[With unrelenting mattock I break the clods
I harry the weeds and thus improve the soil.]

The mattock appears with great regularity in Latin and Greek texts on husbandry, from Hesiod to Virgil and Columella, and it is a strangely underused tool here in the UK where we prefer a combination of spade, fork and hoe. But with the mattock you can make short work of digging over a patch of land. Last week I took the unrelenting mattock and carved up two of my weedy beds. The appearance of the vegetable garden, though, is still a disgrace. It’s the paths. They are covered in tufts of grass and other weeds. I was advised to put gravel down on them, also wood ash to kill weeds. I have given much thought to both these suggestions at great length, but I have yet to act on them. Now is also the time when I should be manuring, but again I haven’t done it yet. I must act soon.

ON THOSE wonderful hot sunny days of mid-October, I made sure that I went for walks along the cliffs after lunch. One day I took Henry with me, and we walked down to the lower cliff path. We drank from the waterfall, watched buzzards and gazed out to sea form rocks. Henry rightly said that the rocky path reminded him of Lundy. When we arrived home, I saw that we’d been rambling for three hours and must have walked about five miles. which I thought was terrifically impressive for a four year old. And Henry never once whined or complained; on the contrary, he was still gambolling along at the end of our walk.

ON SUNDAY, Brian came round to give us our first ferreting lesson. The basic principle of ferreting, for those who don’t know, is this: you peg little nets over each of the rabbit holes in a warren. Then you slip a few ferrets down the holes. The rabbits, terrified by the ferrets, bolt from their holes and try to escape. The run straight into the nets, which close around them. They are then humanely dispatched and you can take them home for your pot. That is the theory but we didn’t manage to catch any on Sunday. We strolled up to a nearby field with our ferrets, Twister and Whisper, in a cat carrying box, and found a warren in a wall. Brian showed us how to place the nets over the holes. We then let the ferrets out of the box. Brian had brought two: Twister and Whisper’s mother, and one of their sisters. They sniffed around each other. We then picked up the ferrets and slipped them into the rabbit holes, down which they seemed very happy to go, curious creatures that they are. It is a terrible fact, by the way, that it is illegal to use ferrets to hunt rabbits in the US, out of some hypocritcial concern for bunny welfare. Down went the ferrets, and after a terrific rumbling from underground, we saw a rabbit shoot out of the wall about thirty yards away from us, through a hole that clearly we hadn’t spotted. Our job was not an easy one because there were thick layers of gorse everywhere, which hid the holes. Two rabbits also bolted on the other side of the wall. We tried a couple of other spots but could not find a good warren. Then we had one last go at the original spot, but the rabbits had clearly cottoned on to what was happening, and we had completely lost the element of surprise. We did see two rabbits, but they just wandered quite happily in and out of their warren. There was no danger of them bolting into our nets. So no rabbits, but it was a great introduction and the whole experience had made me look at the walls and the fields in a completely new way. They had come alive to me. They were vibrant entities rather than just passive objects of contemplation. I sensed that poaching could connect you with the land in a way I had not previously understood. A hunting expedition also gives a real purpose to a walk. The children enjoyed it very much. And both our ferrets came out of the holes all right. At one point, I worried that we might never see them again. But there they were, with muddy noses, doing their job.

ENDS

MY CABBAGES have done well. I kill a dozen caterpillars each day and while the leaves now resemble a piece of delicate Breton lacework, the cabbages themselves seem sold enough. Victoria made one into a Russian style stew with bits of chorizo. The kale plants are also blooming, as are the sprouting broccoli, which should be ready for harvesting in the Spring. I only wish I had planted out more brassica plants. I harvested the last of the French and runner beans and cooked them and pickled them. I don’t really know why I did this, as I don’t like runner beans and I don’t like pickle. It would have been far more sensible to make them into a chutney but I couldn’t find a recipe. I think anyway next year I will not waste my time with runner beans but concentrate on the really delicious blauhilde French climbing beans and perhaps some dwarf beans. Also to report: I dug up a few remaining beetroot which were excellent. The pumpkin plants seemed to have died a death. They have wilted. I blame the hens for dust-bathing next to them. I plucked one tiny squash and I think I will now throw the plants away and dig over that particular bed very thoroughly and add a lot of manure. I suspect that the soil was a bit thin, as all the courgette plants I tried there also failed. The raspberry plants, having been slowed down when the pony ate them, are growing back with renewed vigour and I am hoping for a little fruit in a couple of weeks’ time. October is the month for sowing broad beans so I shall do this. I also plan to sow a lot of lettuce and rocket and so on in pots around the front door.

OUR EGG production is down. Most days we collect only two. Neil Scott reminds me of the George Orwell diary entries which read simply: “one egg today.” “Two eggs today.” The two young ones, though, are puffing out nicely and look like they will be much prettier than their plain brown mothers. I am planning to buy a digital camera and so I may in future include one or two pictures with these diaries.

