Pig Sty Avenue

Arrived early in the gloaming, about 7pm. The wood was arranged any-old-how, just as it has been piled up, that it, not properly as a bonfire. And it's been piled there under the snow and rain since January, some of it, and was sodden. Rotten wood anyway really soaks up moisture, and when I've been dealing with it a lot the last 10 months I've become more and more convinced that the American pejorative verb to suck is not sexual as some suppose but is actually a dead metaphor likening the person or thing that sucks to rotten wood, which literally sucks moisture. But telling someone 'The movie could be compared to an abandoned shed which has not been painted in years and whose timbers have dried out and begun to absorb moisture from the ground and from the rain' would be rather tortuous compared to 'the movie sucked'. So what I'm saying is, the fire took a bit of lighting. I wasted a whole box of firelighters and a litre of white spirit, and it was s

I'm getting the background on Prof. Shohamy from Lazaraton, 2010, being an interview transcript. This because she's clearly the leading figure in CLT. Shohamy's interest in language and testing could be the result of a 1950s childhood in Israel, where ability in Hebrew was a signifier of belonging, and citizenship. Her father had employment difficulties because of his inability in the language: "There was kind of an unofficial CEFR scale, if you will, whereby people got language proficiency scores."   In the 1970s, at University of Minnesota, the FSI (or CIA or ETS?) were interested in testing being given academic credibility. They used face-to-face interviews for assessment and considered that they had '“emotional validity,” or “experiential validity.”' Her doctoral work compared cloze tests and the FSI speaking tests in Hebrew, (finding high correlations), but "I am very glad that I detached myself from that work and went in a different directio

I was converted to no-dig a few months ago in the bath, listening to Gardeners' Question Time . I've been aware of the concept for years, of course, and had been inclined to say, in The Long Bar with The Old Man after a hard day's digging at the original Pig Sty Avenue that it was a load of hippy nonsense. Anyway, somebody asked a question about no-dig, and what got to me was the tone of the three experts. Mind, these are all people who make a living from horticulture, and have been formally trained in it. They weren't saying it might be a good idea, they were saying it's the only idea. Dig if you want to, it's good exercise, cheaper than a gym and you meet a nicer class of person. (Clearly, Bob Flowerdew has not encountered some of the gobshites who lean on my plot's fence and give me unsolicited advice.) Their attitude reminded me of mine on questions of English usage. People, usually in the pub, knowing what my job is will often assume that I will we

I was all for going back this evening, to light a bonfire of a showery twilight, when no sane Glasgwegian will have their washing out, but after dinner as I felt the pleasant aches and pains of three days hard labour I thought, 'Sod the bonfire'. Sunday I demolished the Frog's Winter Palace. It was mostly rubble and bricks from the Old Greenhouse Foundations, (not all of them, mind, just a portion, see below). And I realised I've learned one important lesson since last November: when piling up rubble, pile it somewhere thoughtful, near where it can be used or disposed of. There were also a couple of sheets of rusty corrugated iron, which I've taken an aesthetic shine to, for eventual deployment on the shed. The Frog's Winter Palace still had one resident, perhaps s/he's been the only one, I don't know. Anyway, I pointed out the attractions of the pond, and off s/he went in search of a summer residence and, hopefully, love nest. And the pond had fille

One needs an occasional day away from both the allotment and academia just to let the mind and body process what's been happening, and today is one of those days. It's rained non-stop, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the pond's shaping up, tomorrow. Yesterday, Good Friday, 25th March 2016, was a significant day in the story of Plot 79, or Pig Sty Avenue #4. After nearly 10 months of work, I planted the first actual food crops, being 5 rows of Maris Peer (2nd early) potatoes, about 10 to the row. I've marked the rows with sticks, twigs from the pollarded cherry tree, which were on the wood pile, and beginning to bud. Who knows, they might continue to grow and maybe put roots out, and if so they'll get a home in the hedge. But if not, they've cost me nowt. And a blog post is a label in the cloud: the 5 cherry twigs in the Pond Bed mark my Maris Peer. Better than buying something plastic to mark a row, eh?

