trapped in the tea room

We watched the Olympics opening ceremony right to the very end.  I enjoyed it a great deal, and am pleased it was a gigantic British in-joke and not a bland international spectacular.  The abseiling Mary Poppinses were a master stroke.  It was a sad shock to the system this morning, though, when the alarm clock went off at quarter past six.

There were only two of us on duty in the plant centre, as someone was on holiday.  I asked my colleague with foreboding what we were going to do about the tea room, and he reminded me that the sparky girl would be at half past nine to take care of that, and would be able to keep an eye on the shop as well.  At nine she rang to say that she was not well and would not be in.  Then a thoroughly confusing man, connnected in some way with a parish council, rang about a memorial tree.  It took me some time to work out the exact nature of his query, and I had to promise to go and check with the owner, and set off to ask her about the tree and break the bad news about the tea room girl.

The puppies were making a vast amount of noise when I got up to the house, and the owner was cross about something the dog had done, and irritated with the PCC man who had not replied to her e-mail, so didn't seem to take on board the problem with the tea room.  She didn't offer to run it herself, but ten minutes later it transpired that she had been listening to what I was saying, but would be out all morning at a pony club meeting, so I was going to have to do teas.  As I don't know how to use the cappucino machine frothy coffees were off the menu for the day.

There are things nobody has told me about the tea room, like whether I am supposed to pour unused milk from the tables down the sink or top up the little jug and give it to the next customer.  Or what sized jug to use for what number of people to avoid waste.  I started off washing the crockery by hand, as I couldn't remember how the dishwasher worked, but ran out of anything dry to dry it with.  It seemed feeble not to try to use the machine, so I put some cups and saucers in it and pressed the button marked Start, and it started, and I felt rather an idiot for not trying that earlier.  When it had finished running I opened it, and discovered that the crockery was still wet, and speckled with coffee grounds.  I really don't like running the tea room.  I like plants, and can stomach the low wages and social inconveniences of weekend working in pursuit of horticultural knowledge, but if I'm going to do something boring I can think of better paid alternatives to manning the tea room that occupy more sociable hours.  After lunch my colleague took over, and mid afternoon the owner did a stint, and it turned out that today is her son's birthday.

Once I'd escaped from the shop I spent a peaceful couple of hours tidying up the achilleas and the moisture loving plants section, and got an enormous lump of mysterious black slime on one leg of my trousers, that I'd been hoping would last the rest of the weekend.  Nursery work and tea room duties really don't mix.  Fingers crossed the girl is feeling better tomorrow.