Garden design with manic depressive Dave

It's bank holiday Monday and therefore pouring with rain. Vicky and her family are sitting down to a full breakfast when a man marches past the kitchen window. It's manic depressive Dave, the decorator, who has let himself in through the side gate. He gives a half wave but it's difficult, because his arms are full of tools and seed packets.

"What's he doing here?" ask Vicky's children
"No idea," says Vicky. She goes into the garden, shivering.
Dave has already started digging. He is wearing jeans and a shirt, and water is trickling down his neck.
"Surprise!" he says, lugubriously. "You said something needed doing to the garden, so here I am, doing it."

Dave, the anti-Christ of the interior decor world, the man whose preferred colours - dark brown, dark blue, dark red and very, very dark black, ideally on alternate walls - are less a paint chart than a pain chart, is turning gardener.

Unsurprisingly, his preferred gardening weather is wet, ideally with the occasional apocalyptic clap of thunder, so there's no sun and blue skies to taunt him with their allusions to an illusory happiness that will, of course, never be his.

It's an awesome notion, and there's something about the sight of Dave surrounded by large, sharp gardening implements that makes Vicky decide not to question him any further about his horticultural plans, despite the fact that she has never actually specified what it is she wants done.

"I'll leave you to it," she says, and goes back into the house.

Later that day, when Dave has just left, Vicky finally dares to inspect his handiwork. She puzzles over it for some time. The flower bed has been very neatly dug in a sort of undulating wave shape with two distinct curves.

"Oh, my God," she says, as realisation dawns, "it's....."

"...a perfect 36 D - and all in proportion," says Dave, making . "Sorry - left my trowel behind. I've planted all the veg, too."

"Veg?" says Vicky, faintly, "I was thinking of climbing roses."

"Veg," says Dave, firmly. "It's nicer. And useful."

When he's left again, she inspects the empty packets. There are turnips, radishes, chard, three kinds of lettuce. But, above all, lots and lots of big, purple carrots.

If she changes the design, there's always the possibility that Dave might become distressed and slash another of her carpets. So it looks as if she's stuck with her lingerie garden for the time being.

"I might just as well add a phallic water feature and have done with it," she says, when she texts me the next day.