Bringing people back to Black Patch Park

'In August 2003 a campaigning group called The Friends of Black Patch Park (FoBPP) was formed to challenge proposals outlined in Sandwell Council's Unitary Development Plan to zone two thirds of the park for industrial use. Our aim has been to protect, celebrate and enhance the park's 20 acres (81,000 m2) - as originally created by public subscription in 1907 - as a place of historic importance and indispensable green space for future generations.'.

..That's a para' from 'my' Wikipedia article on the Black Patch, 1.8 miles from our home in Handsworth, about 12 minutes by bicycle...

Black Patch Park in Smethwick, West Midlands. De-commissioned Kitchener Street runs NE-SW between greenery just above the railway across the right hand lower quadrant

We've been working up a case. I've fixed a date in March to meet the Leader of Sandwell Council - a 30 minute afternoon slot in three weeks time.  (Back to the future 28/3/16: On 16th March our Chair, Ron Collins, Phil Crumpton and I had a 40 minute meeting with Cllr Cooper. It went very well and we felt that the Council Leader was more than ready to see the areas around the Black Patch rezoned for housing, notwithstanding the difficulties. We left optimistic and ready to submit a more detailed report to him at his request. On Saturday evening 26th March Cllr Cooper, aged 52, died unexpectedly and suddenly at his home) First draft....

Friends of Black Patch at the Soho Foundry Tavern - Andrew, Stacey, Phil, Ron (Chair) and Harjinder ~ 2 Feb 2016

BLACK PATCH PARK: RESTORING A COMMUNITY OF PLACE
Report requested by Ron Collins, Chair, Friends of Black Patch Park ~ 10/2/16

The way to solve the recent problems of Black Patch Park* is to rezone the area surrounding it for housing**  – that, or get rid of it. No industrial use can guarantee the future of the Black Patch. Even a generous S106A mix of capital and revenue will not solve problems resulting from 30 years of depopulation. People need parks; parks need people. Black Patch needs a community of users who can see the park from their bedroom windows, and walk into it from their front doors; who treat the park as their place.

Residents celebrating Coronation Day in Black Patch Park 1953

Black Patch Park has almost no-one living next to it. Residents in Birmingham’s inner suburbs of Winson Green and Soho  to the east, north and south of the park, report memories of their park, but in 1966 these communities were effectively separated in terms of political influence from the Black Patch when it was transferred from Birmingham to the short-lived borough of Warley which, with further local government boundary changes in 1974, placed Black Patch Park in an east corner of the new borough of Sandwell, in Soho & Victoria Ward, whose local ward councillors include, since 2004, the present Leader of Sandwell, Cllr Darren Cooper.

Black Patch Park inside Sandwell MBC

The Black Patch has only survived in these circumstances because it is loved, respected and valued by a remarkable community of interest made up of people and organisations who come to it from different parts of Sandwell and Birmingham to enjoy sport and exercise; who believe it might be the birthplace of the great Charlie Chaplin; who are aware of its close association – geographic and historic – with the standing remains of Boulton’s and Watt’s Soho Foundry;...

...people whose childhood was spent there; who know the local history of the park’s association with the Romany Gypsies whose descendants visit the park annually to celebrate the memory of their encampments on the Black Patch during Smethwick’s industrial era. And thanks to that especially contemporary community of interest – the internet – the Black Patch is known over the world; has its own Wikipedia entry; ballad by the late Bryn Phillips on YouTube; Facebook page and location in the local history websites of Smethwick, Handsworth and Winson Green.

