The biggest one you ever did see

Having a Kenneth Williams moment

On the subterranean last leg of our journey back to Blighty on Sunday, the only possible sport was in contemplating what awaited to cheer us on our return from civilisation.

One thing, of course, is The Girls. We are not immune to a syndrome, while away anywhere, of musing between ourselves on what the cats would think of such and such. After all, however daft it may seem to some, they’re our family.

In Collioure, for instance, we have occasionally seen small lizards – which provokes comments about how the cats would hunt them and then be rather surprised to find that their tails can come off without killing them.

And indeed, the terrible trio were delighted to see us. They didn’t even bother with the usual: ‘Who are you? You’re scary’ or the formality of a five-minute sulk. Their major concern was simple: fuss!

We’ve been immensely lucky over the years, with friends who will come in and feed and water them, and clean their litter trays. I much prefer it this way because, even if they do fret a little, they’re ultimately still in their own home, with their own familiar smells and places and toys and food and so on.

And I’ve heard more than a few horror stories about cats and dogs coming home from catteries and kennels with illnesses, fleas and whatever.

Some years ago, one of our cats – Trickie, who we’d ‘rescued’ from Battersea and was approximately 12 at the time – died suddenly while we were away on a long weekend. She’d gone and found somewhere dark, in a box under the bed, and simply curled up and died. It was unexpected and unpleasant to discover, obviously, but I’m glad that she was somewhere quiet and safe and familiar.

This bunch have had plenty of entertainment while we were away, as Ian, who is an absolute diamond, has been in both looking after them and sorting out our tiny home office.

He’s turned it from being a cramped, dark room into a light one, with – somehow – both more storage and more space.

Since his wife is allergic to cats and he loves them, this gives him the opportunity to enjoy some feline company. And we know from past experience that Otto in particular will sit for hours watching (supervising?) any work he’s doing.

We moved into the flat 18 years ago. As a new-build housing association block, it had carpets and basics – points that, as very low-paid hacks at the time, were both essential and very welcome.

But after 16 years, it needed work, so we’ve been steadily dealing with it over the last couple of years. And of course, once you sort one thing out, another goes – and everything else looks even shabbier by comparison.

The supervisor

We had been intending to do the kitchen this summer – the cupboards are falling apart – but after the boiler died early this year, that went out of the window. So we settled for a rather easier (and cheaper) job.

Good god: I remember the days – and with no faux romantic fondness whatsoever – when that boiler would have wiped us out. It should go without saying, but unfortunately doesn't in the UK at present, that low pay is no fun, and that poverty remains a very real situation for many, many people.

But anyway, there was also the question of seeing a ‘new’ room to welcome us home.

And then there was the patio and the potager.

By the time we unlocked the front door, dark had descended outside, so a full and proper inspection had to wait until the following morning.

In the event, there was plenty to be pleased with.

While the tomato plants have not produced a vast harvest, there is a nice collection of sizeable fruits that are just coming toward ripeness. And thank you to Lucie, who donated four to us after my attempts to grow from seed had all come to naught.

The chilies too are doing well – small, but the first ones are now turning red.

The thyme has died, but the oregano is flourishing. And the little olive tree, bought for decoration alone, is still sporting tiny olives. I doubt they’ll grow much further now, but it’s going to be transplanted into a bigger pot this autumn, replacing the lemon tree, which seems much more temperamental about temperature and water, and much less inclined to bear fruit than had been thought.

That south-facing wall of the patio really does have to be treated like the Mediterranean – in fact, very much like Roussillon, where frosts can hit, but where the heat in summer is high. I have much thinking to do.

Olives cope with frost, without needing to be wrapped in fleece – and indeed, a sharp spell of cold in the winter can actually help to promote to development of fruits in the summer.

Beyond the patio, in the carpark, the potager has done well. There are runner beans in various stages of development – even still some flowers – and I was able to enjoy harvesting the largest ones last night for dinner.

