I make no excuses for re-visiting this subject. Many people have heard of Yorkshire tea, but not many people know where it’s from. The T fields of Barnsley are awash with product. Rotherham has one or two cultivated areas of tea production. It’s about the only cultivated thing in Rotherham. Although they do make the most excellent greenhouses there, I know I have one, so you would expect cultivation to be rife, but the tea grows better in Barnsley.

People should know that Yorkshire tea is harvested almost entirely at night by ex miners watched over by their ‘norahbatties’ which is the local name for supervisors. It is done almost entirely at night in the small hours, look out for it if you visit the area. Approaching the pickers or their ‘batties’ is not recommended, however a short greeting of ‘ Nahten’ might elicit a response.

Missing the Summer Fete season with lockdown, not many of these have been going on, so where are all those ladies what bake. I love a Vicky Sponge, I even have a liking for the industrial manufactured versions with their wafer thin covering of ‘jam’ and eight of an inch of ‘buttercream”.

I thought you ought to know that.

We’ve all been buying a lot on-line in these days of lockdown, if it can really be called that here in the UK where we seem to be considerably behind the curve. The latest debacle being “Wear a mask”, or ” Don’t bother” or even worse “Why bother?”. We’ll find out in time that we should all be wearing them, especially in shops. Listening to a government minister on the radio this morning obfuscating on whether we should wear one or not was enough to get my blood pressure rising unhealthily. It seems that they cannot answer the simplest question put to them.

So, buying on-line it has been and in those days of considerable sunshine I got the hosepipe out to water the garden as often as possible in an effort to keep our new trees going. The pipe in question has the odd hole here and there so only about a third of the water that started the journey ended up at the end of the pipe, and faffing about with the pipe usually resulted in more water on me than on the trees. As the leaks were getting ridiculous I thought the investment in new hose might be the answer, and so it has proved to be.

After buying on line I was asked to review my purchase. I gave it 5 stars and reviewed it thus: “The hosepipe was of a pipe design and functioned exactly as required, the fact that exactly the same amount of water that went in one end seemed to come out of the other end without any diversion was new to me and was an added bonus. I’m hoping that this will continue for many years to come. I would not hesitate to recommend it to others who wish to transfer water. Please send my best wishes for a long and healthy life to the design and production people who made this all possible, may their gardens bloom forever”

The result of my purchase is naturally that it has started raining. I make no excuses for re-using a recent drawing, we are after all in the age of recycling. If you don’t like it you can always put a review in the comments section below, but like the government minister, I’m unlikely to either read it or take much notice.

I’ll be out in the garden trying to reduce my blood pressure.

I’ve been lucky to avoid taking medication until recently when I was obliged to start on some to get rid of an infection. As a bit of light reading I took a glance at the side effects for these anti biotics which were going to rescue me from pain and discomfort. Who writes this stuff? It’s all very careful and as a result I was tempted to the following a cartoon. Laughter being the best medicine and it’s the only one with multiple side effects that are not remotely harmful apart from deep guffawing which might put your back out, but a good sneeze can do that too.

I’m on the mend.