Today is the day when our domestic help calls round and we always seem to have a lot to talk about, even though it is only a week since we last met. She is bringing round a big root of mint for me to help to populate my mint bed in Mog’s Den. In addition she has donated a couple of planters to me and I now just have to think of something really colourful to put in them – perhaps some fuchsias or geraniums. We decided to go down into town by car as there were one or two gardening things that I wanted to buy from Poundland. It was one of those frustrating days when the layout of the store had been changed around and the various things that I wanted seemed to be quite elusive or the design had changed and it was not quite what I wanted. Whilst we were having coffee in Waitrose, one of old friends that we often met there so we had quite a long chat. I did have an ulterior motive in wanting to see her again because she and I have both had a similar type of medical investigation and I wanted to know what ‘post-operative’ advice she had been given. So it was fairly late when we got home but we rustled together a quick curry type meal. After lunch, I was dismayed to find that one of the cheap storage containers I had bought from Poundland had a flaw in it (a hole in the incredibly cheap plastic it was made of) and I couldn’t find the receipt. I decided to make the best of a bad job and effect an emergency repair with electrician’s tape so the container will serve for the purpose intended (quite light peat for the garden) Then I planted the mint, got my peat and topsoil containers filled and had a general sort- out within my mini greenhouse. Tomorrow I have scheduled for myself a cleanup of some of my gardening tools, some of which need a de-rusting as I store them outside. I have a technique to do this which involves a dousing in white vinegar followed by either a wire brushing and/or a treatment with a Brillo pad. I try to get into the habit of regularly treating my garden tools with WD-40 or the Asda alternative (much cheaper!) so that in general rust is not a problem for me.
It is said that most people dream but we don’t tend to remember any of them. But just as an exception, I had rather a vivid dream the other night which must have resembled the ‘Theatre of the Absurd‘. In the dream, I was playing the part of the producer of a play called ‘The Vigil’ (which is actually very easy to stage as it essentially a ‘court room drama’).The play revolved around the evidence for the ‘Resurrection’ and therefore is basically on a religious theme. I cannot recall now how I came to be involved but basically I got drafted into the play which was being put on by an amateur dramatic group in Wetherby in Yorkshire. On the strength of this, Meg and I put on the same play when we were university students as a ‘one night stand’. Because it is dark when one is on stage and gazes out into the void, you do not know if you have an audience of 8 , 80 or 800 but I suspect that the entire audience was nearer 8 than anything else. But now to return to my dream. I was trying to persuade one of my colleagues at De Montfort University in Leicester to accept a role in the play. My colleague was affectionately known as ‘Auntie Pat’ by the students and had a buxom figure and a sweet, typical ‘English’ style face. I was trying to persuade ‘Auntie Pat’ to accept the role of Mr. Pinchas who was a Jewish store keeper (who sold the material for Christ’s shroud). I was saying to Pat that if you don’t want to accept that role, I have another part that needs to be filled, namely a kitchen door. I was trying to persuade her to accept either role by saying I would have to accept the role she did not choose. Just then, my son wandered in, grumpily, complaining that he could not get a good signal on the radio he had clamped to his ear (think large 1930’s radio with a mahogany surround) He complained that he could only pick up Hilversum or the Light Program and then only if he located himself just outside Paris. (I know know that Hilversum is a Dutch complex of radio and TV stations and was always well represented on the old-fashioned radio dials). At that point, I woke up and realised why I would never be successful were I to ‘tread the boards’ and try to produce ‘naff’ plays more regularly.