There’s some lettuce and the chard is knee-high and looking fantastic.

The shock was the courgettes. When we left, there were a number of very small ones, and when we returned, most had grown a bit larger – but one had grown insanely to at least a foot in length!

It was harvested on Monday evening and weighed in at a staggering 713g. And it still was a lovely delicate flavour when sliced and cooked for around 10 minutes with some mince and onion, that was simply garnished with fleur de sel, pepper – and nothing more.

Actually, it contributed to three meals.

Away from matters horticultural, I’ve always said that I don’t do new year’s resolutions.

But I have, in effect, made a number of post-holiday resolutions. I don’t want to lose all I gained in that three weeks in Pays Catalan.

Yesterday evening, I had an appointment at the local leisure centre, to sign up for a membership. I’m going to get back into a gym for the first time in 15 years. There are two reasons.

One: a bit of physical activity is a good way to deal with stress. And two, if I want to do more kayaking – and I do – then strengthening my torso, back, shoulders and arms wouldn’t go amiss.

And then there’s the writing.

According to a piece at the beginning of the week at BBC online, the ‘post-holiday blues’ include the feeling that nothing has changed – not least because you didn’t start that novel.

Well, I did.

And keeping more relaxed and energised could just be things that will help me continue it. That – and whopping big, home-grown vegetables!

Easy options on the food front

Bacon and new spuds and asparagus

One of the most surprising things about the last week has been that, after arriving home from Liverpool last Friday, I didn’t leap straight into a Pot Noodle phase.

Utterly knackered, it was tempting. But when I'd crawled up the platform at Euston, I opted instead for the easiest ‘quality’ option: M&S.

I had been contemplating lamb chops, but since the only available ones were from New Zealand, I opted for something a little more local – British bacon.

And to go with that, new potatoes and asparagus.

It was a simple matter to boil the spuds and the asparagus (20 and three minutes respectively) and then pop the bacon into a hot pan and let it sizzle gently for a while, curling and browning; moved around occasionally with tongs.

Frankly, I didn’t even feel like arranging it on a plate, but tossed it all together, added butter, seasoning and the bacon juices.

Even after a week that had seen a couple of decent restaurant meals, there was something heavenly about the result. And it had all been ridiculously easy top cook.

The cats were delighted to see me home, but an absence means that one is told in no uncertain terms, that they are owed.

In Otti’s case, she was determined that, despite never having eaten it before, she was going to try bacon. Allowed to have a little piece (after I’d finished – I do try to teach them some patience) she then decided that it was very nice indeed and why hadn’t I shared more with her?

Saturday allowed a return to Broadway Market and the great what-shall-we-eat-for-the-coming-week challenge.

In this case, I started from a fishy perspective – sea bass, filleted.

Potatoes were par boiled and then slightly crushed before being drizzled with olive oil, seasoned and then popped into the oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

The bass – slashed carefully on the skin, seasoned and lightly oiled – were placed on top and given a further 15 minutes.

Bass with potatoes and seasonal veg.

This was served with fine beans and asparagus, a drizzle or two of my balsamic glaze and a wedge of lemon. And jolly nice it was too.

An experiment with tuna didn’t quite go as planned, though.

Unusually, Vicki had a big slab, so I decided to buy a slice (it’s enough for the two of us).

It was intended for Monday – Vicki said it should be okay for that, but to watch out for the ‘rainbow’ effect in case it did start to go.

To be on the safe side, I decided to try something a bit different, and salt it. The Spanish – mojama – and although I couldn’t find a specific recipe, how hard could it be?

I used a mix of ordinary salt together with some fleur de sel that The Other Half had picked up for me on his recent trip to Perpignan: one that was infused with banyuls, the sweet wine from that area.

On Sunday evening, I rinsed it off and left it to soak ion fresh water. That was changed again on Monday morning and one last time when I got home that afternoon.

