It was a very beautiful morning, with a streaky pink sky behind the lime avenue on the lettuce farm, and layers of mist laying over the fields. I was rather surprised, on getting into the car and flicking the wipers to clear the condensation from the windscreen, to discover that it was not moisture on the inside of the car but ice on the outside, and that the wipers would not flick because they were frozen down.
The farming programme on R4 was talking about the severity of the drought, from Shopshire across to East Anglia. It's true. Recent rain has moistened the top few centimetres of soil, but dig down and it's still dry. If we don't get some proper rain at some point over the winter then next year is going to be very difficult, for farmers and gardeners. By the time I reached the Stour valley the radio had moved on to the Today programme, and a politician was explaining how within the next two weeks the European economy could go over the cliff. I suppose it could. The idea seemed to exist in a different world to the one in which clear morning sunlight shone on a high tide in Constable country, and beyond the river reeds and pastures stretched away.
There had been a delivery of shrubs from France since the last time I was at work. The boss has bought plants from this French supplier for all the time I've worked there, including lilacs, some varieties of Philadelphus, and hydrangeas. We don't take many deliveries from them each year, and it did seem as though we had a year's supply of Philadephus 'Buckley's Quill' sitting on the grass at the back of the plant centre. There were some fine chunky Magnolia 'Elizabeth', which is a good yellow flowered variety (though maybe not the best), but alas, the customers we had waiting for them had all either found plants elsewhere in the meantime, or weren't prepared to pay the price of such large specimens. Over sixty pounds for a magnolia is painful.
The wood turner who lives in the village, and makes wooden pepper mills and fruit that we sell in the shop, using wood from the estate, called in to see what extra stock we needed. As we chatted I discovered one of the drawbacks of living in a conservation area with no street lights (on account of the light pollution). The pavement in his street was dug up for work on the gas main, and going out after dark he fell over the barriers around the hole, which were not lit. The gas company say it is not their fault there were no lights, as the council wouldn't permit them. The wood turner is taking Warfarin and so vulnerable to internal injuries such as you get from walking straight into a metal barrier, so he's not at all happy. He was even less happy when his doctor told him that if he developed a headache he should call an ambulance immediately, in case it was an aneurysm. I thought that if the council had really forbidden any lights, even small ones, for an a obstruction on the pavement, then that was a pretty stupid decision. Though I suppose if you know you are at risk from knocks and bumps and you live in a village with no street lights, you might do well to invest in a decent torch.
The wood turner's misfortune reminded me again how quickly life can turn. One minute things are fine, the next, not. A case in point being my hand, still swollen to a shiny potato, though the tide of red seems to have peaked at the first joint of my middle finger and half way down the back of my hand, and is now receding. There has to be something in there, and I keep hoping it will work its way out. I have my eye on a pair of leather pruning gloves, with suede gauntlet cuffs to protect the wrists, which I'd better get and wear when working around roses and other plants with substantial thorns. I was wearing gloves when the accident happened, and trying to be careful, but obviously the gloves were not up to the job and I was not careful enough. I must remember to swap them for normal gloves for fingertip weeding, since expensive leather wears through at the fingertips every bit as quickly as normal rubberised fabric.
Trade seemed quiet, but I learned on getting home that the A14 was horribly blocked due to resurfacing work following an earlier accident, with enormously long tailbacks. If you had been thinking of paying us a visit, and then heard that the A14 was one gigantic traffic jam, you would probably have altered your plans and decided to do something else this afternoon. But who knows? Maybe it is the drought, or the prospect of Europe's economy going off a cliff.
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