The boss suddenly got cross about the sordid state of the tennis hut, and employed one of her children to clean it. I don't know what prompted her to take an interest in the condition of the staff room, which admittedly was absolutely disgusting. Maybe it was the realisation that her friend's work-experience teenage daughter was expected to use it last week. I think the idea is that we are supposed to keep it clean ourselves, and if we were allowed any time during the working day to do so I wouldn't mind spending the odd quarter of an hour helping wipe and tidy. The trouble is that we aren't ever given time during working hours to do it, but always expected to be busy in the plant centre, or with the plants behind the scenes. I utterly refuse to spend any part of my one hour unpaid break time cleaning the staff room, or arrive early or stay late to clean it. The other staff feel much the same, and so it degenerates to a state of chaos and dirt. Since I have a robust immune system and a very highly developed ability to tolerate squalor when needs be, it wasn't likely that I was going to blink first.
A longstanding customer came in today, whom I hadn't seen for a long time. It turns out she has been ill. She is one of those sweet, dippy people that one feels need looking after. Fortunately nowadays she seems to have a nice unflappable chap to do just that. She bought two trees, one a silver stemmed birch with leaves slightly chewed by insects and quite enormously tall. She fussed about the leaf damage, largely for theatrical effect, and I reassured her that it was entirely normal for insects to have a little nibble as the summer went on, and that the tree would not suffer at all. In fact, the circular hole in one leaf was positively exciting as it was the work of a leafcutter bee. Her companion was more concerned about how we were going to fit the tree in his car, but we trussed it up with soft string and put the rootball in the passenger footwell, and the top was so flexible it would curl down inside the back window. I hope it didn't snap on the way home. Her daughter-in-law is also a customer, so she told us a story about getting muddled between being a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and I told them the line from Iolanthe about how to find a mother younger than her son is very curious, and we parted in a state of mutual appreciation.
I spent a large part of the day disentangling clematis from each other, and cutting the wayward stems that had grown far beyond the ends of their canes. It always seems such a waste to trim off healthy growth, but they do make more, and people won't buy them once they have all grown into each other. I tried to keep any well-developed buds, twiddling the long stems round in loops where necessary, as they also sell better when people can see the flowers. It was quite warm in the polytunnel, and one customer kindly observed that it was a hot place to work. Actually, it wasn't too bad. The humidity was a bit high, but people go on holiday to get a climate like that.
The guinea fowl were making a terrible racket just before closing time. They have a rasping cry that sounds like rubbing metal. I fixed them with a disapproving stare and said 'shhhh' and to our amazement they shut up. I don't know if I'll ever pull that trick off again, or if they had finished anyway.
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