If everything in the world were made of edible plastic, you would not have the problems caused by these green things

Eternally-un-named friend hedgehog hunting

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting having tea in a garden centre near St Albans – not my natural habitat.

My eternally-un-named friend had gone off to the Information Desk to ask about buying a hedgehog.

It is a long back story.

I have mentioned it in my blog before.

She is waging a war of attrition against slugs in my back garden.

“What did they say at the Information Desk?” I asked her on her return.

“There was this oldish guy there,” she said, “and I asked him Can you tell me where I can get hedgehogs? and he started looking at me slightly frowning.

“He said: Do you mean ornamental ones or real ones? and he was sort of frowning a bit more.

“Real ones, I said.

“And he told me: There’s a place you can get them in Notcutts, but we can’t get them – and he’s still looking a bit oddly at me. They’re wild animals, you know, he says. You might be able to get them in Notcutts in Smallford. They have animals there. But I don’t think they’ll have them, because they do pets and a hedgehog is a wild animal.

“By this point, he was scowling even more at me, as if I’m a bad person who wants to buy a wild animal and you’re not allowed to. But, I said, you’re selling hedgehog homes, so I thought people must be able to buy hedgehogs.

“Oh yes,” he said, “that’s to encourage any hedgehogs you already have to stay there. And all this time, he’s looking at me as if I’m a bit…”

“That you want to bake and cook hedgehogs?” I suggested.

“No,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “I think he thought it was like when you tie up a swan in your back garden.”

“They sell hedgehog homes?” I asked.

“Yes,” said my eternally-un-named friend. So we went over to look at them.

Slate roofed hedgehog house (right) may encourage residency

There was one with a slate roof for £29.99, and one made wholly of wood for £44.99

“The other thing I’m thinking,” my eternally-un-named friend told me, “is that you have a massive ant problem in your garden.

“They’re all around. Scurrying. You can see them as you come up the road from Elstree station. They’re rife.”

“What happened to the ladybirds?” I asked. “You said you’d found a ready supply of ladybirds to kill the aphids.”

“I can’t get the ladybirds to kill the aphids until I’ve killed the ants,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “because the ants would kill the ladybirds.”

“How are you going to kill the ants?” I asked.

“I’ve got a load of white powder,” she explained, “and I’ve got sprays and I’ve been pouring boiling water on the ant nests. One day when you were away in Edinburgh I went out into the garden to pull out the dandelions – at least they’re not actually going round killing other things – and there were ant nests everywhere.

“The aphids are out the front on one of the plants. And every other day, I would take off the branches that had the aphids on and bin them, because the aphids sap the plant and there was always a little ant walking up the stalk trying to do something to an aphid.

“Those millions of invisible bugs that I put in the ground to kill the ants… Unfortunately they have to be kept wet and we had that dry patch for some time. They cost £11. I know that’s cheap per million, but they didn’t seem to be pulling their weight, so I put down the £3 white powder as well.”

“What if the hedgehog eats the white powder?” I asked. “It will die.”

“I have no idea,” said my eternally-un-named friend. “I’m dealing with ants at the moment. I haven’t found a hedgehog. Who else eats ants?”

“The French,” I suggested.

Buying an anteater could be a viable alternative to a hedgehog

My eternally-un-named friend thought for a moment and then said, perking up: “We could get an anteater! It might be easier in the long run just to get an anteater. The problem is there are the ants AND there are the slugs. There’s a double enemy situation.”

“Or we could just get a Frenchman,” I persisted. “They’ll eat anything.”

“When you break open these ant nests,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “you see half of them have got wings, half of them are eggs about to develop and the other half are the ones running around doing things to aphids. That’s the problem. We have 150% of ants trotting backwards and forwards everywhere. it really is hell.”

“You see?” I told her, “Nature is a nightmare. That’s why I try to have nothing to do with it. Anything green is a nightmare. New cheese, old meat, anything with leaves or stalks. Nightmare. I try to have nothing to do with anything green. If everything in the world were made of edible plastic, you wouldn’t have these problems. It must be possible in the 21st century. Natural things are bad things.”

“Well,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “if part of Nature and wildlife is that hedgehogs eat slugs, it’s certainly not happening round Elstree and Borehamwood and I don’t see how hedgehogs are going to come to your rescue when you have main roads.”

“Tunnels,” I suggested. “We will have to build hedgehog tunnels.”