I've got about 50 maris peer (2nd earlies) chitted and ready to go, and it's not raining, and I've got the day off, so it's looking like I'll get them in this afternoon. But before I don the gardening togs and head off to the plot, I'm going to do a wee Critical (-ish) Discourse Analysis on the chitting question as represented online. Googling I got more than 300k results, with this one top, "How to grow potatoes" .  It carries advertising. It makes several assertions: you'll be hard pressed to find commercial growers chitting, for example. Really, how do we know that?  But if that's true, why should allotmenteers?  It suggests recycling egg boxes for chitting, which is what I do, but also tells you it's possible to use seed trees, or even (ffs) wooden chitting trays, and gives links to sites that will sell you these commodities, both at Suttons Seeds, (though I notice the wooden chitting trays send you to a not-found page, perhaps no on

Got there early-ish, before 10am. All set to finish digging over the tattie patch, when I noticed (couldn't miss her) a blackbird with a beak full of mossy stuff. Aha. This was the nest builder in the shed, not Mrs Robinson. It turned out she was getting into the shed by a circuitous route I'd never have thought of: into the adjoining potting shed, and then through a gap in the dividing 'wall'. Which I blocked up. She must've thought it was a brilliant nest site, twice removed from the outside world. Last year by the shed there was a tarpaulin fallen from the southern fence, and a large-ish nest in it's fold, right by the rhubarb . I suspect the same bird, God bless her, she'll have to wait a blackbird lifetime for the hedge to be big enough for her nest. But, anyway, the site of the blackbird with the beak full of mossy stuff - on woodpile, made me think, oh shit, what if a bird, maybe a wren, wants to make its nest in the woodpile? See, it's all kind

Just as I was getting ready to leave this afternoon I noticed a bird had begun building a nest in the shed. Mrs Robinson, I presume, I have seen no others in this corner of the garden. I blocked up the hole in the shed wall with my old Aramco shirt to discourage this frankly rather presumptuous behaviour.

That's today at noon, after 2 weeks with almost no rain. In the foreground, is the pool I dug out a little more on Sunday - as you can see it's filled nicely with water. I'd estimate it as being about 6-9in deep now, enough to sustain a frogspawn or tadpole population for a short time. It rained a bit earlier this evening. More is forecast for tomorrow and for the Easter weekend. Whether frogs choose the pond as a nursery, and whether that's a wise choice, I have no idea and it's out of my hands now. 

I managed to finish editing the submission I've been working on for... months, I think, and get it sent off at 11.30 this morning and get down to the allotment for a couple of hours, maybe slightly longer. 1st, raked over the whole bed to level it and get most of the roots out. Roots! Loads of them, mostly nettles, I've left them heaped up by the pond, but I'd estimate a couple of barrow fulls. Which got me thinking. There are bits of twig, branch and root from the fruit bushes, too. They'll all break down but that bed will likely become a bit deprived of nitrogen in doing so. Which is a good reason for going with the plan to mulch with oomska and sow with field beans at the end of the season. Then I got into digging over, hopefully the last time I will dig this bed over for sometime. Got maybe a third done - I was actually very pleased how little 'hard work' it was, the soils is quite light. There are actually 3 types of soil: by the eastern boundary, benea

It's clouding over now, and rain is forecast tomorrow... I'm still hopeful that there'll be enough rain to sustain tadpoles and froglets over the coming months. On Sunday, one of the pond's 3 deep points (the northerly one) had a few inches of water in. I dug the southerly a few inches deeper into the boulder clay and it too filled with a few inches. I left the middle one with sludge in it, as it seemed to be attracting a lot of insect activity. The chart above shows average rainfall for Glasgow, in March we'd expect 69mm. But the actual rainfall in the last 2 weeks ( see below ), since 10th March is neglible, just over a millimeter. Which might indicate that the last couple of weeks are unusual, and that if at least part of the pond can retain a few inches of water, then, Bob's your uncle, this is exceptional and it won't normally be in danger of drying out. If it's exceptional, then topping it up from the water barrels is a reasonable course.   

Grubbing at the old fruit bush area, and the SW corner, once infested by nettles, I've noticed the emergent ground elder seems to have a symbiotic relationship with nettles at the roots. I've been collecting the nettle roots, therefore, to burn them. Ground elder has popped up along the old fruit bush area, but also in the NW bed. The significant moving around of tons of earth has had the effect I'd feared but expected of spreading it. The earth I move from the far SW corner is heavily invested, and I'm planning a bonfire on top of the moved earth, which might help. This year I suppose it's a matter of gathering intelligence about it, seeing if anything works. Mostly I'm going to be hoeing weeds, which is from what I read liable to make it worse. We shall see...

