I decided to put the gardening on hold until World Naked Gardening Day is over. Instead, I’ve just cleared out the kitchen cupboards instead ..... fully clothed.
Years ago I was sent to sort out a problem with a brand new washing machine owned by a Chinese family, and when I arrived I discovered that the only person in the house that knew even a couple of words of English was a little girl of about four or five, who was about three foot and a fag paper tall, if that...
Eventually I got the gist of the problem, which was that the transit bolts hadn't been taken out, so when the machine went into spin it jumped all over the kitchen. I took the bolts out, and tested the machine was OK.
At that point, one of the adults kept trying to sign to me to put the transit bolts back in, while I was trying to sign to him to throw the f***ing things away...
It turned out that the bolts had been shaking themselves loose, and the silly buggas had been putting them back in every time. Whenever the machine got to the spin cycle, the whole family would gather round and hold the machine down...
Whenever I get depressed, I think of that family dancing round the kitchen, trying to control the crazily jumping machine, which must have been like trying to control a rampaging bull, while they were all shouting and jabbering away in Chinese...
It's hard to stay grumpy with that image in my head, even all these years later...