It's a puzzle

 

I can hardly believe my eyes. Our air plant has changed to red and it has sent out two flower buds. I have had it years. It gets covered in dust and occasionally one of us will put it under the running tap then it goes back on the window ledge. It sits on a ceramic lily pad with an ornamental frog looking on. But the flower is unremarkable, after all these years, you would think it would be spectacular.

Kew gardens have a lily that blooms every two years and that flower is huge and well worth seeing. Birmingham Botanical gardens had a plant this year called the sapphire flower, it has taken ten years to bloom and now it will die. I wonder if that will happen to our air plant.

I do not know what happened to the person in our supermarket who was stopped by the store detective. She was old and struggling with her trolley but went through the self-serve counter without difficulty. I noticed that she had bought a pan, but it had a grey tag on secured by a complex of metal wires. All went well until she got to the outer door when and alarm went off. In a flash the young store detective was there with her.

“Excuse me madam…” he said in a firm but kindly voice.

 I went off to my car thinking, not for the first time, that I did not have a receipt for my goods. I paid with my mobile and refused the receipt. How would I prove that I had paid if this happened to me? How does it work?

Another thing I do not know is how the blue badge parking scheme works in our hospital car parks. We met a man who could not walk very well and he had blue badges. The notice says that you do not have to pay if you show your badges to the attendant.

The man went over to the attendant’s hut and there was another notice which said ‘In Outpatients’. So, the man hobbled off with his badges to find the attendant. It is complicated and I do not think I could be bothered.

But I should have bothered to buy an ice-cream more carefully, when we went to the seaside. You see, I couldn’t decide which flavour to have. Caramel or fudge, so I asked for one of those double headed cornets and had both flavours. The ice-cream started to melt. It melted faster than I could lick, it ran down the cornet and onto my hand, then my arm and into my sleeve. There are lessons to be learnt this week.

(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)