Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

Last weekend, we started the allotment rhubarb crumble season. Delicious! Its such an easy thing to grow and cook and I don’t understand why rhubarb is so expensive in the shops - £1.88 per pound or about £3.86 per kilogram. The last two years I had less rhubarb than the first year, by minimising the four or five rhubarb plants to just one gigantic one, which seems to have died now and needs to be split into all the little rhubarby knots developping out of it. The first year I had so much rhubarb I did not know what to do with it - I distributed it to neighbours and friends and fellow allotmenteers and had gigantic loads of plastic bags full to give away.

Last year was a slight disaster when trying to grow tomatoes and peppers and aubergines, I think it only works when you have a garden or allotment close-by your hous, so you can water these every day, if needed even twice in early morning and evening. Edinburgh is in a big allotment crisis, like the rest of Scotland, and so my allotment is about 30 min away on the bus/bicycle and about 20 min with the car. I just can’t go there every day. And to aleviate the waiting lists, the allotment plot distributor has started splitting them into halves, which makes the plots a little bit too small for putting up proper big sheds and green houses, as well as trees or ponds or expand into growing flowers or to try any effort in being self sufficient in staples like potatoes and onions.

So this year I am trying to grow simple veggies like cucumbers and courgettes again, also I have started on an asparagus bed, with asparagus seedlings raised myself over the winter from Organic Gardening seeds Jersey Knight and Connover Colossol. Its a great way to save money on seeds rather than buying crowns if you have the time to wait a year or two longer before harvesting the spears.

I am still having problems with the big aphid invasion in my flat, my kiwi plant looks extremely unhappy this year after being covered in an abundance of green leaves last year, it only has about 2-3 leaves left now.

I started a herb spiral but have always had some problems with growing herbs on the balcony or in my flat. They just seem to die when they are seedlings, and I never was able to raise kitchen herbs but for one parsley which died, too.

This year I am planning on trying to grow a lot of salads for me, my friend and my guinea pigs. My allotment neighbours have small kids and one emptied the whole seed packet out in a row, they have hd gigantic salad therefore over the whole winter. The kid seems to have something going for it with this idea - a lot of my seed packets are in danger of being outdated, and I am seriously considering to therefore apply the same approach.

Last year I got some seed bands - biggest disappointment of my life. It’s not worth the money, hardly anything germinated at all.

I am quite gratefull that two friends of mine are looking after most of the allotment plot this sumemr as I won’t be there - and they keep it imaculate and seem to be very successfull gardeners.

Somebody knicked some tools out of our shed - including the hoe of one of my allotment plot partners grandfather. It is a bit weird in that the person seems to carry these away one by one, we did not get a door with our weird shed which we always have been regretting a lot.

I had a dream this weekend, but a less dramatic one than Martin Luther Kings. I dreamt that my three guinea pigs had multiplied into a colony of 40 and come all with their own cages or so, and I went on holiday and quickly needed to find people to look after and keep them. So, my task in my dream was to match up guinea pig personalities with friends’ and collegues’, and it was a quite weird task.

Luckily Minilli, Guinea Lee and Misty weren’t appearing in my dream. The three pumpkins are doing well though I haven’t yet managed to integrate Misty into Minillis and Guinea Lees close-knitted community. She seems now more up to it, so might be trying this evening.
The guinea pig books I have all say not to try to put adult unknown guinea pigs together as they live in family colonies, but I hope it will go well, as they have been staying in different cages for the last three weeks. So maybe they are regarding each other as family now. Guinea Lee has been trying to impress Misty with a chauvenistic guinea boar appearance, striding along with impressive sounds.

SB is proud to have published more blog entries over the last months than I did. So, though am not really keen to do some blogging I’ll just summarise some of what’s been going on - I have been starting to participate in the couchsurfing networking site.
As I haven’t been able to stay anywhere yet, I have just hosted people, and experiences differed quite a lot: my first guest was a really nice guy from Germany, who cooked us an excellent Salmon and Leek lasagne and we got on really well. My next guests were from Australia and America, and because I have written in my description that I like leftwing, alternative people I ended up with some kind of spiritual ghostwhisperer and energyhealers on their way to Findhorn Community. Now, they were very friendly, but I was slightly annoyed in that they did not contribute to any food costs, despite coming with a rental car and spending about £700 or so each on a week of spiritual self-discovery in the Findhorn community. Given that I am quite skint I thought that was a bit unfair though, especially as I opened my best bottle of fairtraded, organic wine for them and they also got a good share of the Lasagne.

