Locked down in Birmingham

Athens on Friday 19th Feb 2021. I had the Acropolis all to myself one rainy day in April 1958

So it's snowing in Greece - the dear country, the wondrous land. The woman, Xristoo, told me when I asked about the weather in Greece. She'd phoned me  from Athens to try and sort out my 'customer problem' with Alpha Bank. My debit card was eaten by an auto-cash machine outside Corfu Green Bus Station two years ago, and though I reported it the same day, I've been trying to get a replacement since. We've been at our other home in Birmingham since December, in Handsworth. 

A small incident on Soho Hill, gateway to Handsworth. A mile and half from Birmingham city centre

'... down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour - by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.' Raymond Chandler 1945

In the last few weeks two people, one of them a 15 year old, have been murdered on roads near us - Linwood Road, Holly Road, and someone shot through a window in Antrobus Road a friend told us. “You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullsh*t and you know it.” And everywhere in streets, on pavements, in nooks, crannies, frontages, rubbish and more rubbish. I've been working the allotment in my 'bubble' - so pleasantly cosy in the greenhouse when there's even a smidgin of sun. 

A cup of tea in the warmth of the greenhouse on Plot 14, Victoria Jubilee Allotments, Handsworth

I've been shopping, filling the capacious pannier of my bicycle with favourite things from the city markets - fruit, cheese, pastry, vegetables and the company of humans - where a stall sells bacon and egg sandwiches and a cup of tea, good for warming the hands. A capacious mask causes my glasses to steam up indoors so I wait near the door for temperatures - mine and the shops - to even, before buying wine, bread, milk and treats.

Someone driving fast down a back street didn't know he'd hit a cat and ended the ninth of its lives. Someone else picked up the broken body and dropped it in a wheelie bin, with other stuff they picked up, clearing litter. The bin was packed too high, seen as unacceptable by the bin-men, so it stayed un-emptied with other tipped rubbish beside it at the end of a Handsworth cul-de-sac. 

Last time we did a clean-up that way, HHH volunteers emptied the bin, shovelled up the surrounding rubbish - leaving odds and ends for the circling scrap-metal kites. When we'd filled our transit van, the limp corpse was separated and buried in soil to feed the vegetables on our allotment, close to where we'd buried Oscar dog who died in August 2019 - after a far better life than this magpie cat.  Since then Handsworth Helping Hands has been unable to do any of our usual work. Perry Barr Recycling centre is closed to charity waste disposal during lockdown, so we cannot carry out street clean-ups. We've kept up our presence on the social web - passing on warnings of on-line scams. local news, give-away items, information on Coronavirus, vaccination and testing locations... We've also been meeting with other local people sharing information about the problems of our area, talking with local politicians - on-line via ZOOM. 

Cllr Sharon Thompson, Birmingham City Council's Cabinet member for Homes and Neighbourhoods (3rd line, 3rd from left above) asked us to submit evidence to the city's Scrutiny Committee who are looking at the impact of Exempt Accommodation on the inner suburbs. HHH's witness statement, prepared by Lin and I with help from our fellow committee members, was submitted just before deadline.

Lin gets briefed by someone managing a social housing association that strives for best practice

A WITNESS STATEMENT FROM HANDSWORTH HELPING HANDS (HHH) ON EXEMPT ACCOMMODATION submitted to Emma Williamson, Head of Scrutiny Services  emma.williamson@birmingham.gov.uk Thursday 18th February 2021

Our witness statement is based on family residence in Handsworth and Birchfield for over 40 years, and from 10 years working together as a small charity, Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH), carrying out environmental work, whole street ‘skip-it don’t tip it’ days, ‘green-up clean-up projects’, as well as a miscellany of services for vulnerable people in Handsworth, Birchfield. Lozells and part of Aston. As HHH’s work includes tasks on behalf of people in Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), we do not mention names, addresses or specific streets.

Handsworth Helping Hands: our last meeting not on-line

- What issues are faced in Birmingham by residents and agencies associated with exempt accommodation?

When it comes to examining their social impact on the life of the inner suburbs of Birmingham, we do not want the impact of HMOs not classed as ‘Exempt Accommodation’ to escape the attention of Scrutiny. We know Exempt Accommodation, managed by Registered Providers, is exempt from regulations and Local Housing Allowance caps that apply to HMOs, but, for the purpose of this statement, Exempt Accommodation and HMOs are in effect synonymous, creating similar issues for residents and other agencies such as the police, social and ambulance services. 

‘Rachmanism’ was a term given in the 1960s to the exploitation of tenants of slum properties by unscrupulous landlords. Scrutiny members are now examining a problem that matches the social depravity of Peter Rachman, but one made worse by the complacency, even the support, of government - a messy, mostly unwilling, collaboration - blighting the social capital of Birmingham’s inner suburbs.  By ‘social capital’ we mean those residents of an area who have roots in it, have lived there with their families, worked there, and have invested their time and their money in an area. They know the neighbours, know the local shops, take part in voluntary activity, send their children to local schools, attend public meetings, attend local places of worship. They may be defined as belonging to and sustaining a community, enjoying where they live, valuing the network of relationships that enables society to function.  

The social capital of any one street might be measured by the capacity of the people who live in it to look after neighbours and be looked after by them. If the ratio of residents who constitute a street’s social capital, compared to those individuals living in Exempt Accommodation and HMOs, becomes imbalanced, as has happened in many streets in Birmingham’s inner suburbs, then what was once a neighbourhood with the resources, in partnership with local government services, to look after its most vulnerable neighbours, becomes a population of strangers. 

As numbers of these categories of property increase in an area, eventually a tipping point is reached. Neighbours become overburdened with appeals for help from the vulnerable in their midst - requests for food, cigarettes, money, the use of their phones. They get tired of calling ambulances for people collapsed on the pavement, seeing drugs traded openly in the street, are vexed by pilfering of anything left in their front gardens, having their car doors tried, seeing police cars parked in their street, being kept awake by loud music late at night, or annoyed by it on summer afternoons. They despair at seeing bulky objects dumped in streets, at having to pick up rubbish spilling onto the pavement from over-filled bins, at bins being left unemptied by Fleet and Waste when recycling and household waste have been mixed. They become suspicious of strangers and worry about the safety of their children going to and from school or playing in the streets. The extra insult is to find that such concerns, when voiced as objections to an HMO conversion, are not acknowledged under planning law. 

As family properties are converted for multiple occupation, the loss of accommodation for more stable residence negates the sense of place that is part of community. Houses for sale in Handsworth are visited by a queue of potential buyers interested in converting the property, initially to an HMO, with the possibility - in many cases the intention - of it later becoming Exempt Accommodation.  Every decision by city planning services, to allow conversion of a family home to an HMO, has the secondary effect of driving from the area the last remains of the stable 'community of place' that could otherwise have supported lower numbers of transient residents, many of whom hardly know where they're living. Our elected members are seldom able to vote against officers' 'legal' recommendations.  

