Powerless

I looked at the bedside clock last night, shortly before falling asleep. It read 00:45. When I next opened my eyes, some time after waking up, it said 02.10. The last thing I heard before falling asleep again was the milkman arriving, just after 6.

Unsurprisingly, I slept late this morning and found it hard to get up at all. Then the electricity went off. Too late, I remembered the letter received from the electricity maintenance company to say that the power would be switched off today whilst trees close to cables were cut back.

My day was entirely topsy-turvy, a perfectly acceptable state of affairs. I put on a dressing-gown (I never do this) and trotted downstairs to read the papers, then back up for a bath - the shower is electric. It was nearly 10 o'clock by the time I emerged, smooth and scented, recovered from sleeplessness.

It's been a useful day, overall. Several panes of glass in the greenhouse had been broken in the gales and we have replaced them and put back others that had slipped. I finished cutting back the tall laurel hedge and once again resolved that it must never grow so tall again - how many times must I cut the beastly thing back to stumps before it takes the hint and just dies? I started cutting Al and Dilly's privet hedge, which is about 8 feet tall, to waist height.

There's a line between informal and neglected and we had crossed it. All I can say is that in the last three years we have had two family weddings (parties held here) and two babies, our gardener has finally become too old to work and I've concentrated on vegetable growing. But there are no more excuses and I must start to pull it all back together again. Unfortunately, it's too much for us and it's hard to know what to do about it. The sort of work we need done isn't suitable for a jobbing gardener, what he'd do is what I can do myself.

Never mind. It's after 6 o'clock and time for a drink before cooking dinner.