May 10

Caroline's Cuttings

Hello and welcome to my little bit of the website, where I hope to be able to keep you up to date with all things AT, and give you an insight into my life as Alan’s PA.

Carolines Cuttings, May 2010.

I see to my shame that the last Cutting was posted way back in January, when we were truly snowed in for a day or two. Cut to today, and I’m looking out on the same garden from my office at the crabapple and apple blossom, the last of the daffodils and an eager army of weeds. The younger daughter has just returned from running a ski company in the French Alps as the snow has gone at last even from the mountains, though it’s been so chilly in Hampshire in the last few days that the vests are back on, comforting against the northerly wind and the frost on the lawn in the mornings.

But everywhere is suddenly going green again, and for those of us who wake up in the small hours and worry about everything from total world war to whether you remembered to turn the dishwasher on, the dawn chorus is a sound to cheer any heart from 4.30am onwards! Alan is as busy as ever (no surprise there then), and filming for various forthcoming television programmes is taking him out to sea, to some very special gardens, and riding some equally special horses.

In the meantime his spring garden is looking spectacular, and he enjoys being able to switch off from all his commitments by doing some mowing of quite a lot of grass … There is always the writing to do, and the interviews to give, the post to look at and consider, and the enormous number of invitations which come from every part of the country from both the great and the good, and the likes of you and me. He is invited to banquets, churches, schools, glittering charity events, to help the disabled and disadvantaged, the Brownie brownie-bake, and to support the sufferers of the most awful diseases and accidents. Alan simply can’t help them all – but he does try!

Alan’s television show will be back on air at the end of September, but hopefully we will have proper summer weather before then! Here, the cats have moved outside again to stalk and pounce in the undergrowth and leave unpleasant bits of suspected mouse guts on the kitchen floor (good advice is to watch where you’re putting your slippers en route to the kettle in the mornings) and they have actually slimmed down a bit (wish I could say the same, but then I don’t do mice).

Hebe the Labrador is happy to plunge into the local canal again, and therefore thinks she deserves the fishermen’s sandwiches on the way home even more. At least even she doesn’t go for those awful wiggling worms in the boxes beside them …

Happy Spring!

Caroline