When residents move in and out of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs, bulky objects and other belongings are abandoned on the frontages of properties, spilling onto pavements. Fly-tipping in the area becomes endemic, exacerbated by the activities of unlicenced waste collectors, who, for ‘cash-in-hand’ from a colluding landlord, remove beds, used mattresses and cut-rate furniture, and dump it close to where it was collected. 

The transient tenants, who constitute our area's 'population of strangers', are, more often than not, uninformed, and, through such vulnerabilities as mental ill-health, drug dependency, alcoholism, learning or language difficulties, uneducable about waste disposal arrangements. Fly-tipping and littering become a chosen method of waste disposal. Waste collection and street cleaning services are made less effective. Streets become a wasteland, strewn with litter, bottles, piles of foul-smelling black bags filled with who-knows-what, soaking-wet carpets, old clothes and mattresses and mountains of broken furniture. The correlation between the character of this street environment and levels of crime and violence can’t be ignored. At this point, neither householders nor tenants of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs can be assured the same promise of ‘a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in’, made to social housing tenants in the government’s November 2020 ‘Charter for social housing residents’. 

- Are City Council processes fit for purpose, sustainable, efficient or exacerbating any issues?

The  Cabinet brief for Homes and Neighbourhoods should overlap the brief for Street Scene and Parks, in a way that gives attention to the connection between the social atomisation caused by too many HMOs and Exempt Accommodation properties, and the overwhelming of inner suburban streets by litter and fly-tipping. Other councils in the West Midlands – Coventry, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Sandwell - give greater attention to regulation and enforcement as these relate to permitting conversion to HMOs, issuing licences, registering accommodation as ‘exempt’ and monitoring the consequent required provision of extra support services.

Birmingham’s enforcement services have been skeletonised. Even with a recent, substantial grant from Government, a small number of conscientious council officers are hopelessly overburdened in checking for and dealing with breaches of HMO and Exempt Accommodation regulation and legislation in properties catering for approximately 18,000 tenants. 

Birmingham’s planning portal offers advice to applicants in submitting applications to convert properties to HMOs and advice on how to respond if an application is refused, but is not correspondingly user-friendly for those submitting objections to such conversions, or reporting breaches of planning or building regulations by those doing the converting.

- Why do people use exempt accommodation? 

Exempt Accommodation and HMOs offer a step up from rough sleeping to the homeless, the vulnerable, people struggling and failing to gain secure work or the income needed to rent or buy their own property; a social class, sometimes described as the ‘precariat’. One academic has referred to ‘generation exempt’. Tenants of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs include people unable to find work, people made redundant, ex-prisoners, people with mental health problems, struggling with addiction, escaping domestic abuse, people made homeless due to family break-up – a population of fellow citizens existing without predictability or security, with intermittent employment or underemployment, some trafficked as modern slaves. 

- What are the drivers for landlords to enter into providing exempt accommodation? 

Successive governments now rely on the private rental sector to provide accommodation for anyone unable to buy or rent their own home. Birmingham’s inner suburbs offer a lightly regulated zone for investment in private rental properties.

A scan of the internet reveals a national industry, promoting the financial gains to be made from HMOs, touting them as ‘investment opportunities’. Landlords are tempted into HMO investment through being able to take advantage of housing benefit rules, linking the rent they can claim to the number of bedrooms of the legally habitable size. This encourages owners of HMOs to increase the number of bedrooms in their properties, thereby increasing rental income, by subdividing rooms, or by adding extensions to properties, sometimes without obtaining planning consent, sometimes with false information being entered in planning applications. 

The acquisition of ‘exempt’ status allows even higher financial gains to be made by unscrupulous landlords willing to commit what is essentially fraud. 

To become ‘exempt’, a property must be leased to a ‘Registered Provider’, to be ‘managed’ by them, but not necessarily involving them in providing the extra services required for gaining exempt status. In some cases, the only ‘management’ involved may be dealing with the initial benefits application, receiving the enhanced benefits, and, after subtracting their charges, sending the landlord what remains. 

It must be said that some Registered Providers give excellent service, ensuring that HMO standards, although not mandatory, are applied, that the extra services promised and paid for from the public purse, irrespective of whether they or the landlords arrange the provision of those services, are delivered, that the welfare of tenants is paramount. Unfortunately, however, even for Registered Providers managing many properties, this is not always the case.

The current Exempt Accommodation benefits system enables the exploitation of Exempt Accommodation tenants and of taxpayers, by both Registered Providers and landlords, by those among their number who claim to provide, but don’t necessarily deliver, the extra services necessary to enable vulnerable tenants to live with an appropriate degree of independence. In some cases, the only reliable ‘service’ is delivery of illegal drugs by local dealers. 

The lack of legislation to effectively regulate the Exempt Accommodation sector stigmatises the social contribution of honest landlords and Registered Providers who, in running their businesses or not-for-profit organisations, offer conscientious support to their tenants and strive to maintain good relations with the community who live around their properties. 

- What role can Planning legislation play within the confines of existing legislation and how can planning be used or amended to manage the growth of exempt accommodation?

If Birmingham City Council is to combine concern for the tenants of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs with concern for communities, steps must be taken to stop other local authorities diverting vulnerable people to Birmingham, into the regulated, but poorly enforced, HMO and the unregulated Exempt Accommodation sectors. At present HHH volunteers are struck by an impression of ‘lawlessness’ - a shameful failure to implement even existing planning law and building regulations, with many properties converted for multiple occupation without planning permission, where reported infringements of the most blatant kind are ignored, especially when a conversion is completed before those affected by it can query it, where council planners and building regulators fail to reverse illegal work, once completed. Such ineffectual planning regulation, applies to other services the local authority is supposed to provide for vulnerable citizens.

We also believe that the council’s database fails to reflect the actual numbers of legal conversions, let alone those erected or converted without permission.

Regulatory services are ill-staffed to cope with the challenge of enforcing the laws and regulations, as they relate to HMOs and Exempt Accommodation.

Although not, currently directly related to Planning legislation, housing benefit rules that enable landlords of HMOs and Exempt Accommodations to substantially increase profits, in some cases fraudulently, by sub-dividing and extending properties should be changed. If three-bedroom family homes could only be operated as three-tenant HMOs or Exempt Accommodations, they would quickly become less attractive to those landlords whose only interest is to maximise income, and would have the potential to be returned, eventually, to the family housing market.

- What are the health needs faced by this group of vulnerable people?

