Day 2: Kolkata

We arrived at dawn and stepped off the plane into an oven ... bliss! I could feel the warmth reach my bones. I got to meet the rest of the party: Desiree, Merle, Susan, Mike, Judy, Christine, Duncan, Lynda and Denis. And we were whisked off to the hotel. I say whisked; in fact it was quite a long bus trip, past fields and farms at first, then developments of apartment blocks, commercial buildings and shopping centres springing up, then suburbs and finally the thronging, heaving city proper. People! People people people. Kolkata has a population of 14 million, and another 5 million commute in each day. The poorest live right on the street, sleeping, washing and eating in the open.

The hotel, by contrast, was
a chilly, gleaming marble palace, with uniformed flunkies hovering at every turn. A bus tour of the city had been organised for the afternoon so I rested until then.

When we set out on the tour it was overcast, and somehow lulled by the chill of the hotel I didn't take a hat or sunscreen with me. Later on I needed both! I had taken my umbrella, however, so used that for shade. Our guide was Shanti, your go-to man for facts, figures and history.



We were hauled around various monuments and churches and museums, but for me the best bit was driving down all the fascinating streets, seeing daily life.







Among the places we visited was Mother Teresa's mission, the Sisters of Charity. As we drove up to the street it's in, our way was partly blocked by a pray-in: dozens of Muslim men had unrolled their prayer mats in the street and a scowling imam was conducting Friday prayers. The atmosphere was simmering with hostility on all sides. Shanti was beside himself with outraged indignation: "Look at this! On your left! These men are blocking the road! What right do they have! As a Calcuttan I feel ashamed of this!"



The mission was very simple and we were greeted by a sweet Indonesian nun. We visited Mother Teresa's tomb, a plain marble plinth, and left after peering up some roped-off steps at what was her room. "God be with you," said the nun as we went.

Near the end of the tour we stopped by the river to look at some people launching idols. By this stage I was knackered, not having slept or eaten all day, so I stayed in the bus. It was apparently interesting but boisterous - someone was splashed and got upset.

Back at the hotel I was tempted to go to bed but pushed myself to stay up. A few of us ate in the hotel restaurant - delicious food; I had fish curry, yum. And so to bed... a very comfortable bed.

India/Bhutan tour - Day 1: to Kolkata

I should really start this travelogue with the few days leading up to my departure...

The flight left on Thursday but I had that whole week off, so I thought I'd have a very leisurely time packing and getting ready. No such luck. At the weekend Bertie went suddenly and quite dramatically lame: I came home from shopping and he didn't greet me at the door. He was upstairs standing on three legs looking very sorry for himself. I dosed him with some doggie painkiller I had to hand and he seemed not too bad the next day. But then on Sunday he went downhill again - the leg swelled alarmingly and he couldn't put any weight on it.



So on Monday I whisked him off to the vet, who took him in for an X-ray. Nothing was broken, happily, so it was a matter of antibiotics, painkillers and bed rest. I was pleased I was leaving him with a good dogminder rather than kennels or some poor benighted friend. Liz was unfazed by the news - she had an elderly lab staying who was also on "light duties", so at least he would have company for his recuperation.

Just when all this was sorted, and I was about to take Bertie to the dogminder, Faye texted her news: she was in hospital in Cornwall with a very painful gallstone! I spent a day phoning and texting and emailing to see how she was and let the rest of the family know. Finally I threw some clothes and stuff in a suitcase and was off to the airport to catch the plan to London.

And at Heathrow while waiting for my flight to Kolkata I got a text from Pinky saying SHE'd been in hospital too! Good grief.

The flight was overnight and very comfortable - I was lucky enough to have all three seats to myself and so could stretch out. The only glitch was that I'd picked the very last seat on the plane to be served dinner, so by the time they got to me they only had the vegetarian option left - moussaka! I said I wouldn't mind so much if it was something Indian ... and the steward whisked it away and came back with a delicious veg curry. Lovely.

:: googled!

I saw the Google car today but didn't get a photo of it. By the time I'd grappled my camera out and switched it to auto (it was set for night shots) and dragged Bertie away from an interesting bit of wall, it was gone. So when the UK's Google Street View eventually goes online there'll be a nice shot of me fiddlng with the camera. Sigh.

:: rain, rain and more rain

It's getting a bit old... I mean, it's nice not having a drought, and the courgettes are coming along marvellously (so much so I may regret having planted six), but it's actually quite cold a lot of the time. Grumble.

