It’s Spring! Spring! Spring! Soon it will be time to stop whinging about the cold and the rain, and begin whinging about the heat and the rain.
Those of us who are avid gardeners will relish this season, being unable to wait to plunge their fingers into the bare earth, with its mixture of nutrients, tetanus germs and biting things. Luckily, here at Moaner Towers, I have been able to restrain my impatience, harnessing it, if you will, to remain indoors and write rubbish.
I have ventured nervously out a few times, into the greenery, but have been driven back by an impalpable wash of hatred, directed at me by plants which can best be described as malevolent. It is almost a physical thing, which drains ones’ body of every ounce of energy. Whether it is a colour thing, whereby they detest me because they are green and I am not, I cannot say.
They just hate me, and that’s an end to it.
These delinquent plants are by no means puny and shrivelled. Many of them are strong and muscular, and can kick sand in the face of any seven-stone weakling. It is purely a mental thing, though, a feeling that I am at the receiving end of death-rays from these verdant vermin; a feeling that if I remain in their presence another second, they will over-power me, and I will become One Of Them.
The reason for their antipathy is not known. They have been well cared for, being fed copious amounts of liquid fertiliser , which is disgusting, the sort of thing one might pour over Robert Kilroy-Silk. There are even two hoses, one at each end of the garden, from which they have absorbed more water than is held in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
They have been talked to, in tender loving tones, and assured that they are the most wonderful one of their species ever to walk stand in the earth. They have been privileged to listen to Your Hundred Best-Loved Melodies , and to Sandy Toksvig presenting the News Quiz on Radio Four. Nothing works. The only feed-back is a huge mental wave of pure evil.
Grizelda, who is immune to thought waves, being a woman, suggests that they are unhappy with their location. Perhaps they have been planted alone, she says, and miss their friends. Or receive too much sun. Or too little. But now she has transplanted some of the little things bastards, the problem remains. There is simply No Pleasing Them .
At first I did my best to placate them. I went down on my knees before them in an act of worship. Nothing . I used a ceremonial trowel to weed around them. More nothing . I studied books, wasted pounds on magazines, listened to TV programmes, took advice from experts who live on the twenty-third floor. There is no cure.
Well now I have had enough . I have washed my hands of them, and left them to rot. I refuse to water them any more. They can take their chances with the rain.
And a plague on both their hoses.