Good day yesterday, the first day at allotment for a week, which apart from Christmas hols is about the longest I've been away. The pond was almost dry, (no rain for nearly a fortnight), so I took the opportunity to excavate one of the pools a little deeper, getting a barrowload of silt, and digging down a spit or so (over a small area, about 1ft sq) into the boulder clay. Evidence that the pond will indeed go dry after a couple of weeks is disappointing for the amphibian hopes I had for it. Heigh ho. It's still likely to be a massive resource for invertebrate diversity. Yesterday, there was some kind of bee or wasp visiting the sludge at the bottom in numbers, don't know what it was doing exactly. Lots of other smaller flying insects showing an interest, too. I got at the last of the old fruit bush bed, clearing the tattie patch. It still wants raked level, the (mostly nettle) roots raked out, and dug over, but assuming I get the submission for the doctorate finished t

[Not proofed yet, and will likely want some editing before submission. Still undecided whether or not to give a few lines each to Weir, 2005, and Chapelle, 2012. Will finish it on Monday. Allotment tomorrow.] This research is concerned with the validity of language tests used by the immigration authorities to measure the fitness of people resident in Scotland to become citizens of the United Kingdom. The first issue is to establish what is meant by validity in the context of assessing abilities in English as a Second Language (L2) for people who have a different first language, (L1). I refer to ‘citizenship tests’ meaning for the purposes of this submission the language element (actually a test in the speaking and listening domains at the B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference). But the literature reviewed could equally apply to all tests of language ability connected with migration to the UK, and in particular to Scotland. These include the A1 level tests for spousal

Deeply immersed in the Validity Paradigms section of my Lit Rev, which has to be submitted before Tuesday, I came across a reference to this in Bachman, 2005. So I did a very quick generic search in Scholar, and got the list below to get me started when I move to the critical side. CLA: 'Hello honey, I'm home!' REFERENCES [not proofed] Bachman, L. F. (2005). Building and Supporting a Case for Test Use. Language Assessment Quarterly: An International Journal, 2(1), 1–34. http://doi.org/10.1207/s15434311laq0201_1 Kubota, R. (2011). Questioning linguistic instrumentalism: English, neoliberalism, and language tests in Japan. Linguistics and Education, 22(3), 248–260. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2011.02.002 Lantolf, J. P., & Poehner, M. E. (2013). The Unfairness of equal treatment : objectivity in L2 testing and dynamic assessment. Educational Research and Evaluation: An International Journal on Theory and Practice, 19(December), 141–157. http://doi.org/10.1080/138

Mornings, I need to clear the mental decks of allotment thoughts to enable me to get back to the academic work. Regarding the latter, something happened yesterday in the early afternoon. The shackles came off, the mojo came back, and I rediscovered my academic register. It's nearly 6 years since I finished the MA, and it's taken me since October to get back into it, which is why I'm working now on a 2nd resubmission of what should have been a straightforward section from the Literature Review. But I'm in the zone now, at last, and beginning to enjoy it again at last. So, allotment. A to-do list that I can put to one side for the next few days, before cracking on next week, (I might get there on Sunday, see how things go): Finish grubbing old fruit bush area and rake/hoe NE bed, so that the OFB area becomes history; Plant spuds; Tidy up SW corner, levelling, moving woodpile and oomska; Re-establish compost heap in NE corner; Clear rubble from Midwest bed, riddle

It might be argued that language (or societal knowledge) testing for citizenship operates as a "boundary object" per Macqueen et al, 2015, in which case we need to be aware of what is on the other side of that boundary. That is, what does citizenship mean in Scotland? Here I summarise what I have learned from peer reviewed journal articles found with a Primo Central search in the Strathclyde library database, published since 2009, which came up with a little less than 150 results. I've chosen those articles whose abstract indicated greatest relevance to testing, migration or education.  Akhtar (2008) presents an uncritical view of Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2002, and looks at translating theory about citizenship teaching into classroom practice. A "capable citizen" not only possesses "knowledge and skills" but also knows how and when to apply them. It might be objected that these are vague terms, and that all humans must possess "knowledge

I was never comfortable about glyphosate. But, I'd say to myself, anybody who's got ground elder growing on their plot would understand why an allotmenteer would put their principles to one side and resort to the Roundup once in a way... But no. T he WHO reckons it's "probably" carcinogenic in humans . You'd have to use an awful lot of it to get cancer, no doubt, but I just don't like the idea of having it in the soil. Besides, there's the whole Monsanto thing, putting a penny in those bastards' pockets is not something any self-respecting Bolshevik would happily do. And finally, it's just mealy mouthed to say "Oh yes I'm totally chemical free in my allotment. Except for..." So that's it. 100% organic and chemical free from now on.

