People In Glass Houses

Bert, like myself, comes from a farming background but farming was never where his heart lay. From an early age he was drawn to horticulture. His father Johnny would have liked Bert to follow in his footsteps and encouraged him to take an interest in livestock. He gave Bert lambs and calves to rear and when market time came Bert pocketed the profits. He did not reinvest this money in livestock. Instead he bought a green house and grew salad vegetables in the winter time and tomatoes in the summer. In time he went to Greenmount College where he studied partying, drinking and horticulture. That greenhouse must have been a good one because it has stood in the same spot for more than 40 years. Now that Bert has 6400 square foot of poly tunnel to play with, the greenhouse is all for me to potter around in. Most years I've used it to grow bedding plants but this year I'm growing tomatoes.

We have our godson staying with us this weekend and we get him involved in our projects. This evening he helped me plant leeks and he also mowed the lawn. He loves the lawnmower. I have to admit I had a few concerns about safety and discussed these with Bert who assured me he could come to no harm. I decided to let Bert have his way in this. After all Ben will be thirteen in a couple of weeks. I watched Ben on the mower and I even took a little film of him. He showed a lot of confidence. Maybe too much confidence?

Still from my mini-movie. Does Charlie look a little wary?

Perhaps half-an-hour passed. Ben announced that he was going out to gather up the grass and said that he just loved mowing the lawn. A little while later I heard a crashing noise but did not take it under my notice as Bert is always making crashing noises. I was just getting myself into the mood for staking my tomato plants when I realised I'd been listening to clinking noises for quite a while. It sounded like someone throwing broken glass around. I went outside. And there was Bert, stoically removing broken glass from my very bent greenhouse. And there was Ben looking white and worried as he collected the glass in the wheelbarrow. He told me straight away what had happened. He'd meant to reverse but had gone forward and the front of the greenhouse had got bashed in.

Afterwards Bert told me that Ben was very afraid that I'd be mad. I'm glad to say that I wasn't. Instead I told him that he'd just learned that he'd have to be more careful when using machines and then I got on with staking my tomato plants.

I did tick him off later on for drinking coke whilst on the trampoline.

"Ben," says I. "I'm prepared to forgive you for bending my greenhouse but I draw the line at you spilling disgusting, sticky coke on the trampoline." And that was that.