A Busy Winter in the Garden

 My normal winter jobs in the garden are simple. In early December I prune the vines and turn the pruning into kindlings for a friend who has a real fire in a fireplace.

When it's cold and no longer pleasant enough to use our summerhouse (the shed), we move the potted lemon tree into it for the winter.

Then comes the distribution of compost from our bin and on to soil in pots, bags, or the small strip of garden soil at the edge of one side of the garden (where we grow alternatively new potatoes or beans).

I then prune our two examples of that wonderful rose called Typhoon, and take a few cuttings of it that I hope will "take", then to give away.

With light pruning of the pear and apple trees in pots, and a trim of the mistletoe on the apple tree, I close up shop and only go out in the cold weather to feed the wild birds. Jobs done.

This year has been different.

Rotten wood above the shed door needed clearing out and replacing. This was done mostly by our Lebanese handyman/plumber with my help.

Then I repainted the roof of the shed with another coat of silver, reflective paint and varnished bits of woodwork around the edge that might be subject to further wet rot. 

In attending to the rot over the door we inadvertently just altered the shape of the door frame, which widened the gap at one side of the door to allow wet and wind to penetrate. So I had to buy some timber to put that to rights.

Another winter job was to strengthen the piano, a bamboo framework that supports our summer crop of runner beans. On a recent blog I have related how I solved the problem when having bought long bamboos, the bus driver for my return journey refused me entry with any object over two metres in length (my bundle was six inched too long).

Now came the trickiest of my winter jobs.

The end of one of the slats of our hardwood garden bench had rotted away. I had tried several make-do methods in the past to correct this - and failed. Other solutions, contrived in ideas of the night, also proved ineffective. So I decided to tear off the rotten slat and replace it with new wood. Not selling hardwood at the wood merchant, I had to settle for the proscribed length of softwood. Then I found that the remaining hardwood slat was so firmly attached to the bench framework that it would be just as good and a lot easier if I simply replaced the rotten end of it. So, having drilled and countersunk screw holes, and coated the softwood twice with protective varnish, I assembled, and then admired my handiwork. Only a little wood filling was necessary and, because the colour of the new wood was too light, a bit of artwork came in handy to complete the job.

We live in an age and society where broken objects are often discarded to be replaced by the new. But I like to repair old and often loved objects, and allow them to continue to serve their purpose and become, in their way, unique.

I'm quite proud of my winter's work in the garden. But at my age it has taken a bit of time, and sometimes deserved a restful beer. 

"Waiting " in the SECOND WORLD WAR (part 2 of 2 parts)

 30/12/1944 - 07/01/1945.  I boarded the New Mauritania liner in Liverpool, bound for Canada. I was put in charge of the fruit store and the distribution of fruit barely seen in rationed England. The store was large and refrigerated. The smell was lovely but the cold unpleasant. Had we been torpedoed my chances of life would have been slim. But ocean liners are quick and it was felt fairly safe from U-boat attack. All was well. 

07/01/1945 - 20/01/1945.  We docked in Moncton, New Brunswick, in Canada, and boarded a train to the USA and Miami, Oklahoma, in America's mid west. On board the train, volunteers showered us with gifts of tobacco, chocolates and much else that seemed unbelievably generous and, to our rationed habits, quite eye-opening. We were now in a land of plenty, and almost treated like heroes.