Hector Pinkney MBE and young park users rap for the Black Patch

That strong, but separated, community of interest includes members and officers of Sandwell MBC and the Friends of Black Patch Park – the latter immersed  in the saving of the ‘Patch’ for the last 15 years. For over 14 years, The Friends have studied the park’s history.  They are familiar with members and officers of the local authority, and despite occasional differences, have maintained, with Sandwell Council, a relationship of mutual respect and trust, Both parties are well aware of the intractability of the challenges that attach to saving and restoring this special urban green space; both are aware of the inconsistent succession of policies that have impacted on the Black Patch; both share dismay and frustration over the current state of Black Patch; both are unsure what to do about a place whose future they are equally committed to securing.
During the 1970s and 80s, Sandwell MBC strove to maintain the Black Patch as a community of place; refurbishing the terrace houses neighbouring the park, creating new flats and maisonettes; even constructing an ill-fated tower block. The failure of these housing initiatives prompted a pragmatic shift of policy. The area, including the Black Patch, was re-zoned, via a new Local Plan, designating it suitable for light industry. Logically - given the abandonment of attempts to maintain a community of place – the Black Patch was included in that new policy. A park for cars perhaps.
It was at this point that the park’s community of interest gave voice to concerns that the Black Patch was about to be built over. That voice was given sympathetic hearing by members and officers of Sandwell MBC and by local media. It helped
that the local historian, Ted Rudge, had published an entertaining and scholarly book about Gypsies in the area that included the story of their connection to the Black Patch. No-one, no agency, wanted rid of the Black Patch, but no-one and no-body knew what could be done to stop the park’s decline into urban wasteland.
For the last eight years, since Sandwell’s Cabinet agreed to side-step the provisions of their Local Plan for the area, recognising the park’s community of interest, the Black Patch has survived in limbo. Used less and less and without being secured against them - notwithstanding expensive preventive efforts – the whole park, inside and out, has become the preferred destination of fly-tippers, disfigured by regularly dumped detritus as once it was disfigured by the industrial slag that gave the place its 19th century name.

No-one who  cares about the Black Patch and who, like many local councillors and officers, include themselves in the park’s community of interest, seems able to do anything but wring their hands at the state of this blighted space.  The last blow in the blighting of the Black Patch has been the loss of the community centre which included meeting rooms, toilets and changing and catering facilities.  It speaks for the value of the Black Patch that even with their changing rooms no longer available, footballers continued to use the park, often changing in their cars.   

Michael Chaplin, visiting the park, with his son-in-law on 26th August 2015, to affirm his belief that it was indeed his father’s birthplace, dodged piles of rubbish as he strolled to the junction of Hockley and Boundary brooks in the centre of what had been a cherished public space.

A 2005 Christmas card from the Friends of Black Patch Park (photo: Karen Fry)

Desultory discussions about raising S106A funding by selling off part of the park, at a peppercorn rate, to allow an autoclaving plant may indeed provide some jobs, though not necessarily local ones.****  It cannot promise the revenue stream or regular presence of users that would ensure the success of a working park. For that to be feasible the ‘Patch’ must be surrounded by people. It must again become a community of place, rezoned for housing. No other solution, however tempting as a last resort, however strong or strident its community of interest, can promise a future for the Black Patch.
At least half the area surrounding Black Patch Park used to have houses. Today a semi-circular brownfield site begins at the T-junction where Kitchener Street – now closed – joins Perrott Street.

Oscar, Phil, Avtar Dillon (ASD Associates) and Oliver, my grandson, looking down Kitchener Street next to Black Patch ~ 5th Feb 2016

