GG! Well said!!
I no longer watch chef programmes where they talk about 'jus,' and serve pigeon breast oozing blood and things are cooked in file-like plastic bags hanging in hot water and where all food is eventually piled on plates to resemble something scooped from the floor after first dropping it - or is a tiny serving of something on a large plate with a sauce of smeared dollups.
Anyway, my mother thought it common to have plates filled for you. She used serving dishes to the very end. At least you could choose where you put your gravy.

Priscilla wrote:

Anyway, my mother thought it common to have plates filled for you. She used serving dishes to the very end. At least you could choose where you put your gravy.

I try to go one step further and serve up in the dish it was cooked in. Last night I did poulet basquaise - chicken baked with peppers and black olives in a rich tomato sauce - and served it to table in a bakeofe 'casserole' pot straight from the oven (that's an English casserole, not a French casserole which is just a saucepan). That way everyone can help themselves to as much or as little as they want and it stays hot longer. I wouldn't normally need to cook during high holiday season as all the bars and restaurants should be open but this year, largely because of covid, it's a bit of a problem, with some restaurants having gone bust through lack of business while others are shut because their staff do not have the obligatory Pass Sanitaire or are isolating. Currently there's only one restaurant within 10km of me that is regularly open in the evenings. It's a bit annoying.

Re baked beans,

Priscilla wrote:

Now one can get beans with reduced sugar -  and probably reduced fat  and flavour some cans have things added - sausages or curry powder and  becoming what my mother would have called good stuff buggered up....

I'd always assumed that adding sausages to tinned beans was an English take on the classic southern-French cassoulet. A true cassoulet is a wonderously rich dish of white haricot beans and tomato, pork sausage, chunks of thick-cut bacon, and confits of duck or goose, all slow-cooked together for several hours. In France it is often sold in delicatessen and can readily be bought in tins. The tinned stuff really isn't bad at all and it's certainly quicker than cooking it all from scratch, although it does really need to be a proper cassoulet. A 840g tin of Véritable Cassoulet au Canard de Castelnaudary (the small town between Carcassonne and Toulouse where cassoulet is supposed to have originated) might set you back six euros: not excessive for such a delicious and filling meal but certainly a bit more than you would usually expect to pay for a simple tin of baked beans to which a few anaemic sausages have been added an afterthought.

        

Moved

Tinned baked beans feature in tonight's dinner, with pork medallions, onions (of course), chopped tomatos, heavily reduced-price flat mushrooms, cooked in a stock made from Polish all-purpose seasoning and veggie oxo. Thickening will be reviewed later - if needed. Probably porridge oats blasted in a mini-blender.. To be served with jacket potatoes as the oven will be on - others in this household seem to believe you can do them in a microwave, despite repeated experiments providing conclusive proof that no, you cannot.

Some of us from the Spanish U3A class met up in a bar yesterday and chatted in Spanish (well I tried in my less than perfect way). Afterwards I had some leek and potato soup (gluten free) which was on the  menu there. I'm perfectly capable of putting something on the table for myself at home but I fancied a bit of a treat (and missing one chore i.e. making myself some lunch for just one day).

I've been unable to contact the chap who used to tidy my garden despite contacting a mutual acquaintance by email.  He might have just decided he doesn't want to do that work anymore and chucked away his mobile phone (or changed the card) - a friend who used to hire her services as a temporary secretary/PA did that when she wanted to retire (she moved to a different part of the country also).  I've made other enquiries but they also seem to have gone away/retired.  The chap from the launderette said his sister knew someone but it seems that person is extremely busy at present.  I have done a little bit myself in my geriatric way.  I do get an achy back gardening so maybe I need a brace.  The launderette man said one of his other clients said her father-in-law who lives not a million miles from me - well maybe he would, no harm asking I suppose but has she volunteered her father-in-law without consulting him.  He might not be too pleased about that.  I have seen some people advertising but that was the other end of town - still I do have my bus pass and could probably walk some of the way.  Anyway, hopefully I'll find some solution.

I'm drinking a nice cup of tea (I know - not awfully exciting).

MM, about the horses and their detritus - I'm old enough to remember the milkman and the breadman coming with a horse-drawn drey though the changed to motorised vehicles when I was five or six.  I can remember mounted policemen coming along our road (which was less built-up and less busy then).  People would run out to scoop up the horse dung that sometimes was left to use as fertilizer (cheaper than shop-bought fertilizer/compost I guess).  There are a couple of horses which even now graze in a field a little way down the road (on the other side of the road) - one of the few places that haven't been built on, I think because they very near the flood plain and do sometimes get partially flooded.

That reminds me LiR of when zoos and safari parks began selling manure to the public in (I think) the 1980s. The marketing was/is very clever - 'zoo poo' - and it was claimed, for instance, that lion shit and tiger scat acted as repellents against tomcats and foxes etc. I'm sure that's total crap though. Of the herbivores, hippo poo is apparently la crème de la crème of dung, particularly for the growing of fruits and legumes. I think there could be something in that. Nitrogen and potassium most likely.

Talking about nitrogen and potassium - or most likely a surfeit of the former and a lack of the latter - I can't get my tomatoes to ripen. Last year due to all the garden centres being closed throughout March, April and May (because of covid) I couldn't buy any young tomato plants, and so I resorted to raising plants from seed that I had collected from fresh tomatoes that I'd originally bought to eat. These seedlings I potted on and eventually planted out in late May, to follow an early crop of broad beans. I didn't get many to ripen but I put that down to not using pukka, commercially-raised seed.