The next guest was a really wonderfully smiley girl from Taiwan, who was incredibly nice and actually very keen to socialise a lot and go-out and make friends with other couchsurfers, whereas I am not that keen on partying anymore. It was quite intereting also listening into the discussions about Chinas and Taiwans political disagreements - did not know that both countries speak the same language and that China constantly tries to claim Taiwan as being part of China, whereas Taiwain claims its independence.

I had numerous exchanges with people wanting to come and stay and then it did not work out either with the date or travel plans. Some emails I got read like spam with really bad spelling: “am bored today but have found this amazing thing called couchsurfers”, came from an Australian Au Pair teenager wanting to stay with couchsurfers for the whole August period during Edinburgh Festival Time, another person tried to subsidise his English language course by staying on other people’s couches for two months or so but was getting kicked out, and a third girl booked the couch but then never appeared, so I was wondering what to do.

Then there was the Swedish girl, who seemed to ask me the whole time what I do, in various forms like “what do you do? What did you do today? What are you going to do tomorrow?” In the end I just answered “no comment”, but luckily about two hours before she left we finally found one topic we could both seriously  engage with each other: books.

So, at the moment I have decided not to take on any more couchsurfing guests for the next three months as it is a bit of a tricky and busy period with a lots of things coming up.

Reading Sarah Allen’s piece on Starbucks in Tuesday’s CiF, I was impressed with her style, but angry about the content. On first glimpse, it seemed to be more an promotion of Starbucks rather than being critical of it, although the main point, that a coffee shop worker can not be trained in three hours, is indisputable. However, there are so many other negative points to be made about coffee [ A brain on caffeine ], its production [ Mini Black Gold ] and Starbucks [ Wikipedia]: from the now historic lack of recycling to lack of support for Fairtrade [ commondream ] to the lack of workers rights and trade union sabotage [ Starbucksunion ] as well as its coffee outlet in Guantanamo’s Camp Delta - it seems startling that the quality of training would be the only point of criticism in this article [ Starbucks gossip ] .
Apart from ethical and social concerns, there are other reasons to avoid – or even boycott Starbucks - it’s predictability bonus can well be outweighed by the detailed information and customer reviews independent cafes [ HaveBeenThere ] receive on the Internet; and European, in particular Vienna , coffee (and tea) houses as well as literary cafes boast a far superior gastronomic culture for centuries than Starbucks could ever dream of achieving. [ for example see Cafe Riquet hosts reading events again during Leipzig Bookfair ] .

Here in Edinburgh, we frequently have had protests against Starbucks . Fairtrade initiatives are also getting increasingly popular, such as the recent Fairtrade Christmas Market, or the current efforts for Scotland to become a Fairtrade nation - coinciding with this week’s launch of Fairtrade Forthnight .

Asking for the reasons for some of the protests, Mike of Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group said: “Groups in the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network regularly demonstrate outside Starbucks, distributing free Zapatista coffee to passers-by. Starbucks are complicit in attempts to evict indigenous people from the Montes Azules area in Chiapas, Mexico through their involvement in the greenwash group Conservation International. This fake environmental organisation blames small indigenous villages for destroying the rainforest, and co-operates with and encourages the Mexican state to destroy the local indigenous villages. Hypocritically they themselves promote tourist developments in the area, and ignore the major damage caused by commercial logging, state road building, and by the many Mexican Army camps. “

The group supports one coffee co-operative in particular, Mut Vitz , which produces Coffee Rebeldia . “The Zapatista coffee we distribute is organic and produced by co-operatives such as Mut Vitz. It is served by local cafes such as the Drill Hall in the Out of the Blue Arts Space and the Forest Café . Green City Wholefoods distribute Zapatista coffee throughout Scotland, as do Essential Trading in England and Wales. By supporting the zapatista co-operatives people are also supporting their autonomous health clinics, schools and system of self-management which all run outside the control of government and business.”

