I had hoped to have photographic evidence of my recent produce-focussed industry but the chances of mastering the technology to transfer it from one device to another are slim to non-existent.  Just take my word for it that after labours which would make Hercules quail,  my entire home is stacked with bottled produce, from onion and chilli relish through to blackberry liqueur (Of the latter only limited stock still remaining).  Which is probably a Good Thing as according to an article I read yesterday, pictures of your fecund  garden  are up there in the top ten most irritating images on social media,  just behind snaps of your perfect family on a sun kissed Ibizan holiday. Not arguing.

What one always forgets in the headlong springtime dash to get a thousand seedlings into the earth is that the little buggers will, slugs permitting, mature and bear fruit, or vegetables, all of which will eventually require attention.  It’s the modern day equivalent to expecting people who had picked cotton all day getting home and having to start spinning, or looming or whatever process is involved.

All this time spent stirring boiling pans has left me thinking, always a dangerous occupation and it occurs to me that the reason people with money always look so relentlessly miserable is the expectation, not wholely unreasonable, that being rich will take the work, and more importantly, the aggravation out of life.  Sadly it doesn’t.  Planes still don’t leave on time, it continues to rain on your birthday and the shoes you must have or die have been discontinued.  Especially in your size.  Forever.  There is, and always will be, a twelve week wait before the sofa of your dreams can be delivered because that’s how long it takes to make it.  Just for a moment try to imagine how very cross-making that is when you thought, having made your first couple of million, that you were leaving all this frustration behind.

There is, however, a tiny chink of light at the end of the Tunnel of Despair, and this once it’s not an express train bearing down on you.  I have been given membership of a concierge service – possibly a concept with which you’re unfamiliar.  The idea is you pay them an annual, eye-watering fee, mysteriously waived in my case, and in return when something, anything,  wants sorting, they do it.  Top idea or what?  It’s almost a scandal that it isn’t available to everyone but as it is one of the very few upsides of being rich, let’s be big enough not to mind.

A victim of deep Protestant guilt, way sterner than the flimsy Catholic sort which doesn’t BEGIN to compare and can be overcome by a few Hail Mary’s, I had never actually used it until yesterday.  I was due to meet my daughter-in-law designate for lunch at a trendy eaterie which doesn’t take reservations (Why? Why?) and the thought of the poor girl having to queue after a hard week at work was just too heart rending … even my lofty principles buckled. We might even have ended up  too exhausted for shopping afterwards.   One swift phone call and we’ve got the magic password that bumps us to the front of the line and thence to the nicest table in the house.  Search hard enough, or let the concierge do it for you, and there’s always an upside.

Readers, life isn’t all bad.