This is a late blog post, and it will be a short one. I've just got back from a friend's concert. She sings with one of the local choirs, and tonight was their Christmas event in Dedham church. It takes a certain amount of effort to turn round and go out again on a winter's evening, after getting in from a day at work, but she seemed keen for me to go. Or at least, she reminded me a couple of times that it was on, and tried to sell me a ticket in advance. I opted for paying the extra quid on the door, in case I was so wet, or chilled, or discouraged by idiot customers, that I really couldn't face spending the evening sitting in a cold church, but I thought that I really ought to go if possible.
Generally speaking, things that you go to out of a sense of duty are often quite entertaining when you get there, while evenings at home in front of the fire when you know in your heart of hearts that you ought to be somewhere else are not as nice as you hoped they would be. So it was with the concert. The choir was joined by a brass ensemble, and the programme had a strong baroque element, and I like baroque music. I'm not sure the internal layout of Dedham church is ideal for choral music, since the pillars seem to get in the way, and the choir stood to either side of the brass, so that they were singing diagonally across the church rather than down it. Never mind, it is a very historic church, containing a picture by Constable of The Ascension (one feels he was on to more of a winner with landscapes). The choir sang, the brass trumpeted, tromboned and tubad, a couple of other mutual friends had made it to the concert, and all in all it was worth the effort.
Work was quiet and damp. Again. I was puzzled when I arrived to see what looked like the young gardener's car in the car park, since he doesn't normally work at weekends, and learned that he had scratched his eye on a Christmas tree on Friday afternoon, and been unable to drive by close of play. He lives in Chelmsford, so the owner had to take him home, probably via Broomfield hospital. It is one of the hazards of working with plants. You think you have learned to be pretty careful, but it only takes one careless move and they've got you. I've needed two sets of antibiotic eye drops in the past decade or so, when rogue twigs have sneaked in around my spectacles.
The Christmas trees are a peculiar lot. I have read articles on commercial Christmas tree production, and ours are not like that. Nobody thinned them, trimmed them, shaped them, nipped them or did anything to make them develop into the supernaturally symmetrical, bushy plants you see in conventional garden centres. Ours were planted, a while back, and left to get on with it, and have developed a rather fabulous, wild, untidy, Ent-like character. The Systems Administrator and I will be off to bag one just as soon as the truck passes its MOT.
A man rang up wanting to talk about a plant called a Toffee Tree. I did not recognise that as a colloquial name at all, although I guessed he might be talking about Cercidiphyllum japonicum, whose autumn leaves smell strongly of burnt sugar. I asked him if he could describe the plant to me, so that I could work out what he was looking for, but he refused to tell me anything at all about it, except that a chap who worked at the plant centre had told him it was called a Toffee Tree. He asked if he could speak to the chap, but did not know who he had spoken to before. I couldn't work out why, if he was so keen on this plant, he was unable to tell me anything about it, and began to get a dark feeling that I was talking to one of Boris's sixteen per cent.
Tomorrow I am going to have to pack and book in with the carriers my first mail order delivery, if I can find a suitable sized box. I warned the customer that it would be my first package, and that if I couldn't make the online booking system work and had to wait for the manager to come in on Monday, it would be with her on Wednesday rather than Tuesday. She laughed and said she appreciated my honesty.
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