If you have visitors, and
run out of things to say, flowers are useful.
They’re not as difficult as pets or babies, not for most people, anyway. Pretty little things, they wait outside until
you need them, and always nod their heads.
My
neighbour’s parents came to see him. They
don’t come too often. They’re more like
hardy annuals that push up in the spring.
Let’s have a look at the garden. This year, they were spending a long time
on one flower, a lot longer than people normally do. They hadn’t gone mad. There was only one flower. The rest of the garden was bare.
I
remember it quite clearly, a tall stem, with a patch of white petals at the top,
like a tiny flag, as if the earth had surrendered.
Think
of a stalk and petals, and personal injury won’t be your next thought. If you want to hit someone, you don’t use a
flower. But they can still be dangerous. Last year, twenty-seven UK residents were
poisoned by daffodils. That’s right,
people ate them, twenty-seven at least.
They’re just the ones that got sick, delicate hunter-gatherers, or poets
– in short, those not immune to daffodils.
This
spring, supermarkets were advised not to put daffodils in, or adjacent to, the fresh
food aisle. It might cut down on errors,
but it won’t stop a devoted self-harmer. You can grow your own. Well, most people can.
Supermarkets
wait for you. They watch you cross the
forecourt. You might not know the
difference between a toothpick and a needle.
As
for the daffodils, blame poetry. Where
there is beauty, there is suffering. We can
hold a stalk and petals, and not know it’s a flower. That sort of thing. But fruit is dangerous too. I was physically assaulted for a bunch of bananas.
Poets don’t write about bananas.
A
banana is not a flower. You can hold it,
or eat it, and still feel nothing. But when
you can’t get things, you want them. In
Greece, years ago, you couldn’t get bananas.
I brought some back from India. I
wanted to impress a few people up in the Old Town, then eat them, the bananas,
I mean. I also had a copy of The Times of India. News print is black. Bananas just go that way. Like friends that bruise, they are not the
best travelling companions.
In
those days, a bus ran from the airport to the centre of Salonica. It stopped on the waterfront, near Aristotelous
Square. From there, I used to walk up
the hill. That afternoon, I’d just turned
the corner into Egnatia. I must have
been holding other things as well, but I only remember the bananas. A man gripped my arm, the one with the
bananas. His fingers felt like
metal. He wanted my bananas, but he
wasn’t stealing them. How much were they? His voice was like his fingers. I couldn’t move. I’m not exaggerating. I was back in Greece.
The
skyline looked the same, and the castellation on it, like a toy at that
distance, where my bananas had been going.
Cut
from a tree in India, carried on a plane to Greece, and turned into custard on
the top of a hill. Is that the sort of
history you want for your bananas?
The
man with metal fingers let me go. A
passer-by said: “Leave him alone.”
I
didn’t do the cooking, but I allowed it to happen. They were my bananas. The Old Town was full of passers-by. No one said: Leave them alone.
The
man with metal fingers should have got them.
