I like a nice garden. I like them best when I can just wander round, or sit and admire the view.

Unfortunately our half acre of paradise requires work. Now me I talk a good garden, and father is good on mowing and much too keen on pruning/lopping/slashing. Weeding is something neither of us like.

Still it has to be done and the beds right in front of the house were in desperate need, so I spent a couple of days doing a proper job, dividing clumps of summer flowering bulbs and getting right down to the deep roots of the perennial weeds.

Sometime during these two days something bit me on the leg. I'm fairly typical of the women in my family, and our photo albums are full of fat women with slim ankles and unlined necks, but I have not reacted well to that bite and, while my left ankle remains slender and the calf really quite shapely if a bit short, my right leg has swollen up and looks as if it was designed to support a concert grand. It doesn't hurt, and my sister assures me that a week's course of anti-histamines will bring it back to normal, but I am not a happy bunny.