Early Morning Cup of Tea

I woke up four times in the night. The fourth time I took the hint and got up.

I went downstairs into the kitchen where I took the tea things – you know: mugs, tea bags and stuff – out from where they hide when not in use, and put the kettle on. ‘While it’s heating up’ I thought, ‘I’ll go and ‘dead-head’ the yellow roses by the front garden gate.’ I’d been thinking about that for a couple of days.

I opened the front door and was immediately confronted with the bountiful bough of beautiful white roses, which hangs down in front of the door. ‘That’ I thought, ‘is a higher priority than the roses by the gate.’  I needed to do something about pulling it up a little higher, so that the postman wouldn’t need to duck to push letters through the letterbox, but there’s a pigeon nesting in the cotoneaster bush which is next to, and intertwined with the rose bush, and I hadn’t wanted to disturb her. But… she wasn’t on the nest and I couldn’t see any eggs (which aren’t difficult to see in the loose pile of scruffy twigs that pigeons think is a nest), ‘so’ thought I, ‘I’ll do it now!’

I went down to the shed to get the folding steps – which would be necessary to enable me to reach high enough to move the wire hook that holds up the main branch of the rose-bough to a point further along the branch thus lifting the bough higher.

Now, the hook in the wall (hitw) – onto which the loop of clothes-line which is attached to the hook-which-holds-the-bountiful-bough-up (hwhtbbu) is hooked is an upward pointing hook so, as long as the pulling force emanating from the hwhtbbu was in a horizontal or downward direction all was well and the bough was held up, but, as you will already have gathered, the bough of beautiful white roses has grown, not just upwards but just bigger, all-around. And heavier, so it sagged.

I unfolded the step, stood on it, and lifted the bountiful bough up with my left hand whilst unhooking the hwhtbbu with my right and moving it further along the branch. Slowly I lowered the bountiful bough until the branch rested in the crook of the hwhtbbu.

‘Just right’ I thought.

Then there was a ‘pinging’ sound. The branch slumped, lower than it was before, and the hwhtbbu dangled uselessly on the now limp loop of clothes line.

‘Of course’ I can hear you thinking, ‘the direction of pull with the hwhtbbu now further up the branch, in relation to the hitw, is now slightly upward so the loop was bound to slip off.’

I climbed off the step and fetched a pair of pliers from the kitchen tools drawer, (I know that pliers are not normally classed as kitchen tools but the term ‘kitchen tools drawer’ is as it is because it’s in the kitchen not because pliers are kitchen tools). I replaced the loop of clothes line into the crook of the hitw, and bent the hook shut. (That’s what the pliers were for, see?) “Now try and escape!” I said to the piece of clothes line. It looked quite sheepish dangling there, until my right hand grasped the hwhtbu and pulled it to hook it around the main branch of the bountiful bough, which my left hand had lifted to meet it, further up the branch than it was before.

I climbed down from the step and stood back to admire the results of my efforts. The approach to the front door was white with fallen rose petals, as if for a visiting deity, I walked up and down a couple of times so that the transcendent beauty wouldn’t be wasted, then I fetched a dustpan and brush, swept up all the petals and threw them in the compost bin.

The postman will only have to bend a little bit now. I will point out to him that he might consider the considerable time and effort expended, largely for his benefit, as his ‘this year’s Christmas Box’ in advance.