Plum Duff
We live and we learn. This week I have learnt two important lessons in life that will stick with me for many years.
Lesson 1
Under no circumstances become a postman. Regardless of your financial circumstances never become a postman. Never, ever become a postman. Postman, don’t do it!
Yes, we have been delivering fliers yet again. In a moment of miscalculation we bought enough fliers to cover the entire East Midlands and are now under a fiscal obligation to deliver the damn things.
After 2 days of arriving home with an aching back, aching legs and a deep desire to fall fast asleep, I nicked my wife’s Pedometer to calculate just how far we were walking each day. This was partially a scientific exercise to see just how far you walk down a 1 mile long road when you have to venture down umpteen drives - the answer is about 4km (European pedometer!).
However, the primary reason for the pedometer was to offer a bloody good reason for being far too knackered to make dinner in the evening. When my wife arrived home I limply offered the results of that days flier delivery round. It read 10km.
My wife, as predicted, scoffed at this mere two figure value. However I was expecting this, hence calling her remark ‘predictable’, so I pointed out that this was her pedometer and as such had been calibrated for the mincing lar-de-dar steps of a woman. Bearing in mind my large manly stride this 10km reading obviously represented an actual distance of about 40 miles, possibly more, and would therefore explain the many Scottish accents we had heard towards the latter part of the day… Needless to say I cooked dinner that evening. Ho hum.
Lesson 2
Never become a gardener! Gardening, don’t do it!
The garden has been presented to us as a fair ground of colour and scent, a veritable fence enclosed paradise. Phar! It is a death trap not just waiting to happen but positively luring you in to it’s poisonous embrace. The fact that Titmarsh and his minions encourage the over 50’s to engage in gardening is obviously nothing more than government sponsored euthanasia.
Last week end I decided, in a fit of madness, to ‘trim’ the plum tree at the end of the garden. In the autumn it had offered up an enormous crop of plums but you needed oxygen equipment, an enormous ladder, and a steady head for heights to gather them. Alas, I possessed none of these prerequisites for a life of plum pie, plum sauce, plum… plum. So 90% of the plums were gathered by the local wasps.
Aside from hating wasps I have nothing against them but I didn’t like to see all this potential goodness going to waste. So I decided to chop the tree down to more manageable proportions during the winter. Said winter arrived, we had a brief dry, blue skied interlude, so I borrowed my next door neighbours chainsaw and stepped out into the wilderness that is my garden.
Half expecting a small boy called Jack to come tumbling from the upper branches mumbling something about beans, I took the chainsaw to the tree, counting my fingers after each attack. Branches fell left, right, and plum centre and after 10 minutes the leviathan was down to more shrub-like proportions.
I innocently dragged the branches across the lawn and began chopping them into pieces that would fit into the car for transport to the local tip. I took a slim branch and, scorning the clippers, manfully broke the branch between my hands. The branch bent and bent and then suddenly broke. My left hand smacked into the other side of the branch and impaled itself on a long sharp spine.
Ow! Was my first response, followed by ‘bugger’ when I realised how long and how deep this spine had been driven into my palm. I pulled it out immediately. It was long, about 15mm, but I’d seen worse.
Within 2 minutes I was feeling faint, within 5 minutes my hand was frozen; I couldn’t move a finger without extreme pain. By the end of the day my entire hand had blown up like a balloon.
I visited the doctor the next day, had a tetanus injection and was given a bag full of antibiotics. A week later and I am still unable to bend my fingers properly! And all this from a bloody plum tree!
Needless to say I am hoping for a bumper crop of plums this year. I am going to make jam from them. Take every one and pummel them into a plumy mess. Steam and boil the little f**kers. Strain them though a fine mesh and then freeze the ar*e off them in the fridge.
Serves the buggers right if you ask me.
