I have had a splendid day.
It started in the best way possible, which was with the surprise discovery that the Queen had paid us the cash that she owed us for performing our civic duty as witnesses in court, and hence our bank account was no longer rinsed clean. I had not been expecting this, because I did not think that she was at work on a Saturday, and so it was a true moment of serendipity.
Better still, I did not need to worry about my reckless extravagance of purchasing the nematodes.
I had told Mark about it anyway, but he was so worried about the vine weevils that he agreed that it was a perfectly justifiable, nay, vital expense, and so that was all right.
Once we were solvent again we could hold our heads up and march into the day with pride, although we didn’t really. Actually we had bit of a lie in and did not get up until almost nine o’clock.
Once we were actually out of bed we did so many things that we hardly stopped at all.
Even when we did stop, which we did, obviously, not least for a cup of tea and some breakfast at about half past two in the afternoon, still we were busy making excited plans, because we are starting to Do Things in the conservatory.
We began by loading the dogs and the chainsaw into Mark’s already too-filthy-to-matter taxi. We headed off to the farm, where we discovered that the sheep had not only eaten most of the honeysuckle, they had actually tried to bash down the fence and dig it up. After that they worried the dogs, tiresomely, following them about and sniffing them, upsetting the dogs into an agony of guilt in case they were going to be in trouble. They know that anything sheep-related leads to dreadful penalties, and were not sure if being relentlessly investigated would turn out to be a crime.
I do not have much conscience about eating our fleecy friends anyway, but today, especially when I discovered that they had also eaten the heads off the daffodils, the recollection of mint sauce seemed positively justified.
The dogs were in disgrace anyway, because one of them did a poo on the carpet yesterday. Had I had any mint sauce I would have been serving it with roast dog, we were so cross.
They knew we were cross. They have been trying to make themselves invisible ever since.
The weather was absolutely brilliant, and we could smell springtime in the air. The birds were rushing about noisily, trying to do unmentionable things to each other, and the first green shoots are beginning to come through everywhere. Quite a lot of them seem to be stinging nettles, which is a nuisance, and I am going to go up with some gloves and start to dig them out if the weather holds next week.
Mark loaded bricks into the back of the taxi, and I loaded logs, after which we spent an hour down by the still-huge stack of tree trunks, and I chainsawed through them whilst Mark split them. We had to stop because to my surprise I hit a nail, buried deep in the trunk, it must have been put there before I was even born, and slowly, slowly absorbed into the tree. Anyway, it blunted the saw and we had to stop.
We had to crawl home slowly, because of the back bumper of the car almost touching the ground, obviously taxis are not designed to have a couple of tons of bricks and firewood hurled into the boot.
The bricks were for building the new flower bed. Mark has started on this, and I am more excited than I can tell you, because it changes everything and makes our conservatory into a lovely magical shape. We have decided to curve everything, like a garden path, and build an archway around the door.
It is going to be wonderful. I have not taken a photograph, because there is not enough of it yet, but I will take one tomorrow, so that you will be able to see.
Lucy rang. She has been wearing plain clothes and doing drug raids. She says that plain clothes are no good for being a policeman because they do not have enough pockets, and she ran out of handy spaces to keep everything on her person.
Have a picture of a sheep-scoffed honeysuckle. The rotters.
