LEADING LIGHT

Killing time waiting for the sparky to come and fit the super-duper new ceiling light purchased for the downstairs loo.

After hours of fruitless searching, I’d struggled to find something practical yet different to light up our new loo so I bought a boring set of chrome spotlights but then weeks later I had a cyber moment that changed all that.

Randomly surfing the web of an evening as you do, I came across this delightful ceiling light. It’s called a Hinkley Somerset globe ceiling light with a flushed mount in a heritage brass colour and a milky glass shade. Perfect.

Hinkley Somerset ceiling light in heritage brass colour

This fabulous ceiling light should co-ordinate nicely with all the other gold-coloured accessories/pipework plus I think it will also compliment my Metropolis posters having a bit of a modern but vintage feel to it.

New home for my old Metropolis movie inspired posters

Even though our cloakroom ceiling is the size of a postage stamp, this lovely light doesn’t look out of place or dwarf the area. 

Neatly fits into small spaces

It's always a good idea to keep everything in proportion when coming up with interior designs to prevent any one fixture dominating the overall finished effect.

Looks great near the posters

Our next full length feature film - The Plumber Always Rings Twice.

AVENUES & ALLEYWAYS

Does your front garden smell like a tramp’s urinal? Do you wrinkle your nose as you pass the petunias on the way to the front door? Banish those nasty niffs of dog walker turd bags, half eaten takeaways or next door’s bonfire with a squirt of whole driveway deodorant. Comes with a Useless Product guarantee, refills at £200 per can (excluding postage) and high toxicity warning. Clears odours effectively, kills everything else in a 3-mile radius.

Just thought I’d have a go at inventing my own un-necessary product while waiting out the midday sun in this rather unexpected heatwave.

According to the Met Office, if you have 3 or more consecutive days of temperatures above a specific threshold then it’s technically classed as a heatwave. So, using that logic does that mean if you have 3 or more consecutive days of Government bullshit is that then classed as a Shitwave? Hmmm. Yes or No?

Anyhow, we’re not here to talk politics – it’s far too hot for that. I’m here to tell you about the transformation of my side alleyway from spartan wind tunnel into verdant paradise and share tips on how this was achieved on a very shoe string budget.

When we moved our side gate forward at the end of last year, it created a rather long and spartan looking wind tunnel along the length of the house. It looked dreadfully bare and devoid of greenery but with a bit of imagination and some super scrimping, this tunnel is now a small paradise.  Here’s how you can pimp up your alleyway.

Space is always going to be at a premium in an alleyway that’s only 1.4 metres wide so it’s a case of thinking upwards rather than outwards and that’s where the power of Poundland comes in.

Never underestimate the bargains that can be had in the gardening section of Poundland where you can often find wall pots or hanging baskets at a fraction of the price than a posher garden centre. I chanced upon these grey half-moon planters for £1 each.

Poundland planters perfect for growing strawberries

Deep enough to plant a couple of strawberry plants in each or some colourful trailing basket plants.

Dot them on your walls to add colour

Simply a case of drilling a hole in the wall, these planters have a handy groove in the back that neatly slots onto a fat screw head.

Reduces the impact of ugly pipes

I’ve used wall hung planters to minimise the ugliness of the peeling asbestos waste pipes as we cannot scrape the paint off (health hazard) and replacing them is way down the list of DIY projects.

Perfect fit between two pipes

Planters and a few strategically placed pots around the gas meter box have helped to frame it better making it look less utility and more Chelsea Flower show.

Less utility, more Chelsea flower show

Use surplus timber planks, pallets or wood that can be treated with outdoor paint, stain or varnish to make long narrow planters. The other half excels at knocking these up from DIY project leftovers. 

Planters made from surplus decking planks

There are always people looking to get rid of old pallets on community groups such as Nextdoor so if you’re lucky then you may be able to bag these free of charge. Free paint can now be found at many local recycling centres or do what I do and look in B&Qs bargain bucket. It may not be your colour but it does the trick at half the price!

Planters are great for growing alleyway mangetout peas

After waterproofing your planters with a couple of coats of exterior paint make sure you line the insides with a nice bit of plastic. Super scrimper gardeners like me use empty compost bags for this. Made out of thick plastic, compost bags can be ripped apart then stapled to the inside of a planter to protect the interior and help retain moisture that might otherwise be sucked away by bare timber.

Baby peas

have become monsters

I collect all my old compost bags ready to use not just as planter liners but also to line large pots too like this lovely plastic planter I bought from a local Charity shop. My bay tree has put on loads of growth since I potted it up into its new home.

