It’s bloody garlic again…..well, to be precise it’s elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum), which is actually closer to a leek than to true garlic. I’ve grown it for the last couple of years and it’s fabulous stuff. Well, it’s fabulous if it doesn’t rain incessantly and therefore rot in the soil before it can be harvested. The bulbs are as big as a fist and each individual clove is the size and weight of a whole bulb of normal garlic. In 2011 I harvested it all, peeled it, zuzzed it up in my food processor, mixed in some olive oil and froze it in ice cube trays so whenever I was cooking something for which mild garlic was appropriate, I just popped into the freezer, pulled out a cube and dropped it into the pan on the stove. It stayed very much alive despite being frozen right through the winter.

The flowers are huge, roughly double the size of a tennis ball and, when cut, they go on forever without the aid of the freezer. The vase of heads that have been in our lounge warding off evil spirits for the last six or seven months are still remarkably colourful and vibrant, despite having the texture of tissue paper. I’ve missed my garlic boat this year – they should be planted in the autumn and despite it being a reliable crop for six of the seven years since we moved here, I didn’t get round to it this year.

Another thing that’s dead but strangely alive in our world is Jessops. We’ve heard the news today about it going into administration with sadness. When David put a link to his first “doggie pic” on pbase the other day, we both looked at the pic and agreed that the blue bag in the background was almost certainly a Jessops bag containing who-knows-what now. So, three or four days after discussing what it might have been that we’d bought comes the news that we’re unlikely to every buy anything from them again. Still, I suppose that it’s no surprise they’ve gone under if “people like us” (supposed photographers) haven’t set foot inside a Jessops for years.

We’re sad for the poor souls who are staff at Jessops (along with those from Comet and all of the other casualties) who are highly likely, it would seem, to lose their jobs. If they’re not already, our high streets (fore streets here in Cornwall) look like they’re dying to me. Dead but strangely alive with charity shops……