Mildew has hit my tomato plants, so together with the slugs' decimation of my bean seedlings, I'm prompted to wonder how on earth I'd manage if this meant the difference between eating or not, later in the summer. I guess I'd do what I am doing and that's planting again, but I don't know if it'll be too late to bring on more tomatoes in time. The beans will no doubt be fine and shoot up.

I met some more of my OU students yesterday at a poetry day school in Croydon and have spent two weeks marking assignments. Today must be a day for digging again. I wonder if this sense of another place is part of a writer's toolkit? Although my other place is only the allotment, it reminds me of the opening of a poem by Edward Thomas called Digging - "Today I think only in scents." I often need a break from words or from making sense in words, as opposed to that direct link between body and the world that happens through the senses. The link that children have and that we lose so quickly if we're not careful.

The sun's out and it promises to be dry. And now I'm a taxi service again. Duty calls.

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