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Helper or parasite
I thought of you and now I am richer
[ 5 minute read ]
For a couple of days I have been in a somewhat one-sided conversation with one of the local shop-keepers in the neighbouring village. I remarked that my young tomato plants are bigger than the ones he sells for the farmer next door to his shop. He, the shopkeeper, wanted to know what kind of tomato plants I have, 'Bush tomatoes?' I told him about the varieties I am growing. It turns out he wants vine tomatoes; specifically, he wants to have 'tomatoes on the vine', because he thinks they taste better than when they are not on the vine. I told him that tomatoes gain very little once the plant has decided to let them ripen and sealed them off at the node just before the stalk on the tomato and prevented nutrients in rest of the plant from reaching the fruit.
As they do, the shopkeepers suddenly vanish when another customer comes in and the next day he was replaced by his wife (also 'the' shopkeeper). I am used to that, so I just carried on as though they are the same person. 'It is likely that in the 1980s', I said, 'a buyer for M&S went to Italy on a tomato buying expedition and approached a farmer. It is faster, and better for the tomato, to cut the vine with the tomatoes on it than pick them individually, so when the buyer tasted the vine tomato variety, they were impressed with the flavour. Back home, they might have gushed, 'We simply must buy tomatoes on the vine; they taste wonderful.' When they should have said, 'Vine tomato varieties taste better than other tomatoes.' Since then, we, the housekeepers and home cooks and home sous-chefs, pay a premium for tomatoes that are picked in a fashion, not for flavour, but because it is logistically imperative to pick a crop quickly and efficiently without damaging the crop. One snip of a vine collects ten or more tomatoes in one go. Individual tomatoes are more expensive to pick and process than tomatoes left on the vine, I propose; not least because they are washed (note there are no stalks on the tomatoes). However, no stalks could also mean that those tomatoes were picked before they were ripe and the node above the stalk was not the 'break-off' point of the plant it should have been. In other words the tomato left the plant at the weakest point, the tomato/stalk junction. 'It ain't natural, I tell you.'
I needed to collect something from B&Q, the DIY superstore chain, but lack the appropriate transport, so I suggested trading some of my tomato plants with the shopkeeper in exchange for him picking up the item in the city. He was not keen and rinsed the conversation away with silence and reasons for not going to the city during weekends. Essentially, over the last few days he wanted to grow tomatoes on the vine but not if he had to put any effort into the project at any point in the process of attaining free tomatoes on the vine.
The shopkeeper in my own village has previously asked me to fix a bicycle for him. I freely did it and replaced one of the tyres with a slightly worn 'spare' tyre I had (no charge). Incidentally, because I use donor bicycles to keep two of my choice bicycles going I don't really have spare anything. Now, if I need a tyre it will cost me at least £20. I found it a bit curious that the shopkeeper asked me where to get some tyres for another bicycle he has. He has a SmartPhone so google it, I thought. No, that is not what he wanted. He said he would bring it in and I might take a look at it and then be able to help him. It transpires that he wanted me to give him tyres. I suspect that he had said to someone that he knows someone with tyres and he will give them a deal to have the tyres replaced. I, of course, would just be creating more future cost for myself while he reaped a financial reward. As it turns out, I have already given away all my 'spare' tyres to anyone who needed them.
A long time ago, I had a conversation with Sally, my next-door neighbour that revolved around her fetching a couple of baking trays / roasting dishes (Sunday Roast size) for me. I left her some condiment for making salads on her doorste as a 'Thank you'; she had told me that she eats a lot of salads. I mentioned, in the following conversation, that the cost of Olive Oil prohibited me from including that in the gift package. I have always hated myself for not including it. This morning, I left a bottle of Filippo Berrio Extra Virgin Olive Oil on her door-step at 6:00 am.
Just as I was getting off my bicycle outside my home yesterday, a neighbour pulled up behind me in her car. 'Excuse me, have you got a moment?' I thought, 'Why are you being so formal?' It turns out that she wanted to thank me for letting her daughter ride my bike through a flood to save her feet and shoes from getting wet and muddy, about three months ago. She told me that her daughter was delighted with my chivalry and went about my bike being really big. My bicycle isn't big at all. It is really too small for me. She is about fifteen so she is not particularly small, and I had let the seat right down for her. Since then, this particular neighbour has been trying to thank me as I passed her house, but she said I cycle too fast for her to attract my attention in time.
I much prefer the last two interactions than the previous two. The shopkeepers for all their feigned community spirit are first and foremost money-gatherers.
I made Southend a couple of hours later; but not before drawing long stares from other sailing crews who were wondering why I was sailing so close to the World War Two sunken (1944) 'Liberty' ship, the SS Richard Montgomery, still with volatile explosives on it. It is so dangerous that salvage and make-safe divers have never been close to it except for a plan to remove the masts, still visible above the waves, in case the masts fall down and set off the 1,400 tonnes of explosives supposedly still on it. Plans have been to wait for the containers holding the explosives to leak and the explosives to wash away, but no-one knows if the explosives are still there or not. Now (very recently) there is concern that a number of 'metallic' objects have been detected around the sunken hull.
It was a few days later that I was becalmed (no wind to drive my sails) off the Essex coast on a speedy tide, still with a broken engine and heading for the concrete piles that is the World War Two sea defence, the Shoeburyness Boom, also known as the Thames Boom, off the Essex coast (Maplin Sands to be precise). It was built to prevent WWII German shipping and submarines and later 1960s Russian vessels, entering the River Thames and it, still sticking out over 2km and marking the edge of MOD testing ground both on land and the estuary, was about to wreck my tiny boat. The boom in the image above jinks right and if you look carefully you can see it, above half of the closest part, as a dark line on the horizon. You can see the scale of it from the image below. It is only part of the same defences that crossed the entire 7 miles of the Thames estuary.
