I had an embarrassing moment this afternoon.
I thought I would pick the blackcurrants.
I have been feeling mildly guilty about blackcurrants for some time now. They have been fat and black and ripe for several days, and occasionally I have been picking a handful to take to work. They are a rubbish substitute for chocolate buttons except in that you can be completely assured of your own impeccable virtue whilst eating them, but in every other respect they are not very satisfactory.
They do, however, make the most magnificent jam.
Of all of the jams, blackcurrant is my absolute favourite, not that I can eat it because of trying to diminish my rotundity. Mark likes me to make it as well. He never eats it either, but he likes the idea of having a rural sort of wife, proficient in feeding a family from all of nature’s generous bounty, and in any case it is divine for filling up the middle of cakes accompanied by whipped cream.
Today I noticed that the path to the back door has become liberally bespattered with fallen blackcurrants, which were slowly beginning to be walked into the conservatory. Since I have no wish for purple tiles I thought I would go into the back yard and pick them.
Oliver helped me for a little while but then had to go to work, observing on his way out that there was an ambulance parked in the driveway to the flats. I said it had been there all morning, and I had no idea what it was doing, getting a Full English Breakfast at the cafe, probably.
Oliver almost didn’t go to work, and he went against my advice in any case. He had been sent a text by the pub’s HR department announcing that anyone who was late for work would have all their tips for the day taken away from them. I thought this was a disgrace and a shocking abuse and advised him to text back immediately telling them what they could do with their job, and he said that this was why I am permanently unemployed.
All the same I thought it was dreadful and told him that if he changed his mind about wishing to tolerate petty tyrannical dictators all he needed to do was to hurl his apron on the bar and walk away, and he said he would bear that in mind.
I was upset about it because I know the owner and had always liked him very much, what rotters people can be in secret.
Once he had gone I returned to the blackcurrants, and dragged the stool out from Mark’s shed so I could reach the ones at the back better. They are in raised beds, and too high to be reached from ground level.
I had just wobbled up on to the stool when a small commotion began at the flats opposite.
Somebody was being wheeled out and hauled down the steps to the waiting ambulance at the bottom.
Of course for a brief moment I was fascinated, and then realised to my horror that I was standing on a stool, peering through the bushes and over the wall just like the very nosiest of nosy neighbours.
I must have looked exactly like the sort of old biddy you really don’t want to live next door to. I am that anyway, but that is for all sorts of other reasons generally, like pinching spare dustbin space and bellowing at the dogs.
I tried to bury myself in the bushes and busy myself with the blackcurrants, but even that was no good, and I bobbed about over the top of the wall like a curious jack-in-the-box, not-looking in their direction as hard as I possibly could.
The ambulance men – there were four of them because a second ambulance had turned up by this time – could not fail to notice me, and I was struck with the awfulness of trying to pretend to be doing exactly what I had been doing in the first place.
I tried to pick blackcurrants as conspicuously as I could, and only made myself look as though I was trying to look as though I was picking blackcurrants when I wasn’t really.
I finished picking the blackcurrants just as the loaded ambulance was driving away. The other two ambulance men looked at me and then got into their ambulance as well.
I didn’t want to look as though I was going in because they were leaving, so I hovered about trying to find some more blackcurrants to pick, but there were none.
I sighed and looked at the ambulance men.
They looked back at me, and we all departed together.
I have no idea what was wrong with the person in the flats and I do not have the smallest desire to find out.
