Meeting my new granddaughter

I'd forgotten how small new-born babies are. They really are tiny!

I became a grandfather on Friday, June 26, 2015 at 2.10am and I met my granddaughter, Julia Elena, for the first time about 11 hours later.

I feel as if I should be writing something really profound, but I've already deleted half a dozen sentences, so no Chinese philosophy for life in this blog. It's also a Kahlil-Gibran-free zone!

Tom texted on Thursday morning to say that Lucy's waters had broken during the night, so the baby was on her way - we already knew the sex and the name had been chosen (so there were no surprises). I thought the baby would be born fairly quickly, but Lucy was sent home from hospital and told to come back when contractions were every three minutes.

She spent a pretty uncomfortable day at home and when I called for an update, they were still there at 10pm, joined by Max, Inna and Sam (Sam had come across from Jersey for a course in minor surgery). Contractions were getting more intense, so I guessed the baby would come overnight.

I got a text from Tom at 2.30am to say she'd been born 20 minutes earlier and that she weighed 2.7kg, so I woke Margaret to tell her the news. In the morning, Margaret was planning a trip to London on Saturday and had arranged dog-sitting duties with my sister, but I thought we should see Julia on her first day, so we packed Holly into the car and headed to London.

Only a few hours old - Julia Elena

June 26, 2015, was a lovely sunny day with temperatures around 28 deg C. We thought Lucy, Tom and Julia would be at home, but we got a call just as we neared Catford to say that they were still at Lewisham Hospital and we should go there. While Margaret got the sat-nav out, stuck it to the screen, caught it when it dropped off and then tried to programme it to find the hospital, I followed signs to Lewisham and came to the hospital in the High Street. Fortunately, it's really easy to find.

Max and Sam met us in the car park and took Holly for a quick walk while we went in to see the baby. I have to say I was very impressed by Lewisham Hospital, it's a fantastic place and they had a massive delivery room with birthing pool. It's a lot different from the drab, functional room in Peterborough Maternity Hospital where Tom was born almost 34 years ago.

Lucy looked tired, but happy; Tom looked shattered. Baby Julia was wrapped up in a merino wool blanket and cap with little mittens on to stop her scratching her face with her sharp fingernails. She is tiny, but with perfect little hands and feet. She has black hair (like her mother) but everyone says she looks like Tom.

I have no wisdom to impart and no advice (except never have a tattoo), but welcome to the world Julia, have a long and happy life and thanks for carrying a few of my genes into a new generation.

Footnote: Julia was called Julia because a July birth was predicted. Her early arrival might have meant a name change to June, but Tom and Lucy have stuck with Julia. Elena is after her great-grandmother Luisa Elena Cadeno Gallo, who will be 100 years old in February.

Sleep when you can - there will be a lot of disturbed nights.

Where am I going to? Jersey, I hope!

Maybe it's an age thing - I'm not getting any younger - but I do find travel (especially air travel) not quite the pleasure it used to be.

I guess I don't get around as much ...

Margaret and I are just back from Jersey and getting there (a short hop) ought to be a piece of cake. I was responsible for the travel arrangements and I made a bit of a Horlicks of it in honesty.

First question was: boat or plane? We did boat last time and it wasn't too bad - a fast catamaran run by Condor Ferries from Weymouth. It now runs from Poole and it's a bigger boat, but still a fast ferry, taking just over four hours for the crossing (including a stop at Guernsey).

I'd always choose boat rather than plane, but Condor Ferries seems to have achieved the worst of both worlds by combining the slowness of a boat with the "herd 'em in" and "rip 'em off" ethos of Ryanair or Easyjet.

They charge quite a lot more than the plane, then make you book a seat in a somewhat uncomfortable lounge and there isn't the option of wandering round and sitting in a bar or cafe like there is on the Dover-Calais run. You can book a better seat in a "posher" lounge, but that was an extra £20 on the way out and an extra £50 on the way back.

It seemed cheaper to fly and, without the car to worry about, we could be more flexible finding a hotel without parking. I went onto Expedia to book tickets and found flights at decent times and decent prices via Easyjet. I thought I'd booked to fly in and out of Gatwick, but when I checked a few weeks before departure, it turned out I had booked to fly from Southend and back to Gatwick.

I like to think I'm quite good with technology, but clearly I'm not as smart as I thought I was. I'd selected "any London airport" and Southend is a London airport; most of the options on Easyjet (the cheapest) were from Gatwick, this one had sneaked in and I'd clicked it without looking properly.

When I realised what had happened, I tried to change the booking. This was no problem, but it would have cost close to £80 for the two of us, so I decided to stick at Southend. On top of that, when I printed out the boarding cards, it turned out I hadn't booked any luggage. This is an extra £20. Ironically, when we checked in, they offered to put our additional hand luggage in the hold free of charge to make more room in the overheads!

