Summoning the spirit of Old Maurice in Long Ditton
Gravity is taken very seriously in the Grump garden, but surprisingly it’s not the law of nature that has the most sway...
The law that governs most things that happen in my garden is Sod’s Law. This, for anyone ignorant to one of the few laws of science not to be written up by the Royal Society, is based on the principle, that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Thus when your car breaks down and leaves you stranded on the hard shoulder of the M1 on a wet Friday night, a wry smile will pass your lips as you recall that the three-year warranty expired the previous week.
This is a genuinely true story about a gardening-based incident that pushed firmly at the boundaries of Sod’s Law. Hard at work chopping up apple twigs with my anvil loppers one February morning (and when I say ‘hard’ I’d probably been going for at least five minutes without a cup of tea or a biscuit), for some reason I decided to chop and twist.
The blade of the loppers decided that lopping and twisting wasn’t for it and one of them broke clean off, a catastrophic failure and the end of the loppers. I’d had them about a year and to be fair, used them quite a lot. It wasn’t a case of one of those pieces of equipment that you buy, stick it in a cupboard for a year, then break it after about five hours use (i.e. my B&Q McAllister wallpaper stripper)
These loppers had had a fair old life. But then I thought, when did I buy them exactly…? Scrabbling through the desk drawer at lunchtime I found my receipt from Squires in Long Ditton. It turned out that I’d bought them exactly a year ago, to the very day. No word of a lie. Not twelve months and a day, they had broken on the final 365th day. Looking at the time indicated on the receipt I had bought them at 4.15 in the afternoon. They were still within guarantee by about three hours.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I had two hours to return them. But would they be replaced?
There has been a garden centre in Woodstock Lane, Long Ditton, since I arrived in Surbiton in the early 1980s. The Squires site was originally occupied by Woodstock Garden Centre, run out of an old commercial glasshouse and Maurice was the boss. He was aided by his son Derek and often the rest of the family would help behind the cashdesk too. Maurice was always cheerful, friendly, approachable and would greet my arrival with the familiar “what have you killed now?” This cheerfulness didn’t extend to taking anything back, though.
The second you wanted to return a faulty item, winter arrived in his disposition. I bought a load of imitation York-stone concrete flags that after a month dismally eroded into just another concrete paving slab. I brought one back to show Maurice, pointing out that they should probably retain their Yorkshireness for more than a month. He looked at it sadly, shook his head and said, “that’s how they go.” There was no further discussion.
Eventually the lease ran out on the site and the landlord sold to Squires who created the temple to gardening supplies that is there today. And to whom I now drove clutching my newly-defunct loppers. I made it to the returns desk with about an hour and a half to go on my guarantee. Part of me wanted to linger and wait till the very last minutes. I handed over the clearly ex-loppers, presented the receipt, and stood back and waited for the reaction. It was very un-Maurice-like.
After only a perfunctory look at the receipt and the loppers the young man on the returns desk and I were striding towards the garden equipment section to see if there were any replacements in stock, otherwise he’d have to order me some in: “you did want anvil loppers? We’ve got lots of bypass.” I was trying very hard to keep the broad smile off my face. It’s not every day that you can laugh in the face of Sod’s Law.
FH
