Cut! Chop! Slash! Burn later....

No Gymnastics today as it's half-term so Queen Jaffe Joffe had set us a task. She was quite prepared for it to last 2 days, if that's what it was going to take. First we harvested all the red tomatoes. Then we harvested all the orange and yellow ones that had a decent chance of ripening on a windowsill.

Then we chopped, slashed, stabbed and ripped our way through the tomato plants and took down the frame. I have a pair of long-handled choppers and some secateurs and I wielded them ruthlessly. This left us with an empty flowerbed which Bud shortened so that the path would get wider.

You know the way everyone gathers in the kitchen at parties? Well, in Puddleparties, everyone gathers in front of the tomato bed where the path is at its narrowest, and a fatal bottleneck develops. No longer. Plus now we've got a freshly dug bed for fireworks. While he was doing that, I sorted all the tomatoes and got rid of the stalks and swept up the debris. Colin the Compost Heap is now very full but the unique ecosystem that is Colin will digest it all as usual.

Jof desires a new TV stand and going-to-work cupboard to put all the junk on so we went to North End where there are many charity shops (bath fizzer rumpus) and we're now the proud owners of some new (old) furniture. Then I cried out in anguish and sank to my knees on the pavement - not in some kind of religious fervour but in terminal hunger. A cafe beckoned and I had fish'n'chips and Jof's hunk of black pudding she failed to eat quickly enough. She started stealing my chips like JoniBobsDad: I countered this by ketchupping them liberally which protected them from her evil grasp. It's good to be clever.

Later we decided that as there weren't going to be any more tomatoes, we might as well cook them all up in the cauldron to make the annual passata. I sorted them into green ones and usable ones and off we went. Due to strenuous and well-underlined orders from Jof we put only herbs in, no beans, no spinach, no sweetcorn etc etc. Then we did some Saturday night hoovering, as you do, to make the room ready for the new (old) furniture. Thank goodness we got some bath fizzers today.....
Bath fizzer night music by request: Cosi fan tutte and Mozart's flute quartets.