When the Florist's out to lunch...

It was all rather reminiscent of Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch. An anniversary looming, I needed a bouquet so went into the local florists, only to be met by an assistant who told me no such thing could be procured until 'after one' because the florist was having lunch! A shop stacked with flowers and bouquets awaiting collection (a fair few ordered, no doubt, by spouses better organised than I), but nothing resembling a wodge of oasis could be fitted with blooms until the florist returned. I used to work in the printing industry, where demarcation disputes were an entertaining way to pass many a happy hour, but I never thought that demarcation of labour would still persist in floristry. Perhaps the sisterhood have managed to keep this quiet - but it seems that a florists shop is a closed shop. Unfortunately, I was pushed for time, so I headed to Tesco - doubtless their Finest won't come up to the quality of the lunching florist's finest, but needs must when you need flowers to go.

Happy Anniversary

The picture was taken 100 years ago today - my grandparents married at St Andrew's Church, Burley, Leeds on 1 June 1914. Just 27 days later, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated in Sarajevo - a place that most of the people in the photograph would never had heard of. But by the beginning of August, WWI was declared and within 4 years my grandfather would be fighting in Flanders and of his two brothers, Arthur would be a prisoner of war in Germany, and his youngest brother, Albert, would be dead - killed in an air raid at Ypres. Of two of the male cousins in the photograph, one would lie about his age to enlist and another would endure the opprobrium and ridicule reserved for the conscientious objector. Before the public displays of remembrance start, I want to offer my family as an example - on this, the centenary of my grandparents' wedding - as a reminder of what war did to ordinary people, and how they coped with the horror of events way beyond their experience or control.