Southend actually turned out to be a happy accident. We got pretty cheap train tickets and it's an easy journey via King's Cross and Liverpool Street. The airport has its own new station and the airport is also brand new, very clean and smart and also very quiet. The train to London was late, but we had plenty of time; the plane was on time and Lucy picked us up from the airport.

Flying back into Gatwick was much more hassle. It's a massive place, you walk what seems like a couple of miles from aircraft to baggage hall and then to station (via a terminal shuttle). Our plane was delayed by a thunderstorm, so we were running 30 minutes late, we missed the Thameslink to St Pancras and had to get a later one, then arrived at King's Cross to find the station partly closed (due to a fire alarm) and our booked train gone. We had to fork out again for Great Northern tickets and get on the 12.35am, which stops everywhere and is full of drunks.

One chap opposite was trying to read his iPad, but kept dropping it. When he got up at St Neots, he dropped his glasses and would have lost them if Margaret hadn't intervened. She also counted one chap being sick five times (but at least it was in the toilet).

On the plus side, I did get to almost finish my book ...

I suspect we'll be making the trip to Jersey a couple of times a year for the foreseeable future, so I need to get my travel agent act together. I'll probably fly unless we need the car (or take Holly) and I'll certainly look at Southend as a first option.

Lucy says the ferry has been getting a lot of bad press. It's a new, bigger catamaran, but has been dogged by technical problems and hasn't been able to dock in bad weather. In fact, one day while we were in Jersey the fast ferry wasn't able to get into St Helier. It was windy, but not that windy.

Meet my new friend

Meet my new friend. He doesn't have a name (I might call him Jersey Jerry), but he's one of Les P'tits Faîtchieaux, which is Jèrriais (the old language of Jersey) for the "Little People".

He was part of old folklore, but now he's part of a modern art installation. I picked him up at La Hougue Bie in Grouville, Jersey this week and brought him back to Thorney via Easyjet.

La Hougue Bie is one of the largest and best-preserved passage graves in Europe and was in use from 3500BCE. It's a long tunnel with galleries leading off, covered by a massive mound on top of which (sacrilege!) the Christians built a small church. You can go into the passage, although it's very low, and at sunrise on the longest day of the year, the sun shines directly through the entrance and illuminates the back wall.

Inside La Houge Bie

It's a fantastic site - well worth a visit - but back to my little friend.

People believed the P'tits Faîtchieaux lived inside the many dolmens (prehistoric graves) scattered around Jersey and unlike most little peoples of legend - fairies, leprechauns and the like - they are not generally mischief makers, but rather helpful.

There's a story of the farmer who went to his stable in the morning to find his horse exhausted. When he checked, he found the Little People had ploughed his field for him during the night. There's also a legend that they will do housework and other jobs in exchange for cake.

This figure and more than 4,000 like him are part of a public art installation which is happening throughout 2015 and is intended to celebrate Jersey, its traditions, legend and language. They were made originally by Jersey potter Jane Gould and, once the prototype was in place, volunteers made the rest. They are made from Jersey clay, dug from St Ouen's in the west of the island, and were fired at La Hougue Bie. The figures aren't glazed, so if left outside, they will return to earth.

A number of them were put inside the inner chamber of La Hougue Bie at the spring equinox and the rest are being offered to visitors to take and place in locations (hopefully) far and wide. They want to know where the figure is placed, along with a picture. In November this year they are putting a map up at the Public Projection Gallery in St Helier and there will also be an exhibition of photographs.

Allotment update - pests and diseases

Onion white rot destroys the roots
then attacks and rots the bulb

I have been fairly busy with my allotment and it has (in general) been taking shape nicely.

The big remaining problems are rabbits and also onion white rot, which has devastated my winter onions.

The rabbits put paid to my efforts at growing saffron crocus. I never dreamed that they would eat crocus leaves, but they treated them like fine asparagus and nibbled them off as soon as they showed above ground. In April, I gave up and took the surviving bulbs home to plant in the garden. I may be able to harvest some saffron from them there, but I think they will take a while to recover.

Rabbits were also nibbling my spring-sown onion sets and my Jerusalem artichokes, so I have fenced off the whole of one half of the allotment. I will put wire netting around the whole perimeter later in the year, it's a big job but it will save a lot of hassle in the long run. I've seen a big fox down at the allotments, but he's not making much of a dent in the rabbit population.

My winter onions have been devastated by white rot

The onion white rot is more troublesome. It is a fungal disease and eats away at the onion roots and then rots the developing bulb. Once in the soil, it will attack any member of the onion family - leeks, shallots, garlic or chives. It remains active in the soil (even if no onions are grown) for up to 15 years and is easily transmitted from one part of the allotment to others.

