SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

It’s good to have a fireman in the family.

Our son Conon came to lunch today. He's a volunteer fireman. Around here we call them Garys because except for Conon they're all called Gary. He’d just about got away scot-free afterwards when I remembered the cracked pot on the balcony which he’d said he'd deal with.

My husband (popularly known as 'im indoors) fetched a rope, I fetched a fadge and at 'im indoors' instructions, a sharp knife. I suggested a ladder but the fireman declined it.

Upstairs and through daughter Rose’s room we went, onto her balcony, and surveyed the pot, D-ended, about 3ft long or more and a foot deep, and its inhabitant, a very overgrown Agave attenuata. Well of course I’d seen it all before, but Conon surveyed the pot and the agave while his father surveyed 'big' daughter Catriona’s chair, salvaged from Erskine College, which has stood on the balcony since we moved into Clairvaux.

“It’s had it,” he said, in tones of deep gloom. I was worried he’d notice the table.

“Do you want to save the pot or the agave,” he asked, “because you won’t save both. You could just cut the agave out of the pot and plant its pups.” That agave has a two-foot stem and is probably three foot in diameter. I have plans for that agave. And its pups.

You won’t save the pot,” he said.“It won’t be any use. Not with that crack in it.” I also have plans for the pot. It’s going upside down somewhere, with other pots on top of it. A pot stand.

He and Conon manoeuvred the fadge under the pot while I generally got in the way and specifically, stood on 'im indoors' toe. He complained. “You stood on my toe,” he said. Then apologising for complaining he said, “It’s my knee”.

There wasn’t much room on the balcony. Well there is, but it’s occupied by the aforementioned chair and table, two cacti and a bougainvillea. Bougainvilleas have thorns. Everything was down my end. I noticed the bougainvillea needed watering.

Conon cut holes in the fadge with the knife, and threaded the rope through the holes. He told his father how to tie the rope around the railing; his father suggested an alternative method.

The railing is quite high. “The paint’s coming off it already,” his father said.

“We could rest the pot on the pergola then,” said Conon. (There's a pergola over the terrace beneath the balcony. A pergola, not a pagoda, and not - heaven forfend - an 'archgola'.)

“No, it’s not galvanised,” said his father.

Slowly they hoisted the pot onto the railing. The railing wobbled. “It’s not very strong,” said 'im indoors. We all laid hands on the rope. “Take your hand off the rope,” said 'im indoors to me. Such was the suspense, I can’t say whether I obeyed or not. Slowly the rope was paid out and the pot, the agave and the ornamental grass (did I mention the pot also features an ornamental grass which stopped being ornamental a while ago) down through the wisteria and the grape vine, down on to terra firma.

Down we all followed, onto the terrace where the agave, the ornamental grass and the pot rested safely, all intact (except the pot still had its crack).

We wondered about getting the agave and the grass out of the pot. “We’ll leave it for another day,” I said.

I felt quite tired.