A little irony is good for the soul

Went down to the Potting Shed, as the local allotment clubhouse is called, to get advice from the older and wiser than me on planting runner beans. Year 3 of the back garden allotment, and I still haven't mastered the 'do a proper plan on paper so you can stagger the crop' strategy as advised in the book I bought when I started the allotment, and have now mislaid.

This is why I currently have purple sprouting broccoli three months after I should have. No plan: crops arrive at the wrong time. Or fail to materialise at all, like the carrots and leeks. Last month I dug so many trenches, the whole back garden resembled a re-enactment of the Somme with seed potatoes. Chatted with Rose, one of the pensioners who live next to the green space we are all fighting to save from developers. In the course of conversation, she asked how the writing was going - I also pen sarky letters to the local paper; they like reading them.

Shared the decision to publish my new novel online. 'Tell me when it's out and I'll buy a copy for my great-niece,' she said. As Rose is in her 70's and does not have a computer, as Husband of Rose believes they are evil, and won't allow one in their flat, I assumed she had not grasped the concept, so explained slowly and carefully, that it was not a paper book so she wouldn't be able to go into WH Smith and purchase one. Was informed crisply that she quite understood about e-books, thank you very much, and that her niece had a Kindle. Never misunderestimate the elderly, as George Bush didn't quite say.

So although this is not the way one is meant to go about it, I have just sold my first e-book. As in allotments, so in life.