Rain, and more rain. Strangely, Hounslow Chronicle news editor Dan Lyons has not been called upon to do a repeat of  his Superman act of rushing out into the flood to rescue Clive.

It seems there is a "right kind of rain" and the sort that puts tomato plants on a life support system. So the tedious, boring rain is just the stuff for Clive.

He's plonked outside for the day, and brought indoors before we all go home, like some spoilt pedigree cat.

Both allotment holder Patsy Duffy and the editor are in agreement: "Tomatoes love a good wash from gentle but steady rain."

Fine, but what about the rest of us who have to go splish, splash, splosh down Hounslow High Street, catching all kinds of unmentionables in our open-toed sandals?

And talking of unmentionables, we thought a truss was some sort of peculiar garment elderly chaps wore to control hernias or something.

Apparently tomatoes have trusses too. This is believable in Clive's case because the mutant plant definitely needs some support to hold up all those tomatoes.

But it's the tomatoes themselves that form a truss – it's the growers' word for the collection of fruit linked up on one of the branches.

The editor tells Patsy: "The problem is that the first lot of trusses are piling up and need to ripen. The second trusses are not far behind and the third trusses are set as well. If we're not careful we could be swamped by tomatoes."

Please, no.