A brilliant day on my scale. My scale runs from good to brilliant, on good days it dosen't rain and brilliant is today or better, no rain for three weeks but prior to that it was three weeks of rain. yes, swings and roundabouts.

I opened my car to find out the temperature, there is a little read out in the corner of the dash board, 18 whatever's, then I do a little mental arithmetic, double it and add 30, equals 66 in English, well, it's probably not English but it is what I understand. Just out of sheer curiosity I look in my newspaper at the temperature around the World so that I can tell myself that we are better than Rome, London, Paris, Melbourne, whatever.

It has been three weeks of weeding the garden, I don't mind doing that as I just sit on the grass and lean over, I'm getting past bending down, well, the bending down is not so bad, it's the standing up again that gets me.

There is a rake laying on the grass, no, I'm not daft, the tines are sticking in the ground, not for me treading on it and receiving a black eye from the handle, no, I just tripped over it, and if anyone comments "that we all get a bit doddery at your age" I will delete them from my friends list, anyway, I was lighting a cigarette at the time, just a tee shirt on and I fell into a patch of stinging nettles.

Big hearted me, I cultivate a patch of nettles so that the butterfly's can lay their eggs on them, It's no old wives tale, nettles sting.

It's ok, me, a man of the soil, a man of Sussex, countryside, the Downs, nursery's, it's embedded in my mind, the answer is docken leaves.

I've been weeding for three weeks.