In the High Barnet Waitrose store yesterday a young lady was being trained up in delicatessen duties. You did not need to be Sherlock Holmes to detect that she was a trainee. I figured this out by the excessive care she showed in positioning the knuckle of ham in the slicer, and the presence of a kindly, slightly older lady, watching over her.

“Would you like anything else?” she enquired on handing me my ham. Sure, I replied – “I’ll have some paté, provided it has plenty of calories.” She looked at me strangely so I explained: “What is the point of eating low calorie foods – I heard that in the US they now have restaurants serving only bowls of steam?”

She asked me which particular paté I desired. I glanced at the labels and couldn’t help replying – “I’ll have the Belgian Smooth and Assured…just like me”…

I scarpered off to the till and explained to Andy and the lady behind me in the queue that this might be the last time that I actually pay for my groceries in Waitrose because yesterday’s edition of the Times contained a step by step guide to forging your own £20 banknotes. This is essentially what the Bank of England have been doing under the pseudo-scientific label of “Quantitative Easing”: printing banknotes that are not backed by anything at all and thereby diluting the value of every other banknote in circulation and exacerbating, not alleviating, the financial crisis. (See related link to Cobden Centre article). Sharp readers will have worked out that, perversely, this effect increases (rather than relaxes) Council funding problems and in turn cranks up the pressure on all community facilities which are being merrily sold off in spades.

Now I know that the chap who served me is called Andy because I have just returned (at 7.30 am) from an early morning visit to my Council Allotment at Bells Hill. After watering my spuds and onions I noticed Andy in a bus queue in Chesterfield Road, so I gave him a lift up the hill to “The Spires” shopping arcade, home of the aforementioned Waitrose.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my ambition is to visit grocery stores less and less often. Nothing against Waitrose. It’s just that Council allotments are some of the most valuable community assets in our Borough (and nationwide), and I salivate at the prospect of eating my own vegetables for the rest of the year within a few short weeks.

Just being at my allotment induces a feeling of serenity, calmness and timelessness that the expression “Nature’s Valium”, best conveys, to quote my dear friend Robert Goymour.

To my astonishment, I discovered recently that a large chunk of these allotments were sold by the Council a few years ago. Regular readers of my posts will guess that I was not surprised at all. The dreadful saga of the Council’s attempts to deprive the community of open space at Claremont Road drags on, against the background this week of the scandal of Barnet Councillors’ “allowances” and, even worse, the Conservative Group’s punishment by ostracision of Kate Salinger, the classiest Conservative Councillor by a country mile.