The worst health needs come from loneliness. An individual is given a transport fare to an unfamiliar address in a city they don’t know, lodged among strangers in a converted property, beside mistrustful and apprehensive neighbours. This isolation breeds ill health – physical and mental. Perhaps worst is the lack of political engagement. Handsworth’s famous group Steel Pulse - old men now - who many enjoyed in local places before they became famous in the late 70s, were signalling in their music and lyrics the troubles of the 1980s that made Handsworth nationally notorious, but also became associated with a multi-racial cohesion that continued almost into the recession of 2008. 

Thousands of lonely men and women in HMOs hardly know they live in Handsworth, Birchfield, Aston, Holyhead or even in Birmingham. They have no engagement with the area or with one another; little impulse to rebellious creativity, political organisation or collective reaction to their condition. The harm of this condition is drug addiction, alcoholism, petty crime, theft from shops, homes and cars with the amplifying corollary of an atomised population of victims upon whom criminals can prey, trafficking people, encouraging drug pushing, dealing in weapons, fencing stolen goods and fly tipping. 

- What can we learn from people’s experiences and best practice in other parts of the country?

Birmingham City Council’s failure to regulate the amount and distribution of HMOs is notorious across the UK. Certain types of profiteer circle our city’s inner suburbs like carrion crows. Properties judged suitable for multiple occupation in Birmingham’s inner suburbs are advertised by property agents in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, where local authorities have made it more difficult for unscrupulous landlords to profit excessively from converting family homes to HMOs and Exempt Accommodation.  Scrutiny members might, as part of this enquiry, investigate approaches to permitting, licencing and monitoring HMOs and registering and monitoring Exempt Accommodation in those cities - if only by making a few phone calls. 

Simon Baddeley (Hon Sec), Linda Baddeley (Hon Treasurer), Nick Jolliffe, John Rose, Sister Simone Hanel, Mike Tye (Chair) Handsworth Helping Hands. Queen's Award for Voluntary Service 2019 

Context

Before first light the parched island is soaked by a drenching downpour, a timely damping down of hectares of tinder. We lie in bed surrounded by unaccustomed gloom, lightning flashing through the curtains, crashes of thunder, constant rumbling. Mountains and sea are obscured; our forested foreground, now grey-green under a drifting overcast. The trees beside the house are wrung by the wind. Pouring rain spatters our windows, its fall muffled on the roof tiles, echoing in the downpipes. Water spills over the gutters splashing on the common path. Where I left a small gap in the kitchen windows, the counter’s wet. Water glosses the plaka under the veranda, the decking and concrete of our balconies, dribbling from the  yellowing leaves of the wisteria, soaking the green and red of the bougainvillea, bowing its branches. Abruptly a quilt is welcome on the bed and I switch to shirts with long sleeves and socks. I wear underpants again; even a jumper in the evening.

From this day of rain a fortnight follows of clear blue skies. The mountains in the east – rising in Epirus and the southern tip of Albania – return, during these unexpected days of early autumn , to their Wedgwood blue haze. The strip of sea between Corfu and the mainland could be mistaken for a placid lake, our green hills along its western shore, barer land over the strait.  

After weeks of washing clothes by hand – no great problem - we’ve bought a washer to replace the old one Lin couldn’t mend. Mark took it away for scrap after I’d unbolted its concrete steadying weights. I've carried them down to the garden where they stand as modernist shapes. From the same store on the road to Lefkimmi we’ve also bought a new wood stove – exact match of the one that came with the house 12 years ago. Age and misuse had warped the old stove's lid; its body leaked smoke from cracks at each corner. I manhandled three hundred weight of cast iron down the balcony steps, through the apothiki, to the garden where, filled with soil from the compost heap, the old stove sprouts a young bougainvillea we’ve bought.   

In search of context I’ve been reading a school text describing British economic and  social history from 1700. It ends in 1975 when I was 33 - just starting to live in a grown up way so it seemed; helping me to try understanding the next 44 years – my small life's window that included marrying Linda, her having our two children, getting our own house, the job I’ve had until I left the university a few years ago; my bicycles and my travels on them, the advent of Mrs Thatcher, the routing of the public sector, privatisation, the ending of the narratives and ideologies of modernism with its vision in many dimensions of 'one society'. About ten years ago I was strolling, with my folding bicycle, along the slab pavement of the Thames South Bank in London. Under my feet I found a commemorative plaque celebrating the Festival of Britain - marking its centre. For a millisecond I caught a full-body memory of a 9 year-old holding mum's hand in just that spot pausing amid many people - an enthusiastic crowded space - in 1951. "I have no wish to return to that time. I'd rather be in the now and the future" I thought. But I liked the thought of having been there long ago. 

So...the changing fabric, population and demography of our city, Birmingham, and other cities, the implosion of empire, the blatantly diverging fortunes of rich and poor, automation, artificial intelligence and the spreading role of decisions by algorithms indecipherable by their authors, the vast harvesting of personal data, the end - almost - of posting letters in mailboxes, the ubiquity of screens and roving phones, the hours spent dealing - over the phone - with energy service companies, the world wide web which I entered only in 1995, personal data harvesting, the dilution of place as a product of vast increases in the ease of transience "I'm both somewhere and anywhere",  identity politics "I'm a type on a bureaucratic check list which is useful to know, and I'm not at all which is also a lesson"; the tsunami of superficial distraction, but also my allotment, my continuing work with family, on getting the work of my stepfather  - Jack Hargreaves - restored and published, and also our project with his descendant family ("such a privilege") to give a a wider profile to the laic sculptor of Ano Korakiana, Aristeidis Metallinos (1908-1987), my involvement with local campaigns especially Handsworth Park, the Victoria Jubilee Allotments...

With our grandson, Oliver, on Plot 14 of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments (photo: Tim Hamilton)

... Black Patch Park and our small charity Handsworth Helping Hands,

Handsworth Helping Hands committee meeting

...our encounters with the law, my membership of 1000Elders and participation, as a subject, in research into healthy ageing, the growing up of our children, the arrival of our grandchildren, our homes in Handsworth, the Forest of Dean and Corfu, the boat Summersong, and, the long association with the Highlands from a childhood Christmas at Fasnakyle through the time my mother married again and went to live near Inverness for forty years, to go back to the 35 years before 1977, my childhood, my abrupt encounter aged 12, on a desk in the study of a schoolfriend's father of black and white photo's, in a hard backed book, of thin bodies bodies piled on trucks and being pushed by a bulldozer into a pit, and youth, my old travels on land and sea, sailing the Channel...

