The manager made it to work today, limping. He has bruised two of his metatarsals falling over his duvet, and at the end of last week his foot was swollen to twice its normal size. There is no treatment, except to wear comfortable shoes and wait for six to eight weeks for it to get better. I suggested that if he wanted to save walking on it while he did his stock counts we could take turns pushing him around the plant centre in a trolley, but he preferred to limp.
The boss is not happy after his week's holiday. I gather he didn't catch many fish. I know nothing about hunting, shooting, and fishing, and the Systems Administrator isn't any better, since when I said the owners were away for a week's fishing in Scotland, the SA expressed surprise that you could fish at this time of the year. Something to do with the fish breeding. I thought that actually catching fish wasn't the point, but maybe that only applies to the glum men who sit under big green umbrellas on canals and next to the old gravel pits along the A12, and not salmon fishing in Scotland.
The day's takings were boosted by someone who arrived with a trailer, and spent over four hundred and thirty pounds. She winced slightly at the size of the bill, but since I'd spotted the Mulberry logo on her shoulder bag I thought she could probably afford it. She was younger than most of our customers, and I couldn't quite place her. Reasonably affluent, polite, softly spoken but confident, slightly estuarine accent rather than hearty Sloane, not one of the County set. She was carrying a baby in a sling which I'd put at around six months old, though I know about as little about babies as I do about field sports. It was a very well behaved baby, which consumed a bottle of milk with apparent satisfaction, and didn't cry at all.
A regular customer who I'd left a message for yesterday, to say some Primula he wanted were in stock and I'd reserved some for him, rang back to say he wanted them. He intended to harvest the seed, so it was lucky we hadn't got around to dead heading them. He asked hopefully whether any of us might be passing his way and able to drop them off, in exchange for a sight of his hundred shrub roses which were about to burst into bloom. I said I feared not, as none of us lived that way, and I desperately needed to spend the week getting on with my own garden.
When I told the manager he said that the last time he'd seen the customer, he hadn't looked very well. I began to think that maybe I should take the plants, as my random act of kindness for the week, and because I would like to see the roses. I visited his garden once before, with the beekeepers, and the rose collection was superb, and I thought the beekeepers probably owed him one, because he hosted a garden meeting last year, which turned out to be very poorly attended, for reasons the committee at the time never discovered. I can combine the trip with a visit to the blacksmith to see if they can make my latest idea for a garden ornament at a price I can afford. I rang back to offer my services, but spoke to his wife, who sounded slightly frosty given that I was doing him a favour, but was probably bewildered.
The last hour dragged very slowly, as I tidied up herbaceous potentillas. It was a great relief to get home, my thirty hours in three days working week done. Only two more days of six o'clock finishes to go. The Systems Administrator has gone to a day-night cricket match, which leaves me with the run of the sitting room, so I can finally listen to my new Philip Glass album through the new amplifier and the big speakers. Maybe it will still be warm enough to sit out on the veranda first.
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