Pot luck

 

I stood next to her in the supermarket as she was tapping away on her mobile. Nothing unusual about that, but she kept going to the plant stall nearby, checking the labels and then returning.

“I am reading up about these plants,” she said, “I want to know all about them before I buy”.

We are looking on our house plants differently these days. We are treating them almost like pets. I am certainly very fond of ours. You see, they were my companions in lockdown and they are still with me today. They kept me company through those long days. I noticed every leaf and every blemish. They were treated like royalty. We liked them so much that we took cuttings of them and now all these years later I feel so attached to them that our garden-room is in danger of being overrun by a jungle of leaves.

Another strange thing happened to me in a different supermarket this week. We went up north to a Yorkshire family gathering. The extreme heatwave does not seem to have reached that far and there was an offshore breeze.

I sat in a very cool Yorkshire supermarket, this time next to a table displaying a raffle prize. It was not attracting much attention.

“I have plenty of those things at home,” exclaimed a shopper in a loud voice, “I don’t want to win a box of jobs”. She walked off and I looked more closely at the prize; it was a box full of new cleaning materials and various brushes and cloths.

Just then Mr T came back with the wine we thought we would share with relatives that night. But he forgot the milk which we also needed. He went off again and I rested our wine bottle on the raffle table.

Suddenly there was a lot of interest.  People were stopping and standing near me to read about the raffle. After a while I realised that it was our wine which was the draw and no one minded cleaning up if the wine was the reward after their efforts!

It was an effort driving on the motorway over the Pennines in the heatwave. We were glad of the car air conditioning to make us comfortable. But then our safe world changed rapidly. The traffic slowed and came to a sudden standstill. We all sat there not knowing what to do as emergency vehicles wove through us to reach the accident. People got out and walked around shouting into mobiles, children cried and a horse in its box whinnied.

After an hour we were on our way again knowing how quickly things can change and glad that we were all safe.

(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)