Today goes, widespread sunshine, very little in the way of relief from a breeze, so looking
at 28 degrees Celsius and stifling as well in that heat because of the lack of breeze,
go through to tonight, unfortunately, and I really mean unfortunately, it's going to
be even warmer than last night. Last night, it dropped down to around 15 or 16 tonight.
The best we can hope for, 17 or 18 degrees Celsius as of low, so an incredibly warm and
uncomfortable night in the store, no doubt. And then as far as tomorrow goes, well tomorrow
does have the potential to be the warmest day of the year so far. So far, Saturday just
gone was the hottest day of the year, we just tipped over 30 degrees. So another hot day,
and as we move into the rest of this working week, Thursday, Friday, those temperatures
hanging around 27 and 28 degrees gets a little bit cooler as you head to the weekend, but
only down to around 24 or 25 degrees Celsius. And then into next week, it's staying with
us as well, it's probably, there's a chance that things could break down by the end of
next week, but it's only a chance and there's a relative amount of uncertainty to that,
so I guess the best way to put it is that it's going to be like this for the foreseeable
future.
OK, that's certainly what the Daily Express is saying today, that we could see this for
the rest of the summer, maybe well into August as well. Well, time will tell. Thank you very
much, Charlie. Charlie's in the weather centre for us all morning, of course, and you can
see his five day forecast online at BBC.co.uk-radio-lester. And it's very yellow, there's lots of big bright
suns on there.
Well, it's been lovely, isn't it? And we're in the middle of a heat wave at the moment,
and it was as hot here yesterday as it was in Crete. I know because I was talking to
my mate on Facebook, and actually I think it was hotter here than it was in Crete, and
really we've been blessed with this summer. After a slow start, it's all come together,
and things are growing and it's just lovely, you know, watching the onions swell and stuff
like that. You know, I always think that these are probably the most expensive vegetables
in the world, but they're a lot cheaper than psychotherapy.
Summer suddenly arrived in the guise of a heat wave, much to the relief of the allotment
tears. There's no mains water supply on the allotment, so it's up to the ingenuity of
the allotment holders to make sure they have a supply of water during these very rare hot
spanks. Yeah, well, we haven't got water on these allotments and never had. There is
a stream across the back here, which some people get water from, like Ray next door,
he's got a little pump and he pumps water across, but it's like literally a dribble
and it takes him hours. When I run out of water, I bring it over in my pickup truck
and some of these drums are put on the back of my pickup truck. I personally think that
as an allotment group here, we should do something about trying to get water because it does
put off new people if they find they plant new seeds and everything and they dry up and
they don't progress. And I think these allotments would be far more productive if we did have
water on the site. The trouble with that is how you organise it. I think on cancer allotments,
I'm presuming that they do have water on them and it's probably part of your rent and the
council pays the water rates. I can't imagine they go to the expense of having a meter on
everybody's individual allotment and leave it to individuals to pay because Arthur Peer
wouldn't pay and others would pay more. The problem here, I think, is actually getting
everybody to agree on how we'd actually do it and of course then the costs of laying
on the water, et cetera, et cetera. That is what they call scraping the bottom of the
barrel. You've still got a little bit left there. It's running low. I'd have to put the
barrel up. Water's not particularly a problem unless really we are without water. It's
really we are without rain for weeks on end, which is not that often. There is a motley
arrangement of contraptions, containers and so on. And we kind of eke out the water thinking
if the drought comes, what will we do? But actually the drought never comes. So we manage
okay. No, no, I've got containers full because the hot days have been followed by torrential
rain, which has just filled them up again. So it's probably pretty perfect, lovely hot
weather, torrential rain, which just waters everything. Job done. This well has been dug
up. What is it? 1996. And I dug all myself down to the bottom with a ladder. My mums,
my mrs. have put me out of my door, they've put me out of the deck, all the sediments underneath
and full up with bricks and this and that. And dug up and break it up, put it right up
to the top. And that's what I've got. The water comes with the weather. If the weather
gets good, the water becomes a problem. And I guess everybody here is just battling with
that problem. Because I'm wondering, I mean, we've got a big cube of water over there.