This year I bought young plants and again planted them out in late May to follow a crop of broad beans. The only difference this year was that I didn't dig up the old bean plants but simply cut them down to the ground and left the roots in the soil, except where I needed to make a hole for a tomato plant. Now, in late August I have eight, two metre tall, healthy tomato plants, all bearing plenty of green tomatoes but with none showing any sign of ripening. I suspect the nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots of the broad bean plants are still acting as a slow release nitrogenous fertilizer, and so are delaying or even supressing tomato ripening, but I'm really not sure. I've added a good dose of wood-ash (a source of potassium) as a top dressing around the tomato plants to try to encourage them but so far with no visible success. Maybe in future I should change my crop rotation plan and not plant tomatoes where I've previously had beans, which would be inconvenient as the timing of the two crops works well to maximise use of the space and so give two crops each year, provided they actually ripen enough to be worth harvesting. There again perhaps it's due to the weather: unusually cool and wet in July, then very hot and dry, now, finally, a more normal warm and sunny with just occasional overnight rain. Has anyone any experience of growing tomatoes or had problems this year?


The offending toms are at the top (3 plants) and at right (5 plants). Those are French beans (doing very, very well this year) up the left-centre bed, with Brussels sprouts (for winter harvest) at the left; chili peppers (doing good too) in the centre pots; some courgettes between the tomatoes (doing OK but certainly no glut this year); and various pumpkins, courges and squashes (all for winter store) at the top on both sides of the path that leads to the next terrace up, where there are more French beans. The little plants in the bottom right-hand corner bed are pak choi, planted three weeks ago and already coming on well; and there are young swedes/rutabaga in the corresponding bed in the bottom left-hand corner.

I can't be helpful I'm sorry, MM, about the tomatoes.

Vizzer, I mentioned before that the museum I worked at sold 'elephant poo paper'.

I may have mentioned that I met up with a few people from one of my U3A activities - well I had a phone call from one of the people there saying he's tested positive for Covid-19.  It doesn't mean I have caught the virus but I have been asked to self-isolate. There is a local(ish) pharmacy that has the test kits though I'll have to find out what the logistics are for getting hold of one.  I've had an email from Track n Trace asking me to register and log in.  I feel okay at present but I'd better not be complacent.  I have had my vaccinations.  Most of my socialising has been by Zoom or Skype so it's just my luck that when I meet up in person with people for the first time in a while one of them has tested positive for the virus!  He didn't sound too bad on the phone - as if he had a cold really though of course the main thing is that he recovers (he has been 'jabbed').  He and his wife were just about to go on holiday too.  My tipple today is apple juice - the apple tree in the garden has been fecund so I should get out and start collecting them.

I hope I didn't sound melodramatic in my previous comment but having spoken to Track & Trace I have been told as I am fully vaccinated that in the absence of Covid-19 symtoms I don't need to isolate. It might still be sensible to have the test done.

Surely if you have been vaccinated your body will have anti-bodies to covid - that being the intended result of vaccination - and so a test will just show what you already know, that you have indeed been exposed to covid through vaccination. Or am I missing something?

For what it is worth, since you have been fully vaccinated (I assume that means 2 separate doses of an accredited vaccine) you should normally be able to download certification to show general proof of immunity. That would for example function as equivalent to the French 'Pass Sanitaire' which would permit you enter most European countries and in France is obligatory to visit restaurants, hotels, cinemas, museums, concerts, sports events etc, without any problem. I've got an English couple staying here at the moment; both double-vaccinated, carry their Pass Sanitaire on their phones and are happily touring around France without any problem. I've also a German family who all caught covid together in 2020 and so are not actually double vaccinated, but they still have their passes to show their immunity and they have had no problems crossing from Germany to Switzerland, then Italy and now into France (but they did need to show their passes).

I have a card showing the dates of vaccination. The email I received as a follow-up to the phone call with the Track & Trace representative mentioned getting a test done.  The person I know who has been infected by the virus had had two vaccinations so I'm assuming there is something in the test which shows if a person is suffering Covid infection at the time of the test.

I don't tend to grow tomatoes, MM, mainly because our potting shed isn't a greenhouse. That said - and I can't tell from the photo if there are any flowers on your plants - but if there are, then cutting them off might help by concentrating the plants' efforts on the fruit. Although wood-ash is a good (indeed the original) source of potassium, to much of a good thing can be harmful. They lye run-off from too much ash could stress the roots thus also hindering ripening. Your suggestion regarding the slow-release nitrogen pods on the bean roots, however, sounds like the prime culprit.

Here's hoping they ripen soon. If they don't, then they can still be used provided they're large enuff - (small, green tomatoes are, of course, poisonous). You probably don't need me to tell you that though. No doubt you have a list an arm long of uses for full-grown green tomatoes - pickle, jam, chutney and ketchup etc.

If the green tomatoes are big enough to pick, pick sufficient for your purposes
Put them in a dish with bananas. The ethylene from those will ripen them.
The now-ripe ones will ripen the next batch usw.

While I have yet another cup of tea, I did the home test for Covid-19 yesterday and posted it off.  The Track & Trace team has contacted me to say the test was negative but asked me to download the Track & Trace app (which I didn't want to do but never mind) and fill in my result.  The team was cautious saying I PROBABLY don't have the virus but didn't outright say I don't have it (covering themselve in case there should be a false negative I guess).

You drink your tea, LiR, but my tangential wanderings - well wheelchair drivings [is that a word in English?] actually, has left me thirsty - not for sherry, alas, but for a nice port.
Can anyone explain why - following the Hispanic background of said drivings on the 'identity ...' thread?