For the past week Ali and I have had rotten colds. We've done no pruning, no gardening and very little that involves standing up. On the other hand, when the eyes have stopped streaming, if only for half an hour, we've ploughed our way through endless books. Even when preparing supper, Ali finds it impossible to stop. That's not a cookbook you see her with, it's The Indian Clerk , which she obviously can't put down.

I, on the other hand, have been reading some tripe so bad that it made me think perhaps we should start a 'plant a tree for every crap book you've read scheme'. I'm sure we'd have a forest in no time, and each tree could be labelled with the name of an atrocious book that never should have been published. That way we'd soon know what to avoid and the trees wasted printing the trash could be offset with freshly planted ones. Whaddya think?