Sailing to France in Two Pearls in 1963 (photo: Barbara Hargreaves)

... the coast of Brittany, the Mediterranean from France to Greece, across the Atlantic in Young Tiger from the Canaries to the Caribbean, my time in America, the faces of those who loved me and taught me, long dead but ever in my mind, the panoply of art, literature, poetry, film, music, sculpture, design, architecture that educates me, and enriches my understanding, my ever-present confusions, vexations and perplexities…

I’m also re-reading – much more closely than in earlier years - Out of Town: A Life Relived on Television by Jack Hargreaves. Published in 1987

‘...this book, like my programmes – is concerned with those times, with the feeling of the old, small-farming life and the know-how of it’. The story my stepfather tells is of the time when his mother and father met in 1889 to 1929 when Jack would have been 18 - ‘until I left the farm to go to London University and read Veterinary Science’  

*** *** ***
There can hardly be a citrus tree on the whole island of Corfu that is not now infested and blighted by citrus scale insects, which over the last two years have settled in numberless scores on the underside of every young leaf, sucking its sap to access its sugar, bringing black mould to the leaves' upper surfaces. We are almost entirely bereft of once plentiful oranges and lemons. We see no end in sight for this grievous blight.

Our orange tree struggling against citrus scale insect infestation, beside three more similarly affected lemon trees

Some cut down their citrus trees. Others pollard them severely. Many paint the tree trunks with asvesti (white wash) but these insects do not travel up the trees from the ground. They move through the air on broad vectors across large areas. The insects, sometimes in a symbiotic relationship with ants, return as soon as new leaf shoots appear. Some spray with insecticide, which works temporarily but is not good for the fruit. We try regular spraying of non-toxic olive oil soap solution under the leaves. It works a little. So far we have avoided the blackened waste that has afflicted some trees we see in passing. We've heard that Bayer have a systemic insecticide applied to the soil around the roots which kills to insects leaving the fruit 'safe' after 3 weeks, and lasting a year. We are considering this option. Meantime we maintain the soap solution spraying with a pump action garden spray. Naturalist friends say there may be a chance of the trees learning to resist the harm caused to the vital photo-synthesis of leaves by insects and mould. They also say that a predator on scale insects may emerge. This is a low visibility catastrophe affecting tens of thousands of lemon and orange trees on Corfu and surely elsewhere. I'm always pleased when travelling on the island I see, now and then, a citrus tree bearing fruit, it's leaves unaffected and healthy. I saw a tree full of oranges in a garden on high ground in a village west of Agros a few days ago. Is it are resistant species? Have the pest insects not yet arrived? Waiting like a evil character in the wings is the olive tree plague Xylella Fastidiosa.

The public domain? Our '4 Avenues Project'

'Before'

MOBILISING COMMUNITIES, SMALL GRANTS FUND 2015-16
Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) -  ‘Four Avenues Project’

INTERIM REPORT ~ May 2016

Overview and interim conclusion
The most significant finding that has emerged from HHH’s work on its ‘4 Avenues Project’ has been the transience of residency in the clusters of houses on which HHH has focused. Handsworth, with other inner suburbs of Birmingham, has a reputation as the home of communities of interest. In the avenues where HHH has worked, four small geographical, rather than social clusters, of no more than 16 houses, we have encountered marked absence of community – or to be precise - absence of local communities of place.

A place? The new street sign put up by Council street services has just replaced one defaced with a blow torch

Individual residents and families may belong to faith groups, ethnic and interest groups, distributed in and around the city, but these do not amount to street life, or any of the things that might be associated with the social life of a village. When encouraged by a temporary HHH initiative in a specific street, a small number of individuals have turned out to help clear rubbish, load it on skips, sweep streets and alleyways, and express views on ‘what needs doing’. This transience, predominantly short term tenancies, poses a problem as to how to bring about continuity of commitment to looking after the spaces outside people’s homes. HHH members have been in meetings with social landlords.

'during'

They claim that current economic conditions, preclude them maintaining public spaces surrounding their properties, especially when the street is ‘unadopted’. This retreat, by responsible social landlords, from public space stewardship, is exacerbated by the prevalence of private buy-to-let residencies owned by landlords with no commitment to the space outside their properties, and little for the private space inside them. The frailty of communities of place means there’s no educating process about recycling, removal of heavy object like sofas and waste disposal; no culture of shame to inhibit littering and flytipping in public spaces and shared alleyways, nor involvement in caring about the lives of neighbours; nor is there much evidence of a will, or ability, by the local authority or social landlords, to implement sanctions that might support those residents and local groups who do care about the state of their neighbourhood. Our interim conclusion, given what previous experience and this project has taught us so far, is that no amount of financial capital, even were it available, or social capital in the form of voluntary activity carried out by HHH and similar bodies, is going to have more than a transient impact, without the financial and social revenue that might help create communities of place. The ‘4 Avenues Project’ attempts, through concentrated focus on very small areas, to see if it is possible, through a variety of personal and collective engagements, and a variety of small improvements, with residents and partners, to make a difference. HHH is working with the small proportion of residents who have shown willing to evolve care and attention to that sense of place, whose absence, has become so evident. How we will know whether this possibility has been realised we are uncertain. It is difficult to know if a place has got better. Finding that out, even being able to measure it, is part of the year’s learning. (continued)

'during' - a fish and chip break for volunteers and residents

'after' - but how can this space be looked after now?

*** ***
Gill has emailed me:

I now have a nucleus colony which can go to your allotment. They are Buckfast bees, specially bred to be both docile and prolific.

Dear Gill. Wonderful news! Buckfast bees come up so well on Google (:))
I’ve emailed Winnie who’s on my plot most days and she and I have just spoken by phone.
She’s looking forward to seeing the bees return, which is pleasing given the stings she got only a year ago, along with Dennis.
I have checked with others on nearby plots and they are also happy to see the bees return, especially Danny - two plots away - who, with her  family, had to ‘evacuate’ last year.
I so want this to work!! But nature also plays a part.
Winnie is tidying up the beehive ‘cage’ this afternoon. Her mobile is xxxx. A new number I think. x S

Winnie texted the bees had been delivered Monday evening. [Last year's bee crisis when our plot colony went feral - my letter to the allotment committee - June 2015):

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

Primaries

Winnie with Oscar on the winter plot

Daffodils and crocuses. There's still no snow, hardly even frost; instead warm gales from the Atlantic blowing things over, and more and more rain...

Another green house shattered by wind on the Victoria Jubilee

...until today. Yesterday I continued splitting logs with a spalthammer, using a chain saw to reduce the  size of larger pieces of wood, knots holding the wood together, resisting, while others give way with a satisfying thud, each piece thrown sideways; picked up and split again. The stack grows.

It seems wrong rather than a promise of spring that there's already blossom on the cherry in our front garden...

...It seems to be hurrying me. reminding me of having done too little work on my allotment...