Wikileaks, the anonymous whistle-blower website, has been faced with a legal injunction to be taken down by orders of US District Judge Jeffrey White. The website , which is devoted to battle against web censorship and for anonymity, published documents proving that a Swiss Bank - the Julius Baer Bank and Trust - engaged somehow in money laundering and tax evasion via the Cayman Islands - or something like that. [ Slashdot | Wired | The Register ]
Well, if the bank tried to protect its reputati0n, it certainly backfired: Newsoutlets from all over the world from the Guardian to the Taz report on the attempt to shut down the site, which recently leaked documents related to prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

Fluffy died this morning at about 11 o’clock at the vets. He had developped some rapidly growing tumors in his belly, and in the end he was hardly able to leave his house and couldn’t climb anymore.

Fluffy touched the hearts of everybody who knew him, he was a very polite, curious, adventurous and good-looking Syrian hamster. He was about 800 days old when he went to his final sleep.

He can be remembered in pictures and in his star movie: “How to catch a lost hamster”.
http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/film/film-detail.jsp?id=46385

He will be buried in a nice sunflower box in our allotment.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Sebastian Haffner’s – pardon, Raimund Pretzel’s birthday.
The pseudonym was created to protect relatives still living in Nazi-Germany, after the lawyer managed to emigrate to Britain and started to write.
Now, a lot of people will wonder why the former Observer journalist is still relevant and exciting us today; especially since his obituary [link] has already been published.

But since his death in 1999, a bundle of memoirs from the Thirties have been discovered and when posthumously published in 2002 in the English translation as “Defying Hitler”, the nearly forgotten author topped the reading charts once again.

It created a new hype of Haffnermania, with his previous works republished, such as “Germany: Jekyll and Hyde”
and it also inspired a flood of biographies on Haffner.

But why is he still relevant today?

Like, take me as example: after battling for nearly a year with the subject of “The German city in the Middle Ages” in school in the Eighties, I had enough of history lessons. I gave pretty much up on the subject, it seemed just boring and pointless to me. It appeared to be just a list of dates pointing out that “King X went to war against Prince Y because he wanted some more land”. Or some more power. Or because of something religious. Or… aeh, whatever.

What Sebastin Haffner achieved, was to make history comprehensible and exciting again. He explained motives, thoughts, plans and the decision-making of the people, and did not just focus on the kings, queens and other political leaders but also gave examples about the mood amongst ordinary people living and coping in extraordinary times. And this was not his only achievement: he explained history in order to understand how we got to the present situation and what the future is likely to bring.

Generally speaking, his explanations on for example how Bismarck united the counties to form a federal German state pretty much still explains on why there has never been a serious conflict or struggle for independence by one of its parts. He also explained the motives behind late 19th century home affairs policy brilliantly, why Germany did not have (m)any colonies or that the introduction of the social security system was started in order to discourage public support for the socialist party or other revolutionary tendencies.
So after we reached Bismarck, history lessons got all much more exciting again. Only later, when reading Sebastian Haffner’s work “The Ailing Empire” my impression then was, that the school text books seemed to have plagiarised its content, with a nice pick’n choose of historical details and reasoning omitted because of non-approval by the relevant education ministry. Like, the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg by the early socialist party leaders (SPD) was brushed over very generously, but are nicely and in depth detailed in Haffner’s book about 1918/1919 plus the effects it had on the state of democracy in a young German republic. Oh, and the fact that Hitler was first introduced to the Nazi movement as a police spy. Or read Haffner’s ”The Meaning of Hitler”.

So,in summary and especially in his book “Defying Hitler”, Haffner also achieved to explain to later generations like me, how it was possible that the Nazi Reich and the Holocaust happened, how Hitler could have gained popular support and how a young democracy got transformed into a totalitarian regime.
Given that most of the older generation did not - and if alive, still does not - want to talk about that dark part of history, apart from personal family anecdotes such as “and then Uncle Herbert threw the burning Christmas tree out of the window” or “we were lucky because the bomb flew into the cesspool”, the Haffner’s books, in particular his memoirs, were and are incredibly important to understand history from an egalitarian perspective.

So, and that’s that for another hundred years.

At least for commemorating Haffner - I hope I am allowed back here earlier with another subject.

But, if there is one regret on this special day; then it is that we can not celebrate his temporary presence on this planet by reading his Observer articles on the brandnew Digital Archive for free.

