I have been doing more Improving My Lot in life.
I have been recklessly spending our money on nice things.
I had to stop in the end because the money ran out, which is always a nuisance, and does seem to happen very quickly.
All the same it was a very exciting way to spend half an hour.
I have bought some tomato plant seeds.
These are for a different variety of tomatoes to the ones that we have got at the moment. The current tomatoes, as perhaps you remember, have sprawled so far that our conservatory has become a long green tunnel, with tomato plants climbing to the roof and across to greet their cousins on the other side.
Investigation leads me to discover that tomato plants are actually perennials, meaning that they carry on for ever if the weather is warm enough and they have got sufficient poo-flavoured nourishment in their soil.
We have considered this.
Ours do not have good enough soil to carry on for very much longer. They have eaten bags and bags of cow poo from the farm, and hardly a crumb remains. The poor things are already desperately hungry. They are still providing us with all the tomatoes that we need, but there is no surplus now, and the leaves are beginning to yellow on the struggling vines.
We are going to go and collect some muck and bed them in again if we get time this week. If we manage to do this they might survive the whole winter.
I would like this. We are eating a lot of tomatoes at the moment, mostly on sandwiches with basil and black pepper.
I think that these are a magnificent product whose main ingredient is cow poo.
I am going to uproot the ones that are not doing quite as well and replace them with some new varieties, so that we have an excitement of different flavours from which we can choose.
This is what I have bought today.
I have bought them in an online sort of way, so I don’t have them yet. That excitement is yet to come, and will be all the better for the waiting. All the same, it is frustrating, because I would very much like to be planting them, although also a bit of a relief, because I really don’t have the time.
Going to work is such a nuisance sometimes. There are so many other things I would rather be doing.
A secretly idle part of me would not be exactly sorry if our revered leaders decided to inflict another couple of weeks of enforced staying at home upon us. It would be a financial disaster but a magnificently guilt-free shirk.
I have also bought some seeds for a plant called Coleus, which has brightly coloured leaves, to cheer me up during the gloom of winter, and best of all, some hyacinth bulbs.
I am sure that I have told you the hyacinth story already, but I am going to tell you again anyway. When Lucy was small, for an extended part of her formative years she was, as you might know, a dog. She wore a tail pinned to her knickers, which had been kindly purchased for her by Elspeth, and barked conversationally when she wanted to tell us something. She was called Hyacinth.
Oliver was two. When he wanted to join in and be a puppy as well she told him kindly that he could be Lowercinth, because he was little.
If I plant the hyacinths in the conservatory now I will have the most wonderful springtime. They are my absolute favourite.
I have also bought some soap.
This is a massive investment, because although I make our own bars of soap for having showers, I do still buy the squirty stuff that we use to wash our hands, although I will confess here that nobody sings Happy Birthday whilst they do it. This is because we are secret rebels against a dictatorial state and also because I do not think that Boris Johnson is likely to find out, even in these scary Red Army days of neighbourhood surveillance.
If the police turn up tomorrow I will know that it was you who dropped me in it.
I do not buy it because I can’t make it, but because it takes absolutely ages, which I do not have.
Instead we buy it a gallon at a time. This is really expensive whilst you are doing it, and a bargain for the rest of the year.
Today was the inevitable but depressing day when the gallon had to be purchased, and more money evaporated out of our bank account.
In consequence, once again I am writing to you from the taxi rank. I am feeling pleased with our day’s efforts, because I have cleaned the bathroom and bathed the dogs, in reverse order, and because Mark has repainted the stove, which is shown on the picture, looking beautifully clean and bright.
The dog in the picture is also clean, but sulking.