There were terrace houses along both sides of Kitchener Street, up to its junction with Foundry Lane, where there was a primary school.  Opposite this T-junction was further housing along the south west edge of Foundry Lane as it turns, almost parallel with Boulton Lane. These derelict spaces have connection to utilities - water, sewage, electricity and gas and telecommunications.  Oasis Academy Foundry, James Watt Primary, Oasis Academy Boulton, Summerfield Primary, Victoria Park Primary Academy, St Philips Catholic Primary, St Matthews C of E Primary School, Benson Community Primary School and Holyhead School (11-19 Academy) would all be within easy travelling distance of homes along Kitchener Street. Galton Valley Children’s Centre, Surestart Summerfield Children’s Centre and Victoria House Neighbourhood Nursery are just over a mile away would be inside a mile’s walking distance of homes along Kitchener Street.  As well as health centres on Summerfield, Soho and Victoria Roads, Midland Metropolitan Hospital due to be completed in under 3 years is less than a mile away, about 19 minutes walk from the Black Patch, a centre of health care contributing  to regeneration across the area.  There are Care homes - Beeton Grange, Albion Court Care Centre and Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust, half a mile from the park. The neighbourhood of the Black Patch is served by West Midlands 72, 74 101, 11a and 11c bus services. There are Metro stops at Soho Benson Green and Winson Green Outer Circle, the latter more accessible with a way laid out between the allotments that front Perrott Street opposite the park. There are  main routes for cars to shopping centres in Sandwell, Birmingham and Wolverhampton. The SUSTRANS cycle path passes by the park at the end of Murdock and Avery Roads, running along the towpath of the Birmingham Mainline Canal to Wolverhampton.  Canal & River Trust, with partners, promoting the ‘Birmingham Cycling Revolution’ are upgrading this route, also used for walking and jogging, from Gas Street Basin to to Heath Street half a mile from Black Patch. Three police sub-divisions for Birmingham and Sandwell converge on the area. There are fire stations in Smethwick and Handsworth.

Friends of Black Patch Park ~ Feb 2016

[Back to the future - a posting on Facebook on 25th January 2018 by Diana Niblett, who grew up on a road next to Black Patch Park:

...all the houses around Black Patch were bought under compulsary purchase. Not many of us wanted to leave, I myself was heartbroken. I had a fruit & veg shop that the council took off me and my Father was a butcher his shop was handed down to him by Grandad the council destroyed a entire community. There were a row shops that my Grandad owned but did sell some off that went. To me it was the end of an era as you know my Great Uncle was the son of Henty & Esau Smith and my Grandad robbed my Dad's piggy bank to buy a butcher shop which he told me was flea ridden but he worked hard and bought that row of shops down Black Patch. My other Grandad's Father helped build the bridge up near the Railway pub he moved his family from Manchester so to me Black Patch is steeped with my family's history. I know a lot of the folk from Murdock Rd. Avery Rd. & Vittoria St were born round there so it upset them to be moved. The occasions when we had all moved to different places if I met any of the people they always said it was ok where they had moved to but would never be Black Patch, myself included...]

New homes could be built (yellow shading on the map) along Kitchener Street next to Black Patch Park B66 2QA

 *Wikipedia on ‘Black Patch Park’ includes images and a description of the park and quotes Agenda item 5 of a Report to the Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Transport, Cllr Bob Badham, Sandwell MBC, dated 21 February 2007

 'Within the adopted Unitary Development Plan, sites around Black Patch Park, near to the Soho Foundry were allocated for industrial uses in order to attract investment for a Technology Park. However, this has not come to fruition. A recent Employment Land Survey has revealed that there is no immediate need for further industrial land in this location. As there are no deliverable proposals identified, and to accommodate the wishes of Friends of Black Patch Park to retain the Park area, these allocations have been removed. The land will therefore form a green focal point for any development which takes place on the adjoining sites. The Preferred Option for land adjacent to Soho Foundry has been allocated for Mixed Used which can incorporate industrial and offices, and possibly leisure, community and educational facilities associated to the Foundry once a suitable re-use has been identified. Smethwick Area Action Plan - Preferred Option Document (Cabinet Forward Plan Ref. No. RT089)'.

** In October 2015 Cllr Darren Cooper, Leader of Sandwell MBC, announced that barely half the number of homes needed in the Black Country and Staffordshire had been built over the past four years, with Sandwell standing out as the ‘worst performing’ with a shortfall of 62%. Express & Star, 1 October, 2015

- The Office for National Statistics is predicting that there will 38,600 more people of all ages in Sandwell by 2033 - a 13% increase. David Couttie Associates (2010) FINAL REPORT Sandwell Housing Needs & Market Study Update, p.8

***See ‘Black Patch Park - striving to renew a place’ 28 Dec 2013, describing a tour of the Black Patch  
****The Friends' meeting with Tony Deep, also known as Kurdip Singh Wouhra MBE of East End Foods to discuss plans by Smart Waste - a sister company - to build a recycling autoclaving plant on part of the park is mentioned in a blog entry for 16th June 2015 - one which includes correspondence between us and Sandwell MBC officer, Hayley Insley.

