HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

Pearl, my great friend is about to be off on her travels to places .. exotic. I must admit to being somewhat jealous as she follows the sun around the world; however I am hopeful that we will be following shortly. Anyway, as she is packing up and shipping out I am the grateful recipient of all her pot plants. Early on Saturday morning Americo and I dragged ourselves out of bed to collect our hire van and then onwards to Pearl’s. The morning dawned, grey and cold, with our TomTom refusing to registering the morning light as daytime, preferring to stay on evening colours!

We arrived, on time.. a concept Pearl is unfamiliar with and consequently she was still abed! I am sure she was only too thrilled to find Americo & I on her doorstep. Well.. I believe the actual image that greeted her was me squealing and running for cover as Americo stood like king of the hill, pelting me with snowballs. The minute she unlocked the door, without a hello or by your leave, I stormed the house! Surprisingly we did actually manage to load the plants into our van albeit with the odd snowball flying wildly. I have to mention here that in snowball fights my aim, generally rubbish, is even more impaired when under pressure. I was thrilled therefore when I managed to wallop Americo with a snowball that glanced off the van and down his shirt. JUSTICE!

It was a very slow drive home, by which stage the weather had deteriorated to a constant icy drizzle. The two of us, looking very woe begotten, unloaded the van of what seemed like millions of plants then surveyed our garden and wondered… what the hell do we do now?? I suggested that they looked perfect where they stood, kind of arty. Americo (as always!) had other ideas, no time like the present, so we set about recreating our patch of yard.

I am happy to announce it looks lovely the hours of toil paid off, but by the end of it we were drenched, muddy, cold and numb. When all was done we both stripped off at the door and ran, naked, upstairs into a steaming hot bath, curious neighbours be damned!

Let it SNOW!

This weekend it snowed like it has not done for almost 20 years in London. I love snow, it is the one type of winter weather that brings people together. It is not like rain that can be just miserable, or wind that howls about you making you feel the dead are about to rise and conquer. No. When it snows it seems time has stopped, everything goes still and silent while soft flakes turn the whole world into a magical wonderland.

My sister stayed the weekend, she planned on going home Sunday night but was persuaded not to bother as it was already quite late. The weather had been really chilly then on Sunday the first snowflakes arrived. As darkness fell things picked up, huge flurries making the night look like icing sugar sprinkled from above. We were like kids, T & I were running up and down the street with our tongues out trying to catch the snow (Americo pretended not to know us!). Snow balls were rolled and thrown amongst many gleeful giggles.

That night we all went to bed with the curtains open, watching the snow fall. As we never really get much snow in London it was such a novelty which we were sure would all be gone by dawn. To our immense surprise and pleasure it was still snowing come the morning. Americo left extra early, predicting road chaos, whilst T & I had a quick ciggy in the snow before I left for work too.

Never has the walk to the bus stop been so much fun! Crunch, crunch, CRUNCH!! Large swathes of untouched whiteness with me, the first person to explore this new and exciting world. Sadly the busses had ALL been cancelled, on any other commuter day this would be the biggest pain in the ar*se, however nothing seems so bad in this new world. I started the hour long slog towards the station however after almost falling on my bottom decided to call the boss who, pleasure of pleasures, said to stay home, London transport systems were broken.

And so began our wonderful ‘snow day’, T & I popped into the shop for supplies, went home and proceed to play cards and ‘snow scrabble’ interspersed with a soirée into the snow fight street wars outside. .

Let it snow, let it snow… let it snow!!