Working on the land

There's been quite an unseasonable chill in the air this week, especially during the evening and at night - not much like May at all. However, for the most part the daytime has been reasonably dry and pleasant, so I've been out in the garden quite a bit making the most of it. Tuesday I donned my old 14-hole Doc Martens and did some weeding and tidying amongst the tomato plants. They're still only seedlings, and unless we get some warmer weather pretty soon - which they need to put on a spurt of growth - I have doubts as to whether they're going to amount to much.

In contrast, the raspberries, which I worked on today, are doing much better with some good strong canes and masses of small flower buds already. In my 10-hole DM boots and my 3/4 Reebok trackies, I hacked away at the weeds and filled the wheelbarrow with all the assorted unwanted foliage. I didn't bother last year and the raspberries went on to produce their best-ever crop, so although it looks better tidy it may not actually have mattered that much. It didn't take all that long, anyway and was quite good exercise I suspect: I've lost about half a stone in the last three weeks or so! Yippee!

Beside the seaside

I spent a happy hour or two last night going through an old photo album, scanning in some polaroid photos of me on holiday in the 1980s. A friend from work had a caravan at Warren Bay on the North Somerset coast just up the road from Watchet, and it was great to spend a week or so down there walking along the beach with the dog running in and out of the sea chasing the gulls ineffectually. I don't think dogs are allowed on public beaches anymore now which is a bit of a shame: she really enjoyed it.

Throwing caution to the winds (which is what people traditionally do on holiday!) I used to wear skintight jeans, studded leather belt and armbands, and 14-hole black Doc Marten boots! The big boots had only just come out as I remember in the early 1980s, and the first year a couple of lads came up to me and rather cautiously asked where I'd got them... I think they were afraid I was going to kick them off the habour wall with them. In 1983 when Wham! shot to fame with "Bad Boys" I looked the part with a Wham! T-Shirt to go with the rest of the outfit.

We used to go in early June, and most years in fact the weather was gorgeous for at least part of the time: I loved stripping the waist to take full advantage. The shot of me in my skimpy cut-off denim shorts and DMs epitomises a somewhat devil-may-care attitude, I have to say... but it was fun, and that's what holidays are all about.