Pods growing fat

The plan was then to use Bruno Loubet’s guidelines and confit it – approximately 30 minutes in olive oil heated to approximately 50-55˚C.

All that went okay, but unfortunately it still came out as incredibly salty.

Still, failures are part of the process of learning.

In the meantime, the potager is going a bit bonkers after struggling to show real signs of life for so long.

I will shortly have peas – and the broad bean pods are just appearing. One of the runner beans is already taller than me – okay, I know this doesn’t mean much.

There will be a small crop of blackcurrants – but this is year one.

The salad leaves are doing well, as are the radishes, the spring onions and the gem lettuces, while the chard is coming on decently, as are the carrots and turnips.

The vine is growing well, the lemon has produced a plethora of buds, the nasturtiums are finally producing leaves in something approaching abundance and the four tomato plants that we were given by a friend look to have settled in comfortably.

Who knows – the weather might even allow for cropping a few leaves this weekend. But it’s enormously exciting to see crops developing in such a way.

When blackbirds fight back

'Err, I don't know how to get down.'

It’s all well and good watching vultures tear a distinctly deceased rabbit apart when there’s the safety of a nice, substantial wire fence between you and them, and being able to observe that the old cliché about nature being red in tooth and claw is true.

But such bloodiness is hardly limited to zoos. And here, in little old Hackney, there’s been a fair bit of it in recent days.

The periphery of the carpark has been, for the last week or so, an avian maternity ward.

Never before have there been so many bird families nursing young and watching over them as they fledge – it’s almost like the flats themselves: more obvious results of human fecundity than ever before.

But for cats, the presence of all these birds is like having Christmas, Easter, summer holidays and birthdays all arrive at once.

Back around 2006, when Boudi was about two and a half, and Mack and Trickie were still alive, we were all out in the garden one day, under a rather pallid sky.

The garden in those days was less patio and more just mess, overgrown with various short-lived and halfhearted efforts at anything resembling the horticultural arts.

The older cats were slumbering when, all of a sudden, Boudi jumped up at the rose bush and just as rapidly, dived in the direction of the flat, with something clearly in her mouth.

The Other Half grabbed her by the scruff and made her drop a small bird, then hoiked her inside and shut the door on her juvenile objections.

As the bird made to totter into a bush, Trickie came out of her reverie and realised that prey was around.

She was duly tossed inside too, to be rapidly followed by Mack, who, at around 14, had been the last to spot what was going on, and had started to slink toward the feathered abductee with a glint in his eye.

The Other Half, being rather more used to this sort of thing, said it was probably on its last legs and I’d need to put it out of its misery.

Great.

I got a spade, but it had no desire for a quick end, and instead kept hopping away in a manner that suggested that it was far from in agreement with his diagnosis.

After a few minutes, I decided to leave it – not least since I was, by then, being divebombed by a very angry robin.

Once inside, with the cats all complaining, the same robin took up a position atop the rotary drier and continued to ‘bark’ out a warning for the next hours.

In the meantime, other adult robins swooped in to help coax the fledgling first onto a chair, then onto the little table and from there into the thick pyracantha right next to it.

And then, until nightfall, they flew back and forth taking it food.

In the morning, they’d all gone, so presumably, the fledgling had regained its strength back and learned how to fly instead of simply falling conveniently within jaw range of a cat.

It was an extraordinary example of a family working to save their little one.

And that was the last time that we had any sort of bird incident.

Before that, there’d just been one occasion when Mack and his sister Mabel had ‘found’ a small bird and brought it into the flat, causing the feather to fly rather more than metaphorically.

That had been my first encounter with such an event and I had been all rather desperate and girly about it.

A certain more realistic steeliness had set in by the time we rescued the robin fledgling.

And that was that on the bird front – until last weekend.

Then, while we all sitting in the Sunday afternoon sun, as though summer had landed all of a sudden, Loki bombed in through the open gate and straight into the flat.

