Looking forward to having short grass again tomorrow, although it's going to be an long slog getting there, with 14 days' growth to deal with. I might even give he barbecue a spring clean too. Who knows, I may even take the tree cuttings to the tip at last.

[Phil] A trip to the tip? *jealous* It just doesn't happen here the same way - it's so organised and everything gets taken away. When I was a kid, the tip was a landfill site (actually, that sounds - and is - dreadful) in an old chalk quarry a mile or so out of the town. There was salvage and reclaimed stuff to buy from the backs of various containers - my father often came home with bits of fishing rods from which he would create new fishing rods. We were never allowed to buy anything.

Our tip is just outside Wallingford. Well, it's not ours actually, it's Oxfordshire's, but it's the nearest, and is rather cute and scenic.

[penelope] Your last two sentences, on first reading, had me envisioning a family life predicated on wombling. I realized that you meant that you weren't allowed to buy anything from the tip only after that movie had run to conclusion.

Perhaps more damning, I saw the young penelope as a sort of infant version of Edna the Inebriate Woman wombling across a huge pile of rubbish in a mac with a string belt.