Ten years or so ago we made a lobbying clip on YouTube against building on Black Patch Park....

...and the folk-singer Bryn Phillips sang a song about Gypsies on the Patch, ironically evicted to create the present park, and Queen Henty's curse on anyone who 'develops on Black Patch Park'...

Stacey Dooley, member of the FoBPP, worked up a plan of a restored Black Patch, also showing new homes overlooking the park...

Discussing the Black Patch with Stacey and Phil over coffee and chocolate in Wednesbury the other evening

[Note: Now go forward to Update on Black Patch Park 22nd January 2018]
*** *** *** ***
My grandson is in an animistic phase that delights me - since my ancient education in anthropology taught me to understand what a sensible way it could be of understanding the world in the long journey towards the disenchantment - and re-enchantment - of science. In the tropical house of Birmingham Botanical Gardens are mighty Koi all of whom we named after family, friends and the dogs in our lives - Nanny, Amy, Guy, Hannah, Oscar and Cookie for a start...

They seemed to come when called by their given names...and then at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery I'm left with a number of existential questions from Ollie as a result of this exercise in delayering a model mummy in the children's annexe to the Edwardian Tea Room on the first floor...

\

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed...
The best Oliver and I have managed so far, as a result of unpacking the mummy in the museum, is that we all have skeletons...

...This doesn't quite connect with with "what if we have only a skeleton?"
The best I've managed is "We will go back to where we came from."
Pondering this Oliver jumped a few rungs of the debate, surmising that "When Mummy is a skeleton she will be a mosquito."
Later he suggested that he, Hannah and Henry - Liz's son - "will be leaves." (Of course he said 'leafs').  "Like those floating among the Koi?"
Reflecting on this conversation - as interesting for me as it seemed to be for Oliver - I wondered that we could have a discussion about death without anyone dying, untangled by grief's urgent knell, These matters where no-one knows, where the grown-up knows no more than the child, are sublime. We discuss mysteries as compeers.

Helga Edstrom Oliver is very precise and careful, and obviously thoughtful, I like his reasoning about reincarnation but a mosquito is an interesting start!

Unlike · Reply · 1 · 20 February at 20:58

Simon Baddeley Yes. I wonder if some insight about this, about his infant logic, will of a sudden strike me. His brain is 70 years younger than mine and who knows, with evolution's tiny steps, what connections it's already making that escape me.

Like · Reply · 1 · 20 February at 21:18 · Edited

Helga Edstrom He is exposed to so many different experiences his brain will be busy whirring and clicking. My daughter who is an infant teacher says it's very easy to spot the Oliver's as opposed to a child who just has TV as a way of seeing the world. She still accuses me of "over stimulating" her and her brother and them never having time to be bored, which on reflection, is often when the best thinking is done. But having two lively curious children to entertain we often ended up with the mummies in the Art Gallery.....

Unlike · Reply · 1 · 20 February at 21:23

As commuters we returned to Soho Benson Road on the tram which now extends its line into Bull Street. It was rush hour, but Oliver found us seats for the two station journey...

....I glimpsed a bizarre sight - a passenger reading a book amid others enjoying connectivity.
*** *** ***
And in Ano Korakiana....they're getting ready for Carnival
Ετοιμασίες Καρναβαλιού
28.02.16
Μία ακόμη καρναβαλική σύναξη πραγματοποιήθηκε την Παρασκευή το βράδυ στο Δημοτικό Σχολείο, προκειμένου να οριστικοποιηθούν διάφορα εκκρεμή θέματα. Τελικά οριστικοποιήθηκε το πρόγραμμα των βασικών εκδηλώσεων που περιλαμβάνει την καθιερωμένη πλέον «Τσικνοπέμπτη» στην Αρκούδενα* και την κεντρική καρναβαλική εκδήλωση την τελευταία Κυριακή του Τριωδείου**, με κατάληξη τον αποκριάτικο χορό στο «Luna d’ Argento». Περισσότερα, προσεχώς...