“I got a reply from Bob Slayer,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

A few days ago, she asked comedian Bob Slayer where she could get a hedgehog, on the basis he was brought up in the West Country and would know about such Nature-related things. Yesterday, he replied:

“The British Hedgehog Preservation Society is based in Clee Hill near Ludlow where I grew up. I went to a local pony club with the daughter of the man who set it up in 1982 – Major Adrian Harcourt Coles. I thought he was dead, but I have checked and he is not.

“I remember he raised a load of money to put ramps in all the cattle grids on Clee Hill so that, if hedgehogs fell in, they could climb out. Then someone proved that hedgehogs don’t live over a certain height above sea level and that there are no hedgehogs on Clee Hill.

Hedgehog flavoured crisps were trendy

“In 1981, Hedgehog Foods Ltd decided, as a joke, to produce hedgehog flavoured crisps. To everyone’s surprise, the crisps were a huge success. But they were actually flavoured with pork fat and no hedgehogs were used in the manufacturing process.

“As a result, the Office of Fair Trading took them to court (in 1982) on a charge of false advertising. A settlement was finally reached when Mr Lewis of Hedgehog Foods interviewed gypsies – who actually did eat baked hedgehogs – to ascertain the flavour of hedgehogs. He then commissioned a flavourings firm to duplicate the flavour as closely as possible and changed the labels from ‘hedgehog flavoured’ to ‘hedgehog flavour’ and the Office of Fair Trading was satisfied.”

My eternally-un-named friend showed me Bob Slayer’s e-mail, then suggested: “If a hedgehog did get to your garden, it could have the run of the area. Your garden and other people’s gardens. There’s probably a good living for a hedgehog there.”

“And, if it ran out of slugs to eat, it could drink milk,” I suggested.

“No,” said my eternally-un-named friend. “They can’t drink milk. There’s an advert on television that says they’re lactose-intolerant. It’s an advert for lactose-free milk and they’re telling hedgehogs Yes, it’s OK to have this milk. I’m sure a hedgehog would like to live in your garden, although there is that fox around.”

“I saw it last night by the garages when I was parking the car,” I said. “We may have to set up a fox hunt. Where can we get horses and hounds? Can they be rented or do you have to set up a permanent hunt?”

“I think we should just get an anteater,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

“Or a Frenchman,” I said.

The debate continues.

Should all jokes have a ‘Sell By’ date?

Perhaps the simple cactus has a lesson for comics & for us all

In that strange dream-like world between sleep and waking this morning, I was thinking about comedians telling jokes.

This is never a good idea.

I thought that, like tomatoes and broccoli on supermarket shelves, perhaps there should be a Best By… date and a Sell By… date on all jokes.

After that, it would be illegal to expose the joke to the public.

But then I remembered a conversation I had with a man who sold flowers.

There was a Sell By… label stuck on each and every cactus in his shop.

“Do cacti actually go bad after a certain date?” I asked. “I thought they just went on year after year, surviving through drought and everything.”

“Yup,” said the flower shop owner.

From memory, he told me the European Parliament had passed a law that all cacti should have a two-year Sell By… date.

“After that,” he told me, “the law says I have to throw them away.”

“So what do you do with them if they pass their Sell By… date?” I asked the flower shop man.

“I peel off the Sell By… label on the cactus,” he told me, “and stick on a new one.”

That is not a joke. It actually happened. In European Parliamentary legislation, the dividing line between a joke and reality can be a spider’s web-thin one.

Maybe, though, some jokes should have a Best By... date and a Sell By… date.

On the other hand, some jokes are like cacti.

They can go on forever.

The connecting factor may be the involvement of little pricks.

In the world of cacti, pricks are essential.

In comedy, you cannot beat a good knob gag.

Having rationalised this, I turned over and happily went back to sleep.

Perhaps it was a mistake.

Not the turning over and going back to sleep.

The rationalising bit.

The link between the giant pseudo sea slug of Canada & 3 British comedians

Death of 17 in the boiling waters of a copper chamber pot

The savage slug war being waged in my back garden continues with increasing ferocity. Last night, at about one o’clock in the morning, my eternally-vigilant un-named friend went out, encountered, captured and dispatched seventeen – count ‘em – seventeen – of the ghastly gastropod molluscs, picking each up with two twigs, as if eating with chopsticks, then tossing them into a copper chamber pot and pouring boiling water onto them.

An ignominious death, but no less than they deserve.

