Green Fingers (didn't mention that on the box ...)

I put the empty milk bottles out last night. They were still there this morning.

I put the wheelie bin out last night. It was still there, unemptied, this morning.

It's a Bank Holiday, right!?

When you work for yourself every day's a holiday. Or a workday. You can pick yer choose. But it does mean that you lose sight of the statutory holidays.

Anyway, once I'd realised it was a holiday, I figured I ought to do something of a traditional Bank Holiday nature. But I don't have a car. So going out on the roads and sitting in traffic jams was out. (I was always puzzled by my parents' need to drive out on a Bank Holiday, long after they'd retired. Some kind of Pavlovian reaction, I suppose.)

For a while I considered painting the front door. It does need it. But after I'd looked at the instructions on the paint tin, I figured my while might mean that it would now take too long to dry. In passing, however, I did note something important in the instructions which I'd not taken into account before.

When empty do not use this pack to store foodstuffs, it says.

Who the hell would want to store their Hobnobs or their bacon sarnies in an old paint tin? Yet I'm well aware that manufacturers only put this sort of cautionary wording on their packs because someone has already done what they now warn you not to do.

I opted for that other holiday pastime, gardening.

I mowed both lawns, back and front. I sprayed spot weedkiller very carefully on the dandelions at the front. I have to be careful, because in essence the front lawn is composed of daisies, some buttercups, a funny little purple flowering thing that came from Lucy Smooth's garden, and, oh, a little bit of grass. Difficult for spot weeder to find the spots in that lot.

I raked out the thatch from the back lawn. Amazing how much thatch you can rake out from a lawn if you let yourself do it every two or three years.

I sowed a little bag of grass seed I found in the garage and watered it with Weed & Feed, taking great care not to water my trainers (Will mark clothes and hard surfaces, it says on the box)

It might not sound like much to a seasoned gardener, but I awarded myself a bronze star. I didn't stick it on my T-shirt, however (May cause staining of some cotton items, it says on the packet).

Most of the evening I spent watching from the window for the woodpigeon who normally comes every night to hoover up the seed I put out for the ground feeders; I was sure he would sense my seeded lawn.

He didn't come. I guess he knew it was a Bank Holiday.