Last night marked by waking up every two hours, on one occasion from a super-intense nightmare about next door's toddler having a horrible accident in our shared garage. She doesn't have a toddler and we don't share a garage and there's no way you could fall into it from an attic window and no windows in the attic anyway (also nothing in our attic apart from a few boxes, a crawl-board and subsidised insulation) yet that never seems to slow the subconscious down, does it? Probably brought on by the sudden presence of many small children -- Dan's boys loved my garden (many things to fall off, lots of hard surfaces, a random pile of bricks, a forbidden shed with a cage door) but there is always that hostly anxiety about them managing to break/impale/batter themselves/each other in your loco non parentis.

The party was a pleasant affair, first retsina of the season, astonishing trifle with truly superior cake-top fireworks provided by Paul (who also brought a bottle of Polish fortified wine inside a bottle in the shape of a glass cockerel), much lingering in the garden, etc. My attempts to come up with a cocktail which gave the impression of a single space capsule floating in endless space didn't quite come off; I couldn't find white chocolate maltesers (must have been a limited edition) so I obtained freeze-dried white chocolate coated fruit from M&S (which are really nice) and floated them in the blackness of deep space mix (Tia Maria, Blue Curaçao and Vodka). It ended up looking more like an asteroid, though -- more Hayabusa than Yuri Gagarin. Also the deep space mix is a little bit green. Back to the bar table...

On Sunday I began the slightly tragic process of removing those plants which were killed by last winter's savage triple set of cold spikes. Farewell my pretty variegated ceanothus -- you never really got established. Goodbye Tim's frost-split confetti bush -- it made it through two pottings up, a house move and a disastrous spell in a flower bed, but not through a full week at -10. Still on the danger list are my Convolvulus Bush, and Tim's Olive Tree and Passion Vine, all still showing green but looking awful.

Still on the dammit, are you alive or aren't you? list, that golden gooseberry which turned up from Thompson & Morgan a week late, dry as a bone and giving a strong impression of having been sat on. I experimentally cut a branch and it's green in there. Well, for heaven's sake, get sprouting then!