The garden has undergone quite a transformation from last year, as I’ve been busy building raised beds following the clearance that we did last Autumn. Some of the vegetable beds from last year are now standing with flowers in them instead but they will be grassed over eventually. After a really enjoyable first year in 2009, I’m being a bit more ambitious this year, although it can feel like a third full-time job and the pace of the growing season doesn’t work around you – you have to work around it.

Early potatoes with frost damage visible

I particularly enjoy David Inns’s columns in the Woking News and Mail and I was hoping to link there but the News and Mail – now separated from the Surrey Ad group – doesn’t have a full website although its WordPress blog is a different and quite refreshing change from the staid old thing I used to have to cobble together on a Thursday morning. Anyway, this week David, who is chairman of Horsell Allotments Association, comments on the most obvious thing to any gardeners over the past fortnight – the frost!

Peas don't mind the cold

Once we’re into May, this kind of thing should be over but a late one like we had last week can damage things – including early potatoes, which he comments on and the leaves on mine went slimy and black but thankfully there’s new growth coming up. Unfortunately my tomatoes, even though they were covered, didn’t like the low temperatures last week and so I lost them but I’ve been to Wisley and got some new ones.

Like David, I’m also amazed at the things that didn’t get affected so much – my peas for example, which although you think of them as quite tender plants, seemed to not be the slightest bit bothered by the low temperatures and the asparagus slowed down a bit but there was no discolouration or sign of ill-health.

In his column, David mentions his Comfrey is flowering – Comfrey is a plant of the herb family that grows extremely deep roots and can access minerals in the sub-soil that most plants can’t reach. This makes the leaves full of superb fertilising agents and they are either used in water as a liquid feed or left to decompose in compost or on the ground itself. I have four plants and eight root clumps – my plants came from RHS Wisley and Squires Garden Centre. You might be fooled into thinking – as I was before I checked – that the two small ones are the Squires plants while the Wisley ones have shot up – actually it’s the other way around. So don’t assume the best quality stuff can’t be bought locally.

Give your rhubarb some water

Comfrey on the left from Squires, others from Wisley

My father is also a grower – when he came last time he marveled at my rhubarb and asked me what the secret was. I’ve two Timperley Early plants and three Champagnes with a Raspberry Red that I picked up from Squires in the spring. None have been forced this year as they need time to settle in. The secret to good rhubarb – also a member of the herb family – is the same as the secret of life; water, and plenty of it. Rhubarb will grow fine with just the natural watering from the rain but if you’ve got a few rhubarb plants in the back garden and it’s the only thing you grow, you’ll be amazed at how much different two litres of water a day will make.

Here’s to more sunny days and the occasional (weekday) shower.

It was with a great deal of sadness that we learned that Roger Ramage, business editor of the Woking News and Mail until 2006, died on December 1 and his funeral was held today at Guildford Crematorium with more than 100 people coming along to pay tributes to him.

I worked with Roger for four years at the newspaper and every time I hear his name now, I just smile – so involuntarily that I was worried this would be an inappropriate response in a funeral. Every so often, you meet someone who – despite them having a relative indirect role in your life – you just don’t every forget. Roger was such a person; he was all about communication and a zest for life.

It’s difficult to describe what it was like to work with him – someone with an endless enthusiasm for the things he loved, a loud opinion about the things he didn’t; a knowledgeable man who could hold a conversation on any subject but particularly if he knew nothing whatsoever about it; a raconteur with an endless supply of outrageous anecdotes on a life well-lived and a family well-loved. His laughter was raucous, his temperament about as laid-back as it gets, his imagination fertile and his generosity – both of the material and spiritual - his overwhelming moral imperative.

He could be a clown when others needed that but he was also a respected figure – among the attendees today were some of Woking’s most high-profile business names. The service was a non-religious one at which John Morris, a Quaker representative, led a serious of tributes – both planned and spontaneous – about Roger and his wonderful and full life. It was moving and heartbreaking as all occasions of death and passing are but it was also at times funny, joyful and a reflection that what his family and friends have lost is great – but the part of him that will remain with them is perhaps equally so.

It is no exaggeration to say that we could have recounted anecdotes about Roger for hours and hours but ex News and Mail reporter Rob Brown spoke some very well-chosen words on behalf of the paper that summed Roger up perfectly. He was someone whose life provided nourishment for the souls of everyone around him.

My thoughts are with Tricia, their two children and grandchild in particular. He’s been taken from you far too early and had so much more to give – but his legacy is one that forces many of us, even with only a few years’ aquaintence, to look at our own lives and aspire to live them as generously, as fully and as well as him.

Rog, it was a pleasure working with you – you’ll be hugely missed.

I haven't got a picture of a Woking bin, this one's from Peterborough

I saw Denzil Coulson after the executive in Brewery Road Car Park while I was chatting with the News and Mail’s excellent reporter Beth Woodger. He stopped to make some chat and it was good to exchange words after a few little storms in teacups over blog posts etc. He’s standing as the Lib Dem candidate in North East Hampshire, where he’ll be canvassing the leafy streets of Fleet trying to nab James Arbuthnot’s 12,500 majority away.

You’d have to be pretty optimistic to believe he’ll do it but it takes guts to slog away at the other side’s safe seats and it’s fighters like Denzil who keep politics interesting. While I wouldn’t like to think we’ll lose a seat like North East Hants, I’m sure Denzil will give a good account of himself and I’m pleased he’s standing for Goldsworth West again – we might not agree on much but he’s strong member and the council needs that on all sides.

