This photo (or another, better one, broadly like it) has been waiting to happen for some months, probably even years…..the colander has featured before, almost exactly two years ago, after we got home from the trip to the USA. There is another matching one of these in a kitchen in San Francisco, belonging to Jeanne. We bought them on our stretch limo day out in the Napa valley. That day was such a perfect day out, it’s hard to imagine that it would be possible to better it really. So, the colander reminds me of a happy day, with warm weather, great company and great food and wine.

I’ve been planning to get the colander out, dust it down and fill it with grapes to photograph it for some time, but the crux of the matter is I’ve not had either grapes or inclination so it’s been waiting for ages. When I popped out to the shops the other week, I spotted the grapes, thought they looked ‘nice’ so decided to buy some and do the deed now.

Of course since then, they’ve languished in the fridge, getting ever less photogenic and today, with an air of bad grace summoned up by another shitty, cold rainy day so no chance of any progress in the garden, I decided it was now or never – either try for the shot or forget it on the basis that soon the grapes will be as wrinkly as I am.

The shots I got were pretty nice, but as I’ve said before, I’m sick of my best shots getting knicked from here so they’re saved up for a place where people will be prepared to pay for them and you get the lensbaby mad shot.

Actually, along with my lensbaby garlic, I really like the effect. In this case because the grapes look more than a little malevolent, almost climbing out of the colander and that suits the general air of today. The wonky angle and the grape shaped holes on the right in the distorted part of the lensbaby’s view just sum up the stir-craziness that infests my soul when there are jobs to do in the garden and the weather is too nasty to get out there.

It’s probably a combination of the weather, the fact that the fireplace still doesn’t work, we work in a completely unheated office and my weight loss means I don’t have as much padding against the cold but I can’t get warm at the moment. I feel as though my core temperature has dropped to a dangerously low level and that I’m radiating cold from the inside out.

If you're in the UK, thinking of moving and thinking of using Pickfords to move you, take a peek at my diary last year - they're the lowest of the low in terms of business practices - I would NEVER use them again and they still have not owned up to or given me redress for their incompetence or their negligence.