Tomorrow I'm going to Pitlochry to see Kate and wee Calum, who's recovering from surgery. I thought Andrew might enjoy coming along - he's living in Glasgow now - and he is! I'm collecting him at the bus stop by a roundabout just outside Perth. When I first went to Andrew's parents' farm for Christmas, in the early 90s, they asked me to pick up his brother on my way up. We arranged to meet by a roundabout on the outskirts of Inverness. He was there all right - but in the middle of the roundabout! Stopping for him made me very, very unpopular with the other drivers, I can tell you. But Andrew swears he will not be waiting in the middle of the Broxburn roundabout, whew.

I'm glad not to be working this weekend: for reasons that evade me, "they" have decided to change our log-in names from j.bloggs to joe.bloggs. The early hiccups have been ironed out; the IT boys were persuaded that people weren't being awkward by insisting that their names be spelled correctly. But I'm sure the air will be rent with grizzling and whining come Sunday.

I went to see Wall-E tonight and enjoyed it - four stars out of five, I think. I really can't suspend belief enough to buy robots developing feelings for one another, cynic that I am. But it was cute. And there was a great short film beforehand, a funny slapstick cartoon about a magician and his rabbit. I went to the 10pm session to avoid noisy children, but guess what? These days people take their kids to the 10pm session.

Bertie's fans will be glad to hear he's doing well. Today we went to Blackford Hill and he had a fine old time despite persistent drizzle and stupid signs.

I'm loving my new camera

I had been dithering about which camera to take to Bhutan with me: the Ixus or the EOS? The EOS takes much better photos but is big. I tried taking zillions of photos with the Ixus to learn the settings better. But still it was frustrating - it's really just a point and shoot, a good one but limited.

And then a colleague had her Olympus mid-size compact at work and ooooooh, I thought, that's cool. I do like Canons, so I shopped around and got a Powershot G9, a perfect compromise. So perfect I'm might sell both my other cameras! It has all the manual settings you could want, plus the fun compact camera things like video. You can fit lenses and filters to it with an adapter. So I'm a happy snappy bunny.

:: sprouting broccoli sprouts shock

I thought it was never going to happen, but it finally did: the purple sprouting broccoli sprouted.



And so I ate it.



It's out of focus because I was shaking with excitement! Hee hee. It was delicious - a handful of broccoli sprouts and some spinach, straight from garden to pot, just a couple of minutes' cooking and a sprinkle of salt.

haven't gotten too far with the plans for the vege plot expansion. I've got the extra planks and stakes, and I've grubbed out the grass. But I haven't bought any extra soil or actually built the new bed. I'm sort of swithering about whether to make it half width, whether to step it out from the other bed or keep it separate ... so many decisions! And meanwhile time is ticking away and I should have had the peas and beans in by now.

Oh well, at least I have broccoli and spinach...

And it really is spring, at last.



Bertie is well but slowing down all the time. He still enjoys his walks, and we've had some quite long ones lately, like an excursion to Cramond Island via the causeway:



But really likes lying in front of the heater. He grizzles until I turn it on! And he doesn't run around like he used to either - if a younger dog pesters him for a race he'll usually send it off with a flea in its ear (unless it's a Jack Russell - for some reason he will just about always race a Jack Russell), and the rabbits are definitely safe. I had him at the vet's for his booster shots the other day and she listened for a long time to his chest. "He might have a heart murmur," she said. "But it might be that he's trembling so much his hair is rubbing on the stethoscope." She said if it was a heart murmur it was only slight and probably just due to his age (11 next birthday).

She confirmed my suspicion that he's lost weight - 3kg since his last shot - but said he's not too thin. He still has an appetite, but he's gotten more picky. I think that's in part because a woman across the road has started giving him leftovers - yesterday it was a chicken Kiev, sometimes it's sliced ham or beef stew. Why eat boring old dog biscuits when you can have lamb chops?

He likes his greens though:



Mmmm, a whole paddock of his favourite brand of grass!

I'm at work right now and had better go and do some...

:: spring snow

Brrr, it was freezing today and there was a bit of grotty snow still left when I got up this morning. But then the sun came out. I very nearly got caught in a hailstorm yesterday, while out walking at Blackness:






But it struck while I was in the garden centre buying gravel boards for the extension to the raised bed. Oh yes, it's going to be a duplex. The problem is that I built the original too far back in the garden, so it's too shaded by the trees over the fence. I think I'd get a row if I hacked down the neighbour's rowan (plus it's supposed to be incredibly bad luck), so I'm just going to build another patch. Not this weekend though, too lazy.