Carnival planning meeting. Fokion Mandoulas - Φωκίων Μάνδυλας - Mayor of the village on the right

Another carnival gathering held on Friday night at the primary school, to finalize various outstanding issues - the schedule of key events including the established 'Pancake Day' in Arkoudena* and the main Carnival event on the last Sunday of Triodion**, ending the carnival dance at 'Luna D'Argento'. More shortly...(*Arkoudena is one of the five districts of Ano Korakiana, the one in which our home lies. It is also called 'The Bear' as tradition records that someone brought a bear to the village and entertained there with the animal. Other names now faded away include 'Mediterranean' 'Piazza' and 'Balance'. **Greek Pancake Day is 3rd March and Easter begins 1st of May, so 40 days before that is the last day of Carnival - 22nd March 2016)

Rainy summer days

Plot 14 on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

It was the wettest chilliest day this July but on the 24th Hannah Rowan was one year old - a Friday, and the only day that week her dad was off-work selling cars.

The family and friends gathered over the afternoon on Plot 14 where Winnie and I had set up a gazebo, laid out tables and chairs. Sophia with her mum Liz, whose son, Henry James, was still in hospital after an early birth; her parents, ...

...a family from Amy's baby group; Oscar dog, of course, Linda and I and Richard; Amy and Guy and our grandchildren, Oliver and Hannah.

Simon and Hannah (photo: Barbara Delaney)

Will Hannah have recorded some fuzzy images of her first birthday to recall? Received opinion, which I doubt, says not. Memory's so fallible that I wonder if memories of that age are made up later. A BBQ was intended. Instead Amy, having strung bunting, laid out a table of cold snacks. Well clothed, the children enjoyed running up down and across the paths of the allotment, riding in the plot cart...

...before joining the grown-ups for food and a one-candle cake, "Happy Birthday dear Hannah..."

...after which we played 'pass the parcel' in the gazebo. On went the rain. The boys discovered puddles. By the time we all headed home they were soaked to their skins and happy.
"What rubbish weather" agreed the grown-ups - parents, grandparents, one uncle and several friends "but we'll remember Hannah's first birthday!"

*** *** ***
At the last meeting of the Friends of Black Patch Park at Bishop Latimer Church on 21st July I agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to turn up the following Sunday at Ted Rudge's annual celebration in the Soho Foundry Tavern of the Gypsy connection with the Black Patch. Our chairman Ron Collins who'd normally represent us couldn't be there. No-one else volunteered. Sunday morning it was raining steadily. I put on my long waxed oilskin coat; with this buttoned up and wearing my waxed newsboy cap I can stand under a shower and stay dry. I cycled off to the Black Patch, under 2 miles away over Soho Hill.

Black Patch Park between Woodburn Street, Perrott Street and Foundry Lane in Smethwick

It's long been rumoured, contrary to the unproven claim of the official website, yet on the basis of small, but rather telling evidence - a letter from Jack Hill to the star...

... which, despite the thousands of fan letters he received, he kept in a secret drawer at his home in Switzerland, to be found by his daughter Victoria after his death - that claimed Charlie Chaplin was born in a Gypsy caravan on the Black Patch on 16th April 1898. The supposition which will aways remain a mystery has been strengthened in recent years by several visits made by Charlie Chaplin's son Michael to the Black Patch where he's met Ted Rudge and Gypsy friends, descendants of those families long ago expelled from the Black Patch to make it into a park, and Ron Collins. Michael agreed to be a patron of The Friends of Black Patch Park. On Sunday he visited again in the company of his son-in-law; a nice and unassuming man who clearly enjoyed the company of the Gypsies, strolling amid the rubbish in the park...

Michael Chaplin, son of Charlie Chaplin, walks through the Black Patch (photo Michael Scott )

...and standing on the bridge at the junction of Boundary and Hockley brooks, where he unveiled a stone memorial commemorating the Romany connection with the Black Patch, I filmed our visitor saying that "a lot of the things he (Jack Hill) said in the letter have been verified...."

