It’s been a fruitful two days dans le jardin de la maison Strachan. Not only have I mowed both lawns, undertaken border work, jet blasted a patio and commenced staining the fencing, I also acquired the French translation of ‘in the garden at the Strachan home’.

Each task was undertaken with Verve and Gusto. Well, apart from learning the smidgen of French, which I did after Verve and Gusto had gone home.

I find jet blasting a patio and treating wooden fencing tasks at polar ends of the fulfilment spectrum.

Removing the ingrained detritus resultant from the seemingly endless winter rainfall, exposing a ‘good as new’ paving slab is surprisingly therapeutic.

Additionally, I’ve found the enjoyment levels go up a notch if you incorporate a good soaking of a family member during this work. A word of warning, though, never soak Verve and Gusto as they are right miserable so and so’s, who won’t find the funny side.

Luckily my wee spouse does find it funny and when I drenched her yesterday she signaled her approval by laughing heartily. If truth be told, though, this was only an initial response from Karen. I’m not sure she was as happy when she later said “Do that again and I’ll bloody kill you!”

One good thing did come out of the drowning of my Mrs, in that I won’t have to fork out on the expensive ear rings I was going to buy her for her birthday. There is now no need as she is sporting a very fetching pair that were formerly my testicles……. Actually, on reflection, it probably isn’t a good thing at all…… Strike that thought!

Staining wooden fences with a preservative is a pretty laborious task. It’s not like decorating the house whereby the paint flows smoothly onto its target surface. Getting the product to cover fully on a the rough surface of a fence panel is a far more time consuming challenge.

Additionally when I decorate a room in my home, or should I say maison Strachan, I have the advantage of not having to apply the paint with a sodding big forsythia bush in front of the target surface.

I know you can acquire spray guns to speed up the fence staining application process. However that can be costly as, not only have you got to buy the equipment, this option utilises significantly more preservative than the slower and laborious manual brush approach.

Personally, I don’t want the expense of using a tin of Ronseal wood stainer per fence panel. There is also significant overspray wastage resultant from using the spray gun method to take into account.

I’m not sure my neighbour Mike would be too chuffed if his cats Marmite and Marmalade returned home covered in Ronseal wood stainer.

After all he differentiates and named the two felines by their coat colouring, so if the were both Ronseal ‘Autumn Harvest’ stain colour it may cause him moggy identification issues.

He might end up in the ridiculous situation of having two identically marked cats, unaware who he is feeding, or taking for a walk (it’s a long story!).

The advertising slogan for Ronseal wood stainer is ‘It does exactly what it says on the tin’. I’ve scoured the small print on the tin and not found any reference to potential cat identity changes due to overspray of the product. In this litigious society it maybe prudent for the company to add that warning. I may get in touch with Mr Seal, or old Ronnie to his friends, to run that past him.

Right, I best crack on as I’ve got more fence panels and cats to stain!