23/02/1945 - 27/08/1945.  One hundred in our "flight" arrived at 3 BFTS (British Flying Training School) Miami, to learn to fly aeroplanes. I can only conclude it was the custom to make us feel less individualistic and more like canon-fodder, that the lavatory lacked partitions and was simply a long row of lavatory basins. Some of our number were so upset by this arrangement that they would only go there in the dead of night. But we all must have got used to it. Food in the canteen was bountiful and initially much appreciated.  But the American taste and menus seemed to pall after a while. The first type of aeroplane that we flew was a Cornell (PT19). This was a lovely aircraft and a joy to fly. One day some of us left our main airfield and flew from an auxiliary grass field not too far away. The day in question was cold, thawing on the ground and freezing in the air. We flew what was known as a circuits and bumps (taking offs and landings). I had done quite a few and had noticed that the controls were becoming a little stiff. So, after landing and taxiing to the shed where our instructor was sitting with his feet on a stove, I told him of this stickiness and asked his opinion. "Carry on or finish." he told me. The one thing uppermost in our minds was not to be short of flying hours and be left behind to join a later flight. So I decided to carry on. Unknown to me, and I think everyone else, was that this tightening of the controls was due to water splashing up from the ground and freezing to the underside of the wing when in the air, and thus altering its aerofoil section.  When I was turning in to land the controls froze solid. I had the choice of climbing, using top rudder and jumping out with my parachute, or flying the aeroplane into the ground. With a good chance of spinning and killing myself with my first choice, I chose the second. It was an instant choice. The resultant crash broke off both wings as well as the fuselage behind my neck. The broken propeller and engine, with me attached in the cockpit behind, skidded along the muddy turf and stopped. I saw what I thought was smoke rising from fire, but it was steam. Anyhow, having knocked two instruments out of the panel in front of me with my head, and somewhat dazed, I jumped out and ran to safety. On my way by ambulance back to the main airfield I asked the driver what had happened. He did not know. What I really wanted to know was had I perhaps been run down by a bus in London or something else. Anyhow, I recovered in hospital quickly. When the Commanding Officer visited my bedside, he asked me if I wanted to give up after such an accident. "No, sir", I replied, "I just want to get out of this bed and fly." I thought I'd overdone it. On leaving, he said to the Adjutant accompanying him: "That's just the kind of young man we want in the Air Force."

 On a short leave a friend and I set out to see some of America. So we set out to hitchhike first south to Dallas (then rather a small town), and west to Albuquerque, north to Denver (the Mile High City), and back east to Kansas City before south to Miami once more. A doctor who gave us a lift was curious as to why we kept turning our heads to right and left.  It was a habit we had acquired when constantly on the lookout in the air for other aircraft. We had not trouble in obtaining lifts, being in our RAF uniforms, but lady drivers declined to stop until we learned that when we saw it was a woman driver approaching, and when she had seen us, we dropped our arms and turned away from the road. Now they would usually stop. One man stopped, gave us his car key, told us of his far destination and went to sleep in the back seat. In eight days we travelled 2,425 miles (3903 km) at a cost of 21 dollars. 

From the charming Cornell training aeroplane I qualified as a pilot in the powerful advanced training aeroplane, the Harvard. This now enabled me to go straight on to fly Spitfires, Hurricanes or conversion to multi-engined bombers. But the European war had just finished and, although the war in the Pacific raged, there were enough skilled pilots available to take part in it. Out of the 100 aspiring pilots in my flight, only 50 completed the course to be awarded wings. Some had given up, some failed and some were killed. I was awarded my wings and a commission. 

28/08/1945 - 04/09/1945. Fort Hamilton. I see that I was posted there but cannot recall why.

04/09/1945 - 10/09/1945. I boarded the Queen Elizabeth in New York as a Pilot Officer on my way to Southampton and an England finally at peace.

11/09/1945 - 17/10/1945.  I was waiting again, now in Harrogate.

17/10/1945 - 13/11/1945. At Hereford, I took part in a course for newly appointed officers on how to conduct ourselves appropriately. We were lectured on subjects such as law (how to arrange a Court Martial), language (on joining up I heard for the first time the word "absofuckinglutely"), and other such as manners (not to raise aloft one's knife and fork when at the table - except when delivering food to the mouth, of course).

The rest of my time in the RAF consisted of waiting, then training as a Photographic Intelligence Officer at RAF  Medmenham, then interpreting German aerial photographs of oil installations north of the Caspian Sea at RAF Nuneham Park. Lack of food and heat at Nuneham in 1947 probably caused my TB (there was no cure at that time). Then came discharge to recuperate. The war was over. My war was over. Had I been born a year earlier I doubt if I would have survived it. Even all the waiting may have helped to save my life. But then I have always been lucky.