I had a flutter on the Grand National yesterday and won £50! The horse was Comply or Die, which sounded quite a motivating name. Win or you're dogfood! I bet online, which was interesting - it took about half an hour to set up an account and get a bet on, so it would have been quicker to walk down to the bookies in the High Street. And then when I went to collect my winnings, they wanted me to confirm my age - by either paying them some more money via a credit card (which you can't get if you're under 18) or by emailing them a photo of my passport. Crazy. And it will take four days to transfer the money (by donkey cart?) - again, the bookie would have given me cash money right away.

:: pix

Just being lazy - a couple of pix here from the World Cross Country Championships at the weekend (Andrew was in Glasgow so came through and we had lunch and then watched the finals):






And this is from an excursion down Rubbish Alley, which is apparently where shopping trolleys go to die:

:: change of plans

I've done it - cancelled the Tibet trip. The deciding factor was the train - the Free Tibet people have an excellent web page for ditherers like me and after giving all the pros and cons on the ethics of visiting Tibet they flat out call for a boycott of the train. So, that was it really. I feel bad now that I was really looking forward to the train journey! I love trains.

But however, I am consoling myself with another trip. I'd already paid a deposit, so rather than lose it I applied it to a tour of Bhutan, aka Land of the Thunder Dragon, aka The Last Shangri-La. The trip starts in Calcutta and also takes in Darjeeling and Sikkim, so it will be pretty interesting. The scenery of course is spectacular and the people seem pretty charming.

Tibet

My dreams of a visit to Tibet are receding ... even if things have calmed down by September the current events will have soured my feelings. The stories that are coming out are heart-rending - here's one from a sound technician with a film crew. He wasn't actually in Tibet, he was in a border area that's mostly Tibetan. It's an amazing account, well worth reading.

I even dreamed about Tibet last night! The trip had been cancelled and I decided to go to China anyway, under my own steam, to see if I could get to Tibet by train. I was at the railway station trying to find the right train and met a Tibetan woman who was crying and distraught ... and then I woke up.

Some more links: Free Tibet, Friends of Tibet (NZ)

I'm eating so much better these days...

The canteen at work shuts at 8pm now, long before I get a break, so I've been taking a tasty, nutritious meal in instead. Lovely salads mostly, with home-made coleslaw and carrot sticks. Yum. Now and then I go for a hot meal (there's a microwave in the canteen) - couscous and roasted veg, or pasta. Today it was pasta - organic spinach rinkidinkis (or something) with a nice meat and veg sauce left over from yesterday.

So I put the pot of water to boil and sat down to look through my seeds and plan what I'm planting this year. Then I went into the kitchen to get something and noticed a strange sound. Oh the pot of boiling water! Right! I tipped in the pasta and made a mental note not to forget it.

Ha ha ha!!

Much later I was out in the garden preparing the vege patch for the first seed-planting when I smelt something burning. Hurtled into the house, snatched the smouldering pan from the stove and raced around flinging open windows. Every room had a foot-deep lid of smoke and the smell was incredible.

Bertie was startled by the sudden burst of activity, but didn't budge from his comfy spot on the rug. Until the draught got too chilly and he headed off upstairs. Pause. Imperious bark. I went up to see what the problem was and the problem was smoke: every room was filled with a pale haze, top to bottom. Bertie was on his bed, looking aggrieved. Obviously I cannot rely on being dragged out of the house in the event of a proper fire.

In other news: Well, nothing really. I've been dull and duller. Still plugging away at the gym but with minimal effect. I've started doing rowing and some weights, which makes it more interesting. Yes, that's how dull things are ... a rowing machine is interesting.

Happy New Year!

Hogmanay was damp and I was working too hard to even step over to the windows and watch the fireworks, tsk. I went to see the Loony Dookers, but this year for some reason they dooked at ten to 12 instead of noon, so I just saw the tail end.



BUT, I did have Christmas off, and spent it in a lovely cottage tucked away in the Highlands.



It wasn't the whole house - just the little original farm cottage on the right of the building. The farmer said it dates from the 16th century. It's near Tomintoul, the highest village in the Highlands and it was cold. Very cold.



I had four days at the cottage. The second day was windy - brrrrrrrrrr. Old cottages are leaky! Poor Bertie suffered - he loved the peat fire, and learned to sleep under a blanket.






