It’s just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, the groom said

There’s nothing like watching your best friend getting married to the man she loves to make your eyes sting. Lauren and I have been close for the past 14 years, having met for the first time at an open evening for our secondary school. We spent a day together before school began and while our [...]

Thinking of changing my number…

Beep beep – beep beep
I grunt and open my eyes.
Oh, you have to be kidding me. Why can’t the guy stay asleep like ordinary people?
I looked at the clock. 04:50am. WTF?
I picked up my phone and read the message:
Good morning. I recently read that you had an introduction to the almost nocturnal time of 5:50am. [...]

0550

So there I was, minding my own business. Asleep. Then suddenly I wasn’t asleep anymore. Something was happening. I squinted at the clock. 5.50am. That can’t be right. What’s happening? Wait, something’s buzzing. That’s not my phone alarm … it’s a text message.
I picked up my phone and that too said that it was 5.50am. [...]

Little tiny weeny carrots

So now the carrots have appeared too. As of Saturday morning I have 12 broad beans, 5 potatoes and a little feathery line of carrot seedlings. Oh, and a couple of beautifully compacted areas of earth where I keep walking on it to carry out my inspections.
Last night Mum helped me mix my compost up [...]

Things are growing

We’ve had a beautiful few days here. The kind where I get dressed in the morning for my office on the cold side of the house, only to go outside to do an errand and nearly pass out in the heat – and then come the evening I need to change my clothes as the [...]

Eviction

I had a feeling that you’re not meant to let old tubers grow … and when I checked in my books, I found I was right. So my male relatives may churlishly cheer, while the rest of you pansy-ass women can weep quietly at the eviction of this rogue potato. The haulm had already grown [...]

The lambs in the field go bleat, bleat, bleat

Yesterday was a bank holiday – May is brilliant for such things – and I managed to tear myself away from my computer and get out into the wide world. The sun was shining, so I stole Dad’s 200mm lens and hightailed it on my bike to the field beyond the railway bridge in order [...]