Garden Party

The weekend was glorious. I am sunburnt. I didn’t mean to do it. I always laugh at the fact that everyone in this country goes out half-naked and turn themselves into day-glo lobsters the minute the sun comes out, but I have become one with them. Lobster me up, baby.

The sun shone unstintingly all day Saturday, and then carried on into Sunday. It was hot. Summer seemed finally to have decided to perch, like a swallow on a telephone wire. I wish there was some way I could find to nail its metaphorical talons in place.

Anyway, the BF and I decided to do some ‘gardening’. His garden is a small patch of impenetrable jungle, situated in the middle of a suburban street. There is a disused car in the driveway, but it has all its wheels, so I can’t yet label him a chav.

“Shall I mow the grass?” I asked helpfully, fighting my way through the waist high front lawn before tripping over a mess of rusty metal, and nearly impaling myself on a piece of buried tree branch.

“What the hell is this?” I shrieked. “I’m moving it now. It’s an eyesore.”

The BF stood and watched as I pulled fruitlessly at the pile of twisted crap. It turned out to be one of his mother’s bizarre sculptures, which had rusted and fallen over. It was impossible to move because it is buried in concrete. I had to strim around it.

We attacked the overgrowth with vigour, and I think we achieved quite a lot really, before my arms swelled up in a giant itchy grass-induced rash, and I had to go and sit indoors with a packet of anti-histamines and a bottle of calamine lotion.

Sometimes even I find it hard to believe that I grew up in the countryside.

Weather report for today: Grey and overcast with periodic drizzle, and distant thunder. General outlook – sweaty.