We were on a mission and the mission was … compost! For reasons too complex to enter in to here, we needed compost … a lot of compost! Our supplier was to be here at the Klondyke Garden Centre on the outskirts of Falkirk. They are dealers and the deal was three bags for £12. We ended up getting fifteen 50litre bags … that’s a lot of compost. Don’t worry it’s not as bad as cocaine and it’s not even a regular habit … we are binge composters. Probably won’t touch it again for a year or so.

Principles

Having got our compost fix safely loaded into the car and feeling a bit giddy just at the thought of it all, we thought we should try a scone at the Topiary Coffee Shop. Perhaps it was the mind altering effects of all that compost but here’s another confession.

You all know our thoughts on preloaded scones. They are the devil’s work and to be avoided at all costs. Well maybe not “at all costs”. Sadly, today at the Topiary Coffee Shop, we stood there and worked it out. To buy a fruit scone and then add butter and jam, all priced separately, was going to be more expensive than a preloaded one. Unbelievably we went for preloaded … arrgghh, what happened to principles? They were, of course, overcome by Scottishness! But we should have known that too much compost was bound to have an effect! Serves us right, the scone was awful … hard and tasteless. when we informed the staff that their scones were not great they informed us they had been baked in the morning. They did not say which morning however. The coffee was good though.

The art of shaping

Topiary, of course, is the art of shaping something natural into an unnatural form e.g. hedges into swans … that sort of thing. Topiary came to mind as we watched the two Tory leadership contenders bumble their way through their hustings in Scotland. Both looked as if they would rather be anywhere else than north of the border. Neither looked like  they could be shaped into anything useful. Boris Johnston’s assertion that Scotland’s block grant, was a gift from England, didn’t help. Jeremy Hunt’s wild eyed assertion that the problem with the Scottish Parliament was that it was full of nationalist MPs, didn’t help either.

A lot more creative topiary will be required if these characters are ever to be formed into something remotely acceptable to the vast majority of Scots, however, one of them is destined to rule over us for the foreseeable future. The cream of topiarists are trying to form Corbyn into something recogniseable … anything would do! He seems to determined, however, to remain a hedge. More compost please!

FK2 0XS       tel: 01324 717035        Topiary

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