Sunday

You have just returned from breakfast at Lennie's, picking up flowers at Columbia Road, a wander down Brick Lane and back through Victoria Park in the sunshine. You have picked up a bottle of vino and some cigarettes because it is too nice not to have a little drink in the sun. You are enjoying your vino when there's a knock on the door - who can it be? Londoners never drop in unannounced.

Horrors! It is the landlord and landlady. They said they left a message, but you never listen to the answermachine. The landlady says something about 'sorting the garden out.'

So when they leave you go into the back yard. You haven't touched it all year and the tiny space is a veritable jungle. You start hacking at it with a pair of kitchen scissors. (You're buggered if you'll pay someone to sort it out, when you never planted any of this stuff in the first place.) The buddleia is sky high and covered in snails.

Have you ever had a snail fall into your hair from up above? I have.