You will have often heard me refer to my wife of some 54 years, as the serene, beautiful one (because she is) and also as Pollyanna because she sees only good in everyone. Well yesterday she thinks she may have been taken advantage of, Well there’s a surprise.
To set the scene, Pollyanna is a keen gardener and last summer she asked for my help taking the tops out of two trees in the front garden. A twenty feet tall Silver Birch and an even taller Larch tree. I didn’t say “Well you planted them!” I just said “Yes dear, I’ll do them soon”.
I honestly have been considering the task but with this Siberian wind blowing you will understand that I have to wait for better weather. Likewise the Privet hedge that seems to grow a foot each month. “Just wait until the weather is a bit more clement dear”. Why not last summer? Just don’t ask. Yesterday while I was upstairs slaving over my computer, Pollyanna answered the door to a wandering garden service provider. I call them Pikeys but the serene beautiful one refers to them as travellers.
“Good afternoon lady, them trees of yours are waving about a bit in this wind and that hedge of yours is getting a bit out of hand. Here’s my card if you want a bit of work doing while we are in the area” Pollyanna “Thank you but my husband is going to do them”. Pikey “Well bless you missus but we are in the area and we’ll take the tops out of both trees and take a foot off your hedge and take all the rubbish away for £20”
Pollyanna “Well I have been waiting a while for my husband to do it, so yes please”. Pikey ” We’ll get started then, any chance of a coffee? No milk, two sugars”
Half an hour later the Roving Gardeners had taken the tops out of the trees and loaded the resulting debris, returned the tray with the empty mugs and biscuit plate. My lovely trusting wife handed over a £20 note as they were loading the tree tops and said they were going to empty the truck. They left saying we haven’t room to take the hedge trimmings so we will come back next week to do the hedge. They waved goodbye and drove off.
Pollyanna came up to tell me that she thinks she has been conned and doesn’t think they will come back to finish the job. I said “What make you think that dear”. Personally I think that the Pikeys are the ones who have been done – I would have paid them £40 just for what they have done so far. If they should come back next week I will probably bung them another tenner and provide coffee and biscuits again.
Meanwhile darling Pollyanna might have learned a valuable lesson to not be quite so trusting. Hang on to the money until the job is done. I began singing “I recall a gipsy Woman” and she threw a cushion at me. Perhaps it should have been “The Gipsy Rover”.
Ah-dee-doo-ah-dee-doo-dah-day, Ah-dee-doo-ah-dee-day-dee, He whistled and he sang ’til the green woods rang, And he won the heart of a lady.
