Every Cloud

I know, I thought, I'll squeeze a trip to the garden centre in now. I don't know why I don't normally go at this time. I can just pop in quickly with the little one and buy my bits. Perfect!

Fast forward half-an-hour and the reason why I don't hit any shops at four o'clock in the afternoon, much less my favourite ones, becomes all too apparent as I slam my goods on the counter and sprint after the disappearing back of my running two-year-old.

This was the fourth, or was it fifth, time I'd had to stop what I was doing to rescue my errant toddler. From the floor. From upending a watering can to make a puddle. From pulling the flower off a clematis. From running down a ramp again and again. From underneath a flower display.

As he writhed and screamed in my arms an old lady, the place was full of them, told me my son, who I was feeling a bit cheesed off with, was tired. She could tell. It was his eyes. Actually, he wasn't, he was just bored.

Shush, shush, shush, whispered another old dear as she walked past us. Oh thanks, that's sure to help. Why didn't I think of that, I managed not to say. Out loud anyway.

Still every cloud and all that. My silver linings included getting a lovely young man to carry my box to the car and buying two bags of pixi lilies, one bag of shallots , a Canna Cleopatra bulb and a bag of dahlia bulbs all for ten pence each! I'm hoping they'll keep for next year's gardening club. If I haven't pulled my hair out, lost my marbles, or lost the bulbs by then.