Though it would be tricky to get these suppositions into official records. We got good coverage for the Chaplin visit in the local papers - Express and Star and Birmingham Evening Mail. I know that repeating things in the newspapers creates no more than amplified rumour but it's quite good to have some background chatter on this - even in Wikipedia

Michael Chaplin, Simon Baddeley (Friends of Black Patch Park) with Oscar and Ted Rudge (photo Michael Scott )

I got Michael Scott a free lance photographer standing by to snap us. Ted was keen to get everyone out of the wet and back for a meal at the Soho Foundry Tavern. I wrote to Ron suggesting a meeting of the Friends as soon as possible:

Dear All. May I suggest we meet again asap to:
- Review the fall-out from Michael Chaplin’s visit to the BP and his statement about his father’s birthplace - which I recorded - Arrange a meeting with Cllr Sharon Thompson of Birmingham Soho Ward who I’ve spoken to. She has told me she gets calls from quite a few people especially on James Turner Street about the BP and especially about the derelict community centre - Arrange a meeting with Cllr Darren Cooper who has emailed to say that he would be ready to meet us any time (MC visit to the BP gave us a boost in that direction I suspect - Make a contribution to the current consultation on the re-bounding of Birmingham’s electoral boundaries (can be done on the internet( suggesting that Cooper’s Soho and Victoria Ward in Sandwell transfer the Merry Hill allotments and BP area to Soho Ward, Birmingham. Sharon Thomas is aware of this and would be supportive. She knows the problems and knows there are no voters there but also that so many users of the park do and could come from her ward.  Love, Simon

Ron fixes a meeting for the 11th August but we've got a committee on that day for Handsworth Helping Hands which I don't want to miss.

Ron. Sorry re 11th. Here’s the message from Cllr Darren Cooper that i got on Facebook and said I’d forward to you.
QUOTE 'Hi Simon it was good to see Michael Chaplin in Black patch, I'm just sorry I was not aware of this until it appeared in the news. I have made many attempts in the past to get a solution to the area including the historical Soho foundry. I'm still keen to look at options. However this just seems to hit a brick wall. I had extensive meeting with the Lunar society all to know end. I'd be happy to meet with you to look at options if you contact my office on 01215695666. In any case finding a solution with Council money alone is a non runner given the cuts we have to make. B'ham are in a worse place than Sandwell so can't see that making a difference.’
DC’s last sentence arose as a result of my suggestion that the Black Patch might move into Birmingham’s Soho Ward via the current boundary shift consultation
My reply to him on behalf of the Friends:  'Thanks Darren. It is such a tricky wicked problem - one you clearly understand. I will indeed be in touch. You know at the moment that Hayley Insley, your senior regeneration officer, is looking at Eastside's offer but which involved losing a third of the Patch. We are bound by our constitution and belief in the park to resist this while ready to be participate in all attempts to find a way through in these horrible times for local government! Kindest regards, S' (END)
I hope the meeting on 11th Aug could formulate  - say - 3 good reasons why the latter ward boundary transfer should happen with details of where exactly the boundary might run. I’ve spoken to Cllr Sharon Thompson (Soho Ward, Birmingham)  about this proposal and she says she is happy to endorse a proposal on the boundary consultation web form from FoBPP. She also says she knows Darren and would be glad to meet us and him to discuss the Black Patch (this doesn’t commit her or him to discussing boundary changes to their respective wards - just the possibility of partnership working on the problem.)
Once I have support and ideas I’m happy to fill in the consultation form  
Simon

