Spring time again in the garden
Posted by: Dav in General Gubbins on March 20th, 2011
Spring has finally sprung and I’ve taken advantage of having a well deserved Weekend Off to get caught up in the garden.
It’s not all good news unfortunately, a number of my woody bush fruits were more dead than I’d hoped, including last year’s fun guavas. Apparently they’re not hardy to -Yorkshire after all, neither was the rose nor the goji berry. The Honeyberry coped ok, and the currants and gooseberries are roaring back into growth.
Gooseberries Before
I took the time to give the Gooseberries their bi annual prune, clearing out the mass of growth and restoring their goblet shape a little. I’ve put the prunings into some gritty compost in the hope that they will strike and I’ll have even more bushes. I tried that last year with one of my red currants and whilst only one of those cuttings rooted, that’s growing on nicely.
Gooseberries after their prune
I’ve done quite well for a breadth of varieties of Stuff this year. A friend at work generously gave me a pile of accidentally chitted Jerusalem Artichokes, so I’m hoping they do better than this time last year. The roots are in season at the moment, which is suitably tasty.
I had a really good seed trading session with another friend yesterday, who introduced me to the Real Seed Company who seem to be a good halfway house between Chase Organics and the HDRA’s Heritage library service.
The beds have been dug over and raked and are warming up nicely in the sun, so I’ve direct sown a few rows of Spinach, Chard, Beetroot, Strawberry Spinach (it didn’t germinate last time I tried it but hey, optimism!), French, Runner and Borlotti Beans, Mangetout Peas, and Unwin’s Rainbow Mix of Carrots that I got for Christmas.
My usual potato buckets have been potatoed, I’m going for a lazy earthing up approach by half filling them now and I’ll finish filling the up in a couple of months time. It worked last year.
I didn’t get on with Spinach Tarpy last year, I didn’t like its leaves as much as a traditional breed and it bolted too easily, so I’ve gone for Thompson and Morgan’s Heritage Bloomsdale this year.
I’ve pinned this year’s tomato hopes on an RHS stamped bushy variety called Vilma, another dwarf early, which I’ve paired up with another super early bush variety called Latah, I really associate with its description “The plants are quite untidy. To be honest, you can’t really train them or support them in any way – but if you let them get on with it they really will make ripe tasty tomatoes earlier than you thought possible”.
I’ve sown a few flowers as well, including my fourth generation of Morning Glorys, I’m not exactly following a breeding programme, more that they’re dead easy to grow from seed that you’ve saved yourself. I’ve also got a few clumps of Alyssum and some third generation Marigolds.
A couple of pots of Coriander and Basil from Suffolk Herbs of Kelevedon, Essex for the Kitchen Window Sill have completed the collection.
Sakushi
I don’t normally do restaurant reviews, but I thought this gem was well worth sharing with the internet. Whilst in Sheffield, we took a leisurely dinner at a Japanese Restaurant that I found almost by accident on Google Maps whilst I was looking for a car park using street view. It’s tucked away behind the Cathedral and is just a few minutes walk away from the City Hall if you’re going to one of the events there.
Sakushi has got something for everybody, it’s got bar seats at the conveyor belt if you’re after a casual bite, half a dozen booths and a handful of normal tables. I think you’d fit in about 50 people when it’s really buzzing. I won’t copy out its menu, but its variety makes it stand out from some other places I’ve visited.
We arrived early in the evening service, I think we were the second or third party in there, but it soon filled up with other couples and some young groups of friends. A few people stopped by to take advantage of their takeaway service, which seemed like a great idea if you happened to be nearby. Actually, I think Yo! do a similar takeaway service from their menu if you’ve time to wait for their kitchen, but not to sit down and eat.
The front of house staff are friendly, welcoming and knowledgeable. They were delighted to discuss some of the more interesting dishes on offer as well as advise on things like which order to eat things in and portion sizes. As one of them said “you keep ordering, and I’ll keep bringing it”. Challenge accepted.
