Kentucky fried lap-tops and other springy thingies

You may of course wonder what a hot lap-top has to do with a pic of a pot of winter-flowering pansies.

Well it's all to do with the spring thing, which is happening intermittently outside my window even as I write.

One minute it's bright sunshine, the next it's belting it down with persistent glee and bloomin' freezing.

The lap-top in question belongs to dear old Mick, AKA the crownéd King of Fa and it really was hot, not nick-tastically but thermally.

Being a bit full of the joys of the aforementioned and lightly alleged spring, Mick decided to nip off for a couple of nights burgeoning with romantic intent.

Being somewhat anxious as to the security of Casa Mick during his absence, our hero concluded that the last place burglars would look for a computer was in the oven. Unfortunately it was also the last place that he looked for it after switching on the oven to make dinner when he got back from his hols.

The plastic case was just curling up and turning nice and crispy as Mick tore open the oven to rescue his lap-top. Amazingly it still works, which says a lot for the power of modern electronics . . .

Elsewhere Fa continues in its own particular rich and idiosyncratic dialect, as best beknown only unto itself. Well, obviouslyment, as Dave the Underdog (formerly known as barman) put it this week in a flourish of newly-coined and particularly fragrant or possibly flagrant franglais.

Me, I'm sticking with the winter-flowering pansies. I've become most intrigued by these simple et pas du tout prétentieuses fleurs, which have been cheering up the view outside my front door for the last six months.

I couldn't help thinking that winter-flowering was just a touch of an exaggeration after watching one tiny bud take about a month actually to flower.

Rather more interesting is the way these plants had of faking death during each of the three snow, storm and tempest cold-snaps that we had last winter.

As soon as it freezes, they turn into a slimy heap of wet spinach apparently not long for this world. The first time this happened, the only reason that the pansies escaped bung-ment dans la poubelle was because I was too lazy to bung them.

Then I was amazed to find that with every thaw they magically stand up straight again and carry on pansying. And now when I thought they would be completely past it, they've suddenly burst into a blaze of flowers. Absolutely brill, except that I've no idea where to put them when eviction becomes necessary for my customary summer cultivation of basil.

Serious moral dilemma Batman . . . because you can't beat basil straight off the plant and into the pasta.