My plot

For Father's Day beloved Amy gave me a glossy kitchen-garden porn mag

Early Tuesday morning - about 3.00am - I went downstairs to join Lin who was up late in the kitchen after collecting Richard and Emma from East Midlands off a midnight flight from Turkey.
"I've been having a nightmare. Make me a cup of tea...Please"
"Go on then"
"I was taking an exam.... Thanks...I was taking an exam...on gardening. I thought I was going to do quite well. But I couldn't answer any of the questions. Somehow I lost my paper. Lost everything I needed to at least write something. Time seemed to speed up. My second pen didn't work. I couldn't find the exam room. I had to ask the invigilator, a young American soldier, who made me stand to attention while I asked for assistance. He was unhelpful. It was humiliating. The fiasco seemed to go on for hours. One problem following another. I couldn't complete a single question. Didn't even start on one!"
Amy's friend Liz, who was also up late suggested - via Facebook - that my dream might have come from looking at the gardening magazine Amy gave me for Father's Day - along with a large Toblerone bar.
It is so tempting to use apparent short cuts when dealing with problems on my allotment. For example why not deal with weeds, especially couch grass, by spraying them with glyphosate? Why not lay into slugs and snails and the many other insect pests with organochlorines, organophosphates, carbamates? Punish them! Notwithstanding endlessly rehearsed environmental arguments, I'm beginning to grasp that there's something else I'm supposed to learn about gardening. There's no substitute for constant attention, daily maintenance, alertness, growing experience and learning, steady work and intelligence. I must use my wits. I realise now that 'pottering' is not something to be mildly ridiculed. If I hit nature head on - or try to - I may think I'm 'winning' for a while. Insects will die; weeds will wither  - for a while. Nature hits back by committing temporary suicide or becoming dependent on my shop-bought nutrients. As in intensive agriculture this deal involves growing crops in a more or less sterilised medium regularly re-sanitised and re-fertilized for successive crops. The off-shoots of this more or less effective process are sold on via a confusing repertory of proprietary products to ordinary gardeners across the land. Of course I risk drowning in the fruitless study of endless abusive argument - Rachel Carson versus Dr. J. Gordon Edwards. ....'continued page 94' as 'Private Eye' would say)

For the moment I am delighted at my allotment. Two years ago I was served an official notice to the effect that if I didn't show more signs of working my plot I would be asked to surrender my lease. Nearly four years ago I was struggling. I didn't always look forward to going out to the plot - just 5 minutes cycle ride away. Now....

Plot 14 in 2011 - same bike and same Oscar

I returned from abroad to find proper onions, planted last September, swelling their hips above weedless dark soil...

At last there's stuff coming out of the plot to which Linda will give the time of day. None of this would be possible had I not realised that I have the inestimable advantage of not having to run the allotment like a business. I made a decision last spring - that regardless, or almost regardless of what i could afford, no expense would be spared to make my allotment a success. Of course I've have miles to go before I sleep; the task is as endless as a piece of string. What's been achieved so far would have been impossible without investment in 'black gold' compost - six builder's sacks of it over a year, two similar sacks of topsoil. Add to that my decision to make a network of paths around separate beds that would ensure that in no case would it be necessary to step on the earth when digging, sowing, weeding, or cropping. Add to that my partnership with Winnie who gardens the plot when I'm there and when we're away.

Next we set about making our own compost. Winnie riddles by the composting bays at the back of the plot

Jerusalem artichokes left, rhubarb and parsnips to the right, with Winnie and Oscar under the shed veranda on Plot 14

The other day seeing black fly on the tops of the broad bean plants I prepared a mix of detergent to spray. Coming back the next morning prepared to kill by drowning and slipperiness I found that this years plentitude of ladybirds had done the job for me in one night. Instead I pinched out the tops of the beans to keep the growth in the pods that are already croppable - delectable little beans that take a while to strip from their pods at the kitchen table.  Of course I can't always rely on ladybirds, but the very health of the crop as a result of the attention to the plot and the good compost worked into the top seven inches of the soil helped, especially as so many of large stones and other hard debris have been systematically removed as we've worked the earth. These several hundred carpet tiles, recovered from an abandoned garden we were tidying with Handsworth Helping Hands have been useful, allowing swift temporary paths and as a supplement to the weed-suppressing fabric pegged down by Winnie across the plot. People visit me on the plot. Ron was round the other day to discuss Sandwell Council's consideration of a S106A to build on a third of Black Patch Park.

