Today, Mario Draghi softened his tone on austerity – but hardened his stance on fiscal management – in his speech at a place aptly named Jackson Hole – for Jackson stonewalled, and we are indeed all in a very deep hole. For myself, I collected some hazelnuts, picked 55 pears, chucked dozens of rotten windfall apples on the compost heap, brought more limestone up for use as the wall around my raised vegetable bed, cut some grass, and gave my Polish carpenter friend Kristyan a lift home as his wife’s car is on the blink.

Meanwhile, German fridge magnet Geli Merkel flew to Kiev for urgent discussions on the Ukrainian ‘crisis’, her Vice Chancellor having appealed for a ‘federal solution’ to the Ukraine ‘problem’. For myself, I picked some sloes, pricked the surface of the fruit, poured it into a cheap vodka, added some sugar, shook it about a bit, and then placed it in a dark and dry place.

In other news, those nasty Israelis bombed Gaza again, the Telegraph headline being ‘Mother and family of five killed during Israeli attack’. One had to search among the smaller typefaces on the site to discover that Israel had launched the attack after the launch of missiles from densely populated areas of Gaza had killed a child. For myself, I consulted an English bloke who’s lived here since he was sixteen about how to create a canopy of sloe bushes to connect them to the Cornish Hedge I’m trying to construct. When it’s finished, I’m going to call this canopy The Sloe Lane, ba-boooom. Oh how we laughed at the searing wit of this blogging genius.

And finally, Argentina’s plan to exit its debt default by asking investors holding defaulted bonds to swap them for new locally issued debt has been ruled “illegal” by a US Court, and deemed ‘contrary to global trading agreements’ by, er…um, nobody seems quite sure. To which global trading agreements arrived at constitutionally by the elected legislatures of Sovereign States does this bollocks refer? I mean, it would be very hard to position me as a fan of Argentinian leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner: but even if Argentina remains at the top of the Default Premiership by the grace of the Hand of God, WTF is the basis for invoking global trading agreements for which neither I nor billions of yous voted? For myself, today I picked the last of the mirabelles, adding half of them to cheap whisky, and half to cheap rum.

I do not want to come across as a supercilious bourgeois who has discovered the virtues of rural life and fecund nature. All I’m trying to say here is that, whatever the tediously infinite neoliberal propagandists try to tell you, theirs is merely a badly defended Maginot Line. Property in France has never been cheaper – and British property has never been more over-priced.

Draw your own conclusions.