I don't know if the fungal spores were in the soil when I took on the allotment or whether it has been infected by fungus on the sets I planted or fertiliser I dug in. I grew leeks in a different part of the allotment last year with no problems at all.

The winter onions looked pretty good and a small patch on the end of the row still has plants doing very well. However, they may be infected and the rest of the crop has been dug up and put in the black bin at home. My spring-sown sets are not affected and appear to be growing well, although again, they may be affected just not shown any symptoms yet.

Onions were one of my main crops, so this is a blow. There's no chemical cure, so all I can do is transfer onions to the other side of the allotment, fence off the part I know is infected and hope I can contain the fungus. Of course, not realising there was any problem, I have happily walked across the infected land and onto other parts of the allotment. White rot sets tiny spores, about the size of a poppy seed, so they would easily be carried on muddy boots, garden tools or dog paws.

I have some rust on my garlic leaves and a few blackfly on my broad beans, but I pinched out the tops of those this week so, hopefully, that won't become too serious a problem.

The is where we are with other parts of the allotment:

• My saffron crocus patch has been converted to salad veg (radish, lettuce and spring onion) and is rabbit fenced and pigeon netted. Radish were our first crop of the year and lettuce also doing well.
• The asparagus bed was not cropped this year. There were just a few spears from the three crowns and so I've left them to build up for 2016.
• Shallots look healthy; they overwintered well and the bulbs should begin to develop and swell in the next few weeks provided the white rot hasn't got across to them.
• Garlic was looking OK, but the leaves are now streaked with rust. I don't know how this will affect the growth of the bulbs, the plants are quite large. I might grow these in pots next year, so I can keep them in the greenhouse over the harsher winter months.
• Corn is doing well, both from pot sown/transplanted and from direct sowings.
• Broad beans were sown direct in spring and are currently in full flower (they smell beautiful). I've pinched out the tops to encourage the pods to fill and to deter blackfly. I'll definitely grow these again and will try some autumn sowings as well.
• My peas germinated somewhat erratically (it was so dry in April and May), so I've resown sections and have them netted with micromesh to stop pea moths laying eggs in the flowers.
• I have several rows of carrots, parsnip and beetroot. They are under mesh cloches and I haven't really checked on them. I know some are coming through, but the dry weather may have inhibited some germination. When I'm back from holiday, I'll need to thin, weed and resow (possibly all three).
• Runner beans are being grown up three linked cane wigwams. I got some plastic cane holders which clip together to make a ring and you can then push the tops of the canes through holes. It seems to have made quite a strong structure. Runners beans didn't freeze well last year and they're much nicer fresh, so I've grown enough to feed us and give away, but not too many that we'll have a glut.
• This year I'm trying borlotti beans, which I will allow to dry in the pod and use in stews during the winter. Like the runner beans, they have just been planted out.
• I planted out purple sprouting broccoli this week and hope to get some brussels sprouts in  by the end of the week. These are netted against pigeons and cabbage white butterflies.
• Jerusalem artichokes are a new crop for me. Once protected from the rabbits, they are making good growth and should provide an attractive screen as well as a root crop. I'm not sure what we'll do with them. I've had them roasted and they were quite good.
• My globe artichokes were moved from the other half of the allotment in spring, divided and replanted. They had made massive roots, so it was hard work - almost like digging up a hedge. Happily, they have survived the move and the surgery and seem to be doing quite well in their new location.
• I am growing some corn for Tom and Lucy. It has done quite well both from pot grown/transplanted and some sown directly. There are two patches and, if we get a good summer, I think it might do OK.
• Rhubarb was moved from home to the allotment and despite going to a lot of trouble preparing the ground, it doesn't look too happy. It might have been too dry or it might like more light. Maybe it just needs time to re-establish itself?
• My cider apple trees are growing well and I should get a small crop from them this year. The mature apple tree was pruned and has a decent crop again. The tree that split under the weight of apples has sprouted into growth where I sawed the trunk clean. I'm hoping it might recover as they were nice apples.
• Gooseberries, blackcurrants and redcurrant bushes will provide a small crop this year, but it's next year when I hope to cash in. I plan to add more blackcurrants (from home) and some raspberry canes and will need to build a fruit cage or the birds and muntjac will have the lot.
• Finally, I have eight courgette plants (four green and four yellow). They have only just gone in and hopefully will do as well as they did last year. if they do, we will be buried under courgettes.

That's everything. It's been hard work, but enjoyable and interesting. I'm glad I'm not a subsistence farmer or I would be very worried about what I would be eating next year.

My allotment is much more varied than other plots which are often used for potatoes and nothing else. People can't understand why I'm not growing potatoes and give me an odd look when I say that we don't eat that many.

Broad beans and other crops behind rabbit fences and micromesh

Globe artichokes are growing strongly after transplanting

Corn is coming along nicely - just need a warm summer