My colleagues had a busy weekend, even without the benefit of reindeer on the premises. They sold a lot of Christmas trees, and the owner went off with the gardeners mid-morning today to cut some more. The good news is, the Systems Administrator and I will have a choice of freshly cut trees if we go to buy one this week. The bad news is, the fresh trees were set out with the old ones so we won't be able to tell which are which.
The owners came to a decision and offered somebody the job. The lucky candidate hasn't got back to them yet to accept the offer, and I think the boss is getting worried in case they are using it as a bargaining counter with their existing employer, and aren't actually going to take it. The owners did like some of the other candidates as well, so let's hope they were slow sending out the rejection letters, just in case.
It has transpired that we are going to have a staff Christmas meal. On Thursday. As nothing had been said about it, I'd assumed that in these tough times we were saving some cash, which seemed fair enough, although from a macroeconomic perspective the last thing the local small, family run restaurants need is for the other local small businesses to cancel Christmas. We are going back to a place we went to three years ago, and where I've eaten with the Systems Administrator a couple of times, and the food has always been very good. The only trouble is, we have to pull crackers and wear the paper hats that come out of them, and I hate paper hats. It's not surprising that someone has who avoided having their photograph taken for a decade doesn't like sitting in a public restaurant wearing a tissue paper crown, but I don't even like wearing them in the privacy of friend's houses. I'm safe at home, because such things are not permitted to cross the threshold.
The owner's mother gave us a gigantic box of jaffa cakes. The box must have been the best part of a metre long, and said on the side 'taller than the average elf', and when I saw her with it I initially thought she was carrying a large box of tinfoil around with her for some reason. The cleaner, who only comes in on Wednesdays, has left instructions that we are not to eat all of them without her. I don't eat jaffa cakes, so she can have my share. This is not for health reasons or wholefood convictions. It's just that I don't think chocolate and orange go together as flavours. Either by itself is fine, but not in combination. Still, it is kind of her to want to give us a Christmas present, and kind of the owners to want to take us all out for a meal. In the Systems Administrator's young stockbroking days, when we were living in a rented flat in Maida Vale, there was a year when the stockbroking firm gave us a turkey. We were going to spend Christmas with my parents, and had to joint the turkey, and cram it into the freezer compartment of our small fridge.
The manager has switched off the irrigation system, and drained the water out, in case it should freeze and crack the pipes. That makes it even more officially winter. If we need to water anything we have to use the tap by the side of the shop, but plants aren't using much water at this time of the year. I took a watering can out to my greenhouse yesterday, worrying that I should have checked it earlier, and was surprised at how little needed watering.
One of our garden designer customers came in and bought seven fruit trees, for her own use as she is planting herself a little orchard. We managed to fit them all into her car, which admittedly was a Range Rover, but already contained a bird table, plus two enormous boxes of crackers. Tis the season to be jolly. Think of all those poor souls in their paper hats.
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