Yesterday, as I sat on the sofa, smelling the scent of roses wafting through the verandah door and the homely whiff of soot falling down the chimney (soot always makes me think of the countryside, home, or holidays. It is the antithesis to the smell of an office) and feeling pathetically weak, I decided that there was no way I was going to be fit to go to work the following day, and rang to let them know. We are not brought up to admire giving up in advance as a character trait. It seems more heroic to have a go and do one's best, and positively British to have a go, fail, and keep a very stiff upper lip about it. But I did not see how in less than twenty hours' time I was going to be fit to drag hoses around the plant centre for two hours, then spend the following six hours mostly on my feet, even if there hadn't been what passes in England for a heatwave. If in the end I were not going to go in, or if my going in were going to result in an embarrassing episode of fainting in the plant centre followed by my colleagues scrabbling around trying to contact the Systems Administrator to come and collect me, then I thought I might as well let my employer know the previous day, so that she had the option of asking somebody else to cover for me, rather than wait until five past eight on Monday morning and then call work using my best, special, weak, I'm afraid I'm not well voice.
I spoke to a colleague who sounded vaguely worried, since it is Hampton Court Flower Show week, so the owners will be there, while the manager was due to go on a first aid course, and my young colleague was potentially going to be left on her own. However, as she observed, if you're ill, you're ill. I felt vaguely guilty, but also that arranging for the plant centre to be run by only two people with no backup plan on a day when hot weather was forecast would not be very clever, and if that was what was planned then it wasn't my fault. Given the choice I wouldn't have had flu. Later on I got an e-mail from the owner wishing me well, thanking me for letting her know in advance, reassuring me that they had got someone else for Monday who could work the till, and reminding me that she wanted a newsletter drafted. She wrote to me about that on Thursday afternoon, about three hours before the bug struck, and I will do it as soon as I can concentrate enough to write anything sensible.
I am very glad I didn't go in. I was relieved last night, as the evening cooled down and we sat out on the verandah, that the decision was already made and I didn't have to dither about whether to set my alarm for six, and relieved again this morning when I woke at seven after the longest continuous bout of sleep I've had since Wednesday night. After breakfast I did totter into the garden to water recent plantings in the borders, before it got too hot, since unless they were watered I was going to start losing them. The SA has been very good about doing the pots, but the request to look in all the flower beds, find anything that looks as though it might not yet be established and could be struggling in this weather, and water it, is not a reasonable thing to ask of someone who wasn't involved in the original planting and isn't that keen on plants. As it is, some newly planted box outside the conservatory has been beautifully watered, twice, and I had to confess that it was not newly planted, merely newly weeded, and that the box itself had been there for a good year. I am sure it was glad of the water anyway. Unless you are pretty familiar with the plants in a garden, the difference between something that was planted too recently to have got its roots down, and is about to die of drought, and something that is dying down quite naturally after flowering and is happy as Larry, is not going to be immediately and blindingly obvious in all cases.
After an hour of watering I realised I needed to sit down. The spirit was moderately willing, in that I'd found a few plants that were struggling badly, and would have liked to check all the borders, but the flesh was calling it a day, with the same slightly wobbly feeling I had when discharged from hospital after surgery under general anaesthetic several years ago. The rest of the watering would have to wait until I could do another stint in the evening, and I would have to trust to luck and the fine weather to keep the bees from swarming for another day. Which probably means they have swarmed, but it can't be helped.
Instead I read about plant collecting in Asia. I love stories of plant collecting. I like plants and have always liked physical geography, while the reality of plant collecting is frequently very uncomfortable. Even when you don't do a Tom Hart-Dyke and get taken hostage by armed rebels, plant collecting from Victorian times to the present involves an awful lot of dangerous air travel, dangerous road travel, cold and insanitary lodgings, peculiar food, insect bites and other minor flesh wounds, route marches up and down mountains carrying heavy loads, and infuriating conversations with officials. Much nicer to read about it, and then go and admire the plants in a garden somewhere in Britain, where you can have a cup of tea and a piece of cake as well.
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