Not laws – the social obligations we have to create an orderly and civilised society – which I can live by quite happily. Laws not only protect us from others but they protect others from us and that is just.

I am referring to rules, conventions, if you prefer.

Irksome Rule No.1 – You will shower your partner with gifts on 14th February to show them you love them.

We recently had Valentine’s Day – a particular horror of mine. And it seems so ungrateful to grumble about the whole Valentine’s event when one is ‘blessed’ with a husband who always remembers to buy chocolates or flowers or both and encloses soppy greetings in a carefully chosen card. But it is just a convention. You can’t buy romance pre-packaged on the shelf, romance is spontaneous and to my mind there is more romance in the little everyday things you do for each other than you can find in chocolate that widens the hips. We are tied to this convention because the shops say we should so they can sell mega loads of extra trash a few short weeks after the biggest do of the year. I am considerably more grateful to my husband for coming to pick me up from work, day in, day out, even when it is a struggle to get there and he has better things to do – now that is far more meaningful to me. In any case I find it irksome to be tied to this one day of the year for expressing a romantic thought; I might feel more romantic on, say the 16th or the 25th of February, or even the 14th of June. Mind you I’m not much of a romantic and I feel so inadequate when I wake up on Valentine’s Day and remember the date and realise that not only have I not bought a gift of similar value, I haven’t bought one at all, or even a card! I hate spending the day feeling guilty.

I want my ‘romance’ to be a surprise, a gesture out of the blue, and something that comes from the heart – not the pages of a magazine in an article on ‘How to romance your partner’.

I really don’t like my life being organised for me – certainly not by retailers anxious to increase their profit margin. I like life to be serendipitous.

Irksome Rule No.2 – Housework.

Don’t get me started on that one. It’s another area of my life that I apply the Serendipity Principle to (great film, Serendipity, by the way but then John Cusack is lovely!). I enjoy my housework because I don’t make it a chore and I do it when the mood takes me to do it, or when I have completely run out of clean socks and clean cups. So why do I feel so inadequate when I hear people talking about how they HAVE to get up at 6am to get the hovering done. They don’t want to; it’s a chore and a bore. I enjoy a good tidy up and then I can see when something has been done. I cleaned for an elderly lady one time who wanted me to dust the walls every week. – I never went back, I was afraid of losing my mind…and my will to live!

My only house rule is that the bed is made every day. If you make the bed you really don’t need to do anything else!

A local sussex trug-maker is struggling to keep afloat, trugs are not the height of fashion at the moment it seems - they are a pricey item though which might explain a lot. I have a small one that I keep in the utility room which I throw my gloves into at the end of a stint outdoors.

Contents of gardening trug the other day:
2 pairs crunchy, soil-ingrained gardening gloves
A pink pouch of pink garden twine (supporting breast cancer charity)
A selection of seed packets, some open and spilling seed
Length of wire
1 fish finger

“Ah, I was looking for that” - I swear he is going doolally since he retired. I guess though that it is easy enough to lose track of your fish fingers, you think you have them all in the box but they are itching to get out and in amongst the gardening paraphernalia.

It was in this same weekend that I observed a swan attempting to break into a car’s petrol tank. Some fool had parked it right by this delinquent, over-sized duck’s pond - but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to wrench off a petrol cap with just a beak so the car-owner was in luck. Not so lucky were the passing motorists subjected a large amount of crevice on show from the road planer, almost visible puckering (not to mention extremely unattractive under-garment).

Another snatch of the mildly odd. Seated on a settee in a small bungalow I am conducting a conversation with a guy in the adjoining porch-ette while also carrying on a desultory conversation with his wife in the room off the other side of the hall-ette. He is sculpting a head for a Medusa, life size and very fine, though he isn’t doing the snakes, another chap will do that. She is collecting together bits of pattern and fabric and pins to arrange for constructing my to-be-ready-for-Easter waistcoat (for Morrising in). It is a tranquil moment of surrealism after the mundane and commonplace arena of work.

Although work does have its moments. We have a new manager. After many years of being led by a formidable lady we now have……….a bloke. And he is a man not a poor excuse for one. Athletic build, gregarious, and doesn’t know how shopping works – he is a breath of fresh masculine air. I have to laugh - every day - when a constant succession of women seem to find themselves drawn to his office, to say hello, pass the time of day, or simply ask….whatever. These women who went out of their way to avoid going near the office in the days of his predecessor are suddenly drawn in there like moths to a flame. My roomie and I listen to the tinkling bells of feminine flirtation and snigger; we are biding our time – besides I prefer to have the opposite sex flocking to MY door rather than the reverse. I suppose that could be why my office is ….quiet.

In the week that sees the wee island of Eigg with it’s small but not insignificant population at last able to experience the joy of a reliable electricity supply – something that on the mainland we take very much for granted – there is also the story of the Cannabis Ships.

Not a million miles from the small island of Eigg, is another even more remote and far less well-known island, which cannot be named for security purposes and it is here that the Cannabis Ships skulk. A brand new wind farm on the island generates an incredible amount of power which is then supplied to the National Grid but not maybe not all of it….

A small family have been diverting some of the electricity to power three hulking, skulking ships, moored close to the secluded inlet on the north side of the island. Seen from the outside the ships appear desolate and enshrouded, a pungent smell emanating from them. These are the Cannabis Ships. Deck upon deck of marijuana plants….

Not really of course, this was just a conversation I was having with a guy who has way too much imagination! But is quite an idea and I was thinking of maybe a film of the tale on the lines of Whiskey Galore. A vast ship load of Cannabis lands on a remote island, etc. etc. There’s definitely a part in it for Robbie Coltrane I think and I think Ewan MacGregor would make a very convincing hero….

You just need a little imagination!