This was the first Japanese place that’s had a specials board, where you get the entire roll of a maki if you custom ordered it, rather than just a couple of slices.
We started with a Miso Soup and Sashimi. Miso soup is Miso soup, but the sashimi was just meltingly fresh, I couldn’t choose between fish but luckily they do platters of different sizes. I had a collection of salmon, tuna, seabass and what was either yellow tail or butterfish, beautifully presented on some real seaweeds and salads and a real leaf (rather than the green plastic one normally come across).
Sashimi (slightly nommed)
We followed this up with a few maki from the conveyor belt whilst the kitchen prepared some Kara Age Chicken and a hand roll of their in house speciality, the ‘Sakushi Roll’. This is clearly aimed at a western audience, the only thing missing was the mayo, but it was just divine with such a mix of fresh and saucy, crisp and juicy with the grilled eel providing a real kick of flavour. The mix of salmon and avocado is traditional enough, but to this was added a prawn tempura (I have no idea where on earth they found these prawns, they were enormous) and a good slice of Unagi, with a dash of kabayaki sauce to hold it together.
Mixed tempura
I love Teriaki sauce, so we settled for a dish of Teriaki Duck with a bowl of rice and a mixed collection of tempura. I bagsied the squid really quickly but there were some more of these enormous prawns and some excellent vegetables. I particularly rated the fan cut aubergine and disc of sweet potato. These were served with a nice light soy vinegar sauce rather than a heavy thai style dipping gloop.
I didn’t think I’d stand a chance of fitting myself around either of the cheesecakes, but we were brought some really nice green tea ice cream with two spoons to finish with. Next time we’re trying the black sesame ice cream, apparently it’s even nicer.
Japanese food of this quality is never cheap, but our bill for two came to £55, which includes four soft drinks. Whilst we did get completely carried away, I thought this offered fantastic value for money and I would definately go again if I’m ever within sniffing distance of the city.
Like I said, this offers a lot for everybody, whether you’re a keen eater of raw fish, prefer your meat grilled or are an avid vegetarian. It’s got a solid wine menu, starting at just £12 a bottle, with cocktails available on request. You could pop by for a £5 light lunch, phone through a take away order, have a sensible quick dinner with a bento box or choose one of their 25 main meal dishes.
There’s something about Japanese cuisine that leaves you feeling refreshed, light and happy. And, apparently, it even cures headaches.
Can you tell I liked it? 
York Cold War Bunker
For the first time in many years, I was organised enough to actually do something about York’s Resident’s Weekend this year. The overall jist is that for one weekend a year, the people who live in York (identified by having a York Card bit on their library cards) get to play tourist on the cheap as a thank you for putting up with the 7 million people who visit the city each year.
The main event for me was joining some friends on a tour of York’s very own nuclear bunker, which is normally tricky to visit because it’s only open twice a month if you’re not a group. Our tour was conducted by one of English Heritage’s knowledgable guides and there was a huge amount of information to try to take in.
York Cold War Bunker
Until 1991, it served as the Yorkshire Regional Headquarters for the Royal Observer Corps, which I hadn’t really heard much about since their role in the Second World War.
This organisation was made up almost entirely of a rotation of volunteers, each of which had to spend two hours a week practicing and training, with occasional 12, 24 or 36 hour stints once a year. It’s role was redefined in the late-1950s to be a network of relatively low-tech observation stations that would monitor and track nuclear strikes.
The narrow corridor, imagine it with supplies stacked up along it.
The observers had three tools available to help with their task. Ionising radiation was monitored from inside the bunkers with a sort of periscope with a geiger counter stuffed up it. Any blasts or bombs going off were watched using a pinhole camera, which had four pieces of paper inside a metal box with four small holes drilled in it. A hypothetical nuclear blast would burn a circle into the paper, through the hole. The paper was marked with a calibrated sequence of lines to give direction and elevation. But mostly volunteers were expected to rely upon a standard issue pair of mark 1 eyeballs.