Meanwhile, according to Anna Smith – one of the So It Goes blog’s increasing number of foreign correspondents, who has previously suggested drowning slugs in beer – the slug threat to the economically-vital marijuana plantations of Canada (a part of the economy unconnected to her) has lessened. She told me yesterday, from her home in British Columbia:

Giant sea slugs emerge from the waters off Western Canada? (photograph by Anna Smith)

“The slugs have subsided for the moment. But a large creature appeared on our dock which resembled a gigantic slug. It turned out to be a rare Ringed Seal from the Aleutian Islands. These are not rare in Alaska, but we have never seen one here before. It may have gone off course, trying to avoid the Japanese Tsunami waste, which has now started to arrive on these shores. You might want to avoid showing the attached picture to your eternally-un-named friend, as it could give her more nightmares.”

Even though the Canadian slug threat may have temporarily subsided, other dangers lurk in our Western Colonies.

“The most exciting thing to happen in Canada recently,” Anna tells me, “has been the theft of thirty million Canadian dollars worth of maple syrup from a storage facility in Quebec.

“The police stated that it would be ‘difficult to trace’. My first thought was that it might have been a special order from China (or North Korea!). Most Canadians (myself included) had no idea that such vast amounts of maple syrup were being stockpiled in gasworks-sized tanks. I thought they just took the buckets from the trees and bottled the stuff. We are now being warned that syrup might appear on the black market. I fear it may result in a shootout in Saskatoon, involving tanker trucks of maple syrup and railcars exploding with bales of marijuana.”

Anna is shocked by the size of Canada’s syrup reserves. I am more shocked by the fact that the police accept there is a lively black market in maple syrup. I always thought Canada was a relatively law-abiding place. But, no, Anna continues:

“There has also been a large scale theft of potatoes in Canada. We are wondering if the next thing to go missing will be bacon.”

According to a C-FAX 1070 news report:

Richmond RCMP are scratching their heads after hundreds of pounds of potatoes were uprooted from a farmer’s field. 

It’s not just a few potatoes that have been pilfered, but a football field full of spuds.  Richmond Police are investigating the theft after a local farmer reported that someone had moved in overnight and removed an estimated 5,000 pounds of taters. RCMP Sgt. Cam Kowalski says they are stumped.

“Someone has gone and uprooted all the potatoes in this particular area and gone off with them to, I don’t know, make French fries or vodka, but they are missing and we have no idea who’s done this because it certainly isn’t something we regularly patrol for during the night.”

Even Richmond’s Mayor has spoken out about the crop thefts saying it is a “disturbing offence”.

This easily-disturbed, potato-thieving area of Richmond is where Anna Smith lives. It is a suburb of Vancouver. She tells me:

“It is located on Lulu Island, the largest island in the Fraser River Estuary. Lulu Island is named after Lulu Sweet, a sixteen year old actress/singer from San Francisco who visited these shores in 1861. She was famous for appearing in public with bare arms, which in 1861 was probably the equivalent of doing a naked balloon dance in London in the 1980s.”

In London in the 1980s, Anna encountered (separately) the anarchic comedy triumvirate of the early Tony Green, the late Malcolm Hardee and the late Ian Hinchliffe, so I suspect there are more stories to emerge from this blog’s foreign correspondent’s desk in British Columbia.

Bring back the Fabulous Poodles and Hank Wangford + slugs & comedians

Last night, I went with my eternally-un-named friend to see Paul Astles and Bobby Valentino’s wonderful semi-regular music evening at the Wickham Arms in Brockley, South London.

I blogged in early July about violin virtuoso Bobby’s spat with PRS (the Performing Right Society) over royalties on The Bluebells’ worldwide hit Young at Heart. This seems to have been progressing and I somehow think that PRS have chosen the wrong person to have a fight with. I did not realise that venture capital companies regularly invest in prospective court cases which are likely to be won. Capitalism and gambling intermingled. Or is that tautology?

I suggested to Bobby (as he links the two groups) that the Fabulous Poodles or the Hank Wangford Band should play the Edinburgh Fringe next year, perhaps only for one week, as a teaser to attract a promoter interested in touring them. Fabulous Poodles frontman Ronnie Golden is already a Fringe regular with comedy writer Barry Cryer

I suggested a show with either The Fabulous Poodles or the Hank Wangford Band or preferably both in an hour long show at the Fringe. Maybe only for one week, to sell the idea of a tour. Those are certainly shows I would (unusually) pay to see.