But I know that we use four to six gallons a day in the greenhouse. So it's not going
to last for an awful long time. When the water runs out, really the only thing that can be
done is to bring water from home, which I just loathe the idea of using all that petrol
and effort in order to keep a few vegetables going. Can be a problem, yeah.
Great.
it's not been bad lately we've had a bit of rain well a lot of rain
in a very short time after the drought which is all right you know every cloud
has a silver lining but it does mean as well as encouraging the plants it
encourages the weeds and of course the slugs
right on the top of the list are slugs I have a reaction when I see a slug the
hardest one to deal with the slugs but I think you have to the pigeons love
brassicas so you got to net them for the pigeons I also use a an owl there but I
don't know if it works very well it doesn't seem to want to turn the right
way and if you put beans or anything in even in fact if you disturb the soil or
you put so stuff straight into the ground you'll find the foxes have come and
scripted the soil so sometimes you've got to go and replant and the mice come
dig up your sweet pea so the thing is the slugs did never leave you alone so to
me they're the hardest to cut with if you left on the butterflies of course you
can see here this year particularly large numbers of butterflies so if I
hadn't net up my brassicas every day possibly twice a day I'd have to check
well not twice a day I'd have to check regularly and remove the eggs off every
leaf in every plant which is just not viable so that environment is very
expensive I think but it lasts a long while and it does a job so my brassicas
so far tiny bit of slug damage but not too bad really very happy with them and
so definitely it's the slugs and the slugs are relentless I bet you under here
I just cut them in two which is rather gross but I think it's quick for the
slugs and I can't leave them you can cope with them after a certain time I
think much better than whenever you're just planting but certainly they
destroyed three quarters of my portion of harvest this year I think I think my
vote would go for exterminating slugs worldwide and I really don't much care
how morning Pepe morning what time do you get here this morning up past five up past five because the weather is going to be hot today it's not
point to come later because you'll be exhausted so now is the right time to do
some work and then when it gets unbearable hot then time to rest you go to
work with the weather not when it's to you or to me this is for me that what you
do and just to get some more now because if I don't do it they will go over
ripe and they will be wasted it's not late is the season is different is
change so basically we are on about two months late so if we say now we are in
fest of July I will say is the fest of June and if you look nature the birds the
trees where there be flower and everything they will tell you our
calendar more less is not right I do like to eat fresh artichoke because when
I was child about in January 1946 and I had a blonde and children born after the
world they were almost some suspicious especially if you the other blue eyes of
blonde there in the south of Italy because people think you might be the son
of you know the American or the English or the German so they were lots of
suspicious about so my grandfather used to be a farmer one and used to force me
when I was child to eat raw artichoke used to say to me heat artichoke make
you hair goes black heat artichoke make you hair goes black and that's how we
started and I got addicted to it and now I grow my own artichoke and I love ahead
them and I'm almost 68 years old and people say oh do you color your hair no
I don't color my hair so I think what grandfather was saying there is some
truth on it because look my aunt now it's got black so artichoke carrying a
kind of dark brownie black pigment so what goes down there you know we are
made out of it what we eat so if the artichoke has got some kind of pigments
it's possible you know my dark hair is related to that
too late for me
good nice and scrunching is almost like hitting a type of carrot lovely the
allotment means to me it's like you know the playground and it's basically I
think I don't really play in my garden anymore because I would come down here we
have our chickens down here we wouldn't have chickens if we didn't have an
allotment and the dog loves playing down here he's got his own secret den and we
have the trampoline the swing and the treehouse my dad made the swing in the
treehouse and we got the trampoline off a friend I I have come down here for all
my life I always come down here sometimes I feed the chicken sometimes I
don't sometimes and when I have a friend when we always come down here but if
it's raining we don't the treehouse my dad made and it's an apple tree so when
all the apples are right we go up there and pick them and you can watch the dog
from up there and it's really fun because it's got a little ladder so you can
climb up and the swing my dad made and out of an old tie and some rope there is
a story behind this treehouse and I was climbing up it once and when I was
climbing down I was wearing a dress and it got hooked on to a nail and I actually
fell down it and I cut my leg and now got a dent in my leg on one of my legs
on here and here and it and it still really hurts and I was about five or