Following our discussion, he walked off and looking at his website for the first time since the Queen’s Speech, I now realise why. He’s gone and posted a cheeky little piece about the rise in cost of the green bins for April 2010, claiming that it is about raising money rather than keeping the environment clean. Well, it’s only going up £2  for most people from £35 to £37, which isn’t exactly extortionate and from £15 to £20 for a second bin.

Denzil’s point is that concessionary charges are going up from £20 to £25 for the first bin and £10 to £15 for the second, which works out at a higher percentage than non-concessions. But obviously if you calculate it in percentage terms, you will get a higher percentage the lower the starting base – that’s just the way numbers work.

I don’t think it’s a big secret that the point of the new scheme is both environmental ie it will help more carbon-efficient collection and prevent 400,000 plastic bags going to landfill and budgetary ie it embraces the principle that residents who use the service should contribute to it rather than the cost being spread to everyone through council tax.

One of the beauties of the new waste scheme is that it introduces a small slice of free market economics into the service. It’s basic pricing theory – if the council charges too much for bins, people simply won’t take up the service and the council will be forced to reduce the price. If however take-up is huge and the council doesn’t test price elasticity at a higher level, it has done taxpayers – including those on lower incomes - a disservice by not attaining Best Value.

So if concessionary households are struggling to find the extra £5 a year, that is something that the market will tell us and I am sure will be examined further.

The Woking News and Mail today reports Surrey County Council plans to launch a comprehensive review of its passenger transport budgets in common with most of  its other budgets. It simply cannot afford, it says, to keep subsidising bus companies to run routes that are not commercially viable and the level of subsidy has risen from £4million in 2001 to £11million now.

One could say that the bus companies are being greedy and not putting enough of their margins on the commercially viable routes into helping out loss-making “social” routes. But that is a moot point because rising costs and the recession have forced them to tighten their costs too and the county council is not able to negotiate from a position of strength.

Unfortunately, the only way to cut costs is to cut subsidy and that means routes having to change dramatically or go altogether. The spin on the county site is upbeat enough and talks about a fresh review and an opportunity to shape services but the reality is too stark to deny.

In Horsell, the number 73 bus that goes from Chobham to Woking via Well Lane and Horsell is listed on the review document as one that the county council would like views on but is not immediately under threat. It is then really important that as many people in Horsell as possible contact the county council to express support for this service. It would also be a good idea for as many people as possible to use it.

Should the 73 service be questioned – and there is nothing at this stage to suggest that it will be any more than any other route – one solution is alluded to by Cllr Ian Lake in his quote – that community transport could be answer. That, of course, raises the question of who is going to pay and we had just such a question tonight at the management committee of Horsell Residents’ Association.

Chris Chaney and Edward Bentall came to speak to us about the Chobham community bus that currently runs from Chobham to Woking during peak hours and the possibility that it could be extended into Horsell, which would give us a chance to shore up at least a part of the 73 route. The committee gave a resounding endorsement to the principle of extending the service and giving this option to Horsell residents in the future.

The question is where the money will come from. At the moment, the scheme is funded in part by Surrey Heath Borough Council and Woking Community Transport. But to extend the service would mean more money, which Surrey Heath is hardly likely to pay for given it is Woking residents who will benefit. And Woking Borough Council has little capacity for additional expenditure as things stand.

But I’m hopeful that we can make it work and I will certainly do everything I can to find a solution because I think that having that extra option of peak services into Woking from Horsell will give reassurance to many people in our village. The figures may suggest that few people use it but to those people that do it is often a vital part of their quality of life. And a community is defined by its treatment of the minority, not the majority.

I’m beginning to understand how annoying I must have been as a journalist. I often used phrases that were technically true but stretched the lexicographical boundaries of semantics and the great English language. They nearly always made for better headlines and more irrate PRs.

This week, the News and Mail have carried on the noble traidtion with Woking taxpayers fund energy for Milton Keynes. Let’s start with the first par:

“Woking taxpayers have invested more than £44m in a company that provides
energy to Milton Keynes.”

No, they haven’t. Money for Thameswey has largely come from borrowing and money for the subsidaries has entirely been taken from the money markets. Nothing has come from the council taxpayer ie through council tax to fund Thameswey operations.

The paragraph implies that the company only supplies energy to Milton Keynes – it doesn’t. Most of its activities are Woking-based, including subsidising cavity insulation for residents and providing information on energy efficiency. Furthermore, Cllr John Kingsbury and the Conservative executive have pledged to conclude operations in MK early at the end of Phase I and that no new borrowing be approved for further project. There has been no such pledge from the Liberal Democrats.

Bob Shatwell, always good for a quote, thinks the whole thing is “scandalous”, which is about as good as it gets from him. Chris Bore makes a much more valid point – that the lack of transparency about Thameswey – which Ray Morgan insists is just because he’s never gotten around to it – is it’s own worst enemy.

In good times, the company has failed to get across the message of its success. In bad times, the level of resentment is that much higher because people don’t understand what the big secret is and assume the worst.

When I was at the News and Mail, I tried to run a series of articles on Thameswey to explain its role to readers and spent several hours with Ray Morgan getting into the financial nitty-gritty. It was about as enthusiastically received as mouldy bread by editorial staff and stonewalled on the grounds that people weren’t interested. They can’t have it both ways!