This week I’ve been a little off colour. If you had phoned the shop on Monday morning you may have been answered by a gruff sounding florist; more 40 a day than sexy seductress. The gravel in my chest slowly rose and developed into a squeak and by Wednesday I sounded like Minnie Mouse on helium.

I had to be careful that no one came into the shop for an Autumn hand-tie and left with a dose of the florist’s flu, so I spent most of the first part of the week in the back of the shop or out on deliveries. Everyone kept telling me to go home but everyone knows that the world would stop turning if I took time off and just went home.

So I struggled on.

In truth Lisa, Claire2, Annemarie and Becky practically begged me to go home. It seems when I feel too ill to actually do any work, I like to lie down and boss people around. John can vouch for that, although I boss him around whether I’m ill or not.

Talking of which. John and I were chatting the other night, well, I was chatting, John was snoring.

"I was thinking, if we knocked the kitchen wall down, 
it would really open up the space between the kitchen 
and extension, what do you think?"

“Ghhurgh zzzz cccchumff” came his reply and I took that as a definite ‘Yes‘

So on Monday morning, after John had gone off to work, I smuggled a couple of burley men with sledgehammers into the house. I knew John would just fret if he knew what I was up to and it would take me ages to convince him I was right, so I thought it best that I just got on with it. However, I didn’t realise it was going to take a couple of weeks to knock down a teeny little wall, pop in a retaining thingy to stop the house falling down and then re-plaster. So when John came home after a long commute and opened the door, he was met with a huge pile of rubble and dust. Ooops!

I have been quite poorly though and I couldn’t actually go home to rest because there were all these men in there banging about.

I struggled on through the whole week and by Friday I was actually feeling much better. The chaps from Henning’s (the wine merchant next door to the flower shop) popped in a couple of times, with some medicinal libation. Gin, I’ve heard kills off the flu virus if drunk neat, but while it cured my illness, there was a side-effect.

The new florist’s scissors I bought from a specialist wholesaler, should come with a warning ‘Do not operate while under the influence.’ They cut stems with ease, but if you tried cutting paper with them, it would just crease. However, when it comes to fingers, would the scissors assume my little stubby sausages were plant or paper??

Yes, you guessed it, my finger was more stick than sponge.

Blood spurted out all over a hand-tie I was in the middle of making up. As it happened the customer had asked for rich reds and purples, but I don’t think they were expecting blood red.

Well, you can’t say I don’t give blood, sweat and tears when it comes to my little florist shop.