A Bad Wind...

Oh, Dear Readers, I'm hardly upright this morning after yesterday's events at the allotment. We had barely got to the office where we meet up where we were told that a 'promotional video' was going to be made of our activities that morning. Of course, some of us were a little unhappy about this, as, having been given no warning whatsoever, we'd had no time either to dress for the occasion or learn appropriate dance routines. We were told this wouldn't matter. When we arrived at the allotment, we were told they wanted to film a variety of activities. So all our plans of last week went out the window. I was left planting....guess what? ONION SETS!!! Imagine, dear readers, my humiliation, I'm actually filmed for posterity planting my unfavourite crop of all time...Of course, it could only go downhill from that point. After finishing planting, I was told to set up the tea things so we could be filmed having a pretend planning meeting! Oh, yes, let's go into fantasy land shall we, with a bunch of people suffering from severe mental health conditions? Good idea! Anyway, I started getting all the chairs etc out, when suddenly I saw our leader a few yards away mouthing to me, 'Me back's gone again!' He couldn't move an inch, so I went over to him and started to massage the affected area. At this point the cameraman came towards us filming the whole thing...That was the point at which I lost it. I told him our leader was in pain and needed a chair AND TO BLOODY WELL HELP ME!!! Luckily, at that point we had a new client arrive who had some paracetemol so we were able to help with the pain a bit. So then we continued with the filming of our 'meeting'. I should say at this point that there was a gale force wind blowing straight from the Arctic yesterday. You may have heard about it on the news. Then the pr people ooh'd and aah'd at their lovely photos in our shed...We eventually managed to get our leader back to his car, clear up the mess, and go home...If this doesn't stop you volunteering in your community nothing will.

A Cheery Cherry Planting Day

Well, I'm sure you're all wondering by now how the allotment opening day went. Fine, thank you. Actually the whole day has been somewhat stressful. First I went downstairs to find a frog on the draining board. I let it swim around in the sink while I got my coffee, and then we had to go through the whole charade of the nude trip to the pond again. Afterwards I trod on my glasses, my 'second' pair, though the ones I usually take to the allotment with me (as my first ones are "Miu mius"---huh, eat your heart out NHS subscribers!). On arriving at the allotment I found that the leader had bought two enormous flowering cherry trees which he was planning to have the visiting dignitaries plant in an area which a couple of clients and myself had spent two months clearing for a soft fruit patch. A rather heated discussion followed---the result of which was that I had to dig two large holes for the trees at the far side of the allotment. The weather wasn't pleasant, but the really hard rain only really set in as the dignitaries arrived. I don't quite know how I got mud up my nose but several people alluded to it. We all had our pictures taken pretending to plant one of the trees. And pretending to be VERY HAPPY INDEED about the whole thing, even though by this time we were all soaking wet. The usual pr job. Then tea and biscuits were passed round and polite conversation was made. It was great fun watching the dignitaries trying to figure out which of us could be considered 'mentally ill'----I was talked to very, very, slowly on at least two occasions, and almost felt I should let slip about the petrol poisoning episode last week. But I kept a dignified silence. Oh, by the way, it's now official. I have TWO friends!