4 March

My word! Days when we can sit in the conservatory without electric heating! Such a pleasure to see the world returning to life after the worst winter for 30 years. I think the twin olives Ginny gave us, Popeye and Olive, are surviving. If so, I promise to fleece them up next winter. I think they suffered more from the weight of snow - twice - than from the low temperatures. The hellebore, a gift from Derry and Colin, is in flower, perhaps encouraged by the yellow crocuses round about it. On the way to court yesterday (in Egg1 - v. infra), I passed a garden that was busting with snowdrops and aconites, neither of which our garden boasts (heavy hint...). The seedlings are coming along nicely, and I had an unexpected present from Miss at class today - a split of a sedum from her garden, and now in a pot of compost on the outside staging. Elizabeth and Peter's sedums are starting into strong growth, so I'll put out Miss's nearby in due course.

Martyn's remote car lock zapper was misbehaving yesterday, and to avoid further depredations to my best kitchen knife, I headed out to the garage to find a screwdriver. On the way, I found that the offside front tyre on Egg1 was flat. Since he had to leave for work, essentials were rapidly switched between Egg1 and Egg2, and I repaired indoors to get some clothes on while he went to work on an unfamiliar Egg2. I got enough air into the punctured tyre to back the car out without wrecking the rim (having remembered at the last minute to get the electric pump out of Egg2). It's nice to know that one is still capable at 59 and a bit of changing a 5-stud gorilla-fitted wheel on a frosty morning, though one was grateful to be able to do so on one's front drive. I had to apply 95kg pedal force to the wheelbrace. Unfortunately, the puncture - a small Phillips screw - was so close to the sidewall that the tyre couldn't be repaired. My usual fettlers had a replacement tyre in stock, so I got it dealt with on the way home from court. One of the old team was still there, but the former boss man is now running a burger van, and Sam, the old (young) tyre fitter, has moved to the Costa Geriatrica. Anyway, the remaining chap and I talked about bird-watching while the Sam-replacement fitted the new tyre - evidently he sees kingfishers on the stretch of the river behind their workshop; I recall him telling me once before that he'd seen a shag there as well. With supreme self-control, I restrained myself from saying 'I don't suppose it's every day that you get a shag behind the workshop'. Honi soit qui mal y pense.