This is going to be a very short blog post, because it is quarter past eight, I haven't had supper yet, and I still haven't looked at the slides for tomorrow's talk. The 8.15 am start came in handy again this morning, as I was able to assemble a goulash and put it in the simmer oven before going to work, so at least there is some dinner. From work I went straight on to the concert, and the Systems Administrator has just got back from Cheltenham, so neither of us would have felt like cooking otherwise.
The SA had a nice time at the races, won some money on Friday and spent the next two days gently losing it again. And saw some very high class horses, which is of course the important thing. The way to stay down there economically during a race week is to base oneself in Gloucester, and get the train. Rates at the Ibis in Gloucester, booked in advance, remains very reasonable, even thought their management must know there is a race meeting on, while the Travelodge in Cheltenham shoves prices through the roof.
I didn't see my employers at all today. I knew someone was there at about quarter to nine, when the chimney suddenly began to smoke as if somebody had put coal on the fire, but after that, nothing. The morning started brightly, but by lunchtime it was drizzling very lightly. The teashop girl had been told not to come in until eleven, although we open at ten, and my colleague had to make tea for one set of customers. They were kind enough to tell her it was very good tea, which she relayed to me, with the effect of setting up an ear-worm in my head for the rest of the morning, Martin Simpson's When I came to Caledonia.
We cleaned up herbaceous plants and put them in the tunnel on The Other Side for the winter, and were polite and helpful to those customers there were, who were grateful. I sold somebody a dwarf Scots pine that has the trick of going gold in the winter, and a twisty branched Prunus that flowers in late winter, and explained to her that the holly in her garden that never flowered would definitely not make the hedgehog holly she was thinking of buying fruit, because the hedgehog holly was a male form. She bought it anyway.
I thought I recognised one customer, and took the opportunity to sneak a look at the name on her credit card when she couldn't find the slot in the card machine, and found I was right. We knew her twenty years ago or more, when her husband was very active in a sailing association we used to belong to. He died sadly young, of a heart attack, and in tragic circumstances, at the helm of his yacht part way across the North Sea, leaving his crew to cope with a traditional wooden boat they didn't really know how to sail or navigate, and the corpse of their friend in the cockpit. I didn't say anything. It was a long time ago, and maybe she didn't want to be reminded of it, in the middle of shopping for climbing roses to go on her fence. It was strange, I didn't recognise her face at all at first, but something about her rhythm of speech was familiar.
I missed the first ten minutes of the concert, originally scheduled to be Mozart, but which got switched to Beethoven due to a change in the quartet line-up and the new second violin (or whoever it was who'd left) not knowing the Mozart well enough. I was disappointed about that, as I can slightly take or leave Mozart (Philistine that I am) but like Beethoven quartets. Still, I wouldn't have enjoyed it, knowing I'd abandoned my friend to lock up by herself. It would have been nice if the boss could have got organised to be around for twenty minutes before four o'clock, but there you go.
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