My trolley needs brakes (From Gazette & Herald)

My trolley needs brakes

I HAVE a cycling friend, Hansjrg (Hans for short), of Swiss nationality, and who lives in Lucerne. He's actually a gardener, looking after the gardens on the island within the lake there (going to work each morning in a little boat). Which accounts for his knowledge of flowers, for his letter asks about my show of Centranthus! Well, valerian to me, which is self-seeded and which makes its appearance every year - and in fact twice this year - and which Hans thought was a spectacular sight.

Cutting it down each year is something of a chore. Either you chop the lot down and then collect the debris from the ground, or you cut each plant and bag-up the cuttings as you do them. Whichever way, it can be a back-aching job so, from one of those popular plastic kitchen stools I made a sit-upon trolley, by fitting wheels, and now I can shuffle my way round. However, practical use threw up a snag. My garden is on a slope, and on my first trip, the trolley and I started rolling down the slope towards the garden gate, ever gathering momentum, and me entirely without control. In order to avoid a fate worse than death, I had to deliberately fall off, and come to an ungraceful stop somewhere in the border, leaving the trolley to continue on its chosen journey until it crashed into the gateway.

I thought I had finished using it for this year, when, making an early start, I cut all the valerian right down to ground level, and thought that was that for this year. Someone, somewhere, thought differently, and, quite suddenly, one day I noticed the whole border of about 25 yards was a lush green once again, with pink and white blooms already emerging, and about a foot-and-a-half tall.

I'm not quite sure what to do really, but it looks as though the trolley will have another journey to make. However, I've capped it, I think, I hope, by fitting a brake to one wheel, which I robbed off a scrap invalid chair. So it's fingers crossed for a warm dry day next month, and a safe journey.

Last month, I referred to a Boeing B52 as a Super Fortress. The latter, Enola Gay and Bock's Car being the two aircraft which dropped the only two operational atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought the Second World War to an end very shortly afterwards. The Super Fortress is of course the B29, and the B52 I wrote about is called the Stratofortress. A kind reader, an ex-Canberra pilot, spotted this and gave me a call, and I'm pleased to get the number and name combination put to rights. I can't have been thinking straight!

An attempt was made in April to tidy up the grassed area in Greengate, now that the number of lorries going into the old Co-op yard has stopped, as heavy wheels were churning up the verges, and on top of that many folk used it as a car park. It was re-soiled and re-seeded in spring this year, some rocks put down to deter motor vehicles, and Greengate was starting to look nice and tidy once again. Then the owner of a red Jaguar decided it was a handy parking place, and took to the grass. This has now been followed by what looks like the tyre impressions of a heavy goods vehicle, which has made a sorry mess of the grass. If only motor vehicle drivers would keep their charges on the highway we'd have a tidier town. No chewed-up verges, and no broken pavement flagstones.

The road traffic order (parking prohibition) for Old Malton Road, which was to have been implemented at March 31, had a bit of a stumble. However, it was done today, as I write this. All 250 yards of it, both sides of the road, from the Orchard Fields gateway onwards to the police station. That is, with the exception of about 16 feet, or so, being the length of a Ford Escort which was parked all day - and I suspect all night, right where the lines needed to be. I suppose it could have been there for a day or two, maybe abandoned, or just forgotten about. I would have thought, that as it was causing an obstruction, the contractors, with the authority of the police, could have dragged it out of the way. However, currently we are left with a gap, and I just wonder if, when the car goes, some bright spark will attempt to park there. I suppose the contractors have a problem under these circumstances, and of the choices they have, of towing out of the way, putting double yellow lines round the car, or even putting the lines over the bonnet, windscreen and roof, they did the legal thing, which unfortunately means another journey to Malton, which is more added expense.

Just a reminder about clocks: spring - spring forward; autumn (fall) back. So back it is on Sunday morning.

Is that so?: "An Englishman is a man who lives on an island in the North Sea, governed by Scotsmen" - Philip Guedella (1889-1944) British writer.

Updated: 12:01 Wednesday, October 22, 2003