There were many temptations for him at the farm - a lamb in the garden and an 18-year-old cat strolling around like it owned the place. He actually managed to get loose one night, eeling out the door when Louise came calling, and there were a panicky few moments when the cat came bursting into the cottage to get away from him. Louise had to run and get Gavin because she was carrying her wee boy and anyway she doesn't like cats. But I managed to catch Bertie and shut in one of the bedrooms and lure the cat out from behind the sofa before there was a tragedy.



I had some great walks - there are loads of paths in the area. One I especially enjoyed was to Scalan, which once upon a time was a Catholic seminary. If it hadn't been so insanely cold I might have walked further - I will have to go back in the summer. The other thing about highland winters is that it starts getting dark at 3pm!



Apart from bracing walks I mostly lay around reading and watching TV. The cottage has Sky! I hadn't expected that. I watched Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, but apart from that it seemed to be the same rubbish as regular TV, just a lot more of it.

It was a wonderful break.

:: back on board

I was going to wait until the new year, but what the hell - I've got a spare minute at work so I'll update a bit...

The plum blossom became a plum, which I ate. It was delicious.

Faye moved to the Black Isle for a job, but it didn't work out so she came back down and stayed with me for about six weeks while she looked for work. She's back down in Oxford now, working for an agency.

I had a restful autumn holiday on the west coast, staying in Dunoon and foraying out from there.

This is Bertie in the car on the ferry to Dunoon. He's not crazy about boats.

I joined a gym and have been going regularly enough to feel the benefits. It's a university gym, so full of young, extremely fit people - often whole sports teams clatter through. Oddly enough, that makes it more relaxing than the hotel gym I used to go to - I'm completely invisible to them. The facilities are great too - individual TV screens on each machine. Though I prefer my iPod.

Oh yeah - I got an iPod. My first ever Apple product. It's fab.

Bertie is well, though he gets more curmudgeonly every day. He throws a wobbly if his bed is rumpled, won't eat cheap biscuits, won't play with eager-beaver puppies. He loves his walks though, and is very fit and healthy. Touch wood.

Time to go home!

The day after tomorrow I'm going to Tomintoul, where I've got a cottage for Christmas. I'm looking forward to a few days of rest and relaxation - I'm taking a pile of books and DVDs and the cottage has an open fire. Bliss.

Happy Christmas everyone!

:: Hockadilly is taking a break

Not in the holiday sense, just ... taking a break. Who knows when I'll be back (don't wait up).

 

:: playing catch-up

Yay, the plum tree has blossomed! I have no idea if plums will follow, but I'm thrilled to see the flowers all the same. It's now leafing out healthily, so it's hopefully happy it its new home.

Elsewhere in the garden there's more new life. I checked the raised bed this morning and the mange-tout seedlings are showing. Time to build them a little scaffolding of twigs, I think. And next to them there's a line of tender green where the perpetual spinach is coming up. At the weekend I bought a tray of "Swiss chard" - aka silver beet! Yay! I love silver beet but it's not sold in the shops here for some reason. Also doing well are the purple sprouting brocoli seedlings, despite the fact that I dropped the tray. And several sunflower seedlings have survived being chewed on by some critter or other. I haven't decided where to plant them yet. The sweet peas are growing well and starting to cling on to things. This weekend I'll plant some French beans and courgettes, I think, and that will do it for this year.

Also spotted some animal footprints in the raised bed ... surely not a dog's footprints, surely not. There's only one dog in the place and he's a GOOD dog. Time for some fencing strategies. I've already planned to string some old CDs above the bed as bird scarers, so maybe they'll act as dog scarers as well.

Today I've been recovering from last night's election exertions. I was at work until 4:30am, didn't get to bed until 5:30, and didn't get up until almost 1pm, feeling as though I'd been drinking heavily. I've just about recovered now, but didn't do much this afternoon. It was a fun shift, though - there's always a cast of thousands in for the big night, and the place is buzzing with excitement. There was plenty of controversy, with about ten per cent of ballot papers spoiled. I'm not surprised: when I went to vote I had to really look at the forms and read the instructions carefully. There were three votes altogether, on two forms: one for the MSP and the party list and one for the city council. The city council vote was done on a different system, so that on one form you were putting an X and on another you were numbering candidates in order of preference. I managed to do it all properly, then blotted my copybook by folding the forms in half, when it said very clearly NOT to.

Tomorrow will be pretty much taken up by chores, and I'm working on Sunday, so not much of a weekend to look forward to. The following weekend I have three days off though, so I might go away.

