Toilet roll etiquette - The Great Debate

I was struck by a philosophical question the other day, while gratefully using a Client's loo:

Why "grateful"? 

Because although I am perfectly competent at taking a discrete pee behind the shed (“Ladies! Get yourselves a P-style and never again have to drop your trousers when you have to pee outdoors!”), it is rather nice, on a cold and windy day, to be able to use the “house” loo.

Back in the days when Covid was striking us down en masse, it was not possible to go into someone else's house, so peeing behind the shed very much became the “thing” to do. Those days are gone, thank heavens, but the memory lingers on, so I am grateful on a regular basis, to be allowed to use the indoor loo again.

The debate - which might be philosophical, or might be moral - is what to do when this happens, as in the photo above: the perforations fail to tear neatly, and you are left with a ragged bit of loo paper.

“I can't leave it like that!” I say to myself, “What will the Client think?” .....

 

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Fuchsia - time for the spring cut-back

 Everyone is asking me about their Fuchsia - it must be that time of year again!

 

And the answer is Yes: it is time to cut back the hardy Fuchsia in your garden, the ones which have been bravely standing to attention all winter, and which are now just a collection of brown sticks, with maybe - if you are lucky - a hint of new shoots at the base.....

 

 

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“Help! My Clematis is flowering, but the leaves are going brown!”

This is the plea for advice which arrived last week - this lady has a clematis which, she said, is “currently flowering (early March) it seems healthy in terms of flowers but the leaves look like they are in poor health or dying. They don't drop to the floor. “

Here's the picture that came with the email:

Aha, I can see what the problem is!

Well, it's not a problem at all, it's just a question of......

 

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How to deal with a sodden bed...

No, this is not an advert for avoiding embarrassing nocturnal incidents, nor tips and hints on how to deal with a leaky roof (sorry, Linda!!) (my neighbour's roof needs replacing, and is dripping through her bedroom light fitting...), but a sodden herbaceous bed:

 

This is a problem that I'm encountering more and more, this year: apparently the February just gone (2024, for the benefit of future readers!) has been the wettest since records began, for several parts of the UK: and I would say that Oxfordshire is definitely one of those parts......

 

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