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[ 5 minute read ]
Stop being nice
I am having relationship problems. My neighbour, Sally, the one with the wry smile, keeps reciprocating my desire to give gifts. I left two tomatoes by her doorstep and she left half a dozen eggs on mine, again. If there is a scale or chart to consult for reciprocating gift-giving and she has it, I shall tie a small pony to her gate to see what she does; maybe she will leave give me a car, but I would prefer a goat or a sheep. Unfortunately, I would have to buy some more to keep it company. And, I would have to sell the lawn-mower to buy some fencing to keep the animals away from my crops. I might even need a field instead of a back garden, and a tractor with a hay-bailer, and a barn, and a helper labourer. I am now so looking forward to the end of the tomato-fruiting season. I hope Sally doesn’t like Giant Winter Leeks. I shan’t ask her, just in case she does.
I really have a big problem with not sharing my aptitude for occasionally getting things right in my jagged, and lazily vicious garden. Many of my neighbours simply say, ‘I don’t have the right soil.’ (meaning they don’t), when I ask them if they want any vegetable seedlings or tomato plants. I think this means, ‘I can’t be bothered; we have a shop in the village.’
Sadly, ‘The Tomato Plant Gatherer Family’ lives just a few doors up from me. When I specifically grow tomato plants to share with my neighbours, they, ‘The Tomato Plant Gatherer Family’ don’t want to leave any for anyone else to take; and I suspect that nearly all of the Art Supplies I left outside my home for people to take and enjoy, went to their house for their four-year-old; even the coloured permanent markers, so, I can’t leave anything ‘free’ outside any more.
How do I tell Sally to stop? There are simply not enough gift-givers around for my gifts to Sally to be ‘anonymous’.
Many people are leaving windfall apples outside their homes, so there is some evidence of people putting effort into gathering and sharing unwanted fruit. There was a full bucket of apples opposite my home a couple of days ago, but now it has gone. I expect ‘The Apple Gatherer Family’ took them all. With the ten tomato plants they took from me in March, they should be able to make Apple and Tomato Chutney. They wouldn’t even need to buy sugar for it.
I have mentioned that I like to invent Toast Toppers. I have made one up from Instant Noodles. About five times a year I cook Instant Noodles (they have nasty ingredients like flavour enhancers in them). However, I shred vegetables and include them in the boiling up part of the cooking process. If you can get the amount of water right, you can get a fairly good dish out of a poor product. I had Chicken Flavour with grated Sweet Potato and shredded Cabbage today. Thinly sliced Mushrooms could have gone in too. There was some left, after I had surrounded a bowl-full. Cold, I later heated it in the microwave, added some scrambled egg, and grilled it on a couple of slices of toast. Soy sauce and the missing sliced mushrooms, or a small amount of grated cheese, would have improved it. Shredded bacon roughly mixed through it, without the scrambled egg and grated cheese, would have lifted it beyond measure. Obviously, if the noodle mix with shredded vegetables is too runny it won’t work.
I have my Winter hobby lined up this year. ‘The Book Fairy’ left some cook-books in ‘The Magic Red Telephone Box’, in the next village. I have to take my expensive bicycle if I want books from there, to blend in. I can cook, and almost never follow recipes, so it will be quite different for me to try to make something that other people think is normal, for a while. Indian food and Italian food over Winter for me then. It’s really expensive to cook from recipes though. I lived in a bed-sit a while ago, and met someone in another one in the same building, who didn’t know you can make chips at home. I also had a lodger, in a big house, who didn’t know that mashed potato is boiled potatoes that are mashed. He had only ever had dried and processed potato flakes in a packet, boiled in water!
‘Gentlemen, I give you the gift of the raw potato, hot oil, and hot water!’
You know what? I think I might write a book on gift-giving and receiving. I think England needs one. I won’t waste time on research though, because ‘it is the thought that counts’, isn’t it? No, really, I don’t have a clue what to buy a woman in love with someone else (when I was married I saved a lot of money by not buying her any gifts). or a dog that has just been washed at the dog groomers.
I do know that yellow roses are different to white or red roses, and one is different to six or twelve. Any research in that area would be straight off the internet, but if I come across a florist I might lightly interrogate them. Here is how I would start the conversation:
‘Hello. I am an idiot.’ I find that I can save a lot of time if I tell people something that will they come to realise later on anyway.
‘When would you give white, yellow or red flowers, specifically roses, and how many would you give when? I just love how we can destroy school English Grammar lessons, if we try really, really hard. In truth, the extent of my English Grammar lessons was to be told to leave a gap as wide as my index finger between words, when I was still learning that a pencil is not just for drawing with.
It seems, to me, that we have been trained to feel guilty if we get something for nothing. That doesn’t include the ‘Tomato Plant and Apple Gatherer’ family down the road, though.