Sex vs Gardening

I know. It's a attention grabbing headline, but it's also an interesting thought. I read today in one of the more scurilous papers that one in four women prefer gardening to sex. This led me in turn to wonder which I preferred. I came to the conclusion that it very much depends on what kind of sex and gardening you are talking about. If we are comparing, say, the pedestrian fumblings of a late night get it over with and get to sleep kind of shag (if you don't know what I'm talking about here, you probably don't have kids) to the ectastic moment when you discover that your rare tomato seed has actually germinated, then I'm sorry but I'm with the one in four. I have to admit that if however, we are comparing bodice ripping, bed breaking, earth shattering abandoment to weeding in light drizzle - well, what are those women on? ;-)

That said, I have had much of either recently so I'm not sure I'm one to judge. To say that the last twenty four hours haven't gone quite as planned would be akin to saying that Chamberlain's strategy for world peace went a bit Pete Tong. My original long term plan had been to take today off to go to the County Show. This is a minor, if important part of my Overall Plan. I really like County Shows...and fetes, fayres, jumble sales, horticultural shows, the lot. Now I'm not with the PDX, I can do what I damn well like. And what I like is all the above.

However, I went to help someone out the night before - not entirely altruistically, I admit. There was no gardening in the offing, but there was the strong possibility of my other favourite hobby. It all seemed like a great idea at the time, except that I got a flat tyre on the motorway and then discovered that my spare was also knackered. It all went rather downhill from there, involving a terrible night's sleep on the sofa, cocking up a mooring (well, it's been a while since I've boated on rivers) and culminating with a minor in the brink (they were ok, but the only thing that's worse than going in yourself is watching someone else go in, especially a kid).

I had one of those moments when I thought that if I wished hard enough perhaps I could will teleportation into existence and beam myself back to my lovely canal cottage with my lovely roses and serene cottage bedroom, complete with extremely comfortable mattress. I can now confirm that this approach doesn't work. I still found myself in the middle of nowwhere, about 20 miles from my disabled car with a bunch of unhappy people - oh and children to pick up in a few hours.

So, the County Show didn't happen for me. The good thing about such events, however, is that they have a great habit of reoccuring annually. Something that I rather enjoy about my life at the moment is the sense that if it all goes tits up this year, hey ho, there's always the next.
Which does, finally, bring me back to gardening. That's a large part of my raison d'etre for blogging really - if I cock things up this year, I can rectify them the next, be it beans or not getting to the County Show