in no particular order

Nicky made some jam out of her damsons seeing as it would have taken a year or so to make wine and we don't have any wine-making facilities and no airing cupboard to ferment things in. This is probably a good thing considering the strength of the damson wine my grandmothers used to concoct.

As well as the amazingly large earwiggy-type insect found on the floor this morning and the number of small and rather tenaciously-attached green caterpillars hiding in the pleats and ruches of the lettuce there were two nice little micro-snail-lets sheltering in the petals of some of the in-absence-of-further-vegetable allotment-flowers collected yesterday. Dahlias, apparently.

BLEG. Gargling with TCP appears to have prevented any prolonged microbial evil from occupying my throat or spreading lungwards but my nose now feels most unpleasant, hence the cloudyshape thing on the roller-shutter door on Semple Street when I finally got out for a walk. More spice-based foodstuffs repelled it for a while but it might be time to start pouring tepid brine into my snout.

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For all the advantages proper coffee has over instant coffee, why is instant coffee so much better at having digestive biscuits dipped into a cupful of it?