April 14, 2006

Just had to pop in from the garden for a few minutes because big bro is mowing the lawn and frankly, it's a little on the noisy side.

His wife is hoeing - hoeing! I mean, what's all that about? - and Mojo, the Bassett, is helpfully standing over the patches she wants to hoe, digging holes and then running away, droopy ears covered in slobber and soil, which he then transfers to the kitchen, which means they're constantly following him in to clean up the trail he leaves behind, meaning it's taking ages to complete the hoeing and sort out the lawn.

And where does yours truly fit into this pleasing but slightly busy spring day family scene, I hear you roar?

In a chair at the far end of the garden, pail of chilled beers at hand, studiously reading a copy of The Times - that's where.

(In which, by the way, there was the most distressing story about a 40-year-old woman who used to work for the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi who had lain dead in her London flat for two years before her body was discovered. The television and heating were still on, unopened Christmas presents were in the room, and a stack of unopened mail lay behind the front door. Two years. Two years of no-one giving you a single thought. It honestly made me shiver.)

Before the beer was opened, I was brought cheese, tomato and mustard toasties, and even had my phone brought out from the kitchen when it began ringing (I pretended I hadn't heard it, because I couldn't be bothered moving.)

He's still mowing the lawn, now, as I look out of the window, and Mojo is now eating a new plant pot. The hoeing seems to be getting along nicely.

Back to that bucket of ice cold Coronas, then.