All that Twitters isn't gold
It started innocently enough, this Saturday, at our local garden centre in Long Ditton. I was patrolling the compost aisles looking for the cheapest compost-per-litre deal when I tried to shimmy round a Japanese lady struggling with a bag of ericaceous compost.
She looked up and said, “Could you help me with this?”
“Of course,” I replied, it was only 30 litres, not enough to engage any significant muscle groups. As I was shoving it onto her trolley, in the process knocking over two of her ten beautiful new skimmias, she posed the question: “That is what I want….?” “Oh yes…” I answered, quietly confident that skimmia was part of the acid-loving bundle of plants that included camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons, while straightening her tipped over skimmias. And then I added, "…but make sure you keep it watered, you’d be surprised how quickly it can dry out, even in winter.” I said that because I left some heathers alone in compost one autumn and they dried and died on me.
Unabashed at asking a passing stranger for gardening advice she continued with: “And would I need anything else…?” Again, this extra question wasn’t pushing at the envelope of my limited knowledge on the subject. I wouldn’t need to get all ‘Gardeners Question Time’ and summon the spirit of Pippa, Chris, Eric or Bob to come up with an answer. “I’d probably buy some Miracid, and water them once every two weeks,” I threw in. Which is my own stock solution to anything vaguely acid-loving, such as hydrangeas, acers, magnolias and tree peonies.
We then had a small foray into the merits of ‘hoof and horn’ then parted company.
Ten minutes later she caught up with me at the checkout. Her face dropped when she saw that I was actually buying something myself and came out with a sentence that seemed to include the word ‘sorry’ 15 times but was probably only three. She had thought I was a member of staff.
Squires staff all wear neat, maroon polo shirts with ‘Squires Garden Centre’ written on them and have call centre-like headsets. It does make them look a bit like roadies or sound technicians about to do a soundcheck in Shrubs A-Z. In contrast I was wearing my jeans with holes in two knees, a muddy Billabong sweatshirt and a Wild Fish wooly combat hat which I’d like to think made me look slightly dangerous.
‘Aha,’ I thought, when I’d managed to fend off the sorrys. I’ll tweet this humorous episode on my new Twitter account. The humour of it being that somebody actually asked ME for advice… And didn’t crack up laughing when I gave it. But then reading it back two hours later, it kind of looked like I was making fun of this lady who’d made an innocent mistake, and was no doubt floored by my lack of English reserve in venturing gardening advice to a complete stranger.
…and It also accounted for the fact that she had “tutted” very loudly when I knocked her skimmias over.
