Shoveling shit

I went to the Northern Regional Conference in Gateshead this morning, mainly to cover it for the North East Democrat (due out on Monday if all goes well - if it doesn't, publication will be put back a short while as I will be out of the country for a few days after that). Interesting experience of turning up with my cameras. I put my telescopic lens on my Nikon and within minutes I was receiving requests for copies of the photos I had taken. Seems as though if you are well endowed (ie you have a rather large lens on the front of your camera) people automatically assume they can put away their compacts as my pics will "look more professional", as someone said to me.

In the early afternoon I headed over to Newcastle to our hairdressers. David was there when I arrived and told me that he had been speaking to our neighbour across the road from us who also has the allotment next door to ours. The neighbouring allotment took delivery of a wagon load of manure a few weeks ago. David, in an attempt to enter into interesting and informative discussions with our neighbours, asked him which farm he got his manure from as we were after a load ourselves for our own allotment.

To cut a long story short, David reported that a short while later, our neighbour turned up with a wagon load of the stuff for us and we needed to get it shifted from the car park used by the allotment holders onto the allotment itself.

This necessitated a trip to B and Q for a wheelbarrow after our hair was cut and the grey was removed. I didn't realise buying a wheelbarrow could be so interesting! They come in various shapes and sizes and colours. Fitting it in the car was even more interesting.

So, back at the ranch, we started shovelling the stuff into our freshly christened wheelbarrow and I had the job of pushing the barrow down the path and onto the allotment. There were 30 barrow loads of shit - over a ton of the stuff! Took an hour and a half to shift it. It will all have to be dug in as well. I hope our plants appreciate what we are doing for them!

The result of our manure relocation exercise this afternoon is that I am still working on Parliamentary Campaigner at 1am. It is also due for publication on Monday. So if you are a Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate, open your inbox on Monday for you next set of campaign ideas.

In the meantime, I'm off to bed. I'm knackered. I'll do the remaining two pages of Parliamentary Campaigner in the morning.