Help! There’s a bee on my leg!

In front of my office, a gradually increasing sea of yellow has appeared during our Paris break. The daffodils are blooming. And not just in front of my office. Spots of yellow dot the garden all over. I forget how many have been planted then, bam, the garden is full.

When I described the view to mum on the phone, she thought it sounded lovely. She also thought Paris sounded lovely though, obviously, I didn’t go to great lengths to describe the food we had. Or the art we saw. Actually, I rather glossed over most of it knowing how irritating she finds it.

And she was a lot better this week in terms of living in the home. Well, except for last ten minutes of our call when she started going on about moving into a flat again. I managed to steer the conversation back to the daffodils.

Before sleep I WhatsApp’d Denise and we talked about mum’s new flat obsession. Poor Denise does not get it easy. They returned from their holiday and Trace was sick for the last week and Denise is sick now. At least Denise has realised how rubbish America is these days.

Talking about ‘sick’, I came across a product called Gary today. It was advertised as a topping for pizza in Lost Boy. I was in Lost Boy having lunch with Dawn at the time.

Apparently someone on Facebook took exception to Vegans calling the stuff that isn’t cheese, cheese. It’s a complaint I have previously expressed in this blog.

The someone posted a comment saying something like, why call it cheese when it isn’t? Why not call it something else, like Gary, for instance. Sainsbury’s then picked up on it and released their own vegan cheese thing and called it Gary. And now, it seems, Lost Boy has done the same thing.

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love cheese. All (real) cheese. To call a cheese substitute Gary is a major slur, as far as I’m concerned. In fact, if we are what we eat, I am mostly cheese and therefore couldn’t possibly be a vegan product.

The Gary produced much hilarity at lunch, our first for ages – lunch not hilarity. We talked about vegan food substitutes as well as lots of other things. Like Nicktor’s secret stores of ‘stuff’ hidden in various corners of the house. And an exchange of dates for the Double Doctors Dinner which we’re supposed to be organising.

It was the usual Lovely Lunch ending in promises to have the next one soon. It’s always a pleasure lunching with Dawn and not nearly often enough.

Of course, since I was going to be out for lunch and the weather was being particularly kind, I took the girls for an early walk. And when I say ‘kind’ I mean it wasn’t raining. The wind up the top was far from kind of any kind. It was bitterly cold and, of course, from the west.

Apart from a few dogs I’ve never encountered before (because it’s not our usual dog walking slot) the walk was fine with Emma chasing her ball and Freya being Miss Independent. It was this independence of hers that led to a bit of an anxious moment.

Freya suddenly started hopping around like a frenzied lamb when a bee attached itself to her leg. She came to me for rescue. I plucked the bee from her hair and let it fly free. I think the bee was more grateful than Freya who just carried on as if I hadn’t just saved her from a fate worse than death.

POPPY WATCH

There has been some growth in the California poppies though not as much as I’d hoped.

Of more concern, however, is the sudden appearance of strange holes in the raised bed. Imagine a conical head, continuously turning in the same place, creating a perfectly smooth sided depression in the earth. Then imagine about eight of them.

There is nothing obvous to explain these strange things. I guess it must have been the Pixies but I can’t for the life of me work out what they want them for. Unless the little sprites have suddenly become artistic and created things for no reason other than because they can.

We may never know.