I just love Charlie Brooker’s column in The Guardian. His latest take on the media lists is spot on. And is so impressive, that it clearly lightened up my day when I was nailing together a bookshelf, just by wondering if it would make it into his list of “908 Items of Flat-Pack Furniture to Assemble Before You Die”.

Definitely, I would NOT put the ARGOS bookshelf into this list, but the small animal wooden log cabin should easily be able to make it into the Top Ten. Because the little hut is made of untreated wood for the guinea pigs to eat, consists just of 4 walls and a roof, and has got three windows and a door and has a beautiful rustic and simple architecture and looks pretty snug, too. Its so easy to assemble that nobody would ever need even instructions for use. With a price of only £10, any first-time buyer and property developper in Britain will be doomed to be jealous.

The bookshelf though was rather horrifying; I needed about a week to understand the instructions and another week to know how to put it together without following their obligatory legal disclaimer: “It would be useful to ask someone to help ou at this stage”. I really don’t like to nail the back on, which is just a sheet of formaldehyd-ified sheet of an unidentifyable mixture. And in the end I was mortified when I thought I had lost one of the little metal pins acting as shelf-supports, they should really have put in some more. But for a strange reason, there were several screws present which were not needed, as well as the plastic naiing precision tool was broken.

The last days I have tried to tidy up a little bit by optimistically getting rid of stuff I hope I won’t need anymore in future. But like everything, it has become more of an exchange of things rather than being able to get rid of stuff. Especially as I got two guinea pigs now, via freecycle. I originally wanted a non-barking dog, but then that offer came along and I thought I would try. The two are not that tame yet, but seem to be happy to listen to classical music and they are very shy and a bit overweight. Now, unfortunately with guinea pigs, there is no way that they could be made to diet, the only way would be more exercise, but that is very tricky as they are not yet tame, and less energy-rich food, and more hay, and securing all the electrical cables.
In fact, the worst thing you could do to a guinea pig is to make it starve, as it disrupts its darm flora and can kill it. In my pre-veterinary days, I have seen one guinea pig die because the family went on holidays for two weeks and did not organise any regular feeding of hay!!! Dogs and cats are less prone to irregular feeding as they are carnivores, so they are dependent on their hunting luck and nature doesn’t punish them if they are unsuccessfull, but all the grass eating animals can suffer from huuuge health problems if they are not feed hay ad libitum(as much as they want) and every day.

The only way guinea pigs can be made to loose weight is to cut out the commerical pet food, and just stick to hay and fresh fruit and veggies, and to give them a much, much bigger area to run around and maybe increasing the guinea pig herd.

The two guinea pigs are constantly squeeking, so had to evacuate Fluffy into my bedroom so he can sleep during daytime undisturbed. They are quite shy, but I got the guinea boar to eat some parsley out of my hand, they are like very messy vegetable and fruit vacuum cleaners, trying to eat nearly everything. Fluffy is much more tidy I have to say, with him peeing in only one corner and also keeping his food in a pile. Apart from that, though he is much smaller he is much more tame than the guineas, like he comes when called and never ever seems to be scared of me.

This weekend it was the London Anarchist Bookfair as well as Edinburgh’s Independent and Radical Bookfair by Word Power. I was a bit disappointed that they both clashed, and the Edinburgh bookfair had less interesting events on than usual, but a whole lot of Palestine Solidarity and other more socialist tendencies.
This year there was hardly any factual, investigative or news journalism presentations, but novels, poems and prose. Mike Small and Kevin Williamson are planning to launch a new magazine (again), called “Bella Caledonia”, with a seemingly slightly Scottish nationalism editorial. However, there was some tendencies and new books which were interesting me: one investigation into “Blackwater”, the private American mercenary army, a lot of books about criticising New Labour’s policies into spending £60 billion in “consultants” to change and privatise education, health service and other public services and some books about PFI and one about the water struggles. I was also impressed by the Centre for Alternative technologies - it publishes a whole lot of DIY guides for windmills, solar-panels and similar.

I am at the moment reading Ian Bone’s “Bash the Rich”, and it is incredibly funny. I have just got approval by the author to translate it into German. Unfortunately I have got a bad cold and headache so am not really up to much today.