Vegetable Plot Battleground

So here I am on the train to Southampton, journeying to pick up the Agéd Parents (fresh from the Isle of Man) and bear them home for a week's holiday. It's a year since I've seen them, and it'll be interesting to see how long it takes us all to start bickering.

Wow, but there are some blank-eyed shambling morons in Poole. Whoops, getting distracted.

I'm hoping that this parental visit will be a chance for everyone to recharge their batteries; morning cups of coffee with a home-made bun, gentle walks, perhaps a little light shopping. But it wasn't always like this. I remember the few holidays my Dad took with the rest of us as whirlwind endurance marathons. How many attractions can we fit in? How far can we walk in search of a better restaurant, and will any of the ones we passed still be open by the time we return, stumbling, through the gathering darkness? As I think back on it I realize that my Dad was always doing; he found it hard to relax and just be.

And what's worse, I think I've inherited it from him. Perhaps it's some sort of meme.

Yet for all that, there are never enough hours in the day for me. I rise without too much trouble (although getting started in the morning is a tadge harder) but I resent bedtime. It marks drawing a line under the huge list of things I had intended to do that day but didn't manage because of my one great sin; getting sidetracked.

Sometimes this is unavoidable, but some of the time it's the closet perfectionist in me making himself known (I've been known to spend an entire day cleaning and reorganising the kitchen cupboards. I'm not proud of it). But most of the time it's just hopping from one thing to another like a butterfly with a bad case of the squitters.

The internet is the worst place for me. Given my job it's inevitable that I spend a fair bit of time on there, seeking opinions and information, but every second I'm being jostled by such interesting trivia that I can't help but get sucked in by some of it. I mean, did you know that They Might Be Giants' Birdhouse In Your Soul is a song about a night light in the bathroom? There you are, see, you just learned something that might save your life one day. An axe-wielding madman could barge into your house just as you sit down to your cornflakes and shriek 'No-one gets out of here until I know; who is the Blue Canary in the outlet by the light switch, and why is he watching me?'

Aha! And there it is; the moment that turns this train journey into something special. Our train has been idling along at slightly less than walking pace (British trains often do this, I'm not sure why) for a while now, and I've been watching a seemingly endless row of gardens pass by; regular slot after slot of ornamental pap in various states of order. Plastic ponds and plastic sandpits, stands of pampas grass and flowering shrubs, and always the bulk of that precious space is given over to useless, monotonous grass. And then suddenly, standing out like a jewel in the suburban monotone, a working garden; rich earth, broad beans in flower, a compost bin with a squash plant poking out of the top, strawberries almost ready to announce the summer. You can stuff your forsythia up your bottoms, suburbia. Give me the battleground of the vegetable plot any day.