I just discovered this post lurking in the drafts folder: I wrote it a week ago and thought I’d published it, but not so.
I’ve got a bit carried away with gardening this week, and while the two lavender cuttings were settling into their pot, I looked up methods of propagating comfrey. Mark used to joke about this herb, ‘it doesn’t come free, you know,’ but actually – it does. Not only that, if it’s in a place where you don’t want it, it’s very hard to get rid of. But I wanted to take some from between the cracks in the front garden and transport it to the back – to which end, I did some research – and, surprise, surprise, you can’t take cuttings. I more or less knew this, but whereas the recommended method is to divide the plants and transplant one half, the only comfrey plants available to me have wedged themselves so tightly between paving-slabs that it is impossible to get any garden implement in there.
But all was not lost. As I wrote ‘comfrey cuttings’ on my notepad, a small twinge occurred in my brain. It reminded me of something. Some poking around revealed this to be an abortive follow-up to Dad’s Army called Parsley Sidings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_Sidings
And all of this set me thinking about sequels to sitcoms. Ones which failed include Joey, the unsuccessful follow-up to Friends; Going Straight, the much less exciting spin-off from Porridge, and one which only I seem to remember, Constant Hot Water, which featured Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner of Coronation St) as a B&B landlady. I didn’t know, however, that there had been a sequel to M*A*S*H called Aftermash, but so it was.
However not all spin-offs are doomed to oblivion. Some do even better than their progenitors. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is widely considered to be better than the original, and Frasier is far superior to Cheers.
None of which gets me any further with the comfrey. I did attempt to dig up a couple of roots, but they both perished.
And this post has gone all squashed. Maybe that’s what happens if they don’t see the light of day…
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 