The Cottage Smallholder

Oh Danny, being' too young' to marry- I blush to say my young man was only 19; I look back and am slightly surprised at how young he was… You also mentioned boiling the kettle of an evening- one of the highlights of my day is just that- being brought a cuppa is bliss.

Valentine's Day is nonsense says the woman who still sneakingly and secretly rather hopes that one day an enormous and mysterious bunch of highly scented red roses will be delivered anonymously on February 14th but the last time I got a card was when I was 8 and at Primary school. Alan Singer and I were going to run off to Israel when we were older, I was going to convert to Judaism and we were going to work on a Kibbutz..oh yes, you can have it all worked out when you are under 10.

I did once get a bunch of red roses- I had, MONTHS before my birthday, got theatre tickets for sir and I to go to Stratford on the very day of my birthday to see something we would both enjoy ( the theatre at Stratford being where he proposed this was rather special) at the last minute he announced that he had an 'important' football match on that day. Too late for me to find someone else to take up the ticket ( i.e. about an hour before we were due to leave the house). As I was er, remonstrating with him, the doorbell rings. A delivery man with a very large bunch of long-stemmed red roses. Sir looked somewhat taken aback- I thought they were from him to apologise for his major gaffe of footballing on my birthday and was very touched until I saw his look of surprise… they were from an ex-pupil who had mistaken my 39th birthday for my fortieth…splendid! Turned a rather unfortunate incident into a hilarious one- the look on Sir's face- red roses from SOMEONE ELSE….ah the power of cut flowers.

Whilst my denial of zombie-hood may ring false (my often undead appearance being quite often deliberate, though more often due to not having had enough sleep), I have to say I'm not bowled over by cut flowers.

Possibly this is due to under exposure, as no one has ever sent me flowers, or even brought me flowers as far as I remember, actually. they're pretty for a bit then they wilt. Unless you hang them uside down to dry, in which case red roses go a wonderful blacky blue.

I'm quite happy for people to attempt to change my mind on this point though, preferably with suprise anonymous bouqets delivered to my office. The fuss this would generate would probably be as good as the flowers themselves. It's all very well to know how much your other half values you, but sometimes you want the rest of the world to know it too.

Well i guess kenyan orothr third world (or LED if you're that way inclined) countries is better than local farmers growing drugs, but I have a feeling that flower farms are similarly run in that the locals make a pittance growing a crop of no benefit to them, leaving less space and other resources for food. The profits are all accrued at a higher level, and in the way of all things trickledown, the highest pockets are the most water tight.

Sorry, i don't mean to subvert this lovely thread about nice things into a ranty thread about international economic injustice.

Any one seen the film "stranger than fiction"? is very good, i recommend it. A guy in it is trying to woo a baker,so he brings her a tray full of small paper bags with colour coded tabs, and she's really confused until he says "I brought you flours". I liked that a lot