It’s the middle of May for goodness sake, where is Spring??!! Apart from a week in March that was as hot as July, the weather has been cold, wet and windy. Even when the sun has shone the nights have been frosty. Only last week I was out 2 nights running covering up my tender plants. Thankfully they all survived, but they’re not enjoying it any more than I am.

I’ve planted out rudbeckia, larkspur, daisies, cosmos, sunflowers, dahlias and nasturtiums, all lovingly grown from seed. In my head the garden will be a mass of colour in summer, but not unless we get some better weather.

Then there are the food crops. The peas, as ever, look terrible and the broad beans, which can usually survive all manner of inclement conditions, look terrible too. The pretty white strawberry flowers all have a blackened middle, and as for the potatoes. Who knows?

The forecast for next week is warmer, so I think we’ll all be glad if ‘they’ve’ got it right.

We’ve had 3 consecutive frosty nights in the last week, and it’s just about killed all the 21 Salvia Patens I planted down the side of the drive. I managed to cover the 6 Sylvias Sunflowers by the pond, I’m just glad I hadn’t planted any more out.

They looked pretty sad, but then they often do, so I kept my fingers crossed and I have to say they look a lot better this morning with some sun on their backs.

The potatoes are blackened too, but I know they will come back. I’ve written myself a big note for next year.

DON’T PLANT ANYTHING OUT UNTIL THE 2nd WEEK OF MAY!

Yesterday, for example, was glorious. I got the grass cut and lots of other well overdue jobs. I even planted out some of my seedlings, only to hear today that Saturday night is going to be cold at 1c. I do hope I haven’t jumped the gun.

Then, true to form, today is dull and very cold, with the promise of rain later on. Not even the fields of oil seed rape could cheer me up this morning as I went to do the weekly shop.

Normally the bright carpets of yellow lift my heart, but today it was just too cold. Where is Spring?

Here you will find a selection of my favourite things in table form. How cool is that? Just mouse over the pictures for full details.

Although it has warmed up slightly and the sun is shining from time to time, there is a wickedly cold wind, so whilst I’m waiting for some warm weather to return, my thoughts have turned to indoor pursuits.

How 2 people can accumulate so much ‘stuff’ is beyond me, though as I may have mentioned, we’re not very good at throwing things away, just in case ‘it might come in for something’.

But now the gloves are off. Major changes are afoot, in the shape of getting an additional wardrobe. I know this sounds like adding to our collection rather than reducing it, but the hope is it will help to arrange the ‘stuff’ we do have in a more satisfactory manner.

Anything that doesn’t make the cut will be thrown out (yes, that’s right, thrown out) given to a charity shop or put on EBay. I’ve already had some small successes in that regard and get quite excited when I receive bids and make sales.

Let’s face it, whatever I sell at this stage of my life is all profit, so I don’t mind small prices, but I have sold a couple of big ticket items too.

However, I digress. Getting a new wardrobe sounds quite simple when you say it quickly, but things are never that easy. That’s why yesterday afternoon I found myself painting a bedroom wall.

We’d cleared a space for the 6′ 6″ monster, but in doing so had highlighted the fact that the bedroom is badly in need of decorating. (We actually knew this already but had successfully ignored it up to that point.)

The thought of having to move this behemoth at a later date didn’t appeal to either of us, so the lesser evil was to paint the wall behind it now, before it arrived. So that is what I did.

Another bi-product of all this activity is making space to do things. As a result the middle bedroom, affectionately known as the ‘snug’, is piled high with stuff that is either in the way, waiting to be sold or waiting to be re-housed in the new wardrobe.

As I often use the ‘snug’ as a refuge from Peter’s snoring, getting into bed at 3am is like a cross between ‘Total Wipeout’ and ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’!

Last Tuesday in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, which is near to where my sister lives, it was sunny and warm and setting records at 24c. Today, just one week later, it is snowing, blowing and a chilly 3c.

Here it’s wet, cold and miserable. Happy Easter everyone!

In fact it all started yesterday afternoon. I had cut the grass, in front of the house, with the Flymo for the first time this year. Any further grass cutting is held up whilst the oil leak on the big mower is fixed.

When I’d finished I was shattered, not being match fit, so wasn’t too pleased when Peter decided he was going to cut the bit of the hedge at the back of the house that hadn’t got cut last year.

This involves me fetching, carrying and picking up hawthorn trimmings. Needless to say the clearing up operation when he’d finished wasn’t thorough, so this morning I went out to finish the job.

I had been raking and sweeping happily for about half an hour or so, despite severe aches and pains from yesterday, and had just stopped for a short breather leaning on my brush when I felt something hit my elbow.

As I looked down there on the ground was a peanut rocking gently as it settled into a nick. Presumably one of my feathered friends had dropped it whilst flying overhead.

So there we are. I can add ‘being hit by a peanut dropped by a bird’ to my list of ‘firsts’.

First I weeded and tidied the existing strawberry bed, then dug over the site of the new strawberry bed that I’m going to plant up in the next week or so.

In the conservatory I potted on 12 tiny  ‘Lucifer’ seedlings. I sowed 48 last September, so not a great conversion rate. There would have been more, but the same cold snap that did for our plumbing also did for a few baby ‘Lucifers’.

My dozen or so Rudbeckia, that I sowed last August as a bit of an experiment, are looking interested at last. They’ve been in the conservatory all winter and had been looking a bit sad, but seem to be responding to the rise in temperature and longer days.

