Ranch:
7 am. Friday 10th May – computer at home.

I have that Friday feeling for a very good reason. I’m off work for two weeks and it’s my favourite time of year. May! ‘Spring hurtling towards summer’ as Neill puts it.

I have an unplan – no motorways, no car parks, no supermarkets.

Of course, it’s the best time of year for ranching in the UK – so much to do, so much to plant. Getting the roof on the greenhouse is on the cards – I decided on poly-tunnel polythene in the end – less than a quarter of the price of polycarbonate.

I took the first rhubarb harvest to work – a big carrier bag. It was all gone before I got to my office. Wellness and all that shit. If I hypothetically organised a meeting, I’d make sure that there was a free lunch of above average quality (and it would finish on time).

The summer solstice is the fashionable date in the rustic English calender, but for those in the know, for lots of reasons, the full moon in May (the 18th) is the coolest. I have a festival up there every year – camping in the van in the bosom of abject glamping luxury. It’s a big success. I keep forgetting to invite other people though – me and the trees get on just fine.

Table from Painting Snails
Wheels:

After a couple of years of scrimping and saving, I’ve committed an utterly revolutionary act. I’ve bought a tipping trailer for the tractor. A bloke from Huddersfield delivered it to the end of the top road. We hitched it to the tractor and I drove it down. I got it stuck trying to reverse it into the barn. There’s an art to reversing with a trailer – my neighbours Chris and Jimmy taught me how to do it the day after.

It’s revolutionary because organic gardening is 100% dependant on the amount of organic material that you can put back into the soil – now I can collect horse muck from the vast mounds on Jimmy’s and Carla’s allotments, potentially increasing my output several-fold. It’s also revolutionary because a tractor designed in the late 40s and made in 1954 remains the most efficient cost-efficient vehicle for the job. It would be possible to convert it to biogas.

I decided to keep the van. I’ve had the romantic illusion to travel the West coast of Ireland in it for a few years now. When I showed Tony a picture of the tractor and trailer he immediately said ‘You need to move to the West coast of Ireland.’

Rock & Roll:

We have no upcoming gigs and I’m glad. We did a spot at one of those charity all-dayers on Sunday and I decided never again – proper well-organised gigs from now on or nothing. I’ve decided on a new book, and I’m going to tour that, just like we did with Painting Snails. I want to record a song this week and do a simple video.

Our Pendle Radicals project is starting to get exciting: Sick of being Normal – Pendle Punk 40 years on is an observation of the influence that punk has had on a diverse bunch of 12 or so people. There’ll be a narrative in the form of a published fanzine-like booklet and there’ll be big photos taken by Casey – it will be marked by an exhibition and a gig, but like the rest of the above, it will be another chapter in a fascinating story. It’s only recently that I’ve realised how much of an influence it was. Doing a John Peel session will always be by far the best thing on my CV. I’ve started work on re-doing the NOTSENSIBLES website and Gaz has re-mastered the iconic first version of the album and re-done the artwork. It would be nice to re-release it.

Beryl told me that there’s a long tradition of talking to bees and telling them your story – life events and so on. The hive is all set up but still no bees.

It’s supposed to get sunnier later in the week but it’s still raining in the grim North. Louise and Rachel have just brought me a cheese and onion pie from Haffner’s – perfect timing – once I’ve eaten it, I’m off up to the ranch.

The story so far ...