I am thrilled at the prospect of having the opportunity to potentially put my green fingers to good use.  Having an outside garden is different to having one indoors, you know.  It’s like the difference between an inside lavatory and a brick shit-house, I suppose.  If you are really lucky, you have both, but for as long as I can remember (I suffer from the most terrible anemia and forget lots), I have only had pot plants on the window sill, all of which turn up their toes and push up daisies, so to speak, after next to no time.

I was at the doctor’s the other day and he said that I ought to take brisk walks in the countryside, mainly because I am over-weight because I forget that I have already eaten.  My auntie, who looks after me, says that I can’t be trusted to walk briskly in town, let alone the country and so she suggested that we get a Kleingarten and while she does the weeding, I can walk backwards and forwards, as long as I keep away from the potatoes she plans to plant.  We looked at a Kleingarten the other day and Auntie joked that we were running the risk of becoming Spießbürgerlich, but I think that it would mean that we were moving up in the world.  Middle class, here we come, I say!

We met the current owners, and they want to get rid of the garden, because it is too much work for them.  They looked very sad.  Still, I thought, that is their bad luck.  You can only move up in the world by stepping on toes and climbing on shoulders and jumping on heads after all.