There was a bit of a buzz round the Robinson property last week.
Thirty years ago when the Loving Spouse and I moved into this half-built house, my mother-in-law gave us a sizeable root of a shrub I’d admired in her garden. “My own mother planted this when I was a girl,” she said. “This’ll start your garden off,” she added, more in hope than expectation.
Despite being re-located in a bed of builders’ rubble, the heirloom thrived, producing ribbon-like leaves and long graceful stems with pretty pendant pink bell-like flowers which nodded in the breeze and dried to knotty little seed-heads just right for flower-arranging – another skill I sadly lacked. What its horticultural identity was, I’ve no idea. Nanny Robinson called it ‘fairies’ fishing rods’. And so did we.
Lumbered with a sizeable plot and having neither the inclination nor the energy, we decided not to go down the floral route. Instead we stuck in a random selection of trees, grassed the rest and lived happily ever after. Six feet from the front door the fairies’ fishing rods bloomed obediently every year without fail or attention – until this one. I didn’t even notice it turn yellow, tussocky and sad. Anyway, when the man came to cut the grass, I asked him if he’d strim the sorry-looking thing down to root-level and perhaps it would come round with the heat. Five minutes later I saw him dash past the window, arms flailing. “There’s a wasps’ nest in it!” he shouted, taking refuge in his van.
Well – what a siege! I rang the council. “There’s a wasps’ nest in my garden,” I said. “We don’t do wasps,” said Pest Control, “but I’ll hand you over to Environment.” “We don’t do wasps,” said Environment, but at least gave me the name of a private firm who did. Next day a man in a moon-suit came with a syringe-y thing and blasted them all to perdition. I didn’t watch. Then he rang the doorbell. “Look,” he said. In his gauntleted hands was the nest, almost as big as a rugby ball – a beautiful and intricate construction, full of dead-as-mutton wasps who’d completely eaten away the whole root system. Now I’m in a quandary. For sentimental reasons I’d dearly love to replace the plant, but I’m not going to make an exhibition of myself in a garden centre asking for ‘fairies’ fishing rods’.
Apart from this domestic drama, last week restored some degree of what passes for normality in this uncertain climate. For the first time in three months I went shopping. Not for dreary staples like groceries or newspapers, (I never stopped doing that) but the vital necessities like perfume, lipstick, summer sandals and clothes. I had my hands sanitised five times within twenty yards in the shopping centre and came home triumphant.
What a pity the coffee-shops were closed or only serving out-of-doors, as I needed a little sit-down due to over-excitement, but I don’t do ‘alfresco’. Too many wasps. Best of all, I had lunch out. Ooh, the bliss of a proper restaurant meal with friends, though since we’d been quarantined for weeks, (‘living and partly living’, as T.S. Eliot so pertinently put it,) gossip was in short supply, but we’d all had our hair done, made a sartorial effort, had a good laugh and went home on a high. I’d forgotten the joy of ‘normal’.
In excellent spirits I rang Daughter Dear to boast about my retail success. What a gunk I got when she responded briskly with cold logic and a degree of sound common sense I never credited her with. “Mumma,” she said earnestly, “I think you’ve gone a bit kittery. You do realise that in current conditions there’s nobody allowed close enough to enjoy your fragrance; under a mask no-one can see your perfect lipstick; you’ve no prospect of a holiday in those sandals and that dress sounds suspiciously like a duplicate of one you already have.”
All sadly true. A mother’s place is in the wrong…
