April 23

What is it with men and hoses?

Stupid question, Freud would explain in an instant what it is with men and hoses. Trouble is, Freud would also maintain that I, too, am desperate to grip this thing and spray it around everything in sight. He would be wrong.

We have a mediteranean garden on our terrace. Most of the plants and flowers were wedding presents and we can still remember which Olive tree came from which couple and who gave us the pots in which they stand. The garden was designed by Mark Helston, who specialises in making a small terrace feel like acres of land and Mark visits every so often to maintain it. At least, he did.

We are hopeless gardeners. Although he would be happy to instruct us, we know the names of nothing, nor how to care for the plants we love so much. Mark has spoiled us by keeping it in shape. But Lockdown has changed all that. The garden is our lifeline. We walk in it,10,000 steps up and down, and up and down again, past the white daisies with the deep, blue centres, which probably aren’t daisies at all, past the olive trees and the sturdy green plants that look like a cross between a pineapple and a palm tree. There are Lilly-of-the-valley hidden in the shade and tulips pressed up against the kitchen window. Mark delivers tomato plants each year, which I water, diligently, with a watering can and have seriously competitive conversations with friends, whose terrace he also tends, about whose tomatoes are doing better and whose chutney recipe is tastier.The year my tomatoes got blight gave rise to the most unseemly delight in their house and the texting to me of many photos of their thriving, bursting fruit.

Without Mark, our garden is beginning to look “leggy” as he calls it and, although I water the tomatoes, I’m not sure I can manage all of it by can. Enter”The Writer”, who loves the garden as much as I do but has, hitherto, declined to have anything to do with its upkeep.

Anxious about its welfare, I have an inspiration. I suggest he tries out the hose I hate and never use because I can’t ever manage to regulate it properly. I either have the water pressure so high it blasts the earth out of the pots or so low, it trickles away to nothing and wouldn’t give a dousing to a violet.

Reluctantly, he agrees and half an hour later, I wonder where he is, only to find him, waving the hose about masterfully, directing it in a powerful stream at the thirstiest plants, holding it out, rigidly, in front of him with pride and coiling it up back in its place with what seems to me like reluctance. Did I catch him stroking it?