Off The Richter Scale

19th August 2010 Victoria Plums. Just part of the crop from our tree on the allotment.....and the gift of Dutch blueberries 

brought by my brother from the pick-your-own farm near where he lives in South Holland.

August 19th 2014 - the  crop of Victoria Plums we picked today at the allotment from the same tree. My husband counted them - (he counts everything these days - blackberries, biscuits, train carriages)  -  twelve in total - enough to fill a small black plastic flower pot.

My brother is coming over from Holland to visit us tomorrow. It'll be the last time for a while as he is going to live in Fiji. Instead of blueberries he's bringing us a beautiful yellow David Austin rose which doesn't thrive in the type of  soil they have at the ashram.

I'm finding it hard to type tonight as I have a swollen infected middle finger - from a splinter or a cut I must have got from the tangle of thorny rose and blackberry branches I was tussling into an old compost bag this morning after yesterday's mammoth pruning session in the garden. 

My husband fills the back of the car up to the gunnels with bags and bags of cuttings and takes them to the compost recycling centre.  Then by the time we come back from the allotment with the twelve plums and a courgette, three tomatoes and six lettuces, it's beyond lunch time and I'm shaky hungry.

I want to eat at home and then go to Otterton Mill later for tea and a walk but we'd already discussed having lunch there and as it's my husband's preference - I think he already made a mental picture of it which is hard to change - I grumpily agree. And bargain with the walk - I'll have a late lunch if you agree to a walk by the river afterwards.

We stand at the counter and order our food. There is a glass case full of cakes and biscuits next to the till. My husband says I want one and buys a chocolate chip cookie. He wants to eat it now. I say Have it with a cup of coffee after the meal. But that's an almost unbearable idea for him now - delayed gratification.

We sit at a table outside. He goes to the loo. When he sits back down the table wobbles, the water slops out of the glasses. He mops it up with a napkin. I go back inside to get more water. When I come back he's eaten half the chocolate chip cookie.

After his Brie and Bacon Melt on a Cheese Scone with Apple Chutney he goes to buy a coffee. I change my mind and decide to have an apricot flapjack. He says he wants another cake. I say You've got the biscuit - you can't have another one. But he wants it so much. I say You can have some of my flapjack.

But he doesn't really like it. And I don't know what I'm doing.... insisting on my eating etiquette.....making us both miserable... my fear of getting fat  - me and him - off the richter scale of reason now - all muddled up with trying to keep the march of madness at bay....his and mine.