Off The Edge Gardening

There is a shop in the harbour that sells fudge, particularly excellent fudge.  I may have partaken on the odd occasion.  They concoct this ambrosial sweetmeat in front of your drooling lips, large copper vats are stirred over an open flame emitting devilish aromas which drift into the street, enticing the hardest hearts down into their lair.  For those not wooed by scent, behind a picture window you can watch as they work the sugary goo on a marble slab, tempting more prey into the web from which you can never escape, at least without a bag of clotted cream flavoured or perhaps, for those with their fingers on the pulse, chilli and kale.

Yesterday we stood and watched for a while, joining a young lad and an older lady who I imagined was his grandmother.”Hello” I said to the boy “what is going on in there?” ”  Without turning her face in my direction the lady said “You mustn’t talk to strangers” and yanked him away.

This has stayed with me.  It made me frown.  I really don’t need any more wrinkles.

I was offended, possibly wrongly so.  She meant the best for the child.  But I worry for us, for our culture, to live in a world where it is wrong to speak to people that we don’t yet know.  Young, old, middling, our lives are enhanced by others.   The ones that we happen by, those that are foist upon us or that we seek out.

We have a family joke, between myself and my mum anyway.  When getting on public transport we say “Make sure you don’t speak to any strangers”. Then we laugh as we know it is inevitable, mandatory, to make new friends, to learn about others and perhaps become better people for it.

And not to frown.

Did I mention that whilst working at The Farm last week I lost my glasses?

As I am approaching my life-peak I am finding that reading glasses are getting higher and higher on my top ten of day to day necessities.  It has even overtaken marmite on toast. This doesn’t mean that I spend hundreds of pounds on designer frames and tinted, anti-scratch, UV protected, Dalek repellent specs.  Quite the contrary.  I have a posh(ish) pair for special occasions, for example when I need to see in focus, and the rest of the time I use cheap off-the-shelf, rough estimate of my prescription, acceptable ones.  This is because I mistreat them, and lose them.  In fact the ones that I mislaid last week were some left behind in one of the holiday cottages and never claimed. Waste not want not.

Quick, we are going off piste again, let’s head back to where we started, which was last week at The Farm.

It was a showery, gloomy day and my pockets were stuffed full of essentials; hat, labels, pen, tissues, camera, a danish pastry and my glasses.  Just before lunch I realised I had mislaid my specs, guessing that as I pulled my hat out of my pocket as yet another rain storm commenced, they had fallen out.  I retraced my steps.  I put out an appeal on the tannoy (they don’t really have a tannoy, I just told Mrs G which is good enough).  I squinted and peered and pulled faces that have undoubtedly aged me by about 30 years.  Who would think there were so many things that needed close inspection?  Then Farmer Tony gallantly came to the rescue.  “Have a pair of mine” he generously offered. “They cost 99p” he added, which slightly lessened the impact of his generosity.  So I have been wearing them for the past week. They are rather good in a Joe 90 kind of way.  And they have served me well.  There have been compliments.

Today, as I busied myself around the greenhouse I spotted the wayward set on the ground just outside the door.  A little muddy and one of the arms was broken, but apart from that absolutely fine.  Nothing that a sticking plaster wouldn’t mend.  As for Farmer Tony’s set, I have decided to hold on to them for a while.  You never know.

You have got to admire this little pansy, growing in a gap in the tarmac at the base of a bus stop.  I wonder how many people have noticed it.

Well that didn’t last long did it?