But accommodation cost is always one of the major problems at the Edinburgh Fringe, so I guess it won’t happen.

Accommodation is not the only ongoing financial problem in Edinburgh, though.

A ‘think piece’ by Bob Slayer which the Scotsman newspaper suddenly pulled and which I then posted in one of my blogs on 4th August – How the Edinburgh Fringe is financed – got a lot of hits at the start of the Fringe; and a flurry towards the end of the Fringe; and today it has had another burst of sudden hits with a few comments at the bottom of the post.

I have a feeling people don’t spot any subsequent Comments on my blogs, so it is maybe worth pointing out that, in response to my blog yesterday about slugs in my back garden (it’s a glamorous life), Anna Smith made this Comment from Canada:

In British Columbia, which is neither British nor Columbia, we are over-run with slugs. Slugs have been known to decimate entire marijuana plantations, a vital industry here, now that much of our forests have been logged or destroyed by the pine beetle. The only solution to the pine beetle problem is a winter cold snap, which kills the larvae, but we have no control over the weather. Slugs are easier to combat. We place a saucer in the garden, and pour beer into it. The slugs soon appear and drink themselves to death within hours. Many comedians take years to perform the same accomplishment.

My eternally-un-named friend, at the forefront of the UK’s battle against the slug menace, has dreamt of slugs the last two nights. Giant ones climbing in and out of drains. She may try the beer option but, as I do not drink alcohol and she seldom drinks – in case the slugs do not take the bait – I may invite comedian Bob Slayer round to clear up the left overs.

Although, if I do, this may prove to be a major mistake.

“When I went down, it was about six inches long!” she said, still horrified

The horror… The horror… and they are getting bigger…

After the Edinburgh Fringe finished, I drove back to London from Edinburgh on Monday night – Well, actually the early hours of Tuesday morning. My eternally-un-named friend was looking after my house while I was away.

When I phoned her at 2.00am on Tuesday morning, there was initially no reply. This was because she was out in my back garden with a torch and a two twigs. She had looked out into the garden from my back bedroom and there, illuminated in the light from my kitchen below was what she described as a scene of horror.

“When I went down, it was about six inches long!” she said, still horrified by the memory.

She told me the full details yesterday.

“Hold on, hold on,” I said, scrabbling to turn on my iPhone’s audio recorder, “The slugs are getting bigger and now they’ve developed an ability to re-grow their heads?”

“They always had this ability,” she replied. “I just read about it on Google.”

“And they’re getting bigger?” I said. “Why are they getting bigger?”

“Because they’re eating a lot,” she said “and it’s been raining a lot.”

“They’re drinking a lot of water and they’re bloated with rain?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “they’re eating all the little plants.”

“And you said something about squidginess,” I prompted.

“No, no,” she said. “No more! Another subject. Let’s find something jollier.”

“You could be part of my increasingly prestigious blog,” I said. “Just the sqidgy reference. Give me the squidgy.”

“Well,” she relented, “I was a bit tired with putting boiling water on them, you know, to kill them. And then you have to drain off the boiled water and then I was adding salt and washing powder, because they seem to be able to come alive again even after all these terrible things. You find one that’s crawled out of the pan before dying.”

“Crawled out of the pan?” I said, surprised. “The pan?”

“Or a bird’s come along,” she continued, ignoring me, “and tried to lift it out and decided they didn’t like the flavour of washing up liquid or salt.”

“Pan?” I repeated.

“It turns out that copper,” my eternally-un-named friend said, “is really good for killing black mould. So we’ve now got to look for a lot of copper things on eBay.”

“Is black mould relevant to the slugs?” I asked.

“No,” said my eternally-un-named friend. “Well, it is slightly. There was a point where the grossness of everything and the looking round… I did try to spread coffee over one area at one point, because they don’t like coffee.”

“Slugs don’t?” I asked.

“The egg shells have worked a treat,” she continued, cheering up. “They can’t climb over egg shells. It’s too jagged. Egg shells are very sharp. You can cut things with egg shells.”

“I’m surprised chickens can get out of them,” I said.

“Anyway…” my eternally-un-named friend said, “there came a point where I couldn’t be bothered putting them in the water. I thought I’ll just squidge them to death… because I’m not actually touching them… So the end of a plank or something… bashing them and trying to rub them… And they ended up in little pieces, which I left there… Only to return a day or so later and it was like seeing half a thumb lying there, which had suddenly grown a head.”

