Down on the ground, up in the air.

Down on the ground I actually managed some allotmenteering this weekend, Saturday to be precise.
Its OK, you can pick yourselves off the floor and have a reviving cup of hot sweet tea.

I might manage some more as the year progresses, oh dear, now you've spilt your tea, I'm sure it will wash out though.

Went and dug the poor old Hayterette out, a quick brass brush of the sparkplug, a top up of the petrol tank and "One man and his dog went to mow some allotment paths.". Something so satisfying about mowing, not needing to think, a steady pace, the noise of the machine, turn, another strip done....
The first mow of the year is doubly satisfying, the fact that the grass has started to grow enough to need mowing is a harbinger of spring and the contrast as you turn at the end of that first strip and look back at what is now a scrubby mess with a neat strip, where minutes before it was just "grass, a little unmown" is striking, you pace and turn, pace and turn, then suddenly it's all neat.

That job done, I chanced my luck with what the more pc amongst us gardeners refer to as "A single person manually operated horticultural earth inverting implement.", I call it a spade and this week the clods did NOT stick to it, so I dug a decent chunk, stopping before my back protested.

Up in the air, I digress from gardening, at length, to describe, well, a damm good reason to support air ambulances.

Son's first game for his county U15 side saw us up early for a Sunday and off to Eastleigh in Hampshire. Leaving with the assumption that the M25 would be a pig, it was not, so we were early arrivals and even after killing an hour at a local coffee shop the host club still had it's Sunday training running.

Son went off with team mates and I mooched through onto the clubhouse balcony to see a "stoppage" on the furthest pitch. About ten minutes later this yellow bird arrived, fortunately the lad went by land after loosing his new "rugby skin" to NHS scissors. Mums all looking worried, smaller kids all excited about the chopper.

Now guess what happened later.

Yes, the big yellow bird liked us so much it came back and took one of our team away to Salisbury, precautionary after a neck injury with some temporary loss of feeling.

While waiting for land crews to arrive we managed to build up to three "stoppages", a dislocated shoulder after ten minutes in game one, a damaged knee and the neck knock in game two, three little anxious clusters dotted round the ground. They then decided the chopper was needed, after arriving on the clear and open far side of the ground it eventually did a very short hop across to our lad by the clubhouse, who by then resembling an orange chrysalis was slid in the back and off he went to Salisbury A&E followed on road by Mum & Dad.

The games restarted after nearly an hour and completed without further "stoppage", but just to bring the tally up another of our team managed to come out of the last phase of play with a suspected broken collarbone. The highest injury rate I have yet seen in a single day.

A bucket appeared on the bar for air ambulance donations.

This service really is something that the NHS should provide as a basic, instead of relying on donations, but it doesn't so support your local Air Ambulance.