A day off and a sleep in. It is, after all half-term.
I awoke up enough to receive a kiss from my beloved as he left for work, but not enough to remember what day it is. When I came too properly, not long afterwards, I found a tea-tray (the teapot in the owl tea-cosy and the tea perfect to drink) a red envelope and a little vase of red roses. How sweet. (I did wonder how much those roses cost, and how many air-miles they had done. Not in a churlish way you understand. just wondering)
I didn’t forget, really….I made him one, this year, using one of my photos mounted on card. In fact last night the dining room was a production line of card making.
On Saturday, late afternoon I went to town with a memory stick loaded up with the pictures I wanted to print off. The shop door was wide open. Bear in mind this was a day of minus temperatures. Minus 5c.
‘Shop management policy,’ I was told, ‘to keep the door open.’ It makes me want to cry.
However, it was for this reason and no other, I sat at the computer furthest from the door.
The staff member who came to see me was helpful. I wanted matte (now known as lustre, apparently) -
‘Just let us know at the end when you place your order,’ she said, ‘as there’s not an option on the screen.’ It turned out that the computer I had sat at was for the speedy service, but that I was too late for the speedy service. I hadn’t wanted the speedy service anyway….
I placed my order, re-iterating that I wanted matte. They’d be ready Monday at the not-so-speedy service price, thank goodness, which was half the original quoted price.
I worked yesterday, on the other side of the patch, but rushed over afterwards to collect the pictures, having decided I wanted to make my Valentine’s card. I arrived after 5pm. You’ve probably guessed it…. the photos were ready, but when I looked them over they had been done on glossy paper.
The man was very sorry. Luckily he believed me, as no-one had written anything on the order sheet to ask for ‘matte’ -or ‘lustre.”
‘We can re-do them for you.’
And re-do them he did. They were ready at 5:40 pm, after the shop would normally close. For this I was most grateful and impressed. And I had double the photos – the glossies and the lustre prints all for under a tenner.
I have only ever printed photos with a similar machine once before and they were a lot more expensive. I had forgotten the limitations of the set up. I had cropped my pictures quite tightly in my editing soft-wear at home, editing them exactly as I hoped they’d come out – but the screen in the shop had a different ratio of length to width, so on some of the pictures I lost the edges of shots… very important edges as the prints took off spiders legs and suchlike. I shall just have to try to remember this next time.
A few years back a very dear family friend died around Valentine’s Day and I wrote a poem. Just don’t tell Cyclo.
Winter Flowers
When it comes to Valentine’s Day
don’t buy roses.
Roses are for the long hot days of Summer.
Chalk white rime edges the trees
and crows call against wintry skies.
Snowdrops in the Churchyard
bend their heads to the coffin bearers
so hard to believe it is Pat’s body
in the box.
But even as the Church bells ring
and sadness pulls inside
I hear a black bird sing and feel
somehow that Winter is edging out.
When it comes to Valentine’s Day
don’t buy roses.
Roses are for the long hot days of Summer.
A frosted rose against the front wall
51.761206
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They hide in the lee of the beech hedge, rarely getting any sun, but this morning before work I noticed a little scalene triangle of light brightening up the place.
Pseu
