Last year, in the Museum of Someone Else's Life, I wore canvas trainers to do the watering. I'd taken out the laces to dry them off between monsoons. They were comfortable to slip into, those canvas shoes, like moccasins, but they were also impractical - I constantly had soggy feet.
Not this year, by Jingo! Last night I angled into my wellingtons, tucked my pyjamas in to each boot and strode confidently onto the decking, hands on hips, surveying the troops as they waved their leaves at me in the darkness.
It's been less rainy this year - we had one day a few Fridays ago when it chucked it down, but since then, there's not been a lot. I reached in to the murky looking water butt and scooped out the watering can, ready for action. It was pouring with inky black water.
There wasn't much left in the water butt when I'd finished. The plants had had a good long drink and my wellies glistened with the splash back. I did wonder what I would do the next day though if it didn't rain. Thankfully, a hose pipe was snaking through the grass, under the fence and out to the outside tap. I figured that everything would be alright.
It didn't rain, so today I tried it. Pyjamas tucked into the wellies, t-shirt and post-work baseball cap squarely on, I unlocked the patio doors and stood out on the decking. The watering can was where I left it, scraping against the bottom of the empty water butt. There was little choice but to try the hose.
It didn't work. At first I thought there must have been some blockage somewhere, so I traced it back to the tap from the nozzle. It all seemed OK. There was a little bit of water leaking from the tap, so I assumed that I'd switched it on correctly. Yet at the other end, twenty metres away, under the fence and angled (deliberately) by me into the watering can, the bright yellow nozzle was as dry as Ezekiel's biscuits.
It was at this point that my knowledge of physics troubled me. Water was gushing in at one end, but definitely not out of the other. There really were only two possibilities - it was either leaking out somewhere along the pipe... or...
I grabbed the nozzle and examined it. It didn't seem to be twistable, and there were no buttons or switches. There was a yellow ring, about two inches down the pipe, which looked like it was part of the nozzle. I had a closer look. The words Hose Lock were written on it with an arrow pointing backwards.
Well that's got to do something, I thought to myself. I grabbed the pipe with one hand, the yellow 'hose lock' with the other, and I twisted it as though I was giving it a Chinese burn.
Everything happened quite quickly after that.
I was instantaneously hit in the face with an explosion of freezing cold water, my hat fell off, the nozzle flew off one way, knocked over the watering can, and I (like a startled idiot) let go of the pipe as I gasped backwards! The hose, free of its grip, recoiled into the grass and started spouting water in every conceivable direction. By the time I managed to get hold of it, somehow reconnect the nozzle and thrust the whole dripping contraption firmly back into the watering can, I was soaked - and I mean properly soaked, in my pyjamas and t-shirt.
I think there are some jobs that I'm just not cut out for.
In fact, one of the fascinating things about jobs is that certain types of people seem to get on very well with certain types of vocation. We had a long two-hour meeting today, wrangling our way through a tricky Sprint retrospective, which is essentially a review meeting where you all get to rush through what went well and then lament in sackcloth and ashes about what didn't and whose fault it was and why it won't ever change. At least, that's what I think you're supposed to do...
Anyway, next door, in the boardroom, the marketing types appeared to be having their weekly cocktail party. There was raucous laughter echoing through the walls; there was cackling and the sound of chinking glasses as though it were Friday night at the local wine lodge. I smiled at the contrast through the wall, while we huddled round a projector screen, grumbling about numbers and management. Well, I wasn't grumbling, but you get the picture.
You know me, I don't grumble about things - even when I'm dripping wet in someone else's garden.
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