In this post I cover an oft-requested topic. How my allotment centred life has helped me manage Adult Onset Still’s Disease (AOSD) and Fibromyalgia. AOSD is a very rare auto-inflamatory disease, as a result the information on the web is drawn from a small sample of patients and isn’t very...
In this video I explain why I started an Allotment, what it means to me and how the three plots work together as a little Allotment empire. In brief, I retired a couple of years ago due to ill health and I got an allotment to fill the time that...
I’ve been interviewed on the radio every day this week, if you are keen on gardening or even better have an allotment, you might like to listen to the interviews, each one is only a few minutes long. The links jump straight to the interview. I also cover how the...
This video describes the way that I’ve designed all of the raised bed frames on my allotment plot to be a standard size, with optional mesh, poly-tunnel and cold frame tops. The frames can be stacked to create deep beds and hot beds too. The video then goes into more...
It’s taken me a while, but I’m now in a suitable mood for setting new years resolutions. December saw me laid up with man flu and January had me mostly confined to the house with food poisoning and a torn stomach muscle, but all these problems are now fading and...
Although New year’s resolutions seem to be going out of fashion I still like them. I print them out and stick them on my desk wall but I also have them on my phone in Google Keep, each one decorated with a nice photo as a visual reminder. I think...
This post isn’t for me, I’ve already committed to retirement, it’s an answer to the regular stream of friends and colleagues who ask me this question, it’s my attempt at a well thought through answer, rather than a quick email reply. To get started it might be worth taking a...
I’ve come to the end of my first calendar year as an allotmenteer and it’s been life changing, I expected to enjoy growing my own food, but it turned out that there were lots of benefits that I really didn’t expect to get from the allotment: the wonderful sense of...
Today is my first retirement anniversary and it feels great! Deciding to retire was an amazingly good decision for me, much better than I’d hoped for and I had high hopes – although there were a few weeks of continuous rain over winter when I consider moving abroad for the...
I was at the peak of my physical fitness and at my most optimal weight back when I was 25. Now I’m 52 and retired I decided that I would try and return myself to that same position, when I was able to commute 25 miles to work on my...