This week, tubs. No, no, no, no. Not Tubbs with a capital t and two bs, he of the extremely wide-shouldered, pastel suits who used to hang around with Don Johnson, he who was also a fan of the extremely wide-shouldered, pastel suits.
Neither, of course, are to be confused with Alexis Colby and Krystle Carrington, who also wore extremely wide-shouldered suits. Alexis and Krystle were, like Crockett and Tubbs, stars of 1980s TV programmes. However, that is where the resemblance ends. Unlike Crockett and Tubbs, their suits came with skirts not trousers, usually navy blue encrusted with rhinestones/sequins (Alexis) and silver encrusted with sequins/rhinestones (Krystle), if my memory serves me right. Not a pastel shade in sight.
I hope that, for anyone born in the 1960s or 1970s, this little trip down memory lane doesn’t cause you nightmares about your 1980s youth, such as that bad per or wearing stone-washed jeans.
Aaaaah, stone-washed jeans. There’s a look that just can’t ever be allowed to make a comeback.
No, it’s tubs with a lower case t that I’m talking about. The kind that you put outside yer hoose stuffed with gorgeous flowers, or herbs, or even potato plants. Mine usually have a mix of all of these.
The flowery ones are out front to impress visitors, and (it transpires) to act as a ‘dog toilet’. Late at night, our mutts pop out to pay a last call of nature and, too lazy to trot any further, cock their legs up my tubs. Groan.
A couple of months after I first lovingly planted them and placed them proudly out front, the flowers began to suffer from major die-back. Then they just died, full stop. As a result, all my tubs now sit on drab breeze blocks. Very attractive, and the reason why I grow lots of nasturtiums to trail down over them from my lovely tubs.
Anyhoo, the reason for mentioning my tubs was this. In the last week or so, I planted some seeds in the greenhouse, as I do every year, in order to grow the lovely nasturtiums, marigold, cosmos, lobelia, alyssum which I then plant out in my tubs.
Last Friday, my friend Yvette and I were admiring their lush, new green growth as the seedlings poked their wee heads up through the (homemade) compost. The next morning I went to water them and their lovely, lush wee heads were gone. Mice!
Time to employ the secret weapon – Jock the Patterdale, more teeth than a lumberjack’s saw. Or maybe I should just print out some pictures of Crockett and Tubbs in all their pastel, triangular-shouldered, dentally-corrected finery and stick them on the staging. An equally potent weapon, methinks.