The greenhouse bought in December still sits at the head of the plot

...on my other projects - Out of Town 'Restored to Life'....for which I have cash to spare, for work with Francis and Frazer, after an out of court payment from Kaleidoscope TV, who, last year, so signally failed to fulfil their side of the contract I made with them in early 2015. Extract from my 'letter before action':

My claim is based on a failure by Kaleidoscope TV Ltd to repay me in kind for goods and services they have received from me – this includes the loan of films to broadcast, the broadcasting of my films more than once, contrary to contract, and numerous failures to broadcast, contrary to contract, commercials for published episodes of my films. I own rights in broadcast quality episodes of TV films by my late stepfather, Jack Hargreaves’ – ‘Out of Town’ (OOT) programmes. In February 2015 I loaned DVDs and Digibeta cassettes of these programmes to the local TV company, Kaleidoscope (a.k.a Big Centre TV) to broadcast. At the same time, and in return for allowing the broadcast of these programmes, Kaleidoscope TV Ltd agreed that they would undertake the restoration, to broadcast quality, of at least 30 episodes of OOT in the form of 16mm film and sound-tape – ‘Jack Hargreaves OOT Archive’ – that are stored at my home, as well as airing commercials advertising published DVDs of ‘Out of Town’. The broadcast quality OOT material that I had loaned to Kaleidoscope were broadcast during 2015, but over the last year Kaleidoscope TV have done no work on the film and tape they had agreed to process. The defendant has had DVDs and Digibeta tapes from me to broadcast twice a week on Big Centre TV over 6 months for free, but have not fulfilled their agreement to process my raw material in return...

'Restored to Life' - Francis Niemczyk's home in Hornsey 

'Restored to life' ~ Frazer Ash with my stepfather's work on a Steenbeck at the British Universities Film & Video Council 

...and Handsworth Handsworth Helping Hands '4 Avenues Project', learning more almost by the day on a tiny part of Handsworth...

Oscar and Oliver in the HHH van on another visit to Putney Avenue

...and Black Patch Park where the fly-tipping grows; where we need a bold idea to recreate a place in what's become a border space, urban limbo.

Oliver, Oscar, Phil Crumtpon and Avtar Dhillon on Kitchener Street next to Black Patch Park last Friday morning

This park we've been concerned about for over 14 years - can it be so long? - is a community of interest, those interested in it (Charlie Chaplin, Gypsies, Soho Foundry, football) dispersed. It needs for its future to be also a community of place: for that it needs - close to it - people whose windows and doors open onto the Black Patch. Sandwell MBC's structure plan for the area has the area zoned to prefer light industry. What would it take it to  have the area re-zoned for housing?
The other project, shared with Linda, Richard and Angeliki is the idea of a website for the work of Aristeidis Metallinos, the laic sculptor of Ano Korakiana. We've done as much as can be done on this until we have the agreement of the sculptor's daughter, Maria, to continue...

Woman in new and traditional wear ~ work in stone by Aristeidis Metallinos 1985 (photo: Richard Baddeley)

These last 9 days Arthur, my father-in-law, has been staying with us, going every day with Linda to Stafford Hospital - 26 miles north - to visit Dorothy, my mother-in-law, who fell in her home, broke her wrist, and now struggles to move about. We await a place in a rehabilitation unit close to Handsworth. It's difficult for Lin, so occupied now with the care of her parents. I'm almost peripheral.
I fear the news at times. Not from newspapers. I stopped reading them except as comics years ago, but from the news I select from broad choices on the internet from Australia to the US, Canada to Greece, S.America, China and the rest of Europe - sifting the over opinionated, seeking wise writing. Right now I'm thinking about the New Hampshire Primaries. I wrote to my friend, Tony, in New England. With Helen he visited us in Greece five years ago. I'd not seen him since I was a young man in Philadelphia, working briefly in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966..

Dear Tony and Helen. I imagine your woods lovely, dark and deep amid the snow we seldom see here. I think of you both regularly and wonder how you are. And how the world looks from New England.  We don’t go back to Corfu until the second week of April. Greece seems too far away, but I am now and then assailed, almost assaulted, by news from the rest of the world. One friend’s Christmas greeting included the impression that we live in times that imitate the start of the first world war.
We are enjoying writing on the tabula rasa’s of two grandchildren - Oliver (coming up 4) and Hannah (2). They’ve already been three times to stay with us in Corfu, Here in Birmingham I’m entrusted with explaining to Ollie the world of growing vegetables,...

..walking beside canals, riding on trams and trains and ascending top front of double-decker buses drawing pictures in the condensation on the big windows, ...

...visiting art galleries where, for a child, everything from a floor pattern, banister or a reception counter is as true a work of art as paintings in frames and sculptures on pedestals... 

Oliver beside an unknown Tiki in Birmingham Art Museum

...not to mention the  ‘installations’ you aren’t supposed to touch. All part of of 'every common sight…apparell'd in celestial light…the glory and the freshness of a dream. Meantime we’re also busy with care of Lin’s parents - 91 and 97.

Arthur in the kitchen

They looked after us once. Lin sends her love. We both hope you and your family are well. X

T replied with a happy group photo of his descendants amid American snow...

Dear Simon, Here is a photo  of our family minus O who's currently working for the International Medical Corp (IMC is like Médecins Sans Frontières) H and I are nervous about that but she loves it... we are going over to visit her in late May (not in ... but in Jordan!) As you can see, we are blessed amid all the misfortunes of others.  Snow?  Alas until (literally) as I began to reply to your email we had NONE.  Now it is snowing—we have about 4” on the ground.  We only expect about another 3” but still it is lovely that our climate still knows how to make snow.  We thought it had forgotten how!!!  Now the woods are dark and silent. Lovely. The world from New England?  We are biting our nails to see what the New Hampshire Primary election will bring tomorrow.  Trump is a buffoon and bully but I think he may have over-reached.  I think he would be easier to defeat in November than Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.  It would be awful if we got any of them as President! Cruz with his fanatical religiosity really scares me. As Europe learned in the 30 years’ war, church and state don’t mix. ....

The hanging, one of 18 prints by Jacque Callot' - The Miseries and Misfortunes of War 1633

However, no one is very enthusiastic about Hillary so she might just be defeatable by a Cruz or Rubio.  Analytical arguments by HC just won’t appeal to peoples’ heart strings.  Myself, I am a Bernie Sanders supporter but think it will be very hard for him to beat Hillary in the primaries with all her “experience”.  Bernie has a very agile mind. I used to see him in Vermont when I lived there.  That agility will make up for his alleged lack of experience.
WWI:  Your friend’s thought about the prelude to WWI has passed my mind too.

There are just so many accidental mistakes or misunderstandings that could easily happen and trip off a worldwide conflagration.  Ironic isn’t it in the context of your friend’s thought that the current instability in the Middle East is an outgrowth of the fall of the Ottoman empire in WWI followed by the imposition of the Sykes-Picot agreement by the British and French carving up the region between themselves.

