Diary – 7 June 2018

I know some people are fretting about Brexit, and others about the drive-by violence the President is doing to the US constitution, but what preoccupies me and the nation’s allotment-holders at the moment is news that the RHS is warning of a ‘bumper year for slugs’. The slimy little bastards not only ate every single lettuce seedling I planted last year, but they have taken to invading my kitchen in the night and dying extravagantly, and in a way that makes a stain, on hard-to-clean surfaces. The RHS is currently conducting trials on five different alleged slug repellents — copper tape, horticultural grit, pine bark, wool pellets and broken eggshells — to see if any of them actually works. You’d think someone would have done this already, slugs not being a new thing. The results will probably come too late for me: I’m going to crack and scatter chemical-blue slug pellets all over my allotment and around my fridge by the end of the week.