The time has come

The special Festival of Britain issue of the Illustrated London News for February 11, 1951 has come into our house and the above advertisement naturally caught my eye because the gloves are named after me (prefer not to think I am named after gloves). I fail to grasp the reference to gloves and baldness, however, but it is probable that I was very bald at the time the magazine was published, having been born just over a week previously. Indeed, the publication has a picture of the King opening the festival at noon on Thursday, May 3, 1951, when little Andrew Baldwin would have been just one hour old. Ah!

The lack of blogging for the past month reflects my lack of activity in the garden. The time has come to put a bit of effort in and over the next few days I shall buy potatoes to chit and persuade Susan to drive somewhere where I can get two or three bags of stuff to dig in to the soil.

I have roughly mapped in my mind what's going where, although the back patch where I had the potatoes last year remains a problem. The soil is poor, very stony and the sun doesn't get there much. My mate Steve suggests beans. Runner, broad or French: or all three. They're tough, and their nitrogen-fixing root nodules will help to enrich the soil, he says. That'll do me.

Now then, do they still make Andy gloves? The hunt is on.