yonmei

10:39 am: This is Scotland
I am sitting outdoors in a gloriously green garden, in warm sunlight. My feet are bare and if I'd thought to pack them I would be wearing shorts.

(My back feels lots better: I kept telling people "sore but normal" yesterday, when it was still worrying me, but it really is today.)

I should be writing a complex and and sarcastic story involving House and a flock of other characters, not all of them ducklings or Wilson, but somehow I can't focus on that.

Hey ho for mayhem, angst, torture, suicide, and despair! I think I can focus on that.

Tags: fannishness, green in the city, imaginary friend meetup, write write write

01:16 pm: Insane Picnic
The sun is shining, on 1st July I'll be promoted (no more money, lots more work, honour, and significant amounts of What Fresh Hell Is This, WFHIT, I need an icon that says that...) and I want to have a picnic.

I invite you all! (This may have to be an imaginary picnic. Or a virtual one.) We will meet on Whinney Hill on Sunday 6th July, at noon, and stay there till we run out of (a) food (b) drink (c) the glorious view. (I have decided not to worry about the sun not shining or it raining.)

I have a clever container which is luggable in which I can bring ice-cubes and cold drinks. (I do not do fizzy sweet stuff with chemicals, so if you like Fanta or Coke or champagne, you need to bring your own supplies.)

Besides large quantities of orange juice, and lots of ice-cubes, and a litre of water, I shall bring:

A couple of bottles of wine. Red and white.
A large supply of home-baked rolls.
Butter and cheese and whole-grain mustard and chutneys.
Apples.

Also, if I figure out a way of transporting both, a flask of espresso and a carton of ice-cream so that we can have iced coffee, because there is Nothing Nicer.

What will you bring to my picnic? (While I don't myself eat meat or fish, I'm not actively opposed to other people doing it in front of me. I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals: I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.)

PS: I have reasons to be depressed, but we'll talk about those later. Right now: picnic!

Tags: coffee, eating some delicious food, green in the city, imaginary friend meetup, weather

01:53 pm: The cost of the Olympics
Gardens destroyed:

Halfway up Waterden Road in Hackney Wick, east London, down an alley between a bus depot and a cash-and-carry and across a little bridge over the river Lea, are the Manor Garden allotments. Or at least, that is where they were, until two months ago. Now, if you walk down Waterden Road, you arrive at the 10ft-high blue fence and steel gates of the Olympic Park, and you can go no further. The 87 allotments, bounded on both sides by water, overflowing with potatoes and tomatoes, sweetcorn and aubergines, wild plum trees and leafy chard, with figs, chillies and big, bobbing heads of fennel, are abandoned; they will make way, come 2012, for a concourse between the hockey stadium, the velodrome and the BMX venue, and for a giant TV screen for non-ticket holders.

Following a battle that very nearly ended in court, the London Development Authority agreed to come up with a replacement site. This proved to be in Waltham Forest, beside a sliproad leading on to the M11, with no access by public transport. The Manor Garden plotholders, the Clarks included, are supposed to pick up their keys this month. Nobody seems very enthusiastic about it, nor very reassured by the LDA's promise that they will be able to return to within the boundaries of the Olympic park once the games are over, although not to the same spot.

Hassan Ali, 65, gardened there for 17 years:

"The allotment was wonderful, beautiful - like an island, with big trees, apples and peaches. I have a fig tree I planted 16 years ago, now it's 30ft high, and what figs! Everyone loved my figs. When I got a plot 17 years ago, Reg was my guide. He would say how to grow things we didn't know how to grow, how deep to plant the potatoes. The allotment's so social - always dinners, barbecues and parties. I think the very best thing in this world would be if everyone had a little bit of land and grew their food."

Reg Hawkins, 76, gardened there for 55 years:

"My father was at Manor Gardens before me. That's more than 70 years our family has been working that soil. There's a lot of history, a lot of memories. And such good people: from East Enders to Ugandans, Jamaicans, Greeks, you name it. But everyone was always happy to do a bit of watering, share seeds - and cook! They should have called Hassan's shed Hassan's Cafe, there were so many people in there being fed."

The allotments have been there for nearly 90 years: all that treasure of work stored up in rich soil will have been buried for a road to the 2012 Olympics, and Hassan's fig tree will have been cut down.

A common treasury:

A truly Green suggestion by another plotholder, Julie Sumner, an antenatal course supervisor in the NHS proposed a novel form of sponsorship: the plots could feed the athletes of one national team. ‘It would have to be a very small country with not too many participants, but we probably have enough of a selection to keep anyone happy and fit, no matter where they’re from.’ Naturally, this was rejected by the Olympic Committee.

Bulldoze this.

Tags: destruction of good land, evil british politics, green in the city, olympic stupidity

01:51 pm: Green in the city: June
( green seen )

Tags: green in the city, photos

07:37 am: This actually happened on Monday
A new restaurant, Morningside Spice, just opened up a couple of minutes walk from where my parents live, and naturally they wanted to try it out. (My mum's favourite restaurant to go to remains the Kalpna, but that's an inconvenient distance away, served by a bad bus route.) So I walked over on Monday evening to help them try it out. It wasn't bad. Afterwards, I installed my dad's printer driver, and gave him a small demonstration on the care and cleaning of a mouse.

Having eaten way too much at Morningside Spice, I walked back again, too: it was just on eleven when I reached the path under Salisbury Crags, but it was still dusk, rather than dark. All the daisies were closed for the night, of course, and I remembered with pleasure a host of small associations as I walked along: Artos in Sword at Sunset telling the Companions to wear a daisy for their grace-note in the battle of Yr Widdfa; myself aged six or so lying on my stomach in the backgreen, pulling the white petals off daisies and piling the yellow centres up to make a minature meal of rice and honeycakes on a green leaf; the etymology of the word daisy, which I think was the first etymology I ever learned, day's eyes, because they open with the light and close with the dark and stud the grass gazing up at the sky.

Assuming that you are interested in such things, what was the first etymology you ever learned?

Tags: eating some delicious food, family stuff, green in the city