I got inside to find her in the hall with a small bird on the floor in front of her.

Boudi had materialised from somewhere and was reaching out a careful paw to see if it still moved.

We shooed them away and carefully picked it up and took it back outside.

It was breathing heavily but with no obvious signs of external injury. So The Other Half placed it in bushes and we hauled the pride inside, to the predictable objections.

It was only then that I realised that the noise of birds, which has been quite loud of late anyway, had been particularly frantic at that stage.

We checked later and the bird was gone. So, we allowed ourselves to think, another happy ending.

Unfortunately, just 24 hours later, it was Otto’s turn to race into the garden and behind a large pot. We went to see what she was up to and she shot into the flat, to be scragged quickly by The Other Half, who made her drop her prize.

It’s impossible to know for certain that it was the same bird, but it did look so – a sparrow fledgling. And this time it was most certainly deceased.

There were drops of blood on the paving stones – hardly surprising, given that Otto’s canines are so long that I half suspect she’s actually a Dracula cat.

We disposed safely of the bird and kept them in for the rest of the day, while the noise outside continued.

Since then, though, the weather and my illness meant that, until this weekend, the girls haven’t been outside.

Not that all this is remotely as one-sided as you might imagine.

Mr and Mrs Blackbird were, only a year since, squawking away in juvenile joy from the lithe silver birches in the carpark, and are now quite clearly a family unit.

No baby has been spotted, but Mr B has been seen rooting worms from the potager – and hectoring any cat (or human) who comes ‘too close’. Like some of our more colourful ’ackney residents, he was giving it large to all and sundry.

And in the week’s most extraordinary moment, he chased off Reggie, who had only reggiecide on his feline mind, dive-bombing the big ginger cat until he fled through the carpark gates.

So this weekend, whenever they’ve been out, we’ve been extra attentive, listening for any sound of avian anger.

Mind, Loki is clearly working to convince me that nominative determinism really exists.

It’s only just over a week since she managed to get up onto the balcony of the flat above ours – my back was briefly turned so I can only speculate on how she did it.

Once up there, the sense of accomplishment was soon replaced by another feeling.

“Loki, come down!”

“I don’t know how to!”

“Well … how did you get up there in the first place?”

“I can’t remember! I’m stuck!”

She paced rather frantically from one side of the small balcony to the other, meeping in an increasingly paniced way, before suddenly deciding that she could simply jump straight down, landing perfectly lightly, and then making her way into the flat as though nothing untoward had happened.

Yesterday, I found her on top of the canopy that stands next to one of the rear communal entrances, trying to see if she could see any birds in a tree next to it.

But hopefully, a rather quieter weekend is the sign that the fledglings have all fledged or perished in the attempt.

Before I sign off, Boudi wishes me, in the interests of balance, to point out that, a year or so after the robin affair, she actually caught three mice in the flat, over the course of a week or so, and left each one dead, but still in one piece, on the doormat so that, when we got home, we would be sure to find them.

The feline hunting instinct isn’t always a negative thing to be tempered as much as possible.

A weekend of two halves

The jester

To borrow from a rather famous sporting cliché – it was a weekend of two halves.

First up, Saturday (although obviously you knew that anyway).

But Saturday just gone was FA Cup Final day – and I had a ticket for the match, with Manchester City set for their second final in three seasons, this time, against Wigan.

Now by this time you’ll all know that we lost.

And let it be said that the best team on the day won: Wigan coach Roberto Martinez got his tactics spot on, using very limited resources to cram midfield and stifle our attack, but without ever resorting to niggly or dirty play.

For City, Yaya Touré was quite clearly unfit; Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevoz had little or no service, and … well, given all the stuff going on in the background was certainly not helping, that was essentially that.

So congratulations to Wigan – you deserved it. And that is the romance of the cup – and long may it continue.

What made the day rather more bearable from a personal perspective was that I was with good company and that, as a result, the craic was good.

