Rosemary Gone

Did I ever tell you we have a park next to our offices? I think I must have mentioned it some time or another; it's separated by a painted iron railings fence and we have about two metres of border on our side of the fence which is (was) full of shrubs and bushes. Squirrels play there, you can sit and watch them, in fact you can open the door and they come right up to the edge, P says it's therapeutic sometimes. But there's something else (or was), right outside our office a rosemary bush has provided us with beautiful aromatic flavour for our lamb dishes, chorizo, casseroles and soups right throughout Summer and Winter, even in the snow and ice it never let us down.

Last week the morons who run our office block decided it would all look nicer if the border was 'tidied up' and the fence repainted. Neither of us were at the office when it was done but I got a call from P on Friday afternoon saying the border had been totally stripped and our rosemary bush had been stolen (his word) and there was no one in reception, because of cost cutting, to complain to. I said he could hardly complain because we hadn't planted it, it just existed and we'd had the benefit of it....and so had many others because we used to give bunches of the stuff away to friends, its production was so prolific and much better than supermarkets...and of course free.

P sounded genuinely annoyed. I asked him if they'd taken it to the other side of the building or maybe put it in a skip or something, maybe he could go and recover it, bring some of it home and re-plant it. He said he'd already looked but it seemed all the foliage had been taken away. I said perhaps he could plant another one. He said maybe but it would have to be mature and he'd want some other stuff to go with it. I said I didn't think they'd like it if just the bit outside our office was verdant with herbs and bushes and the rest of the offices barren or perhaps with flowers.

Then we got down to the second part of his gripe. "No I suppose not," he said, "but I'm definitely going to complain to someone on Monday. Apart from the rosemary and our bushes, we now have full views into the park and unfortunately vise versa....and I don't want footballers, bowls players and dog walkers staring in when I have to cane your bottom over my desk, which is in direct line of sight of the door."

I was taken aback and glad we were talking by phone or he would have seen my eyes light up.

Have a fun weekend.

Ronnie
xx