The owner was not in a happy mood first thing, despite yesterday's bumper takings, grumbling that there were too many errors putting garden tickets through the till, since the total kept coming to an amount not divisible by the price of a garden ticket. This led to a lecture about the importance of putting the right items through the VAT free category, and the boss chimed in with a pained expression that there were nine messages on the answering machine, and we might wish to look at them. My sense that my efforts were under-appreciated by my employers was exacerbated by the fact that I'd been obliged to get up at what was still only 5.15am by body-clock time, after last night's one hour time shift. My car thermometer registered just 4 degrees as I drove to work, and the morning remained grey, clammy and cold as I dragged the hose about. Welcome to the wonderful world of high end horticultural retailing.
The boss came into one of the tunnels with a trolley while I was watering the magnolias, I think with the intention of raiding stock to plant in the garden. They went on a tour of Cornish gardens last week, including a trip round Caerhays conducted by Charlie Williams himself (that is Williams as in Camellia x williamsii hybrids), and I expect he has come back buzzing with ideas for his own patch. He seemed to find the combination of the hose and my chilly, sleep starved presence off-putting, because after a while he muttered that he would come back later, and departed empty-handed.
Later on the sun came out and the management cheered up. The tea room does make the shop smell nice, a blend of coffee and real cake. The noise of the chair legs scraping across the concrete floor is too much, but the owner has promised to get a vinyl floor laid. People like the tea room. Some who didn't know it had opened had pre-loaded with biscuits before coming to us, and were disappointed because if they'd known they'd have left themselves some room for cake.
One of the tills has started adding to the retro feel of the business by inking in the centres of all zeros on the customer's receipts. It looks like a typeface you might find on the liner notes of a CD by an indie folk-rock band, rather fetching. An engineer who came to service the tills a couple of years ago said then that you didn't see many that old still in use.
The owner sold a large magnolia and some largish olive trees to a relatively youngish couple (only early middle aged) which made her very pleased. She thought the father would have bought more, if it weren't for the children acting up. Actually, the wife wasn't very keen at the start either. If they are the people I think they are, they bought a house with one of the grandest gardens in their village fairly recently. It is a village with a very strong Open Gardens tradition, and failing to participate when you have just bought one of the top gardens is probably not a social option.
The dog absconded at one point, but turned up safe and well before being discovered as a puddle of squashed brown fur on the road. I got home to find that the new little hens have taken to free ranging with a vengeance, and one of them had wriggled under or clambered over the chicken gate to head off along the side of the wood, not for the first time. If she insists on doing that she will end up as fox food, later or probably sooner. The chickens were originally my idea, but the Systems Administrator has really taken to them as a project, sourcing the speckledies after the old hen died, and assuming almost total responsibility for chicken exercise time. When you exercise a dog you have to exercise with it, whereas with chickens you can sit in a deckchair, reading about the bombing of the German battleship Tirpitz.
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