Triffids

No Mark again today.

He has buzzed off to Barrow to do some building work on Number One Son-In-Law’s house, leaving me in sole governorship of our little domestic kingdom.

The sun was shining again, so I did some more outside things.

They were not very exciting outside things. I climbed down the hole at the front of the house and cleaned bird poo off the kitchen window.

I do not know how birds manage to poo on the kitchen windows. They must fly down into the hole specially, maybe they just do not like being watched. The dogs can be a bit like that sometimes. If we are too obviously watching Roger Poopy when we take him out to be emptied, then he will gallop off and do it somewhere else. There is quite a lot of bird poo about at the moment, because of the crows which are nesting in the chimney. It is next door’s chimney, so I don’t care, but I can hear them scratching about occasionally, when I am in my office. Next door does not light his fire very often, so they will be all right. It would be utterly terrible accidentally to light a fire in a chimney with a nest in it.

He won’t do that. He knows that they are there, and he is a kindly human being. He came round this morning to borrow his ladders. He promised that he would bring them back later, so I said that it would be all right.

I did not need them today anyway. I used the short ladders for the kitchen window and the bird poo, and afterwards I went into the conservatory and tied some of the plants up.

The tomato plants are now enormous and beginning to be a bit threatening, as if they might just dive on you and engulf you in a collapsed leafy embrace as you walk past.

I have not tied them up to sticks individually, or indeed at all in most cases. What I have done is built a cage around them, making it taller and taller as the plants get bigger. Today I put the last sticks on it. It cannot be any taller now. If they get any bigger they will be touching the roof.

I had to fight the tomato plants off whilst I was doing it. They wrapped themselves around my hands and poked their leaves into my face. The cage is now so big and unwieldy that I had to tie it to the walls and the ceiling, because they are trying very hard to break out.

I have come to a new understanding of the superb book about the triffids, which if you have not already read, you should. In my imagination they look a little like our tomato plants. The occupants of our conservatory cannot march about and sting people, but it is lack of ability rather than gentle loveliness, and the fight for the daylight is nothing short of merciless.

It is mildly disturbing to remember that if we sat on the sofa and died then eventually they would  find their way to us and eat us. The pumpkin plant might have a go anyway. It is getting bolder all the time, and is currently striking its way out across the conservatory roof.

After I had finished my battle with the jungle I made some biscuits. These were cherry and coconut with dark chocolate, and will encourage us in weary moments.

Mark is back now. It is his birthday in a couple of weeks, and my parents have sent him an early birthday present of a drill that goes round corners. I have never heard of these before now, but think that the idea is magnificent. I can’t tell you how many times in my DIY adventures I have come up against drilling difficulties in small spaces. I have always thrown in the towel at these points and tried to think of something else that I would like to do instead. DIY without power tools has never been one of my favourite occupations.

Needless to say, Mark is very excited indeed about it, and has been making a tiresome racket with it ever since I came upstairs to write to you. I do not know what he is drilling, because as far as I was aware he was going to pour a glass of wine and read his book for a while.

I expect I will come downstairs to find dozens of new holes in the kitchen.

Have a picture of Oliver cooking dinner.