The bunkers were spread evenly across the entire country, which was quite an investment when they were built in the 1960s, but their equipment and processes received almost no upgrades since then. If you ever see a green metal trapdoor in a field, chances are that it leads down a ladder into a 20′ tin box. Within which there would be three volunteers with sufficient supplies to last 30 days underground. This doesn’t seem like my idea of fun, but then neither does Nuclear War.
Since they were stood down, ownership of almost all of the bunkers reverted to the landowner. Some have been put up for sale on eBay, others were dug out and demolished but most of them were ignored and left to deteriorate. If keeping track of them seems like fun to you, then the Subterranea Britannica would love to hear from you. They’ve visited all of them and mapped them out so that you can go exploring too. But try not to get caught trespassing when looking for your nearest one.
I think there were about 300 volunteers for the York HQ. If the warning went up, then everybody had to drop everything and leg it for the bunker. The first 60 people who got there were allowed in, then the blast doors were shut. There is enough living space in the canteen and bunks for 20 people, so it was a constant rotation between sleeping, living and being on duty. In addition to the volunteers, there was an RAF commandant, two mechanical engineers to look after the generator, water and air supplies, two BT engineers to look after the telephone exchange and three Home Office scientists who combined observations with Met Office data to predict where the fallout was going and who warned adjacent sectors and countries.
The larger of the two dorms. You can see the site's luggage storage shelf in the top left. Marked as the women's dorm, but I can't imagine people would have been that bothered about such distinctions if there were bombs going off.
Each volunteer was allowed the equivalent of a carry on bag to last them for the 30 days. There were no shower or bath facilities because there was nothing like enough of a water supply, so I shudder to imagine what it was like on day 29 with 60 people rushing around inside a sealed box who’s air supply was only refreshed every now and again to maximise the life of the external air filters.
SX2000 in a faraday cage
Originally, it was fitted with a patch cable style of exchange, but it was upgraded to a modern automatic exchange in the late 1970′s. Amusingly, it’s fitted with a Mitel SX2000, which I have a certain amount of professional experience with..
Plant Room
I appreciated the brutal simplicity of the generator room’s automatic firesuppressant system. If the room got too hot, then a single strand of lead solder melted through, which dropped the blast door over the only exit and then flooded the room with CO2, which smothered the diesel generator, the fire and anybody unfortunate enough to be in the room when it went off.
The one nod to upgrading the technology was in the early 1980s when there were a small handful of Met Office automatic detectors issued for trials. These were originally designed to monitor direction and intensity of thunderstorms, but with the addition of a top secret module that had to be removed before the public were allowed anywhere near it, they also did the job for nuclear blasts. Unfortunately, they also still detected thunderstorms, so caused any amount of excitement.
Triangulation maps
The main operations room was straightforward. If they were on alert, then a number of telephone and radio operators contacted each of that regions stations every four minutes to ask for updated observations. If one of them had noticed a bomb going off, then the operator would take down the numbers and shout out “TOCSIN BANG”. These would then be triangulated with other observations from the network on the local maps which gave the approximate area of impact, that was logged on a large piece of wood and passed onto the regional maps, whereupon the triangulators reset and waited for the next bomb to land.
Monitoring maps and the operations room
Nowadays, the ROC is a social organisation. You can read more about their history on their website http://www.rocassoc.org.uk/open/national/roca/hist_ng2.htm.
There aren’t many left, but the bigger sector bunkers included the necessary infrastructure to maintain regional government, until national government could be re-established. This included facilities like a BBC studio and transmission equipment that could play back the public information recordings. In the end, almost none of those recordings were transmitted. It was felt that asking the population to be prepared would have caused too much panic and uncertainty. One piece of trivia that amused me, apparently John Craven did most of the recordings in the 1970s.
How better to finish off a trip like this but with a pint and a lunch at the ever good Brigantes and a Punch and Judy show, courtesy of the city council.
Punch and Judy