[This blogpost was formerly entitled "Testing Validity Paradigm(s) because that is what was being researched at the time. But it has taken on a life as its own as a database of Journals regularly publishing articles on Language Testing, (all of which need to be therefore regularly consulted). I have amended it today because I have expanded the scope of research beyond straightforward validity and into Critical Language Testing, and wish to include journals discovered in connected literature searches, e.g. (5) Educational Research and Evaluation. 22/03/2016.] Today's the day when I stop flitting around the garden of academia like an unfussy butterfly, and get my oomska together. 1st order of business is a list of journals which regularly publish articles on language testing, so that I can be aware of the current paradigms, focusing today on Test Validity, (so as not to be distracted, - I've got a bloody deadline approaching). American Journal of Speech-Language Patho

It really is Spring. Here are the crocuses, (are they? bulbs ain't my thing) in Alexandra Park, yesterday. I heard Monty Don on Gardeners' World saying the daffodils were nearly finished where he was (southern England, somewhere), but they're just appearing in Glasgow. And I walked into the University this morning without a hat on my bald head, for the first time this year. The walk through the Park on my way home yesterday was a change. Normally, I go by the route that takes me home via The Lea Rig, shut for refurbishments, so after coming out of the Park I went to La Cala, on Meadowpark St, for my Sunday Guinness. A proper Glasgow pub, but not a place you'd want to linger in beyond a couple of pints. I wasn't exhausted, as I sometimes am of a Sunday. I'd intended to get the NE Bed, (aka the Pond Bed) levelled and raked and ready for the spuds, but the old fruit bush bed which once was there is slow to give up the fight. It had sprawled out to occupy al

“I mean they did actually advertise for local people and what they told us was that there was about thirty people applied for jobs and only about twelve bothered to turn up for the interview, and then only about four actually wanted the job when they’d got it.” This anecdote is told by a participant in Tonkiss (2013)’s study. She notes that it was related to her regularly. It suggests that a number of local people applied for jobs, (seasonal agricultural jobs, so potato picking, for example). Less than half of applicants attended for interview; (were all 30 applicants invited?) Of those 12 interviewed, only a third agreed to accept the jobs, (were all 12 suitable enough to be offered jobs?)  I have heard anecdotes similar to this many times, it could be suggested that in one form or another it has become part of British culture. There's a picture of British workers half-heartedly filling in a job application, perhaps badgered into it by the Job Centre or a family member, but then m

I think the upper photo was one of the first I took. That was in July last year. And the lower I took yesterday, with trembling hand after several hours barrowing oomska, (which you can just see in the upper right hand, SE corner, of the plot).  The path's a bit straighter, and quite a bit higher, and the jungle to the left has been razed. You can't really see in the top photo, but at that time the NW bed, (right fore- and middleground) use to slope down to the West. Now it runs down towards the path, Eastwards. Although barely apparent in a photo, that's what has actually been occupying me for months, just getting the plot to lie properly, so that the excess water runs down towards and under the path, and into the pond. I'm looking forward to blogging a 3rd photo in a month or two, with lots of lovely crops growing, at last.

...and plenty of it. I got to the plots yesterday to find that the delivery was imminent. Good job I'd decided to have an allotment Friday and a University Saturday.  And here it is, in excess of 10 tons of it. There were 7 of us to barrow it between 5 allotments. The methodology was, each of us 7 would take 2 barrows to each of the 5 plots in turn, and then start again. One of the lads calculated we'd each have 3 trips, that is 6 barrow-fulls, to each of the 5 plots, and by jingo, he was almost spot on, with about 5 or 6 left over at the end for the community garden. It took us several hours, but it passed quickly enough with some blokish humour and swear words. The whole load cost us £80, so £16 per plot. Which, to put in context, I was contemplating forking out £100 to hire a truck to get a few tons from the stables outside Cumbernauld. We can make this a regular thing, now that contact has been made, at least every Spring. And here's my share, at least 2 tons.I