First crops from my pathetic attempts to administer cultivation on the Bournville allotment. So scarcely have I been able to get up there I’m faintly embarrassed about putting in an appearance lest I be spotted and chased with pitchforks.

While working with Talking Birds on the site-specific ‘Solid Blue’ show in 2002 – made for Coventry’s remarkable Whitefriars Monastery building (or at least the impressive remaining fragment of it), Janet gave me a few seedlings from her batch of Salad Blue potatoes. The variety were developed in Scotland apparently, at the beginning of the last century. The descendants of those first seedlings were plucked free of the worms last week.

The dig/weed/scythe session was itself cut short when allotment-partner Lisa tripped on a dodgy pathway, wrenched a ligament and was rendered untimely cropped. While we battled the hoards at Selly Oak A&E, the vegetable matter made vengeance on us with unfettered growth – to the chagrin of the neighbours, no doubt.

Ps. Salad Blues are not that great for salads. They mash well, though, and are good to have around for conversation.