Tony Jacks "The picture reminds me of days gone by when men tended their allotments and chewed the cud."

I got permission from Dannie, VJA Secy, to crop the hay from the hay from the allotments next to mine; a chance to give Winnie the tutorial she wanted on using a scythe.

A swift learner she called me her 'ballet teacher'. "Flex your legs, Winnie" "Sweep the ground!" "Get a rhythm" Sharpening too, and adjusting the lay and the grips. The hay we've scythed is piling up nicely against the fence at the bottom of the plot, to add to the compost factory there. At least half a dozen frogs leapt clear into the long grass left along the hedge of plot 15 and the foot of plot 13 where there's a sturdy bramble patch to gve us blackberries late summer. Getting organised I've mapped the plot...

...to help me keep a record of plantings and croppings; to start rotation and queued sowing to avoid gluts.
 There's also been a small calamity. I hardly want to dwell upon it. A letter to the allotment committee just before the meeting the other week:

Dear VJA Committee. Re bees. As you know we had a problem on the allotment last Sunday 7th June. For reasons still unclear but experts suspect was a missing queen following a swarm, the bees which for 3 years have been fine and so welcome, went 'feral', stung two people and frightened away several families from their plot that afternoon. In under 30 minutes I was on my plot with my apiarist friend – Gill Rose - who had come more immediately to the 'rescue’ after a phone call from me. Arriving at my plot I experienced a threat - even on the path while well away from the hive - from a dozen angry bees, and had to back off slowly. Another experienced apiarist – Nigel Fleming (Birmingham Beekeepers Association) - joined us and it was very regretfully decided by him and Gill to apply apicide to the colony. I support their judgement. So now for the first time since June 2010 we have no colony of bees on the VJA, tho' there are still some wild bees roaming the site. I have met and spoken to people affected including the people stung and the people with young children who'd been threatened and had to leave the site. All understood the dilemma. We are preparing the case for reintroducing bees on the allotments and want to make sure we've covered every angle on top of the hazards we had anticipated when the bees first arrived – liability insurance, accreditation of the apiarist, risk assessment, netting around hive, first aid kit to hand, approval by committee after consultation with plot-holders. Everyone I've spoken to seems keen to see the bees back and is sad that such drastic action was needed. Any advice? What is the view of the VJA Committee on re-introducing a bee colony to the site? Did the people directly responsible respond the ‘bee crisis’ swiftly and responsibly; call to Simon from Danny W at 15.37 on Sunday? - attendance at the hive by 16.10; - decision to apply apicide when all bees had returned to hive; - 18.15 Simon notified by Gill that colony has been destroyed; - from 16.00 Simon on site talking to people affected, with follow up on subsequent days and via Facebook and email to VJA committee members Kindest regards, Simon, Plot 14, VJA

Two days after the bee colony was killed I ventured into the net surround of the hive. Gill had removed the top tiers. In what was left of the massacre was a plastic sandwich box. Lidless. Lining its bottom, a mass of small scorched corpses. Blackened. Around the edges of the hive a few bees still stirred weakly. I set about clearing up, putting the remains on the compost.

The bees on Plot 14 in happier times

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In Ano Korakiana last weekend - a party with music, singing and dancing at Piatsa...

"Γλέντι μετά μουσικής" στο καφέ - "Piatsa" διοργάνωσε χθες το βράδυ (Σάββατο 20 Ιουνίου 2015) ο ΠΑΟΚ, με ποτό, σουβλάκι και μουσική από την ορχήστρα του Γιώργου Μαυρομάτη, που μας χάρισε όμορφες μελωδίες, μέχρι μετά τα μεσάνυχτα, δίνοντας παράλληλα έναν τόνο ζωής στο χωριό μας.Οι παρέες είχαν πιάσει διάφορες γωνιές στα παράπλευρα του δρόμου και απόλαυσαν τα τραγούδια του Γιώργου και των συνεργατών του...Στις ζεμπελιές διέπρεψαν ο Κώστας Σαββανής και η Αγγέλα Θύμη!