Faye came round last weekend for a computing masterclass. She's gradually getting to grips with her machine, though she's finding it a steep learning curve. I'm learning too, because it's got Windows Vista, and I'm still on XP. She's on holiday at the moment and is spending a lot of time looking for a new job.

:: moments when I wish I had brought my camera

There I was at 1pm, outside the local police station with three, count 'em three police officers, me with a garden fork in hand and all of us looking dubiously at the scraggly rhododendrons in their "garden". One of them took the fork off me and started digging up a clump of past-it daffs.

PC1: Don't dig it up! Don't dig it up!
PC2: Why not?
PC1: You'll have to get all those stones off first. If you dig anything up, all the stones will just go into the soil.
PC3: There's plastic underneath too, look.
Me: Oh dear.
PC1: You need a rake or a broom or something.
PC2: A broom?
PC1: To sweep all the stones off.
PC3: You should probably come back on Saturday morning...

Yep, so that's what I'll do then. I got the e-mail saying to turn up to dig up all the plants in the police station garden, but not the other email saying not to bother. All the tools were there and I was willing to give it a go, but cooler heads than mine prevailed. Saturday was supposed to be the planting day but I guess now it'll be the digging-up day. Unless the PCs get motivated. Personally I'd find gardening in a stab vest a bit warm.

Right now I'm off out to plant some stuff in my own patch.

:: progress report

Today I battered in the stakes on the raised bed and screwed the gravel boards in place. It wasn't too easy - most of the stakes ended up at slightly different angles for a start. But once I'd heaved in the two bags of dirt it looked a lot better. The third bag is still in the car boot - didn't have time to heave it out today.

While I had the drill out I completed another little project I've been procrastinating on and put up a washing line. The previous owner for some reason took down one of the three concrete posts set up for a traditional line (and left the post where it lay! it weighs a ton & can't be reused), so today I bolted a hasp to the tree to act as the third pole. Hurrah! I'll hang out my first load of washing tomorrow.

Some photos:



Planted some sunflower seeds....



.... which were much appreciated by the enterprising wildlife.




This is the raised bed earlier in the week, before I finished building it.



My nice compost bin - it's German, very cunningly designed and made from recycled plastic. I have a worm bin too.

:: nearly finished!

This afternoon I finally whanged in the posts on the raised bed, screwed the planks to them and tipped in the two bags of dirt I've managed to haul in from the car (one still to go; bad news is I think I'll need another few bags). It looks great! Not perfect - it's hard to whang the posts in straight - but certainly dirt-proof.

While I had the electric drill out I attacked a tree with it. The traditional clothes-drying arrangement in Edinburgh and environs is a to have special posts and a line strung between them. At some point before I bought my place, one of the posts had been taken down. It's an enormously heavy concrete thing, so reusing it isn't an option (yes, it's still there! I managed to heave it to the back of the section but it was a major struggle. There are two others, but they're both on the same side so useless). So I have screwed a heavy galvinised bracket to the pine tree at the back and strung a line to one of the remaining posts. Cool!

It's a stunningly sunny and warm day, the first real warmth we've had this year, what with all the haar.

The sweet peas have sprouted in their pots in the spare bedroom. I think they're sweet peas anyway. I didn't label them, oh dear.

Chris, Julian and wee Ella arrive on Sunday night (or Monday afternoon, depending on whether they break their journey up from Oxford). Chris is looking forward to seeing the raised bed because she's planning to build one herself. I'm looking forward to meeting Ella!

:: ow ow ow

Gardening is hard! Saturday I trailed around various garden centres looking at log rolls, before finding the perfect fixings for a raised bed at the Homebase in Linlithgow. Gravel boards and pointed stakes. Gravel boards are planks that have been pressure treated to prevent rot. What could be simpler? bang in the stakes, nail the gravels boards on to them and bingo! A raised bed.

I started out with three planks and six stakes, intending to cut one plank in half and make a rectangular plot. The first challenge was getting the sawdusty planks into the car - move over Bertie! - but managed in the end. Bonus: the car smells lovely.

But when I got home, I realised the plot would be too small, and I should get another plank and have a square plot. OK. By now it was too late to go back to the shop; not only that but I'd missed the first episode of the latest Dr Who series. Tsk.

