Sunday 11 May 2008

It's summertime

Today is summer. Well, maybe technically according to the calander it isn't, I never know when seasons are supposed to start or finish, but if you were here today you would agree it is definitely summer. Has been for a few days in fact.

Those of you unfamiliar with UK weather might wonder why that is worth commenting on (apart from the fact that us English have a reputation for discussing the weather endlessly) but if you've ever been here for Glastonbury Festival then you'll know that good weather right now is definitely worth commenting on. Last year IIRC it had already rained every day for about a month at this point and it carried on for another 3 months after that and that's no exaggeration. Well, a bit of an exaggeration maybe, but really not much.

So, we are all desperately praying that this isn't another false start and the annual monsoon isn't waiting just around the corner. The run up to Glastonbury always seems to involve biblical amounts of rain but maybe, just maybe, not this year. Please. I would dearly love to be able to sit around listening to some good music and chatting with good people rather than taking part in the annual re-enactment of the battle of the Somme, surely not too much to ask once every decade or so?

Anyway, back to today. Having been for a walk and picnic on the hills, a pint in a pub garden and a visit to the supermarket, and finding it to be still only mid-afternoon, I decided it was time to do some 'pottering in the garden'. That's something else the English seem to be renowned for although I most definitely am not, usually. But today I had a mission: to pot up my chilli plants.

Somewhere in the last decade I developed a fondness for extremely spicey food and, like many addicts, ended up going even further and trying to produce my own. So for the last few years I've been growing chillis, various varieties with various degrees of success.

This year sadly my initial attempts failed and none of the dozen seeds I planted in March developed into anything at all, I've no idea why except that the source of the seeds (central Bristol) may have been slightly less than reliable. So on friday, when it was also summer, we went down to Devon to get some seedlings from the fine folk at South Devon Chilli Farm and came home equipped with one Jalapeno Telica, one Hungarian Wax, one Pimiento de Padron and one Ring of Fire (yes, it really is called that).

BTW, I know it doesn't warn you anywhere in the blog title but I'm afraid I might be spending a lot of time telling you about my chilli plants over the next few months. Well, if you're reading my blog I assume it's because you want to know about what matters to me, right? Well, there you go, chillis matter to me. Not as much as perhaps my wife or my cat or whether Pink Floyd will ever re-form matter to me but enough to be worthy of comment. A bit like the rather good weather we're having, actually...

And so, having cleverly brought this monologue full circle I'll stop now. At some point I will tell you how chillis can play an important part in your experience of Glastonbury (or any other) festival but right now I need to go back out and sit in the sun and watch my plants grow.