We started at in a pub at King’s Cross at 1pm with lunch – and not just the liquid variety, although the Skinner’s Arms does do decent ale as well as cooking lager.

The pasta

I opted for pasta – which reassuringly lines the stomach – with capers and garlic and chili, and it was not bad at all.

And then we headed for Wembley itself, taking a train that allowed us to walk down Wembley Way – the iconic route.

And yes – I admit it now – I bought a jester hat. Hey – it had to be done. After all, it now entertains the cats.

The atmosphere before the match was wonderful – no need to separate all the fans – and the atmosphere after was fine too.

Let’s pass over the game itself any more than noted above.

Hey ho hum – this is all part and parcel of the experience of being a real fan.

It’s impossible to get on a train straight away after a Wembley match, and hardly easy to get into a local pub. But one of our number knew of a local Catholic social club that opens its doors on match days.

We headed there for the wake, joined by something like 150 other City fans, and with community singing to accompany the cooking lager. This is what, in the darkest times – and they have been far worse than this weekend – have still made it special and worthwhile.

It was around about 11pm when I made it home – surprisingly still largely in a decent state.

The wake

The Other Half had retired, but on receipt of a text had put the oven on before so doing.

I slipped a Pieminster fish pie into the oven, half-heartedly teased the cats with my jangly hat, and waited until my supper was ready.

After that, the only possible place to go was my pit.

And there I stayed until yesterday morning, which dawned bright and sunny.

It was a morning that demanded time in the garden. First of all, though, a trip to Hackney Road was required to pick up a couple of framed pictures – not least, my Günter Grass lithograph.

Then, serious gardening time.

The runner beans had been going so completely mad that they couldn’t have stayed in the grow house a day longer without bending below the lid.

All three went outside. As did the three broad bean plants and one pea plant. For the beans, both varieties had new bamboo pyramids constructed – the runners are already up to the first level of string.

I raked away vast amounts of pink blossom from the tree above the potager: having finally come into bloom so late, the weather had then battered it into early submission with heavy winds over a number of days, leaving the delicate petals lying, like pink, drifted snow, across the carpark and flower beds.

The weather, which had stayed clear to this point, started to change. Clouds gathered to chunter among themselves. The merest hint of rain dropped.

I battled on.

New sowings of carrots and turnips went in, as the older ones finally show real development.

Then a new cloche, with spring onions, radishes, lettuce and chard underneath, sown generously in the hope that such largesse will eventually mean at least something to harvest.

And in the meantime, the blackcurrant bush looks serene as grows in splendid health.

Perhaps most astonishing of all, one of the peas – just a small one, really – is producing the first pea flowers of the season; a delicate white and pale green.

The brave little cat

So finally, the potager looks to be producing the first hints of harvests to come.

Much is still to be done – but these are the sort of things that revive the spirits after depleting times.

And if that wasn't enough, a half leg of hogget, roasted with Jersey Royals, baby leek and asparagus, was more than enough to do it.

Indeed, it wasn't enough, because then there was mad little Otto deciding that she was absolutely not putting up with local semi-ferel cat Reggie, who is SO much bigger than her, being in her carpark. And backing him into a corner and then sending him off in a flurry of claw-tipped paws.

Remarkable.

Sunlight and geekiness

Belis

If not quite the uninterrupted sun that, until the early hours of the morning, the BBC had been consistently forecasting for several days, but nonetheless, Monday turned out to be the best bank holiday in ... well, for quite some time.

And one nurses a hope that the weather itself realises just how much we need a proper, sustained period of good weather.

Windows were pushed open even before people had seriously decanted themselves from slumber; wood creaking and spraying around the accumulated dust and grime of some eight months of being closed against the gloom and damp and cold.

Sunday had seen a bout of serious tidying in the garden, with bedding plants packed in around the lemon tree, whose surrounding soil, naked against the forgotten heat, was drying out too quickly.

