It would be hard to tell you quite how bad things are except to say that, on top of everything, I have a virus. This one has 48 hours of flu-like symptoms followed by (so far) four days of rampant diarrhoea). I went to see the doctor about the rash in my hair, which my hairdresser had identified about two months ago as psoriasis but he said the other rash, all over the rest of me was fungal. I had so many things to tell him (poor bloke) that I actually forgot about the diarrhoea, which had caused me to sit in the waiting room with knotted legs. I had to ring back and speak to someone else. My polymyalgia is playing up, the Celiac is awful, but on the plus side as I’m eating nothing the Barrett’s oesophagus is quietish, which is good, because it’s really only safe to cough whilst sitting on the toilet.
Apart from that I’m fine.
No that’s a lie. Living in two houses, both of them in turmoil, is terrible. My mother refers to me as the servant, which feels so accurate that sitting voiding my guts in a bathroom where no one knocks on the door with a problem, feels like freedom.
My poor, formerly beautiful, garden is suffering without me but I did manage yesterday to repot my Clems. I had bought a pair of Clematis from QVC. Now these were not any old clematis, these were Raymond Evison clematis. Raymond has appeared on the shopping channel explaining how he prepares the wonderful clematis that he offers for sale after years of crossbreeding and development. By special methods of growing and pruning he ensures that the roots on the plants he offers for sale are of exceptional quality. Evison roots are not like roots, they are more like the steel hawsers with which you tie up ocean liners.
The pair of plants I had were equipped with the familiar hawser roots, which is just as well. When I planted them I was not thinking. Perhaps I was distracted by future shock. Anyway I cleaned out a huge blue glazed pot with only two tiny holes in the base and filled it with sifted soil prior to planting.
And then it rained.
Wettest summer since whenever, latest summer season known, village flower shows having categories for biggest slug, you dribble it, we had it. Throughout it all my pot stood with two inches of water on top but because of the developing family situation I had no time to rescue the two clematis. I might as well have left them in a bucket of water for all the good I was doing them. Any other clems would have rotted to a soft grey mould and disappeared in a welter of lip-licking slugs. Yesterday, however, in between bouts of the dreaded dire rear, I dragged the plants out, with the roots on one virtually unchanged and on the other still there, though diminished. I emptied the pot and started again with a layer of drainage and proper compost and there they are today, flowering.
When family rat on you and lawyers bug you and your life goes down the toilet it is a great comfort to know someone (Raymond Evison), somewhere ( the Channel Islands) is doing things properly.
Raymond Evison and QVC, I salute you.
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JaneLaverick.com – glad that soft toilet paper was invented.