Friday

The sun is shining and everywhere looks bright and happy.  A very pleasant start to the day, even if I have just been out to find that my spraying a few days ago hasn't helped one of my tomato plants which has succumbed to the dreaded blight.  That leaves just two plants and one of those looks doubtful.  Curse this warm, wettish weather!  It's not the end of the world, I know, but very disappointing!  Fortunately, my replacement brown bin has now arrived (the old one went walkabout recently) so I can bundle the failure out of sight.

Whe I was little (cue, nostalgic reminiscences, possibly boring, sorry) we lived not more than three houses away from a family that had a nursery business.  Not babies but tomatoes.  To my child's eye their greenhouses seemed to go on for ever ad infinitum, although I am sure there weren't as many as I remember!  Very often we were send down, clutching a few coins in our hot little hands for 'a bag of tomatoes, please.  There, in the shed, was a tray of glowing red orbs, fresh picked and smelling the way all self respecting tomatoes ought to smell.  They were carefully placed in a brown paper bag, the ends twised over and money and bag exchanged hands.  We would carefully carry our load home again (all of 50 metres, maybe a little less) and proudly hand it over to mum knowing that there would be tomatoes for tea.
Even better it was when we were told to ask for 'a bag of split tomatoes, please.'  They were the less than perfect specimins, not fit to sell on to the shops, sold for a few pence.  Nowadays, with freezers being so commonplace, they'd sell like hot cakes and wouldn't be nearly so cheap, but then it was only possible to buy them in small amounts because they wouldn't keep.  And we carried them home in the sure and certain knowledge that there would be fried tomatoes for breakfast, lunch or tea.  Always a big favourite and they have remained so to this day.
And occasionally we were given one to munch as we left the shed.  Not often - money was tight for all, and running a business like that was extremely hard work and every penny counted - but that just made it more of a treat, not expected but gladly received and enjoyed on those rare occasions.

We lived in a village and as well as the nursery there was also an egg farm.  Organic, free range in the days before organic free range became such a hot potato (forgive the mixed metaphor there) and a little further away which meant a short bike ride down the road towards the village centre, then a left turn at the mory-all (memorial hall to non-villagers) and up the hill for a dozen cracked (or whole, depending on what they were needed for) eggs, then a glorious zoom back down the hill, round the corner and along home where mum was waiting to do whatever she needed those eggs for - cakes, boiled, scrambled, fried, whatever!  It was always delicious.  And oh, the excitement if one turned out to be a double yolker . . .

I've just Googled out of sheer nostalgia.  My dad's carefully nurtured vegetable garden is now all grass and the proper, permanent sandpit that made us the envy of all our friends is no longer there, the only greenhouse is sight is the little one behind the garage and instead of those rows of greenhouses three houses along, there is what looks like a glorious garden.  The mory-all is now quite a substantial building with a proper little car park.  Google-strolling up the hill (you don't burn many calories this way), there's a whole load of houses I don't recognise (well, we did leave the village forty six years ago now) but, to my delight, the egg farm seems to be there, anyway (or was when the photo was taken) and a sign outside announces that there are free range eggs for sale (but not how much they cost!).   Imagine walking up the hill in the morning sun to get your fresh laid breakfast egg.  Do they still sell cracked eggs or has H&S stopped that one, I wonder. 

I guess I will never know!