Ever-reliable violas, purple with a yellow face; sweet William, yet to flower, and belis, in delicate strawberry and cream garb.

The tidying produced a number of small snails, all instantly crushed and disposed of. The campaign starts early this year and with some knowledge to begin this struggle.

Dying tulip.

Frankly, much of the rest of the weekend has been spent in sitting outside, writing. Which is partly what a garden should be for.

And yesterday, The Other Half cooked springbok steaks and boervors over a fire, to be served simply with a bread roll and good mustard.

The first braai of the year was consumed with relish. Otto rushed back through the gate the moment it was ready: she may have a smaller appetite than the other cats, but her ears are perfectly attuned to the sound of food being served and what she lacks in appetite, she more than makes up for in the gourmand stakes.

All three of the cats relished a day when they could potter around, in and out of the flat as they pleased, for the best part of eight hours.

Belis.

If you get your hands on any springbok, then like deer, it’s very lean and needs handling with a little care.

The Other Half rubbed olive oil into these and left them between plates, at room temperature, for some time before cooking.

And then, as always, you don’t cook over actual flames, thus reducing the chances of the Great British Uncooked Sausage Syndrome.

It’s actually difficult to get your head around just how quickly the weather has changed.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the nights were still dipping close to or below freezing, and bed was a place to snuggle down into.

Now, as if somehow we’ve had the whole of a conventional spring wedged into that intervening two or three weeks, the temperatures are well up and, at night, it’s almost a question of throwing back the covers to keep from getting over hot.

Violas.

Has there really ever been a winter-spring like it?

And almost as suddenly, everything is in – or coming into – flower and leaf.

One week out of the country and the silver birches in the carpark were suddenly green – and even the planes, always late to turn green, are now close to it.

And even the dying flowers have their own beauty – something that I tried to capture in a brief photographic safari around the garden.

In such conditions, surely spring cleaning is inevitable?

Purple.

I did some – well, sort of: assuming you can call attempting to tidy my iPod and iTunes ‘tidying’ and don't expect something more akin to Mole's efforts in Wind in the Willows.

It was mostly a question of trying to impose some order onto the rather grotty new version, which seems determined to create chaos, particularly in my large (and growing) classical music section.

This, geeky as it sounds, also brought about my ranting moment of the weekend, as I tried to change details and import cover art, which the present system seems remarkably reluctant to do all by itself.

And when you’re scrolling through an iPod, having cover art is a nice, helpful way of identifying what you have and what you want.

And, oh goodness – more of it this evening.

Okay, it's not just the software developers' problem – it is quite astonishing just how many albums appear to have a choice of four or more lots of data when you're importing them.

Then, of course, there is no consistency in the basic labels are arranged: for instance, some stuff comes in as R Strauss, while others come in as Strauss (R). But this rather screws with any hopes of an ordered list.

The solution, then, is to change the data, but the new version of iTines seems intent on making it more difficult to find and then fully highlight the required album. And this is a long-term project to digitise and organise the whole of a rather large collection.

Technology – wonderful when it works, and a complete pain in the proverbial when you find yourself struggling with it!

A purple patch

The return to London and everyday life was softened – not inconsiderably – by the improving weather. Or perhaps more accurately, by what a week of improved weather had done to the garden.

Bright red tulips were in flower, along with gloriously rich purple ones, a purple chive-like flower whose name I cannot recall, purple cape daisies and a mass of cornflower blue anenomes.

It's a veritable purple patch.

The mint, which I had moved away from the most direct sunlight, is looking better than it ever has, and the sorrel has begun producing its first new leaves, bright, fresh green with a red vein, while the curly parsley is looking healthier than ever.

Within a few days, the first nasturtiums, which I’d sown just before I went away, were popping their heads above ground.

The vine had been planted, like much else, just a year ago in March (in a heatwave, for goodness sake), but had entered winter looking brittle and dried and dead.

