Saturday 29th September

We are back in Wales, after nearly four months and the Day of the Triffids has come and long since gone. The ferns have taken over and are now towering menacingly six feet high and bashing their fronds against the windows of the house.  So I went out and hacked them back for about four hours. Intermingled with the ferns and far more deadly were hordes of silent stinging nettles, which despite a thick pair of leather gloves managed to sting me repeatedly.  But though exhausted, I feel strangely elated.  I work all day indoors hunched over a little screen thinking about numbers, which at the end of the day, and even before breakfast mean absolutely diddly-squat in the great scheme of life.  so, to be out in the open air, doing physical labour is quite refreshing.

And though the day started dull with squally rain, the sun came out and it was a glorious if slightly chilly late September day.  I really do have to ask myself just why I am wasting my life away working on wretched numbers. But numbers, of course, make the world go round.  And unlike the dogs, asleep on the sofa, safe in the knowledge that food will appear twice a day for them come rain or shine, we cannot seem to exist without our numbers.

Tomorrow I go beyond the fence to face again the eternal enemy in a vain attempt to drive them back even further.  And next September they will have returned stronger than ever I am sure.