Green pot - Cancer Research Shop

And on the subject of Charity shops, these are a good place to source cheap decorative bits and bobs to brighten up your walls or fences. I managed to source this lovely garden mirror for £2 from our local Stonepillow shop, reduced price because its backing board was broken. The other half carefully removed the ripped piece of thick card replacing it with a shaped piece of plywood. Hey presto, new mirror.

Charity shop ornaments

I like to jazz up my homemade wooden planters with hearts to showcase my love of gardening. You can often pick up ornamental hearts on your charity shop travels along with bird cages, paintings, ceramic plates, etc. Pretty much anything can be turned into a garden ornament with a coat of clear exterior yacht varnish to protect it from the elements.

Decorate your planters with love

I waterproof canvas prints in this manner to turn them into outdoor art for the patio. Two coats of varnish will keep them from getting soggy or sun-bleached.

Outdoor garden art gallery

When you’re browsing round car boot fairs or charity shops, keep an eye out for unwanted towel rails as these make perfect wall pot hangers. Here’s what we did with our old kitchen towel rail and a few hanging pots from Poundland. Once it held tea towels now it’s going to become a home for more strawberry plants. Being narrow, towel rails screw easily onto the tops of fence panels.

Old towel rails make great pot hangers

Recycling centres, neighbourhood websites such as Facebook, Nextdoor or Gumtree are a good place to find unwanted plant pots or garden stuff on the cheap. Prolific gardeners always have a surplus supply of plant pots and sometimes unwanted plants too especially if they’ve grown their flowers or veg from seed.

Top tip to source cheap plants – some garden centres such as Hilliers have end of season plant sales where many specimen plants such as roses or rhododendrons are sold off to clear the shelves for new stock. Find out whether your local garden centre does this then you can acquire bigger plants for a fraction of the price.

Most garden centres and even places such as B&Q also have a clearance section where you can source plants for as little as a £1 per pot. Last year I bought about 6 pots of reduced priced cannas at £2 each from B&Q and they’re now growing like weeds in my front garden’s raised flower bed. Just because it might look half dead doesn’t mean it is.

Other good sources of cheap plants: car boot or community summer fairs, your neighbours for free cuttings or seeds. Or if you have a bit of bare faced cheek, local parks where you can harvest free seeds from dried flower heads that the council haven’t cut. The Ancient Mariner propagated loads of agapanthus plants from free seeds acquired by my brother on his way to work from parks or gardens on route. I’m not advocating wholesale vandalism here but you can to a degree be a bit creative as to sourcing plants.

I hope this post has inspired you all to look at your back passage in a new light. Often forgotten, overlooked or unloved, an alleyway does have the potential to be turned into a small piece of paradise without breaking the bank.

WHOLE BODY DEODORANTS

Someone, somewhere has invented a new product we never knew we needed and now needs to flog it mercilessly to the masses. How can they ensure demand is created from nothing? Through fear.

Another gimmick

Heaven forbid I may be sat sipping cocktails in The Ivy with cheesy feet, sweaty pits or lady parts that reek of three-day old kippers! What I need is a whole-body deodorant. Do I? Better down that margarita then rush out to buy the latest, greatest odour eliminator money can buy.

At an even greater expense than conventional deodorants, we’ll be expected to buy this miraculous de-whiffer and douse it liberally over every inch of our pungent bodies. Spray, sniff. Spray, sniff. In next to no time, the whole can will have vapourised into thin air along with most of your bank balance. Expect to replenish it at a faster rate than a roll on.

Imagine the world suddenly becomes besotted with whole body deodorants. Millions of people simultaneously spraying these aerosols all over the place will diminish the ice-caps at a rate faster than a shoal of mackerel attacked by hungry sharks. A gigantic vapour cloud forms which then scoffs up the ozone layer. 

Munch, munch – yummy! Clearly, profit not planet was at the forefront of this latest fad.

Smells a bit fishy to me

And let’s think about all those other un-necessary items devised recently to part us from our pennies:

Air Fryers – Hands up all those people who have one skulking on a kitchen worktop like a miniature Darth Vadar? Touted as the best thing since sliced bread, the must have kitchen appliance designed to knock pounds off your waistline and energy bill. Really? Since buying our air fryer we’ve used it about half a dozen times because it is far more energy efficient to cook an entire roast dinner all at the same time in a conventional oven than faff around with small batches in an air fryer.