Greece?  I was going to email you and ask how Corfu is doing.  I gather it is  relatively unscathed but the migrant flood but poor Greece.  There it is with an enormous economic recession resulting from Germany’s hard money policies and the rest of the EU doesn’t seem to be lifting a finger to help Greece cope with the flood of refugees on to Lesbos.  The EU could at least write off Greece’s debt. Of course the US is pathetic having only taken in 2,800 refugees in the last year.
Congratulations on your two grandchildren and the clear sense of renewed wonder they are conveying to you and Lin.  Our’s, as you can see, are a bit older but as wondrous and real companions now they are adults. We jaded old folks need to open our minds as you both are evidently doing. I am embarked (barely) on a short book in the form of a letter to my grandchildren about what an incredible experience it has been to be alive at our particular time in history.  Think of it: from cosmology....

2012 Hubble XDF image showing galaxies from 13.2 billion years ago

....to genetic engineering, to plate tectonics , the internet, etc, etc.  It is truly unlike any other time in human history save (maybe) during development of agriculture  beginning 12,000 years ago. The expansion of human consciousness in our lives is unprecedented.  And most of it is due the recognition since the 1700s that human knowledge is intrinsically fallible.  But of course, even with all the opportunities it is a very dangerous time. (see above and WWI) because so many people are frightened of the enormous changes and frightened of the human responsibility for knowledge and its application. So they are recoiling and striking back like the jihadists or the Christian right in the US.
It is so hard seeing one’s parents reach the end.  I hope Lin’s parents are having some fun and laughs out of these remaining moments. It is also hard on Lin and you as I discovered when my mother reached this stage. It can be quite startling. Suddenly you can no longer ask them (your parents) for verification of “what happened when—“  No you can’t—do what has been your resource for your entire life. Now you are the latitude and longitude by which your children and grandchildren position themselves. They come to you.  Best wishes, Lin, for many poignant moments to share with your parents.
I must go now to watch BBC America.  It was wonderful to get your email and glad to hear you both are doing well as are we. Helen is still working part-time at the hospital primarily encouraging mothers with breastfeeding help. I just turned 76!  Life’s a bit more uncertain now - to recollect Andrew Marvell’s thought “Had we but time enough, this coyness madam would be no crime.  But at my back I seem to hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near.” Otherwise AOK with time enough to enjoy this marvelous landscape and house.  Rather like the Temple at Bassae.

Much love and best wishes for this year to you both. T & H

The Temple of Bassae in Oichalia, Messenia, by Edward Lear 1854

*** *** ***
The earth is so damp I'm reluctant to plant anything, for all the advice on radio and internet about what should be in the earth during January and February. Where I plan to site the greenhouse on my allotment is the bed in which for two years I've grown Jerusalem Artichokes. I've started digging them up.

I delight in the journey of these mucky clay-sticky Jerusalem artichoke tubers forked from the sodden soil of my allotment, washed in a chilly waterbutt, taken home, peeled, chopped, parboiled, drained and sautéed in butter with a dash of minced garlic, bay leaves, white wine vinegar.

Late summer in Greece

Our balcony is festooned with grapes. I eat them pips and all. Down at Piatsa with Mark we were canvassed at the weekend by SYRIZA's MP Fotini Vaki. I took the opportunity to give Richard Pine's latest book - this one about Greece 'through Irish eyes' - some exposure...The general election is next Sunday - tomorrow. The village will be full of voters and cars but there's far less excitement about this election than the one in January. Alexis Tsipras is now another bail-out signatory, mucking down to EU conditions due in October as part of the next tranche of prop-up credit...

At Piatsa on Democracy Street with my friend Mark and Fotini Vaki MP

I have two complimentary copies of Richard's book, one for me and one for Angeliki Metallinos, whose grandfather's work appears on page 244...

The other day, a while away, we had a family supper to celebrate Arthur's and Dorothy's 70th wedding anniversary. Cards at Clinton's ran out at the 50th. Our waitress kindly took a photo of us at Toby's Carvery in Sutton...

Guy, Simon, Richard, Linda, Hannah, Dorothy, Arthur, Amy and Oliver

It's almost astonishing that Dorothy is enduring three weeks of radiotherapy for cancer; treatment she undergoes with stoicism and dignity - a few minutes every afternoon at the cancer unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston. Sometime near the end of last year, in part as a result of pressure from Lin, the medics switched from care that could be regarded as 'palliative', to therapy at probably the best hospital in the kingdom. They made a plastic mould of Dot's face that holds her head steady as, lying on a table, the large and very expensive linear accelerator directs beams at specific points on her face, targeting her nasal cavity cancer - result, Lin's surmised, of her mum's work years ago in the leather industry in Walsall.

My father-in-law and my mother-in-law - Dorothy (91) and Arthur (97) in our garden in Handsworth

*** *** ***
Minor irritations, that didn’t bother great Achilles…

Outside the unique Achilleon Palace with Lin's cousin Val beside Herter's cheesy sculpture of the dying Achilles 1884

...like filling my paper coffee cup during turbulence at 30.000 feet from small spits of milk squeezed from a fistful of catering packs passed down from the passing trolley...

Sent 22 Aug 2015 by Simon B ... Your ref: *** Parking charge notice: *** This morning I received Debt Recovery Plus Ltd’s demand for payment of an unpaid parking charge dated **/08/2014. Can we proceed to court on this matter at our mutual and earliest convenience, rather than any party wasting further time exchanging correspondence?  I have evidence to present to a judge from a file on this incident that goes back to the date of the charge, most of it involving certified letters and notices which received neither acknowledgement nor replies from UK Parking Control Ltd. Yours sincerely… 

Received 28th Aug. Thank you for your email regarding the above Parking Charge Notice (PCN). As per the British Parking Association’s (BPA) Code of Practice, Point 22.7, the time to challenge the charge has now expired and therefore access to the Independent Appeals Service (if applicable) is no longer available….I feel obligated to inform you that, under the Pre-Action Protocol of the Civil Procedural Rules, court action must only be viewed as a last resort. I am attempting to abide by this direction by trying to settle the matter amicably without court involvement. Your actions may be viewed as obstructive to this aim and will be made clear to the court should the matter escalate to such a stage. Please ensure that £150.00 is paid by 1th September 2015. Payment can be made online or by phone…. 

