slow retail

Following on from the slow food movement and then slow TV, comes slow retail.  It is a fine experience so long as you are not in a hurry.  The story went as follows: back in July I placed an order online for some more auricula pots with the same Yorkshire pottery I got the last lot from.  Their online retail process does not extend to payment, because they have to calculate the delivery charge for each order depending on bulk and weight.  I was rather surprised not to hear back from them after I'd emailed and left a phone message asking about payment.  After calling every week or two for a couple of months I was starting to wonder what had happened to them, although the fact that their website was still up and running suggested they were still going.

In September I got an apologetic email explaining that they had sent me a quotation for the full cost including delivery, only it had got stuck in their draft mail folder and was never delivered.  Some of the pots I wanted were not in stock, but they would be making and firing more.  I said I still wanted to go ahead and settled down to wait, since making terracotta pots is not a process that can be hurried.  Once thrown, they have to dry to the right consistency before they can be fired or else they explode in the kiln, or at least that's my understanding.

At the end of the first week of November I got an email saying the pots had been fired and would be packed and dispatched the following week.  A week passed and I heard nothing more, so wrote to ask politely when they would be coming.  Finally at the start of this week I got an email to say they had been picked up by the pottery's courier and would be with me mid week, and sure enough yesterday they arrived, pretty much four months after I ordered them.  They are really nice pots, only I have missed the window to pot on the last lot of auriculas I bought, which will have to stay in their black plastic pots until they come back into active growth in the spring.

As well as the auricula pots I bought one experimental larger pot, to see if it would do for tulips now that the Whichford pottery has disappeared into the stratosphere and only sells highly decorated pots at equally elevated prices.  My new, hand thrown, small Tuscan planter from Yorkshire is wonderfully plain but exactly right for the job of displaying tulips en masse.  Ten inches high by thirteen across, it should be stable in the wind while being visually balanced.  The lip and raised band around the top feel reassuringly solid and should make the pot easy to lift and move when it is planted up.  There is a good sized drainage hole in the middle of the base, and four more low down around the sides.  The terracotta is a nice, soft shade of brown.  I ordered one to see what they were like, and will test it over the winter to check it really is frost proof, though I haven't had any problems with the auricula pots.  It cost eighteen pounds, at which price I could buy a set if I wanted to.

If you want your own traditional hand made British flower pots the firm is the Littlethorpe Potteries.  They are lovely, polite people to deal with and the pots are great, only you have to not be in a hurry.  If you needed a pot for a deadline like a birthday you might not want to risk it, and they don't accept PayPal so you have to be willing to send your cheque off and then not receive anything for weeks.  I would be entirely happy buying from them again, and will probably be ordering more small Tuscan pots and maybe some alpine pans in due course.

Mr Fidget thought that the parcel was absolutely fascinating, and watched keenly as I opened it while I had to be careful not to stab him in the eye as I cut through the parcel tape.  I laid the pots down on the rug in the hall for the time being because I wasn't going outside in the dark and three quarters of a gale to put them away properly.  I was pleased to find them wedged in place with the cardboard egg trays and not plastic, since the cardboard is biodegradable on the compost heap or makes good bee smoker fuel.  I left the cats the box and some of the egg trays to play with, but after a session jumping in and out of the box they curled up around the pots and went to sleep.

Addendum  In the night the three quarters of a gale turned into a full one, and we were woken at 4.21 am by the television aerial blowing off the roof.