So, Sunday I set out for the DIY shop again, and got the extra plank, plus two more stakes and three big bags of dirt. How big? Eighty litres. Why do they measure dirt in litres? Very odd. I might be more helpful to express it in stones, so you'd know you were picking up the equivalent of a dead rugby player. I tried to put one of the bags on my trolley and it fell on the ground. I couldn't get it up again. That was a clue I chose to ignore. A staff member hurried over and heaved three bags on dirt on to the trolley, and another staff member heaved them from the trolley in to the car boot. I drove home, suddenly feeling like I was piloting a barge.

I left the dirt in the boot while I dealt with the bed-building. Easy-peasy! Mark out the space, dig up the "lawn" (actually peed-on yellow spots and moss), bang in the stakes and nail on the planks. Digging up the lawn took a long sweaty hour. It turns out there is an amazingly healthy network of buttercups crisscrossing the backyard, roots like hawsers. So then I banged in the stakes. Bang bang bang bang bang ... ARGH! What I really needed was a Russian weightlifter and a sledgehammer, not puny old me and a joke mallet. Blam blam blam blam bangbangbangbang. I managed to get most of them firmly battered in, albeit at crazy angles, without having a heart attack.

I only really lost heart when I discovered that I didn't have any nails big enough to hold the planks on. And it was too late to go back to the shop, whew!

Today I thought I'd better get the dirt out of the boot before the suspension gave way. I don't have a wheelbarrow or anything, but I had a cunning plan! The brown recycling bin had just been emptied, so I'd just load the bags of dirt into it and trundle them round the back. Perfect.

The bin is chest-height, so I laid it down on its side next to the car and posted two bags of dirt in. The flaw in the cunning plan presented itself. Strain as I might, I couldn't lift the bin upright. So I heaved one of the bags out on to the footpath and this time got the bin rolling. Trundled it round the back and heaved it up the steps to the lawn. Repeated with the second bag, more slowly this time. Couldn't. Manage. The. Third. Just. Yet. So it's still in the boot.

Here's the scunner: With two bags of dirt laid out next to the bed, it's apparent that I'll need at least another three bags to fill it. I think this time I might see if Homebase delivers...

What with all this heaving and hammering I can barely raise my arms past shoulder height, and I've discovered bruises I don't remember getting.

The seeds I planted aren't doing very well - a scattering of husks on the tray marked "sunflowers" was a clue, as were the neat rows of holes in the tray marked "broccoli" (I thought I'd put that upstairs in pots but it must be something else up there).

At first I blamed the birds, but then I spotted a little wee burrow under the thyme bush. I covered it over and the next day it was back. That might also explain Bertie's digging frenzies: he's after whatever is burrowing in the bed. One of my neighbours has reported seeing rats - yikes, please don't let it be rats. The burrow looks more mouse-sized though, very neat and cute.

Garden pix:


The rhubarb is up! Yay!


Something eats the blue polyanthus every year. Not the yellow, not the pink, just the blue.

I've taken progress pix of the raised beds, will post them eventually.

Tomorrow I can't do any DIY or gardening or anything because I have some IT training at work. Finish work at 1am (if I'm lucky), start training at 1pm - wah!

:: more gardening

The weather over the weekend was good, apart from some haar, so I got out into the garden and did some serious work. I had bought some plastic "lawn edging" for the existing beds out the back - part of an ongoing effort to curb Bertie's digging frenzies - but that was disappointing. It's too flimsy really, and so was a bugger to get in. However, I perservered and it doesn't look too stupid. I also weeded the beds and then heaved on a big bag of mulch.

Out the front I savaged the Christmas rose or whatever it's called, which was threatening to cut off access to the house. I was thinking of moving it, but the trunk is easily an inch thick - not bad for a feeble little twig that cost 50p from the "search and rescue" section at the garden centre. The trimmings completely filled the big recycling wheelie bin, a good excuse for not doing too much more weeding.

I've also planted some seeds: night-scented stock front and back; sunflowers, sweet peas and a herb mix in trays; purple sprouting brocoli in pots inside.

Today there was some bad news though: the quote for the sleeper beds arrived and ... gasp ... it's £495 plus VAT - nearly £600 altogether. So that's out - it's far too pricey, given that it doesn't even include the soil. So I'm back to plan B, which is a DIY solution using log rolls. If that doesn't deter Bertie I could fence it off with chicken wire, which would keep the rabbits and the squirrel out too! The tricky part of all this is the fact that the section slopes, so I have to kind of level out the plot. And I'll have to get on to it soon - the mange tout and courgettes should go in in April.