AS the days grow increasingly autumnal, and the night extends its inky fingers into the daylight hours, my feelings of regret at the passage of summer are tempered with a measure of relief.

For the onset of winter means I will no longer have to do regular battle with the grass and weeds that flourish in the gaps between the blocks in the back garden paving.

Getting the garden paved was intended to reduce the amount of grass I have to cut each year, but it has caused considerably more work than when I used to whizz round with the lawnmower.

While the grass which was displaced was patchy at best, the pavement prairie which replaced it flourishes like the centre court at Wimbledon.

I can go to bed at midnight, with the paving reasonably weed free, and get up the next morning to find a veritable jungle bursting boisterously through the blocks, waving their mocking green fronds and yellow flower-heads in abundance.

When the blocks were laid, we put down endless sheets of plastic, overlaid with sand laced with enough chemicals to wipe out every living thing in the village, with still more plastic on top, and the blocks slotted together like a tight-knit jigsaw, with no cracks visible at all.

Sadly, old age is no respecter of appearances, and over the next year or so, weeds started to shoulder their thuggish way between the blocks, gaining sustenance from goodness knows where in the barren sand.

Spilled spoil from careless bedding plant potting fuelled the fire, and once they get a foothold, those weeds are harder to get rid of than people ringing to tell me that I am entitled to thousands of pounds following the non-existent accident I never had.

Patio gardening is supposed to be just about as gentle a pastime as can be imagined, second only to snoozing on a hammock, but I still managed to leave the field of combat with blood coursing down my arm the other day.

I was using the knife we cut the dog’s food up with to howk the weeds out of the cracks, but the blade slipped and buried itself quivering in my left forearm.

Luckily, it was only skin deep, and medical intervention was not necessary

I have found after years of experimentation that digging the triffids out by the roots is the only way to gain relief, even though for every weed you kill, another 10,000 will come to the funeral.

We did buy, at considerable expense, one of those mini-wire-brushes-on-a-broomshank patio cleaners, but it provided only temporary relief.

Despite vigorous application, all it did was take the tops of the intruding foliage, which encouraged them to come back with increased vigour within 24 hours.

We did once bring in the heavy artillery in the form of a power washer, which certainly cleared out the crevices, but also plastered walls, windows, garden furniture, the dog and me in an inch-thick layer of gritty mud that was just about impossible to scrape off.

I was still cleaning the conservatory windows a week later, by which time the dandelions and dockens were already thrusting their way back into the sunshine.

I have yet to deploy the weapons of mass destruction lurking in the back of the garden shed; several sinister canisters of bubbling liquids, marked with skulls and crossbones and dire warnings of instant death, that we inherited from the late father-in-law.

I am of the belief these noxious fluids should only be applied to troublesome weeds by a person wearing a lead-lined boiler suit and a deep sea diver’s helmet, along with gloves of the type used by shipyard workers when endeavouring to catch hot rivets.

Some days I think I will mix the contents of all the containers together into one hellish cocktail that will surely kill off the garden invaders once and for all.

But Mrs Hextol fears it will seep through the cracks, get into the water supply and wipe out half of the North Tyne.

Worse than that though, it could give the dog a stomach upset as she snuffles endlessly round the garden in search of the hedgehog that disturbed her slumbers a couple of weeks ago.

Then again, I am not entirely sure that the liquids are not the turbid remnants of one of the old man’s experiments into making his own beer, and that somewhere on high, he is quietly sniggering at the dilemma and chaos he has left behind.