Frankly we had enough raw material to actually grow a whole orchard from just one Ikea bag!

My Daughter and I were in the Butchers the other day buying a pound of mince and mulling over with them all sorts of ramblings as we seem to do. I was talking to James whilst Claire was talking to Pip and every now and then I picked up a key word from their conversation. We were discussing the fact that I was going to see Katherine Jenkins at Blickling Hall and that they normally have a patriotic big ending to those concerts.
I broke away to look in the freezer and as I returned I heard Claire mention the Proms. Keen to demonstrate how much I liked the proms I informed them so and explained that I particularly like the bit where they all bounce up and down to the Sailors Hornpipe. There was an awkward silence as all three looked at me as they tried to comprehend what an earth I was on about. Apparently they were talking about the school Proms where the kids all graduate and get driven around in big stretch limo's making my comment and the accompanying little knee bend bounce that I had put in for effect look a tad weird.

Getting the wrong end of the stick is a speciality of mine which I practised at great length in my old job. I once had an elderly oriental man come in and ask, abruptly, "Do you sell Dog Chops?".
I have to admit that I was taken aback at the thought of selling any sort of butchered dog and naturally dismissed that racial stereotyping deciding that he must mean chops for dogs to eat and I asked if that was what he wanted. "No!" he snapped back at me "Dog Chops. Dog Chops!". Well he was quite insistent that he wanted Dog chops and I became sure that he was after a Poodle to go with his noodle and so explained that we don't sell Dog chops..... "Yes you do!" he cut in, "Dog Chops, Dog Chops" he continued far more animated now and with some clear frustration at MY stupidity. "Chocolates for dogs!" he rather helpfully chose to clarify. "Ohhhh" I said as I finally got his drift "You mean Dog Chocs....."      "Yes,yes, Dog Chops, that is what I was saying" Well it may have been what you were saying Sir, I thought, but it was certainly NOT what I was hearing and off we went to the pet section to find his little bag of dog chocs.

This, however, was not the most embarrassing of misunderstandings that I have had to apologise for. No one of the most awkward was not even my doing. My Wines and Spirits manager (Mac) in the Tonbridge Store was about 60 years old and very much a gentleman, always dressed smartly and carried himself with great dignity.
He was approached by one of the checkout packers, who like many of them, had learning difficulties and who went on to explain that there was a lady in the next aisle looking for condoms. Mac prided himself in his customer service and met the said lady in the aisle as described. The lady was NOT your typical Condom purchaser. She was actually far more likely to go to the same Bridge club that Mac may have belonged to. They were like two peas in a pod, both in their 60's, both far too posh to be living in Tonbridge, both with their half glazed glasses perched on the end of the nose with a loop of leather so they could drop the glasses to the chest when they were not required. Both of them were true blue Conservatives and what neither of them would do (from appearances) would be to go to the supermarket and ask an oik for condoms!
But here she was and she had done just that so Mac, who was tenacious on such matters, would not let her down and off they went to look for the condoms. I came across Mac and the Lady a few minutes into the quest, in the Health& beauty aisle, just as he was showing her the range including both ribbed and flavoured. It was just at this point that she sought clarification as to why he he was showing her the condoms range. "Because that was what you wanted" he sensibly replied.
"I asked the boy" she clarified "To tell me where the Puppadoms are!"

Once again it was left to me to apologise and sort the customer out but it does show the importance of listening, something that both my wife and my daughter tell me is a skill that I have still yet to acquire.

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The fruit harvesting has started as all of you out there that grow such things are very much aware. Part of our 'hook' for the B&B is that our jams are all wholesome home-made and as such we have used fruit from our garden and some from local pick your own farms. 

The first major harvest was the cherries in the garden. Of course these are not the nice sweet ones, no, they are the bitter things so you could not enjoy eating any as you picked them. Despite this they do make great jam. Poor Claire seemed to be the one that ended up both picking the vast majority of them and worse still de-stoning them, a thankless task (although I did actually thank her for the record).

On one of our explorations last year, as we drove up lanes without a clue as to where they went, took us to a car park somewhere in Norfolk the location of which is a secret and I'd have to kill you if I told you the exact whereabouts. All I will say is that it is at the end of a 3 mile long stretch of road that goes absolutely nowhere.

In this car park there are about 20 plum trees half of them have red fruits and half yellow fruits and they abound with these tiny wild plums (called, we think Mirabelle plums). They literally weigh the bows down as they hug the branches like grapes to a vine.

Well, free fruit, if I have learnt anything from the TV programme The Good Life it is that you should always make good use of any food going free in the wild and also that boy was Felicity Kendal Hot!

Last year our harvest made enough jars of jam to last through to this year but this year we are running a B&B so we need even more plums. The problem was that the lower branches had already been ran-sacked by others (the cheek) and so we had to go higher up the tree. I could only see one way of achieving this and so I pointed the car straight into the heart of the lower foliage of the tree, not without much scraping against my not so precious cars paintwork.The car in place all I had to do was to climb up through the sun roof, place a large Ikea bag on the roof and pick and drop.

There were two flaws to this plan, the first being that I, like Alison & Claire, was in my glad rags as we were all on the way back from Claire's graduation ceremony (CONGRATULATIONS CLAIRE  WO-HOOO!)

The second flaw was my ability to get such a quantity of plums into the bag. It was a big enough bag and it shouldn't have been a problem but they seemed to have a randomness about their falling that I could not second guess. They rolled down the windscreen, in through the sun roof, bounced on my head and even went down my shirt.

Do not try this at home kids.

We have been recovering plums ever since from within the car and one even sat by the windscreen wiper the whole way home. In the end though we had a big Ikea bag full which I used my heavy duty weighing scales, that I had bought from the auction, to weigh them, a total of 30lbs of plums. All of these needed stoning and Alison parents made the vital error of visiting us a day later and so were requestioned to remove pips as the jam making commenced. We had removed so many pips that frankly we had enough raw material to actually grow a whole orchard from just one Ikea bag!

By the time they left to go home I think they were sick to death of plums, they even had to have plum crumble for pudding.

In the last few weeks we have accrued (including with Alison's mothers help) over 80 jars of preserves and there is still the Blackberries to come!

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