She's not Denise, she's a Very Naughty Girl

At the allotment this morning, I was, according to Andy, a very naughty girl.

Not because I spent three hours clearing the weedy patch which used to be the old compost heap before String Girl put her compost bins in the wrong place thereby forcing us to move our compost bins so our onions (or whatever) didn't become swamped in String Girl's nettles and other assorted weeds. And not because I shouted encouragement to Andy every now and then because he was in charge of potato planting and it was a very big job requiring much huffing and puffing and the occasional lie down on the ground.

No, my naughtiness surrounded the planting of the tayberry bush donated by Auntie Pollie.

Now, in my defence, everything would have been fine and no naughtiness would have ensued had not the old geezer from the allotment opposite arrived about half an hour before we left. You know, the old geezer who INSISTED our blackberry was a tayberry, and I INSISTED it wasn't, and he INSISTED it was and wouldn't BACK DOWN?

So, anyway, there I was heeling in the tayberry. It's a big tayberry. It smacked me around the face a couple of times like a frantic octopus, but I wrestled it into the ground without too much of a to do. And then the Old Geezer appeared.

'What's that, then?' he said, pointing his cigarette in the direction of the tayberry. I resisted the urge to go into one of my violent hacking fits as I am wont to do when in the vicinity of a cigarette (it's my way of showing displeasure at this awful habit. It's not very subtle, but I'm a granny now and grannies know no subtlety.)

'I don't know,' I said, with the air of an innocent, or possibly an imbecile. 'It was given to us by someone who's just moved into a new house and didn't want it in their garden any more.'

Andy, who was lurking near the polytunnel, let out a bit of a choke.

'Still,' I continued, maintaining a cheerful ambivalence to the whopping fib I just told. 'I'm popping it in the ground to see what happens.' And I carried on my heeling in.

The old geezer looked at the tayberry bush, and examined the leaves. Ha! I thought. Can't resist it, can you? Can't resist the urge to fling your aged wisdom around our patch, just to assert your superior knowledge over the young whippersnappers who turn up and do a bit of digging once in a blue moon.

'Looks like something from the raspberry family,' he said.

'Ummm,' said I, nonchalantly. 'That's what I thought, but hey ho, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?'
'Probably one of them ornamental flowering varieties,' said Old Geezer, and he wandered off to plague some one else, trailing his superior knowledge behind him.

'You are VERY bad,' said Andy, as we loaded the car to go home.
'What???' I said.
'You know,' said Andy.
'All I know,' I said, 'is that at some point the Old Geezer is going to say, 'That's a tayberry bush you've got there,' and I shall get to say, 'Oh, but it can't POSSIBLY be a tayberry. THAT'S a tayberry - and I shall point to the blackberry - because you told us it was last year.'

'But they look totally different,' said Andy.
'I KNOW!!' I said, triumphantly. 'HA!'

'Like I said,' said Andy. 'You are a VERY naughty girl.'

And that is why, because I am very observant of the laws of karma, I NEVER buy a lottery ticket.