Sent 29 August 2015…I’ve asked for this matter to be brought to court so that I can, as well as presenting a defence, describe my attempts to communicate with your client, who failed to acknowledge that I had issued an appeal immediately after the imposition of the parking charge, failed to give my appeal due consideration and failed in their legal requirement to inform me of my right to appeal to an independent body. You claim to be attempting to comply with Pre-Action Protocol of the Civil Procedural Rules, as this is actually the responsibility of the private parking company, not of a debt collection agency. I deny this alleged debt. Any debt can only be established by a court hearing. No court hearing has taken place regarding this speculative invoice and UKPC had no legal grounds for referring this matter to a debt collection agency. I am under no obligation to have any communication with you and, should I receive any further correspondence from you, other than an acknowledgement of this letter, will seek compensation for harassment. Yours truly, etc 

Received 1st September 2015...Thank you for your email. Harassment has been referred to and therefore I feel obliged to point out that under S1(3)(c) of The Harassment Act 1997, a course of conduct that someone alleges to be harassment will not be deemed so if the person who pursued it shows that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable. Under the circumstances our course of action has been entirely reasonable and in no way reaches the high threshold of harassment. Our company has legitimately pursued recompense for a breach of the terms and conditions attached to our client’s site. Kind regards 

Sent 1st September…Dear ***. You are saying that pursuing someone for a debt unproven by a court is ‘reasonable’. UK courts disagree. I will treat this letter as an acknowledgement of my last email as requested. Yours….I

On other matters...in early spring we had a water meter installed. The work sprung a leak on our side of the meter. The water company requires us, who'd asked for a meter to save on water rates exceeding £800, to pay the repair of the supply pipe to our house. A friendly and intelligent agency plumber found the leak under our driveway. There’d be no need to delve expensively under the house. He warned that mending would take many weeks while his company gained permission to access the pavement a few inches from our frontage. 8 weeks later and into autumn this permission has yet to be obtained. The leak continues. We hear it in the pipes. Our insurance covers the work, for an excess charge of £200. We’d feared more, and the water company, on a one-off condition, guarantees a post meter installation refund of the charge for the leaked water. We wait.

...and another, in our attic next to our header tank  - increasingly rare in these days of closed systems – there’s an expansion tank. For about a year water heated to provide a shower would, after a few minutes of the boiler lighting, splutter forcibly out of the pipe into that tank, overflow it and leak through the landing ceiling into a plastic tray placed to collect the worst of the drips, whose brownish water made discreet drip lines down the plasterwork. Yacub, our neighbour, a heating engineer, after repeated pleas inspected and suggested a new thermostat. I dug out the paperwork for our 30 year-old boiler, identified make and mark; bought the part on ebay for under £30. A second visit by Yacub. He suggested the thermostat wasn’t the problem. Perhaps, he surmised, "You need a thermostat on your boiler tank upstairs" “Perhaps?” There the problem rested through warm months until we thought of winter. I phoned Dermott, recommended by a neighbour, who came almost at once. His inspection said the boiler needed a thermostat. I dug out the spare from ebay. He fitted it in minutes and waited with, us testing the repair. £140 for his expertise. A worry off our list. We left the plastic tray where it was – in case.
*** ***
In early September I’m alerted by a text from a a friend, that the company that produced and retails my stepfather’s recovered TV programmes has ‘gone into administration’. I ask about the timing of my next royalty cheque – due in August, a useful sum.

Dear X. I have heard troubling news that xxx have been put into administration. If this is not the case please reassure me to that effect. If it is true can you please forward me contact details for the administrator. Yours S 

Dear Simon. I am sorry I haven't spoken to you, but have been out at meeting for the last couple of days. We are having to sell the business, through no fault of our own, which hopefully should be finalised in the next couple of days. The purchaser will no doubt be in touch with you. No, we are not in Administration, I can only guess who told you we were. Best wishes X 

Dear X. So I miss Jan-Jun royalties!  Can I assume that this is 'for the time being' and that what I should have been paid in August will be swiftly paid by your new owners. When can I expect the new owners to honour the obligations they acquired with the purchase of the business? I’d appreciate contact details rather than having to wait until they choose to contact me. I am, as you may imagine, seriously vexed at missing over £xxxx expected for half-year earnings on sale of OOT DVDs. Yours Simon 

I'm not at all happy with the situation myself Simon. It's all due to AAAA, at the end of April we were due a payment for CDs we supplied for £140,000. We received from AAAA £10,000 and £130,000 worth of stock back for credit. It made YYYY, our bankers, panic, wanting their overdraft repaid ASAP. We have sold the racking business, but (are) still to be paid some money. We have two sealed offers for the rest of the business. It will be decided who gets it and the terms in the next few days. Best regards X Sent …from my iPhone

It’s my guess that the company is already in administration.

These things would have no more effect than a slightly barked shin on my normal sense of slightly detached optimism and well-being, especially when balanced against such good things as my shared involvement in maintaining the profile of Black Patch Park…

- The plan to build on part of it still exists but in 18 months has made no progress tho’ we stay in congenial touch with Tony Deep MBE of Eastside Foods... 

Andrews letter to Sandwell MBC this July…. Our constitution states: “The Friends of Black Patch Park is a group committed to the retention in perpetuity of the whole of Black Patch Park and to the improvement of the Park for the benefit of all local people.“ Endorsing a development that would see a significant proportion of the park disappear is therefore a major step for the Friends to take and will in our view require much more detailed information on what is being proposed and dialogue on how any proposed development might be done in such a way as to minimise the social and environmental impacts, while maximising the benefits to the park – its heritage and biodiversity – and the current and future and park users.

The Friends Christmas card in 2006 - The Black Patch in winter (photo: Karen Fry)

- Wikipedia’s entry on Charlie Chaplin does not admit the man was born on the Black Patch – does anyone? – but no longer confidently claims London as his birthplace
- With support from my fellow Friends of Black Patch Park I’ve suggested the park become the responsibility of Birmingham – message to the committee”

Hi everyone. Below my words is an acknowledgement from the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) . I am copying this to Cllr Sharon Thompson of Soho Ward who has shown an active interest in this proposal and endorses the idea that Black Patch be brought back into Birmingham as her electorate comprise its main users.
QUOTE TO LGBCE consultation on 4th Sept 2015 from Simon Baddeley on behalf of the FoBPP: For the committee of the Friends of Black Patch Park I have been asked to make recommendations to alter the boundary of Soho Ward in Birmingham to include this park, which, until 1974, was inside Birmingham. Black Patch Park is presently inside Sandwell MBC, bounded by Foundry Lane, Woodburn Road, Perrott Street and Kitchener Street, at grid reference SP038888. I’ve not marked the consultation map with specific details as the Boundary Commission may, via other consultations, have an expert understanding of ways to include this green space in Birmingham’s Soho Ward. The argument for including Black Patch Park within Soho, has been informed by discussion with Soho Ward members, Cllrs Sharon Thompson and Chaman Lal, who, with us, argue that most users of the park, and those most likely to approach their councillors about the park, and its unused community centre, are nearby residents of Birmingham. Over 20 years all but a few Sandwell residents, once living next to the Black Patch, have moved. The main users of this potentially attractive small green space are separated from it, not by geography, but by a council boundary that we propose should be changed. (END)

…and the fecundity of the allotment.
“A work of art” surmises Winnie “That’s what it’ll be!”
We sit under the shed veranda sipping tea looking past the grape-fringed trellis admiring our new fruit cage – a structure held together by carefully propped bamboos and bright green scaffolding net.