She paused.

“It was gross!” she said, and started laughing uncontrollably.

“The pan,” I eventually interrupted. “There was a reference to a pan.”

“Well,” she said, “the pan is what I’ve been putting them in, with the boiling water.”

“Out the back door?” I asked, with visions of slugs being cooked in the frying pan on my cooker.

“Well,” she explained, “I gave up with the salt and washing up liquid. It was costing a fortune.”

“Do you pick them up with tweezers?” I asked.

“Sometimes I pick them up with sticks,” she explained. “You know how I’ve been eating with chopsticks a lot? I’ve been getting a bit more dextrous.”

“You’ve been using my chopsticks from Beijing?” I asked, slightly worried.

“No,” she reassured me, “I’ve been using twigs like chopsticks, only it’s a bit tricky.”

“Surely slugs are slimy and slide off?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “you pincer them between the two sticks and lift them up. Do you remember nothing of chopstick technique?”

“And you have a pan of boiling hot water out the back door?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “I stick them in an empty, dry, copper pan and then I just pour the… I’m usually making myself a cup of tea, wander out into the back garden… See one… Oh blimey! There’s a slug!… Next thing you know, I’m having to go into full operational mode and pour my boiled water which was going to make my cup of tea over a slug instead. By the time I’ve finished the whole awful procedure, I have had no tea and wander round the garden to see if there’s any other things out there. The biggest drag of it all is when you have to pour off the boiled water so you can tip the little bodies into the green bin. It’s all geechy and slimy and they all look quite gross.”

“How many have you killed in the four weeks I’ve been away?” I asked.

“Maybe thirty,” she told me.

“That’s around one a day,” I said. “Can’t we eat them?”

“You eat them,” she replied. “in a frying pan of your choice. I’m not going to have anything to do with them.”

“You can probably make a fortune selling them to some foreign restaurant,” I suggested. “They’re probably a delicacy in Norway or Burundi or Sarawak or somewhere.”

“I’m sure you’ll love them,” my eternally-un-named friend said.

“I’m still not clear about the washing powder,” I prompted.

But then she changed the subject. Intentionally. Successfully.

Why I had to eat half a grapefruit for my birthday breakfast today & for the slugs

The British Olympic team parade in their gay Abba costumes

I was slightly unsettled last night by the sight of the British team at the Olympic Opening Ceremony walking round the track wearing what appeared to be gay Abba tribute costumes. Now I have to face dead slugs. Only time can tell which will leave the greater psychological scar.

I blogged last month about my eternally-un-named friend’s triumph in building a better mouse trap and drowning one of the diminutive rodents overnight in my living room.

Now she has turned her attention to species cleansing my garden.

Planks and an unexplained copper chamber pot in my garden

She likes plants, which means she dislikes slugs, which is why there were three short wooden planks lying in my garden yesterday morning. And an unexplained chamber pot.

“They crawl around all night, doing their heinous things,” my eternally-un-named friend told me yesterday morning. “The slugs. Eating your plants and then, before dawn starts, they need somewhere to hide.”

“Like vampires?” I asked.

“Yes,” she agreed, laughing in an unsettling way. “Like vampires and Daleks,” she said. “They need somewhere to hide that’s damp and away from the sun, because they dry out. The slugs. The whole thing about them is they go round on their slime everywhere and they don’t like to dry out. That’s why they do their eating at night.”

“I know you put the planks down,” I said, “so the slugs will hide under them and you will find them in the morning. But there is a chamber pot involved. I didn’t know I had a chamber pot.”

Oddly orange and very dead slug barely visible in chamber pot

“The chamber pot,” she explained, “just happens to be the only thing I can use to put the salted water in. And it has a dash of washing up liquid. I don’t want to use saucepans and plates – obviously.”

“But I didn’t know I had a chamber pot,” I said. “The first I knew of it was ten minutes ago. I know I have a bad memory, but… And it’s metal!”

“I got it on eBay,” my eternally-un-named friend explained.

“But why a metal chamber pot?” I asked.

“It’s copper. It’s a lovely colour,” she said.

“But you will hear the sound of your own plops,” I said. “Why did you buy it?”

“Well,” she said, “I like copper and a chamber pot is always useful.”

“For killing slugs?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You either lay planks down on the ground near the plants – which they will hide under when the day comes – or you can use half a grapefruit.”

