So, over the past couple of days we've been sent home. Open plan offices, infection incubators. As the week went on, the tow path got quieter. When I darted back to the office for a few last things on Thursday, it was just people moving fast on urgent chores, myself included. One tall middle-class man stared with interest at my Ole & Steen bag from his bike; promise of bread to be had if he picked up his pace. I fed the crows nuts, for the last time in a while; already I was starting the swerve-walk, keeping my distance, watching for passing places.
Up the road, a man in dark clothes disappeared into bushes in exactly furtive enough a way to make me clutch anxiously at my back-pack, full of home-working equipment hastily grabbed from the office. But it was the middle of the day, I was being silly. Plus my rucksack didn't exactly look like a thrilling prize. As I passed the place he'd disappeared, a very expensively dressed man irritably finished a cigarette next to the bin, and disappeared at a clip down a well-worn path into a thicket-choked bog that had been puzzling me for weeks. OK, weird.
It wasn't until I saw another very expensively dressed but slightly twitchy person heading at a fierce pace towards the same location, where doubtless the furtive man was waiting for them with some crucial lockdown supplies, that I twigged that I was looking at another form of panic-buying. I felt a bit better about my backpack full of bread, cheese and technical equipment. And also crossed the path off my list of little mysteries.
I'm not worried about the crows. They won't get food from me, but I know they cache a lot of my nuts anyway, and without humans around making a noise and a mess they'll be able to forage much more effectively. But I've left a pot plant at work. It's a Dracena, so the toughest of the tough, and I gave it a good water. But all the same. Nobody's sure when we'll be allowed back again. Will it survive?
I originally found the plant discarded in a bin, in a job three offices ago in an organisation that doesn't even exist conceptually any more. It was a withered stem with a tiny puff of brown leaves but when I scratched the top of the "trunk" I saw green underneath. So I took it back to my office and nursed it back to first uncertain, then sturdy, then rude health. Is that the plant that was in the bin, asked a colleague who'd seen me rescue it, or did you get another one?
It's the plant I found in the bin. It's the plant that was discarded, unwanted, half dead, rubbish. My rubbish plant that revived, recovered, thrived. The one that the others laughed at. Nobody wanted it so I took it in, my waif, my stray. Inevitably, the plant became imbued with thoughts about my career.
It came home during a restructure that came with a pot-plant ban, but drifted back when it became clear that this was one of those rules that wasn't. The wellbeing arguments were clear, after all, and while the plants were nominally an office resource now, rather than being individually owned, there did tend to be a person making sure it got the right amount of water, and they were usually sat quite close to it. When our screening Plane trees were felled in the Westgate redevelopment, all our plants became even more important, and in the bright light of the open-plan I spun the pot to give the Dracena a spiral trunk; one of the classic tricks for this species.
Maybe it'll do OK. The entire floor has been mothballed, so no-one will be coming round with water, but they are a really tough desert plant and the mothballing also means the heating will be off, so it should just go into spring drought dormancy. Or maybe the heating will stay on, and it will dry to a crisp; or the opposite might happen, if someone in the building rescues the plants to the ground floor, where they will likely suffer a dark, overwatery fate.
I like Dracenas. I had one all through school and another all through college and another through my shared houses. You can keep them inside, in rough, inhospitable spaces, and they just sit there, happily growing, just enough drama in their striped leaves to be entertaining, without ever being fussy about how they're treated or how hapsadaisical you've been about the watering.
Although I obviously have killed them. You can tell by how many I've had. The one that died when it got taped into a box and sat in Big Yellow Storage for three months is only the worst example of my occasional neglectful ways. This one may be joining the ranks of those Dracenas. It's out of my hands now.
Up the road, a man in dark clothes disappeared into bushes in exactly furtive enough a way to make me clutch anxiously at my back-pack, full of home-working equipment hastily grabbed from the office. But it was the middle of the day, I was being silly. Plus my rucksack didn't exactly look like a thrilling prize. As I passed the place he'd disappeared, a very expensively dressed man irritably finished a cigarette next to the bin, and disappeared at a clip down a well-worn path into a thicket-choked bog that had been puzzling me for weeks. OK, weird.
It wasn't until I saw another very expensively dressed but slightly twitchy person heading at a fierce pace towards the same location, where doubtless the furtive man was waiting for them with some crucial lockdown supplies, that I twigged that I was looking at another form of panic-buying. I felt a bit better about my backpack full of bread, cheese and technical equipment. And also crossed the path off my list of little mysteries.
I'm not worried about the crows. They won't get food from me, but I know they cache a lot of my nuts anyway, and without humans around making a noise and a mess they'll be able to forage much more effectively. But I've left a pot plant at work. It's a Dracena, so the toughest of the tough, and I gave it a good water. But all the same. Nobody's sure when we'll be allowed back again. Will it survive?
I originally found the plant discarded in a bin, in a job three offices ago in an organisation that doesn't even exist conceptually any more. It was a withered stem with a tiny puff of brown leaves but when I scratched the top of the "trunk" I saw green underneath. So I took it back to my office and nursed it back to first uncertain, then sturdy, then rude health. Is that the plant that was in the bin, asked a colleague who'd seen me rescue it, or did you get another one?
It's the plant I found in the bin. It's the plant that was discarded, unwanted, half dead, rubbish. My rubbish plant that revived, recovered, thrived. The one that the others laughed at. Nobody wanted it so I took it in, my waif, my stray. Inevitably, the plant became imbued with thoughts about my career.
It came home during a restructure that came with a pot-plant ban, but drifted back when it became clear that this was one of those rules that wasn't. The wellbeing arguments were clear, after all, and while the plants were nominally an office resource now, rather than being individually owned, there did tend to be a person making sure it got the right amount of water, and they were usually sat quite close to it. When our screening Plane trees were felled in the Westgate redevelopment, all our plants became even more important, and in the bright light of the open-plan I spun the pot to give the Dracena a spiral trunk; one of the classic tricks for this species.
Maybe it'll do OK. The entire floor has been mothballed, so no-one will be coming round with water, but they are a really tough desert plant and the mothballing also means the heating will be off, so it should just go into spring drought dormancy. Or maybe the heating will stay on, and it will dry to a crisp; or the opposite might happen, if someone in the building rescues the plants to the ground floor, where they will likely suffer a dark, overwatery fate.
I like Dracenas. I had one all through school and another all through college and another through my shared houses. You can keep them inside, in rough, inhospitable spaces, and they just sit there, happily growing, just enough drama in their striped leaves to be entertaining, without ever being fussy about how they're treated or how hapsadaisical you've been about the watering.
Although I obviously have killed them. You can tell by how many I've had. The one that died when it got taped into a box and sat in Big Yellow Storage for three months is only the worst example of my occasional neglectful ways. This one may be joining the ranks of those Dracenas. It's out of my hands now.
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