ENDS

TUESDAY: TO LICHFIELD, for a talk organized by Sarah Henshaw of the very excellent Book Barge bookshop. The enterprising Sarah set up this business a few months ago and has created a superb independent bookshop which very much reflects her own good taste: every book is carefully chosen and there is none of the gaudy commercialism which you see in a Waterstone, with barely a Dan Brown to be seen. Alongside the new books, she has a very good selection of second hand goodies: old Penguins and Pelicans and beautiful old hardbacks. There is also a deck-chair, and the shop will sometimes rock gently as a wave passes by. It is a truly literary bookshop that manages completely to avoid being pretentious.

As Lichfield or course was Dr Johnson’s birthplace, and as September 14th was the tercentenary of his birth, it seemed natural to discuss Johnson’s key role in the germination of the Idler magazine: it was from his series of essays of that name – scandalously underestimated by his biographers – that I was inspired to start my own 20th century Idler. Dr Johnson was comfortingly lazy as well as productive. The sad thing is that he spent his life castigating himself when there was no need. He was a religious man and I blame the Protestant religion: had Johnson been born three hundred years previously, he would have been a pre-Reformation Christian and would have lived a far less guilt-burdened life as a result.

Reading one of the new biographies on my way home, I was reminded of Johnson’s constant money worries and also of his famous line: “No one but a block-head ever wrote except for money.” Today it is a constant source of surprise to me why so many people waste their time splurging out worthless blogs which probably no one will read and which certainly no one will ever pay for. Therefore I update his quip and assert: “No one but a blog-head ever wrote except for money.”

Thanks to Sarah for organizing a very enjoyable evening and please do visit her shop if you are in or near Lichfield: the website is here.

NOW IS THE season to make resolutions and my advice is: don’t! Of all the depressing and spirit-sapping inventions of the Puritan Revolution, this idea of making resolutions to behave better in the future is one of the most futile and absurd. The usual one is “work harder”. Well, what a nonsense! Where has all our hard work got us?

Resolutions are always broken and therefore they make you feel bad twice: once when you were making them in a spirit of strict self-criticism, and the second time when you break them, which makes you feel like an awful loser. The answer is to stop making any effort in anything and abandon yourself to Providence. It was an excess of effort and zeal that got us into this mess in the first place.

Now more than ever you need to be easy on yourself. It’s surely becoming clearer that hard work does not lead to happiness. Not hard work for other people, at any rate. All that hard work that people put into their job, only to be told that they are losing it due to a complicated set of financial shenanigans that was nothing to do with them at all. All that hard saving people put into their pensions, only to find out that it’s gone, all gone, thanks to the reckless greed of someone in London.

I would dearly love to send out a message to the newly idle of this country: fear not! A new world of hanging around at home and enjoying everyday life is around the corner! Jobs are the most over-rated creation of the Industrial Revolution. Even the sober Work Foundation admits that two thirds of us are miserable in them. So why be miserable if you lose it? This should be a time of great cheer! And think of the small fortune you will save in tax, morning lattes, bus fares, taxis, suits, ties, dry-cleaning bills and drinks after work with colleagues you don’t like?

Now job-free, you will be able to loaf around at home and start up a modest business or do some part-time work. Retrain as a carpenter and rediscover joy in work. Sit around doing nothing at home all day while your children get to know you again. Take naps after lunch, Thank the kind Lord who has freed you from the mind forg’d manacles of late capitalism and allowed you to enter the élite leisured class, who control their own hours of work and leave much time over for reading, meditating and contemplating. The Ancient Romans had no taste for work.To them it was slavish to sell your time to an employer.

Sure they may be some losses. Holidays, cars, cleaners. But really these are small sacrifices when you consider the beneficial effect on family life, all the time that you will be able to spend at home pottering about, making chutney and strange things out of wood.

I know this to be true, because we’ve been through our own self-inflicted financial crisis at home. It happened six yearsago when I gave up high-earning work to live in a rented farmhouse and write a book. My income was reduced to a fifth of its former level. But we never starved, we were never cold, we always had plenty of beer, wine and meat. To a yeoman of 1450, we would have been seen as living at the height of luxury.

So there is nothing to worry about. With thrift comes a great sense of responsbility and satisfaction. To be thrifty is to be creative, to take control. Our real needs can be met cheaply. It’s also true that when you fall out of that old system, you rediscover the power of community. You start to meet them. People start to help each other.

We’ve been reading Little House on the Prairie in the evenings. It’s wonderful. Here is a family who built their own house out of nothing, who were thrilled beyond belief when Pa brought back eight panes of glass from town for their windows. And how little Laura and Mary help round the house! That is the spirit we need to bring back: children are for chores! Yes, there are many reasons to be cheerful this year! Truly, this is the year of the truly idle parent!

ENDS

Order now and show the world you are proud to be idle.