I am your father

In my conspiracy centric world, demand for air fryers or electric cars is only to justify the zillions of licences granted by the Government to foreign companies so they can build loads of wind farms the length of our coastline. No point in building wind, solar or any other form of power generator if there is no or low demand for electricity particularly as our Government usually agrees to pay power generators whether they’re used or not.

Scent Boosters – For decades people have happily gone about their laundry business using only a detergent and fabric softener but now, that’s simply not good enough for Retail Capitalists (the grabbing hands grab all they can). Another chemical element to be added to the already potent mix being flushed into our public sewers and waterways. Hmm – do I get a sense of any planetary responsibility there? Nope. Just another item to add to the shopping list. Not!

Do you really need any of these?

Technological Operating Systems – Okay so these are not unnecessary products because the whole world relies on some technological gadget or other in order to survive modern life but with the lifespan of a sucked Polo mint, Himalayan sized mountains of obsolete hardware are created by operating systems being continually replaced.

Taller than Everest - the E-Waste Mountain

For fear of not being able to spend hours checking mindless social media posts on blogs such as this one, we’re all suckered into continually replacing our phones, laptops, TVs or anything else that depends on an operating system to function effectively. Why? Because if we only had one universal operating system that got upgraded from time to time, we’d never sell any new phones, laptops, TVs etc etc. Did you really think Microsoft or Apple were providing operating systems for the greater good of mankind?

By all means, spray your bollocks or butt cracks with this new whole body deodorant if you must but I’m going to continue ministering to my hairy raspberry with a wet soapy flannel in the shower.

Be careful what you spray on your raspberry

Interesting that whole body deodorant adverts refer to lady parts as ‘ta tas’. I always thought ‘ta ta’ was a way of saying goodbye but perhaps what I’ve really been doing is accidentally shouting ‘love flaps’ at my colleagues as I leave the office each day without realising it.  Whoops!!

WAR!!

Stand by your beds with pitchforks at the ready – Britain Needs You! 

Or rather it needs your money

I've already sharpened the garden rake as there's nothing like a good scarifying to vanquish invaders.

This is no time to dither over whether or not to buy another cagoule in the Mountain Warehouse summer sale, the nation is on a war footing against the unseen foe I’ll have you know. Who is the enemy? Who indeed.

Since there are more fans at a Taylor Swift concert than soldiers in the UK army, it’s time to tax the population at large so the Government can throw oodles of £50 notes at the issue of national security. Britain needs you! Or rather it needs you (the taxpayer) to stump up financially once again but this time in the fight for freedom.

Sir Keir’s weekly defence shopping list looks something like this:

• Tea Bags
• Coffee
• Drones (lots)
• Nuclear Subs x 7
• Camo patterned jacket for future TV broadcasts
• Bombs, bangs, booms or anything else that explodes loudly
• X-boxes to entice UK youth to sign up for military service
• Loo rolls in case of national panic

How we’re going to repel an enemy invasion when we can’t stop a few migrant boats crossing the channel is anyone’s guess but that’s not the point. The point is to be perceived to be ready to ‘whoop ass.’

We may be crap at everything but Britain is very good at ‘readiness’. No-one can drum up the national spirit like the British. After all, we have Vera Lynn recordings. Nothing like those blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover to make patriotic hearts and voices rise to the occasion.

Guaranteed to rile up that fighting instinct

Cynically I can’t help feeling that all of this effort and spending to bolster national defences is no more than a flimsy excuse to manufacture even more armaments to sell to the likes of Ukraine or Israel. Gotta be running low on ammo after all this time, right? Because the other thing that Britain is really, really good at is Arms Dealing and that means making stuff to sell to the highest bidder which costs money.

Supposing I was this ‘enemy’ that’s allegedly lurking in the wings waiting for the opportunity to acquire a nice little island territory, I certainly wouldn’t use an army to bring this country to its knees. Firstly, I would turn off the internet by shutting down all global data server centres then I’d blow up a few space satellites and cut all those undersea electricity cables sending power to the UK. With no comms or energy networks to charge up the robotic Olivers AI Army of the future, we’d be well and truly buggered!

If you thought April was Awful then just wait for the Apocalyptic Autumn. October’s Budget is going to be a real corker. Can’t see how Labour are going to get round their electoral pledge not to increase direct taxes on working people because surely a 3% increase in defence spending can only be realised by increasing the rate of Income Tax.

Paving the way for tax rises

Better buy those Christmas presents now in the summer sales as there’s likely to be even less money in your pocket before December rolls round.