Ohh good, Jos Biggs is back this week.

This is what you should have had last week!

Many thanks to those of you who worried that I might have been abducted by aliens - no, it was just a router glitch!

I’ve experienced red dust before, but never like last week’s dust!

I’ve had both my front and back porch meshed in, and am truly glad that I spent the money and got it done - they are wonderful, and do everything porches should do. 

However, although they are proof against the vicious winds to which Limaria is often subjected this dust is so fine that to some extent it permeates the mesh.

In fact there was so much dust inside the back porch that it formed a pretty ridge effect, similar to the dunes of its native Morocco.

And then it rained! And rained. And rained a bit more, followed by more rain, which in turn was followed by all sorts of rain from drizzle to downpours.

I was in two minds whether to plant seeds in my porches and water lilies on my pool cover or whether to approach the Herculean task of cleaning the whole lot up.

Two things decided me against these courses of action: It was raining, and I didn’t fancy going to the Garden Centre to buy seeds and water lilies; I no longer have the British approach to rain - I no longer say ‘it’s just a little rain, and rain never hurt anybody!’ No, rain is wet and unpleasant!

The other thing was the absence of Hercules. I would have to clean my garden walls, my house walls, my garden stone furniture and tables, my rejas and windowsills, not forgetting the washing line as well as the inside of my porches, and as Hercules was reputedly very good at cleaning stables I felt he would probably look upon a little dust as a job to be completed before lunch.

However, I’ve always maintained that there is an upside if you look for it. Sometimes you have to look very long and hard, but in this case I found it quite easily - I can’t clean anything until it stops raining!

So from the outside my house looks as if it is an ancient mud dwelling from the dawn of civilisation and my porches are obviously agricultural plots ready for the planting of grain, probably rice.

If it ever stops raining and starts to dry up I will have to get stuck in with mop, bucket, brush and determination.

Deep sigh. Maybe the rain isn’t so bad after all!

I wonder - does anyone have Hercules’s email address? I’m sure he’d help if I asked him nicely!