I've just carried out the first runner bean harvest of the year here at Marshside Acres. Yes, a major task involving a lengthy journey across the rolling fields in an expensive 4x4 but someone's got to do it and I'm afraid the recession and the immigration authorities did for the asylum-seekers we laughingly referred to as gardeners.
I've been picking runner beans since I was knee high to, well, to a runner bean stalk and it's a fascinating experience. Why? Because you soon discover that planting runner beans will solve the world's food shortage problems because the supply of runner beans is infinite. Blimey! I hear you say, that's a far-fetched notion if ever I heard one, and that's putting it politely. But let me explain. The thing is that however many you pick and however long you spend doing it, you never pick them all: go back again and there's always more. Ergo, there is no end to the supply of runner beans. QED.
I appreciate this may be wasted on those of you without a runner bean plantation but I urge you next spring to get some these little marvels in the ground and see for yourselves that I am right. Making this discovery will raise you to a higher level of consciousness and bring you closer to a more complete understanding of the universe than even Professor Brian Cox could ever hope to achieve. Never mind the Large Hadron Collider, just reach for the large bean colander!
Speaking of the mighty PBC brings me on to TV. Just to be clear, Marshside blog is a big fan of the Oldham Oracle but there was another scientist type on the box the other day who let the side down badly. Can't remember his name (and too lazy to look it up) but the programme in question was called "the Code". It was all about numbers and purported to show us how the world is held together by extraordinary mathematical patterns. I'm a big fan of numbers so was looking forward to this but it really was poor.
The programme lasted an hour I think but I could be wrong as it felt like days and in any case could have been condensed into 5 minutes. I won't bore you but it included such tosh as trying to suggest that the proportions of Chartres cathedral were based on the ratios between the frequencies represented by musical notes. This rather ignores the fact that in the 13th century they would have had no idea what a sound wave was, what a frequency was or that an octave sounds the way it does because the frequency exactly doubles each time you go up an octave. Plus, I'm pretty sure they used different musical scales in those days and that terms like "perfect fourth" and "major third" hadn't been invented.
So what am I saying? It's more evidence of dumbing down, is what. We read today that a worryingly large proportion of children leave primary school without mastering the 3Rs. What they've been taught for those 6 years or so is a mystery but they probably go on to make TV programmes like "the Code". I suggest that they could do worse than a lesson on "examine the Marshside blog hypothesis on the runner bean: is it true or is the writer a blogging idiot?"
Think about it over lunch and eat up your runner beans while you're about it - there's plenty more where they came from!
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