You may have noticed that you get a free seed pack when you buy a tub of Lurpak butter. The seeds are all of the herb variety and include basil, thyme, dill etc; THEY‘RE USELESS! They come on a small, dry biscuit that has to be placed on top of some compost and then gently watered so they swell up and engulf the seeds.

This is all very well, until you need to water the dam things again. The instructions tell you that the seeds should remain on top of the compost but, when watering, they get dragged under the surface never to be seen again. My wife keeps insisting on me ‘planting’ them every time she buys some butter, but in six weeks all that’s growing in my new herb garden is a few weeds!

Ann Close is from Barnard Castle and has been a client of mine for many years. A lot of Cockfield folk will know Ann from her days at Glaxo and when we were chatting in the salon the other day, she told me this little tale.

Ann was getting ready to watch Andy Murray play his latest Wimbledon match when the Tesco delivery arrived. Ann said, “It wasn’t very good timing as I enjoy the tennis and so I put the shopping away as quickly as possible. I’d noticed the seeds attached to the pack of Lurpak so, I tore them off the butter pack and just left them on the work top, then went and settled down to the tennis.”

Ann said she’d been sat for a while when she heard her husband, Jonathon, come in from work. Within seconds he was coughing and spluttering and - in her words - ‘making a bit of a commotion’. “What’s up?” Ann inquired. “Where the hell did you get these biscuits from?” say Jonna, still choking.

You guessed it; Jonna had eaten the free seed pack!

Of course the poor lad got no sympathy from his wife, she just ranted at him saying that he was worse than a kid and that he would pick up anything and eat it!

To be fair, I’m not so sure! Have a look at the photo. To me, there’s a strong resemblance to one of those ‘healthy’ breakfast biscuits and I bet they’re more use as a snack than trying to grow the bloody things!

It’s put me in mind of a schoolboy limerick.

There was an old woman from Leeds.

Who swallowed a packet of seeds.

In less than an hour.

Her **** were in flower.

And her ***** was all covered in weeds!