six when I did that and there was loads of stinging nettles around it so I was
trying to be careful going down and I just got stuck and I didn't really want
to go up it for ages but now I should go up it be really careful coming down my
friend with Ms. May and she made it better for me so
I use the allotment as an extension of my house I suppose you know kids ride the
bikes up and down I've rebuilt an Austin 7 car in the garage and used it to
test it on these little green lanes
I think this calls if we're gonna start I better get back oh it's moving
dad do you want to push 1937 Austin 7 bought it about six years ago as a
non-runner and I've restored it to a running order I wouldn't say perfect
decorative order but just running order and Eve loves driving it around the
allotment and she does they let her drive it around the green lanes yeah yeah
what you're whispering about nothing all right is that the manual yeah it's
pretty to read that and learn it all and then what year did you say 1937 so it
survives so would it be in a lot of these looking about it would have been yeah
yeah these are the most popular car and I think Austin 7 is when they first came
out one of the most popular cars ever made all those people had motorbike and
side cars sold them to buy these it's the cheapest car you could buy this is
one of my allotment activities yes yes lending calls I've been down here 20
years so it's changed quite a bit when I came down originally it was all old
boys and if you want to know what it was like then you want to talk to one of the
old boys like Phil well my name Philip William Cooper well now I've owed me but
I did live in 220 Queens Road I bought that place I think in 1983 something
like that I paid paid 36,000 for it including the allotment there was
allotment with it that's when I met Taffy Johnson or Aidan Johnson is
proper name I spoke to him today still alive he's in his 90s now and he's living
away now but Taffy was the man and of course I was friends of him and that
way I knew everybody on the allotments and like you say when I go down there now
as I do often the place is more or less the same there was I remember there was a
guy up there named Philip Phil for and lived up near the Craddock and he kept
me had a pigeons up there and we used to go up there and shoot the rats around the
pigeons and yeah we had some good fun up there and then we I was in a pulpitode
with a black dog and I know he said he got talking about his doves white
doves and how nice they were I said oh I'd like a couple of them so he said I'll
give you two come up tomorrow and I'll give you two so I made a because I was a
carpenter myself I made a dove we put a duff coat on my allotment and with two
pigeons we wired them in for about three weeks so they couldn't get out and just
kept feeding them in so they'd know that was their own when we let them out with
that we we sat there for hours watching them twirling and flying it was good
fun for them to have and anyway as the weeks in the months went by they went
from two to four to eight to sixteen finished up with about forty and the
council come down wanted wanted to cull them and we said no you're not culling
them but there were we had stray pigeons they were all cull as ginger and all
sorts of the went from white to black and white oh dear and of course the cows were there trying to build the
youngins out the nests out the dove coat and because I was there with my rifle and
tough shooting as many crows as we could tough with a man he he really really
looked after that place cared about it loved it of course we loved the birds the
wild birds with yellow hammers and finches and God knows what used to be
now at the finish we had to get rid of the doves were that many oh it were
unbelievable everybody that cringes wrote them about the doves oh and of course
all the stray ones that were racing pigeon and Phil who had their loft up
there he didn't lock it because they were going in his loft and he didn't see
all the oh that's some good times and laughs with Phil there was a woman up
there at greenhouses and she sold her plants and her through the bottom
entrance to bottom entrance to the allotments and then it and and it was
owned by a bloke named Warburton he owned about nine of them and he he sold
them to a builder a Warburton surveyors come down come down down our roads down
the private road to our allotments and Taffy in English that was when who are
you so we're surveying the property so Taffy says no you're not get out it's a
bit of arguments Taffy got older one of them and bang nutted him and they were
gone out of a flash and then we're Warburton's died and his son come down
and I said to him what you and he said I'm Warburton this is you're the most
hated man around here says don't come down here ever again and he he went as
far as I can say now them allotments will never be sold I can't see because
I'll never sell mine never is a long long time but while I live I'll never
build it because I'll never sell my plot for building and when I die my sons will
have it and they know my wishes I like to see the wildlife there ain't a lot left
you don't see many goldfinches and linux and things down there now but at
least there's that there's somewhere for them if if if they did ever come back you
can see we just found this bees nest it's taken up home in an old bird's nest