However, last year provided learning exercises in the extraordinary power of plants to revive, and so it has now produced a reminder, with the vine now having some 14 buds, with the ones nearest the top starting to open as the sun makes regular appearances.

The pyracantha has produced delicate new leaves and the first signs of its tiny flowers, while the rose, so sternly pruned back once again, is almost unimaginably suddenly a mass of glossy green, and the oh-so-delicate pink petals of the first clematis buds are just beginning to open.

In the grow house, the two remaining pea plants from the earlier 'boiling' debacle have come on in leaps and bounds and have spent the last week being hardened off. A third one, which I sowed just before my trip, has sprouted, along with three runner beans. And three broad beans are on just visible in their pots.

The rest of the grow house story is a mixed one.

Runner beans.

I may well have to give up on growing tomatoes, strawberries and chillies from seed this year – the erratic weather has done my embryonic knowledge no favours.

But out at the potager, the turnips and the most recent sowing of carrots have finally germinated, while peas that had taken six weeks to even pop their heads above ground are now making steady progress, and two broad beans had emerged too.

And under a canopy of gorgeous pink blossom, the blackcurrant bush is in lush leaf and busy producing buds.

So the weekend demanded that I get outside and do some gardening.

First was weeding – I mention this again simply because it’s worth reiterating that you can do it without pain and without chemicals. One Dutch hoe, the potager and around 15 minutes. All done – no backache. Two weeks of sudden spring growth sorted.

But this subject means it's also worth mentioning what happened yesterday, when the EU acted to ban neonicotinoid pesticides.

A massive step forward, but also one with dangers, given that manufacturers will look to create alternatives – and users may restart using older products that are hardly less 'green'.

Another point worth noting is that the UK government voted against any such ban – its prime constituency remains big business, and big business is not happy at this.

A comment I saw on a forum yesterday observed that, at some point, scientists may be able to create all our food without pollination. But I wonder: why would you want to? Why would that ever be a good thing?

Anyway, I remain a chemical-free gardener – and trust me, I'm not the most energetic. So if I can do it ...

You get the gist, I hope.

The next most urgent task was to sow out the oldest two pea plants from the grow house into the potager and add further copper rings to protect them.

I’d already erected the basic wigwam for the peas and put a bottom row of string around it. By yesterday, the largest of the transplanted peas had wound its first tendrils around the string.

The thing with the copper, as I understand it at present, is that you have to ensure they’re firmly in the ground – I’ve pressed soil against them both on the inside and out – so that nothing can get underneath, and that no plant flops over or debris provides a bridge across it.

Boudi thinks about chasing Basil.

But like so many things, if you check regularly, it’s a matter of moments. And in the battle against slugs and snails, it’s the best basic tactic – so I’m told.

Much remains to be done – and some new planning is in order as I work out what to do with the dead and dying bulbs, and what I actually want to plant on the patio for this summer.

The lemon tree needs some bedding plants around it quickly, to give some protection to the bare soil that loses moisture so rapidly.

It’s recovering now from the long months under a fleece, but given it’s position right against a wall, it probably didn’t get enough moisture during that time – something that I hadn’t fully appreciated and that needs to be remembered for next winter.

Beyond the garden – and the carpark – trees seem to springing suddenly to life; green is everywhere, and people are flooding out of their workplaces during the day to sit outside. The relief is obvious and widespread.

The cats are all pleased too – Boudi is managing almost daily patio rolls on the warmed concrete every time that I let them out.

She's also enjoying being able to see of Basil and Reggie – the carpark's two 'visitor' moggies – and, in general, behaving not remotely like a cat who is on the cusp of 'senior' status.

Otto and Loki are also revelling in being able to re-explore the spots they discovered last year.

So here’s hoping that we get enough of both a (late) spring and a summer to build us all back up after such a dismal start to the year. We all really need it – cats and plants included.