I’ve also started sowing seeds. Just a few to begin with in modules on top of the central heating boiler. Assorted daisies, pale yellow antirrhinum and bright pink Nicotiana (seeds collected last Autumn) Larkspur and Salvia Patens (seeds from old packets)

I’m particularly interested in the antirrhinum and nicotiana, as I selected the seed specially from pale yellow and bright pink plants respectively. I have no idea if they come true from seed.

The only down side is that whilst preparing for a new (non-gardening) project that I will be writing about later, I noticed the big mower seems to be leaking oil on to the garage floor. Hey-ho!

At 11am it was lashing down with rain, but by noon it seemed to be brightening up, so we had an early lunch and set off around 1.30pm. By the time we were driving into Grimsby the sun was shining brightly, but there was a viciously cold wind.

We didn’t know exactly where we were going. A bit of ‘googling’ before hand had told us she was moored at no. 5 quay, royal dock. A trip on Google street-view had then given us the general direction, but surely there would be signs? There weren’t.

The docks seemed like a wasteland, even on a sunny day, with their abandoned buildings and semi-derelict warehouses. Luckily we found a man in a high-viz jacket giving directions to another driver. I called across to ask how to find HMS Grimsby, “Follow him” was the reply, so as the other car sped off we followed him. This ‘chase’ and the  setting in general, made me feel like an extra in ‘The Sweeney‘ or ‘The Professionals‘.

It wasn’t long before he led us to a car park, and just along the quay we could see HMS Grimsby, looking splendid in the bright sunshine.

Of course, being Britain there was a queue, and a very long queue at that, but it was still only 2pm, so nothing to worry about. Sadly there was. The queue was much longer than we first thought, and moving exceptionally slowly.

A young officer walked up and down the line of patient sightseers explaining that at 1500 hours the gangway would be closed, so some of us would be disappointed.

There followed a very long cold wait, and some mental arithmetic. Would we make it to the gangway in time? We felt at best it was ‘touch and go’. With about 20 minutes to go the couple behind us bailed out, not that it did us any good. Then with 10 minutes to go the couple if front bailed out too. A strange decision at that stage we thought.

With 5 minutes to go I glanced behind to see that there was only another couple behind us, and behind them 3 naval personnel. This looked promising, we wouldn’t make the gangway by 3pm, but we felt that we had made ‘the cut’.

We were right. We got on board and I got to fire an (unloaded) machine gun mounted on the side of the ship. We also got to go on the bridge and see all the radar and mine detecting equipment. So standing in a freezing queue for an hour had paid off.

Here are a few brief facts.

The original HMS Grimsby was actually a sloop and she was launched in July 1933. She saw action in the second World War and was sunk by enemy aircraft in May 1941, 40 miles north east of Tobruk.

The vessel we saw is a minesweeper, built in August 1998 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 25 September 1999. She returned to the UK in September 2011 following three year deployment to the Gulf.

I remember quite well how my parents went to great lengths to safeguard our belongings and the dining room carpet, only to be told by the insurance man (yes we had insurance men in those days who came to your house weekly to collect your premium) that they would have been better letting things get damaged so they could claim. Even though I was a small child I can still remember my mother’s reaction.

Fast forward if you will 50 years or so to the morning of Saturday February 11th 2012. To cut a long story short it had been the coldest night I could ever remember and at 11am, as the central heating cranked up and the outside temperature struggled up to -5c, a cold water pipe under the bathroom burst, causing water to cascade down the wall in the hall and drip through the ceiling.

We were quick to react, and turned the water off at the mains within minutes of it starting. The plumber came about 2 hours later. Water was still running down the walls and dripping out of the ceiling, presumably from the small lake that had formed in the roof space whilst the water was still running.

For reasons which I won’t bore you with here it was decided that the best way to access the leaking pipe was to bang out a hole in the hall ceiling. So that is what he did. To minimise damage and mess he first turned the water back on for a few seconds so that he could hear where to knock this hole and to his credit he was pretty accurate.

He replaced the damaged pipe and normal service was resumed, except that we now had a 2′  hole in the ceiling, piles of plaster all over the floor despite a dust sheet, dirty watermarks down the walls  and a wet carpet.

To be honest, at the beginning, I was expecting the hall ceiling to fall down completely with the weight of water, so on the face of it things hadn’t turned out too bad.

Or had they??

I had already called the insurance company before I rang the plumber. Needless to say it was a ‘faceless’ call centre, and the lad I spoke to didn’t fill me with confidence. He promised someone would ring me back, but when no-one did I rang again and spoke to a girl who seemed much more helpful.

I told her my story; waited; banal annoying music; gave my details (again); more music; blood pressure rising; more music; all I wanted was their permission to organise a plumber, how hard could it be? Yes, I should have established that in my first call, and I did try, but the lad just kept saying someone would ring me back to explain things.

In the end she could find no trace of my first phone call so started the whole procedure again. Good job I rang them back or I’d still be waiting. She said I could ring a plumber and that an ‘underwriter’ would ring the following week. I wasn’t feeling safe, happy or reassured by my first dealings with the people who were supposed to help me out of this mess.

The underwriter has rung and wants us to take photos of the damage. She will send a claim form.So now I’m waiting for that and the plumbers estimate to make good the damage, re-decorate and clean the carpet.

This story will now go one of two ways. Either the insurance company will pay up and we’ll all live happily ever after, or they won’t, and my mum’s words of 50 years ago will once more be ringing in my ears.

Which would you put your money on?