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Contraband

When the Police walked in, a couple of weeks ago, I was more than a little surprised, but when the Ministry of Food and Fisheries followed them, I knew there would be trouble.

As far as I was concerned, the seeds I had bought from ‘Colonel Seeds’ were Gardener’s Delight tomato seeds; I kid you not, Colonel Seeds is a real business, not a military person. I grow a lot of tomato plants; mainly for the neighbours. And, for years, I thought that there were at least six neighbours in my street that gained from my annual generousity. It turns out that the same household were taking four at a time and then coming back a couple of days later for four more, and so on until there were none left.

Every year, my good neighbour policy of specifically growing tomato plants to give away to my neighbours was thwarted by someone who gave away the tomatoes he had grown from the plants he greedily gathered from outside my house. The more I heard about how the neighbours were grateful for the free tomatoes, the more seedling plants I had grown so they could grow their own fruit producers. Each year, he got more and more praise. This went on for seven years. Meet Mike, he is so kind. He gives away the tomatoes he puts so much effort into to grow. ‘Yeh, but I am six foot one, like all the good-looking boys in my sister’s graphic teen-love story comics AND, by the way, he got the plants from me!’

Anyway, it turns out that the staff at Colonel Seeds don’t practice a good segregation policy at work. Yeah, that’s right, immigrant workers are allowed to integrate there. No, silly! Sometimes seeds from one plant species get included with other plant species and sold as tomato seeds. I identified a pepper plant once, but the plant the MAFF were concerned about I did not know, and nor could I identify it.

Earlier that day I was outside, I had forgotten why though and was just sort of looking around, but I was holding the small potted unidentified plant.

      ‘Here! Alexander! What do you think this is?’ Alexander is my postman. He knows as much as I do about plants, except that he thinks that my Box hedge is a Privet hedge.

      ‘Privet. Privet. Privet’ he sometimes says, as he points to some of my nearby neighbour’s Privet hedges. I suppose I should really know better than to wave an unidentified plant about that have thousands of tiny green baubles dropping off everywhere, because I had explained to Alexander that the little lemon green florescences on my hedge were flowers, something Privet does not have; he was not previously convinced by the shiny fatter leaves on my Box that Privet does not have. Not only could I identify little florescences as flowers, I also, whenever I had to go home to Australia, always laughed at the Asians trying to smuggle in suitcases packed with contraband, through the airports. By packed, I mean the suitcases have nothing but disallowed foodstuffs in them; meats, raw vegetables and seafood, even seeds, for goodness sake!

    ‘Did yuh feeel out the fooorrm?

    ‘Yis, yis, I feel.’

Alexander hadn’t known what my plant was, but he was intrigued. Great! At least I wouldn’t have to talk to a checkout person in my local supermarket today. I went back inside and took the well-thumbed notebook from the top shelf; where it was far out of reach of the kids’ sticky little hands, and put a tick in the column headed ‘Make someone’s Job interesting’. I hadn’t done that for years. The black hardback front cover was printed with ‘Daily Diary 2012’ in gold. It was now 2025.

The little green florescences were everywhere when the Police and MAFF walked in; hundreds of them on the window sill where the plant still stood, now dried out from lack of water.

‘Ah! Worst thing you could have done, really;’ The blond woman with the top-bun shook her head sadly. Her nylon jacket said MAFF. ‘to let it dry out like that.’

My cat was the straw that broke the camel’s back for her colleague though. Batting the fridge door with its left front leg, he appeared cute.

      ‘Oh, it’s hungry…..and covered with seeds! Where has it just been? Was it on the window-sill at all?’

They arrested me. My cell-mate, while I was on remand for being a flight risk, showed me a photograph of an empty room. I looked up from it with a quiz on my forehead and eyebrows.

      ‘That’s my unsightly missus.’ he moaned, in an East End London accent. I started to smile, thinking I had found a new mate with a sense of humour, ‘Yeah, really unsightly’, I said, but then he looked me in one eye and slowly shook his head. He showed me another photo of a toilet cubicle with the toilet removed.

      ‘There’s nothing there?’ I cautiously asked.

      ‘Dangerous…. Japanese….. World….. War Two….. pilot.’ he slowly said.

He then went to sleep at the tiny table we shared in the cell, with his head on his arms. Fortunately, they let me out before he woke up. I was relieved to be a bit safer and gratefully left, but not before I had written him a note, ‘A camouflaged toilet? If he was American I might of made a play on 'restroom', 'can' and 'john', but he was a straight dyed in the wool Cockney. 'An invisible khazi? I don’t get it.’ But I didn’t have to, because I was impatiently yanked out by my arm.

I was in court on Wednesday, and fined five hundred pounds with one hundred and forty three pounds costs for importing a non-indigenous plant into the UK without notifying His (blooming) Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, or HMRC to you.

That is why I hadn't paid for my broadband this month.