hard cheese for the birds I think they like the nest because there'll be old
nest material in there that they can help to keep their nest warm but it's
really late for them to be coming out we've had this very cold spring but now
fortunately there's being much more active as you can see well I'm Sally and
I have a little bit of an allotment here but I've got two great loves one's
wildlife and the others photography and the allotments give me an opportunity to
mix the two together it can be a bit frustrating at times because very often
you see something of wildlife in a flash fox cubs a green woodpecker in the
snow and you never managed to get it on camera but it has the other advantage
that it makes me look at things that I wouldn't see when I'm just digging or
whatever on the allotment and sometimes I get photographs of things I'll see a
butterfly or a bird and I think what's that you get a photograph and it's only
when you get home that you actually can identify it and then you've got a memory
as well and I think the memory is something that I particularly like this
year I've been taking more photographs for the allotment history project and
again that's made me take different photographs look at things with a
different angle and these days I usually come down see what one's doing on the
allotment and then I'll go for a wander and there may be some really good
vegetables there may be people working on their allotments there's quite a lot of
talking goes on there as well which is nice so it opens up lots of possibilities
and I've certainly seen things on the allotments this year my photographs are
if you like both a I hope an archive for the future of the allotments but
there also there's me in it as well it's my allotments my view of the
allotments that I'm taking and I can look back on that as well this is the
place to be and five minutes from my house I'm in a lovely isolated spot
there are no gopers gopers are the people who come and look at your picture
while you're doing it and I can't stand them there are no gopers and it's
fabulous and the key thing about drawing apart from making nice pictures is that
the more you look the more you see and your life is just so much richer for it
you see things that you wouldn't normally notice you notice things in far more
detail and there are very few freebies in life but looking carefully is one of
them I've got maybe 20 30 pictures more probably out of this allotment and I've
just done one now of this little view through my allotment into my mates down
there and there's a lovely little tunnel of light looking into the trees where you
can just see the outline of his chicken shack and I came down this morning about
an hour and a half ago the first picture you do is hard work it's not bad but
it's a bit of a struggle you get that done and it's it's been okay and then
you can whack off another in 15 minutes that's 20 times better for one reason
you've looked your life has been enriched and you've looked and you've
got a hell of a lot more I like the plants I planted these onions it's the
first year I've really planted stuff and it's amazing how many of them haven't
died in fact most of them have lived and the key to this is the wonderful world
of compost up here are our potatoes they've gone over now which means they're
simply ready to harvest but this area was all full of raspberries and
bindweed and they say you cannot get rid of bindweed well you can and I dug all
this out and then added about this much of this bin of compost to it and this
ground hadn't been looked after it I've done a thing done to it for at least 20
years it had just had nutrient taken out of it by raspberries and bindweed and
this year we got an absolutely stonking crop of potatoes out of it all because
of my own compost and I can't understand why people don't make compost but
quite a few people here who don't and like when you go on holiday and you're
self-catering and you've got all these potato peelies and vets and there's no
way to put them it drives me bonkers because it should be made into compost
and you can compost just about everything including bindweed and then in it
goes and the whole ground it's the soil that's made richer it just gets better
and better and better and better and better and right now we're getting what
you call apples that just fall down onto the ground and I go around I pick them
all up and I chuck them all into my compost and it just goes down and down
and down and down and gets richer and richer and you've not seen stuff like
this it's black and it's absolutely gorgeous and you can have this stuff
from the local shop won't mention its name but whatever and it's basically wood
it's basically chopped up bits of tree and it'll add fiber to the soil but it
doesn't add any nutrients and inside here is one that's really just starting
there we go it's just starting and you can see straw in here
the stuff look at it it's absolutely teeming with life inside here it's not
filthy stuff it's gorgeous look at these that's a little brandling worm there
there what you want to see and if you've got lots of weevils in there you
compost a bit dry but you can see already down here that's what you're going
to get does that look like the stuff from the local supermarket no it does not
all that will rot down there's another little brandling all that will rot down
and your plants will go bonkers so that's what I do
