Tag Archives: roses

Too Many Roses

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After the serious business of poetry, we get back to the sort of blog I am better known for – observations on buying groceries via the internet. I am never afraid to tackle the big issues . . .

The TESCO shopping arrived last night. It featured several substitutions, including roses. I had ordered a small bunch of roses for Julia, but they had been out off stock. Nothing grand, just a small £3 bunch. The environmental cost of flying flowers from Africa is huge, but I try to keep our impact down so I think I can be forgiven a few flowers now and then. Anyway, nobody is perfect.

They sent two £10 bouquets. I had, it seems, ordered two bunches by accident. When I was told that one colour was out of stock I should have left them to substitute with another colour. Instead I assumed they wouldn’t send any and ordered again. They didn’t have any £3 bunches, even after the change of colour I made (bunch, by the way, is probably slightly misleading as a term for £3 worth of roses). So they sent two £10 bunches. I can only assume that the £10 bunches were at the end of their shelf life., as they only charged me £6. Sometimes they are good like that. We currently have more roses than we really need so will be sharing them tomorrow. Even though I’m annoyed with myself for over-ordering, it’s still nice to get a bonus.

Something similar happened with the mushrooms and I ended up with two small packs instead of one medium – extra mushrooms for the same price. Sometimes these things work out. I’m on TESCO again because ASDA really messed up last week. I didn’t mention it because there was no convenient place to do so, but they forgot to include the frozen food.  That meant we had no burgers or veggie burgers, which meant a substantial amount of the menu planning went out of the window. They should, as I pointed out to them, have immediately sent us replacements as it was a mistake, not a case of low supplies. The refund they sent was not an adequate response for a hole in the menu. This is the trouble with shopping on the internet, a silly mistake can ruin a week’s planning.

Flowers – detail

To quote W. H. Davis –What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. I expect he would have included random flower deliveries if they had supermarkets in his day.  Life should include unexpected deliveries of flowers, as I said to Julia, otherwise what’s the point of it?

Which reminds me. We had a poem at the funeral on Thursday. I’m not keen on most of the ones they use. If I should fall from my perch in the near future, can you please do me a favour and spend a day of quoting this one to people. It needs quoting more widely. 

500 Words a Day

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I don’t always write 500 words, though I do normally find no difficulty in the 250 I set myself as a minimum for posting. Most of the time I could write more, but I try to have some consideration for the reader (that’s you) as a thousand words of me moaning about modern life would be too much, even for the most determined curmudgeon.

The germ of this post developed from reading about Philip Larkin, which took me on to read about Kingsley Amis. It appears that Amis gained his reputation for having a prodigious output by writing 500 words a day. This does not seem many. He also, it seems, had iron self-discipline, and would always write his 500 words in the morning before devoting the rest of the day to drinking and adultery. I’m not saying I like him, or have liked any of his books in the past, but you have to admire a man who knows his own mind.

I’m not being dismissive about 500 words a day, or 250 or 1,000, which have all been named as a daily target by various people. It’s not easy. It’s particularly not easy to write 500 useful words.

Here are some figures.

3,000 words a day: Anne Rice, Trollope, Conan Doyle, Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Forsythe.

1,000 words a day: J G Ballard, Sarah Waters, Sebastian Faulks, Somerset Maugham.

500 words a day: Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis.

There’s something there for everyone, and if you want to see more you can look here. The highest target I can find 10,000 words a day, from R F Delderfield and Michael Crichton.

That brings me up to 262 words. It’s ironic that I’m struggling to get the words done for a blog post about daily word targets.

If I was a proper writer I would have to plough on until 500, or 1,000 or even 10,000 words. On the other hand, if I was a proper writer I’d be getting paid for this.  I either need to get a grip or re-title the post ‘333 Words a Day’.

The photos for today’s post are part of the series ‘Things I’ve Photographed Whilst Sitting in my Chair in Front of the TV’. It’s one of the easier series of photographs I’ve done as it requires no travel, little thought and no duck food.

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Roses in close up

The roses are from Monday’s expedition to Aldi and are a delicate pink with a hint of lavender, or mauve. I’m not quite clear about the colours in that range.

I did do some research on the subject, but it ran to 200 words of gobbledygook and left me none the wiser. Bored, confused and none the wiser, to be honest, so I exercised my power to delete.

That, I suppose, leaves us with an important question.Would you rather have 500 words of Greene or Hemingway or 10,000 words of Delderfield or Crichton. There’s no right answer, of course, as I suspect Crichton has outsold all the others combined. It may not be a judgement on the quality of writing, but what’s the point in being the best writer in the world if nobody reads your writing?

That’s 511. It’s quite enough.

The final photo is not a jar of Marmite, it’s a novelty egg cup. When you go to a charity shop with books, it sometimes happens that you buy something…

Marmite - novelty egg cup

Marmite – novelty egg cup

 

 

A Bunch of Irises

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I try to buy Julia flowers nearly every week. The “nearly” is significant as it stops her taking me for granted. Even after 28 years of marriage I feel it’s important to stop complacency setting in.

I also feel you have to ensure you buy them often enough to avoid the suspicion that you are feeling guilty about something.

Mostly I buy roses because they are very reasonably priced all year round, apart from early February of course, and they last well. Younger men may buy with romance in mind but the more mature gent shops with value as his guide.

There is a delicate balance involved – on the one hand it’s an important business in Kenya and I’m supporting an industry in the developing world. On the other hand I’m exploiting poor Africans and the growing and transporting of flowers is damaging the environment. I keep thinking that we should grow our own flowers for cutting, but I always end up leaving them in the garden and buying more.

I try not to buy out of season vegetables, but don’t seem to apply the same thought to flowers, and have never, ever checked the air miles associated with chocolate.

Once the roses start to die back Julia dries the petals of the dark coloured ones for use in pot pourri. That is why I tend to buy the red ones -I feel less guilty about the ozone layer if we upcycle the dead flowers.

However, the choice of roses has not been good recently and I’ve been looking at alternatives. he alteratives are often dire, but they had irises this week. I like irises. Fortunately Julia likes irises too.

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Irises

The lighting seemed to good to miss, and the tight framing emphasises the beauty of the blooms. It also hides the fact that the living room isn’t as tidy as it could be…