Grapefruit: weapons of mass destruction in the slug war

“You drop the grapefruit on them?” I asked.

“No. You cut the grapefruit in half and then eat the middle out,” she explained, “then over-turn it  and put it on the ground near the plants like a little hut for the slugs… And you maybe put some water around the area because they are drawn to anything that’s damp and then they hide under the hollowed-out half grapefruit and think Oh good. I’m not going to dry out during the day. But you find then the next day and, em…”

“You kill them?”

“Well, only one fell for my plank ruse this time,” she said, “but I read an article on Google that said, in one hour, you can collect one hundred slugs.”

“In a small space?” I asked.

“It didn’t say…” my eternally-un-named friend mused, “It didn’t say what size of space. But I suppose, if you had a very large garden…”

“Like the back garden of Buckingham Palace,” I suggested. “If the Queen did it, she’d probably get a hundred. I think I read somewhere that she likes grapefruit.”

“I would think, in your garden so far I’ve easily caught twenty odd.”

“Yesterday?”

“Over a period.”

“I don’t suppose Prince Charles would approve of his mother stalking and killing slugs,” I said, lost in my thoughts. “You had that dream last night.”

“Mmmm…..” my eternally-un-named friend said, also lost in thought. “About a giant…”

“Slug,” I said.

“Ye-e-e-s,” she said.

One casualty in the on-going back garden war of attrition

“What was it doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just had to find a bucket of water big enough to stick it in. The chamber pot was not big enough… And then there are the eggshells…”

“The eggshells?” I asked.

“Well, an alternative is – though you can use all these at the same time, of course – and I think you should – Slugs don’t deserve to live if they eat my sweet peas… Look at the size of my sweet peas! Can you remember what size they were last year?”

“I… I…” I spluttered ineffectively.

“They’re less than half the size!” she told me, her voice rising.

“What’s happened to the top half?” I asked.

“The slugs have eaten them,” she told me.

“But slugs don’t eat from the top down,” I said. “They can’t levitate.”

“Yes,” my eternally-un-named friend agreed, “but that’s why they don’t grow any further, because someone went and ate them when they were starting. They’re half the height and that bush which is supposed to be a pom-pom bush is…”

“… now only a pom?” I suggested.

“Every little sprout!” she said, passionately. “They chew on the new sprouts. A new sprout can’t turn into an older sprout if someone’s gone and eaten it.”

“Won’t the poison just kill them?” I asked.

My eternally-un-named friend has been spreading little blue poison pellets around my back garden for the last few weeks. When we returned last week after a week in Milan, there was a small mound of dead and decomposing slugs under a an up-turned flower pot.

“Another thing which will apparently kill them is coffee,” my eternally-un-named friend told me yesterday.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“I will try pouring coffee – obviously not hot – over the plants… I don’t think it will damage the plants but, anyway… slugs don’t like it and they’re not sure why…”

“The slugs aren’t sure why?” I asked.

“The experts,” she told me reprovingly. “They think it’s maybe because of the caffeine drying-out the slugs.”

“There’s always cocaine,” I suggested. “They’d run around so fast they’d burn their stomachs off and die in screaming slug agony. But why eggshells?”

“I told you,” my eternally-un-named friend said patiently. “They’re like the Daleks. They need a flat surface.”

“Daleks can levitate now,” I pointed out.

“They can’t climb over sharp edges,” she said, ignoring me. “So you put broken eggshells round the bottom of the plants like an impenetrable barrier.”

“Like tank traps,” I said.

“Yes,” she said supportively. “Well done.”

“And it is true,” I said. “You never actually see Daleks at the bottom of plants, do you?”

“Well, in your garden you do,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

A Dalek hides in the undergrowth at the bottom of my garden

“But won’t the poison pellets just kill them?” I asked, persisting. “The slugs, not the Daleks.”

“The blue pellets are very ugly on the ground,” she replied, “and they don’t work when it gets wet, because the whole thing of killing them is with the dehydration. And apparently the poison pellets work by attracting them. So, if they don’t eat the pellets and you haven’t managed to kill them, then you’ve gone and attracted a whole lot who are going to lay eggs around everything and you’re going to have the whole same problem keep happening and, basically, you’re doomed.”

My unexpected birthday breakfast today – half a grapefruit

“I’m doomed?” I said.

“Death and taxes and slugs,” she said.

So it goes.

Happy birthday to me.