WORK AND PLAY

Ugh how I loathe gardening. For me, the nadir knackering bottom-line treadmill of futility.

I've whinged along those lines before but it can't be emphasised too often.

Was set weeding but had to take many breaks lest I lose all control of my threadbare temper.

I trust these fotos show the bitterness in my heart and the utter despair in my soul.

It should be enough for a bloke to be reduced to fleeing a country a mere one month's rent from penury, not a single creditor repaid by even one cent. Daughters left behind sans child support, sans school fees. Sneaking down to Seatac like a thief in the night ... arriving in London with $20 that I changed at the airport and never saw another sou for the next month except for what I begged off old pals of yore.

It *should* be enough, but me voici reduced to even the even direr straits of wielding a garden implement.

Ominous note struck later that soir as we sat on the patio: Mum made some reference to dispensing with the services of jobbing gardener, Costa.

Double if not quintuple ugh.

Were that day to come, swinging from the nearest friendly cypress could hardly count as sign of an unbalanced mind.

Favour: Anyone who finds me swaying in the breeze, liberated at last from the Hoe and Trowel (sounds like some genial country pub) - please - fasten one of the tools about me and arrange a mortised middle finger into an unambiguous sign of enmity and relief at having escaped to that all-paved celestial haven where not a blade of greenery threatens one's peace of mind.

Measure of a true loser: One who not only fails to achieve a single desired milestone or possession, but also flubs fending off the life he desires least.

Oh, but when I was *finally* rid of the wretched 'gardening' - do you see that true relief and satisfaction over the Punt e Mes? The bliss to have traded secateur for cig?

From where I sit and booze and puff, the view is across Gouvia Bay to Albania.