Winnie and her boy on Plot 14

I've numbered every bed at last.

..and started notes...

PLOT 14 ~ 8 Sept 2015

Bed	Notes
1	Asparagus – 8 plants from Scylla’s plots lifted and replanted 2/9/15 Daff bulbs planted 9/9 in corners. [Potatoes sown and harvested March-June – wireworm)
2	Grazing rye (Secale cereale) seeded 6/9/15 – experiment with green manure. Spring 2016 dig in
3	This bed (perhaps others wireworm infested – ruining potatoes). Potato traps set (spuds on sticks under soil) 9/9 daff bulbs planted on two edges [Onions sown and harvested – Jan-July’15. Some onion fly]
4	Runner beans – seedlings planted June 2015.  West end of bed: turnips planted from seed in June. Not thinned enough?
5	Brussel sprouts – seedlings planted June. Attacked by cabbage white caterpillars despite netting, also slugs. Used pellets, and cut off egged and skeletonised leaves.
6	Beetroots. Grown from seeds germinated at home and replanted mid-June. Mixed success. (Peas sown and harvested – March-early June’15. Leaves damaged by pigeons)
7	Fallow [Potatoes sown and harvested March-Aug’15]
8	Garlic – cloves from previous crop planted 7/9/15
9	Aubergine. 4 plants from seedlings in mid-June. Unlikely to fruit.
10	Swedes planted from seed in early June. North: Brussels sprouts (ditto as for bed 5
11	Jerusalem artichoke clump. Regrowing from last year’s tubers. Apple tree
12	Pear. Balm scented poplar. Buddleia
13	Apple. Plum. Stone garden
14	Pond. Various edge plants. Wild strawberry, rushes, speargrass, Chives, Lobelia 4/9/15
15	Rhubarb x 2 planted March 2015. No harvest 1st year
16	fallow. Couple of transplanted parsnips.
17	Parsnips. Already harvesting. Germinated in early March 2015 and sown out late March.
18	East: turnip planted June. West: Winter cabbage seeded June. All netted.
19	Brussels sprouts – seedlings planted mid-June.  As in beds 5 & 10, attacked by cabbage white caterpillars despite netting, also slugs. Used pellets, and cut off egged and skeletonised leaves.
20	Mountain Ash.  Thyme & Rosemary trans-planted from Scylla’s plot 3/9/15.  Rhubarb planted in March’15. No harvest 1st year
21	Runner beans. Planted from seedlings in early June. Harvesting started mid-Aug
22	Fruit net. Raspberry, tayberry, gooseberry bushes planted in late Aug.
23	Fruit net. Raspberry, tayberry planted late Aug.  West: cauliflower [Broad beans sown and harvested April-June’15. Winnie planted in April after my sowing in March failed]
24	Fruit net. Strawberries planted end of Aug – transplants from Scylla’s plot

3 compost bays were built at the end of March 2015. Usable earth in Bay 3, from riddled soil recovered from plot digging and added well rotted leaf-mould. Older compost in bay 1 seems working down well (8/9/15). Later material with added accelerator has gone into bay 2. This is warm. On 5/9/15 I experimented by added approx 75 brandling worms to bays 1 & 2. Both 1 & 2 are covered with carpet over 6” thick insulation blocks.

There are also 2 plastic upright composters for immediate organic material.
*** *** ***
...and a message from the Chair of Handsworth Helping Hands

Hello Simon. Preparing Environmental article ‎for Birchfield Bugle and wondering how many residents we would have serviced over last year with our activities. I'm thinking 1500 households and say 20 Vulnerable individuals, but I could be wrong, any idea on tonnage dropped off to Holford, furniture recycled, etc? Cheers, Mike

Dear Mike. Excellent. My guess - part conjectural. Tonnage of waste to Holford during 2014-2015 under our charity disposal licence is about 13 tonnes - all recorded in the van log. We’ve also probably removed a great deal more in the skips we and partners pay for when doing street clean-up days, so you could add, at a guess, at least another 20 tons ,to which you might add the skimming off of overloads of skips by Council Fleet and Waste. 1500 households could include all residents in streets where we run clean-up days as well as households benefiting from our scavenging - removing specific items from an address and at the same time an eyesore from neighbouring homes.
Might be better to use van log to list all the streets where we have had both ‘Skip-it Don’t tip it’ days as well as the two places we’ve done or started ‘Clean up Green up’ projects as well as various planters all over the area.
I think we’ve assisted more than 20 vulnerable individuals with clearance, furniture moving, gift recycling, gardening, and specific assistance with phoning and contacting people needing help they couldn’t get themselves from BCC and/or Midland Heart - but again we should add these all up next committee.
I think HHH has (with a very small number of mostly pension-age volunteers) established a reputation for ‘working’, ‘getting things done’, even ‘settling disputes through tactful conversations with neighbours’ (educational work re collection dates and how to fill recycling bins etc.). We have I believe always been polite and shown good will in even frustrating situations (in other words we are Handsworth street-wise’, plus we seem to have done well in partnerships with MH, Fleet and Waste, Community Foundation, and BRAG...and of course many residents in streets we’ve worked over the year/s. We’re also transparent as regards accounts and minutes of our meetings.
I am sure you won’t crow about this, Mike. Complement those who’ve helped us; mention generous donations to HHH, some of which, if not receipted cash donations, include gifts we’ve passed on to Birmingham Charities - SIFA Fireside, Red Cross, City Mission, and the Birmingham Dogs’ Home, also the pensioners' buffet at The Stork Pub last Christmas.
We should also mention our lively use of Facebook with illustrations for social networking and exchange of information with residents, city officers and elected members about HHH but also as a noticeboard for other local events in Handsworth, Lozells and Birchfield, plus work done identifying unoccupied, abandoned properties that have become rubbish magnets and, in one case, a cannabis factory. Lobbying members and officers, HHH has managed to draw attention to vacant properties whose owners are supposed to pay extra on top of council tax for leaving them empty. We have also dealt with the gating of alleys, cul-de-sacs and vulnerable green spaces where security has been lax, identifying who is responsible for maintenance and replacement. In this way HHH have ensured that some of the ‘grot spots’ in the area no longer attract fly-tipping. We have also, without becoming party political, been using reports on Fix My Street and photos on the social web, to keep the issue of street cleaning and tidiness on the Council’s agenda.

You might mention that commendation from the last Lord Mayor last March! Best wishes, Simon

Tea break for HHH volunteers courtesy of a resident