Friday 29th May
A child approached me at the PYO kiosk “Is rhubarb vegetarian?” He said.
His Mum despaired, “This is what happens when they don’t go to school.”
“Yes and it’s vegan too” I said to the child unnecessarily adding fuel to the fire. That’s one hipster in the making.
But maybe the child did have a valid question. What if he was actually asking if the rhubarb plant itself was a vegetarian? This week on TV I watched Alan Titchmarsh teaching Britain to Grow Its Own. He recommended the nation feed our plants with Organic fish, blood and bone fertiliser to boost their growth.
Well that fertiliser sounds about as un-vegetarian as you can get. Perhaps the rhubarb plant was a pescetarian (not a vegetarian) and was partial to a filet-o-fish, composted down to boost its yield. So maybe the kid was right, and we should be questioning the diets of our fruit & veg plants. School is overrated innit.
Thursday 28th May
“DAY 2 – Simon is working in The Ice Cream Parlour.” (I really hope you read that in the voice of the Big Brother narrator, for extra effect).
I’d graduated from the PYO hut to The Ice Cream Parlour. This was like an MBA in retail and I was being paid for the privilege! Harvard you can keep your Sales & Marketing. I was out in the real world, with real customers and real-time sales. Did I mention this was real?
Yesterday I’d been trusted to sell two SKUs (rhubarb and asparagus don’t you know). Today I’d been trusted with an extra 24 products to shift. I must have made a good impression on Day 1. At this rate of growth I’d be managing the whole 75-acre farm by Day 4.
I wanted to show that I had this. All I had to do was keep my cool. And with the industrial freezer pumping out a tonne of heat in my wooden shack, on one of the hottest days in May, this was easier said than done.
A rotund man came to the Ice Cream Parlour and asked for “Strasberry” ice cream. It was barely 11am and already I was being tested. I might have been new to the ice cream game, but I was fairly sure that Strasberry wasn’t a flavour. I raced through the 24 signs in the gelato freezer and confirmed to myself we had no such berry.
Given we had both Raspberry and Strawberry on offer, I thought this would be easy to clear up.
“One scoop of Strawberry?” I said
“One scoop Strasberry” He said, doing nothing to resolve the question in my head.
“This one is Rasberry Ripple,” pointing at the swirled, creamy goodness.
“I take Strasberry.”
You know when you ask someone three times and still you don’t understand them. Totes Awks. The unwritten rule is to then hazard a guess at what they said. Maybe this is a British trait, but you simply cannot ask them a fourth time. You just nod your head, say mmhmmm and hope in hell that you’ve got the gist.
The raspberry ripple and strawberry flavours were in the tubs next to each other. He was definitely looking at one of them. Maybe I should have scooped across the two tubs to create a Strasberry Ripple. It could have been the start of something great. Like when Worcestershire sauce was first spilled on a bit of cheese on toast. The rest is history.
I took a shot in the dark and went for a single scoop of Strawberry.
That shot in the dark came good and I passed the Ice Cream Parlour module with distinction*. The man got his Strasberry ice cream. And all was well with the world.
*not officially
Wednesday 27th May
A jolly chap approached me with a grin on his face “Has anyone ever told you, you look like Justin Rose?!”
“Yes” I said, “But it’s usually Tom Cruise I get told I look like.” Not trying to brag. I’m just stating fact.
He took a picture of me in the PYO kiosk. Each to their own. Perhaps I can start a side hustle at work offering look-alike photos. A kind of Madame Tussaud’s meets Fruit & Veg experience.
I asked him if he wanted me to swing the stick of rhubarb for the golfing shot. No, he didn’t. I’d taken it too far. I’m sat in a hut all day by myself; got to spice up the day somehow!
He then told me about a look-alike he’d seen on holiday and stopped for a photo. He couldn’t remember who it was a look-alike of. Good story.
Ahhh I didn’t even tell him my name! It would have made his day/week/year?
His daughter had no idea what was going on. So I filled her in. “It’s not every day you get served by an Olympic gold medal winner…. doppelgänger.” She didn’t seem that impressed. Whatever.