Have you been out today?

Blimey. It appears that Mark Stafford, the most criminally under-employed cartoonist in the UK, has a new piece of papery product to buy. Botulism Banquet is a "32 page anthology of some of Mark Stafford's finest work to date. Printed in 2 different versions".

Buy it now so that when inevitable fame and fortune descend upon him you can say you preferred the earlier funny material.

My dears I have been neglecting you. I am so sorry. There again, if it makes any serious difference to your quality of life if I fail to post for a while then, frankly, you should really get out more.

Anyway, what I've been meaning to tell you about for some time and have singularly failed so to do is: I have an allotment. It was a Christmas gift from the missus, or at least the promise of one was (there are a few different sites around Cambridge and she wanted me to make the choice myself). This being the case, and the ways of Cambridge allotments being a tad arcane, it was April before I'd sorted one out. I'd particularly wanted one on the same site as friend and neighbour Ed on account of how he knows what he's doing and I patently don't. As it's turned out I've ended up being his allotment neighbour as well as his neighbour neighbour. Poor boy probably thinks I'm stalking him.

Can't say I've made much progress with my plot yet, although if dandelions were a viable cash crop (rather than a deep rooted pain in the arse) then I'd be sorted. But it did come complete with a small and appropriately rickety shed (a man should have a shed) and a resident frog (Ernest). Frogs are, apparently, the allotment holder's friend because frogs eat slugs and slugs are the allotment holder's enemy. At present Ernest lives in a big old sink that's half covered by foliage but I may move his home to a sunnier spot and bury the sink in the ground to form a small pond. Apparently ponds are A Good Thing as they encourage, um, good critters who in turn eat bad critters. Nature is a wonderful thing.

The sum total of my actual work there so far, though, is not that impressive: there has been digging which has been hard, slow work due to the need to weed as I go (mainly it's a dandelion thing but also various grasses, thistles and, oh, a whole bunch of stuff that I have no clue as to what it is - cannabis, giant beanstalks and money trees for all I know) and there has been pouring chemicals onto weeds (much to the disgust of my mate Alex, among others, who is rather more militantly organic than I have a mind to be). Unfortunately, the agent orange I used hasn't even worked as well as I'd hoped - it seems to have killed some patches of stuff off pretty well and left others pretty much unscathed. This is probably due to inept application of the stuff on my part or prevailing meteorolgical conditions subsequently (i.e. it rained the night after I put the stuff on). Or some combination of the two. Most likely, seeing as there's no way I'm going to have any more than half the plot in any kind of worthwhile state any time soon, I shall just cover the worst of the weeds over with black plastic for a long spell and kill them with darkness (as opposed to trying to kill them with The Darkness which would work less well and sound awful).

So, all in all it's slow progress but it's enjoyable and it does get me out of the flat and give me fresh air and physical exercise which is no bad thing. In fact I tend to come over all a bit Fotherington-Tomas ("hullo clouds hullo sky") on occasion, though this nature-loving reverie may easily be dashed just as soon as I've attained third degree sunburn and a double hernia. In the meantime though, it is good.

Soon, I may even attempt to grow something there.

A Dog Called Grk, the book that was my first (and, as yet, only) cover job for Andersen Press, came out last week. Please feel free to track it down at all good bookshops now and buy a copy for an 8 year-old of your acquaintance. Or, failing that, move it so it's face out on the shelf.