Not trying hard enough

Although we have quite a lot of fluffy white snow outside, the chest in the hall is currently adorned by spring bulbs, because I have been growing them on indoors, or rather, with the aid of the back kitchen where the freezer and the washing machine live, which is near-freezing, and has been that way for some time. There is a pot of paperwhites, one of ‘Tete-à-tête’ daffodils, and a bowl of hyacinths, which are a fine Imperial purple. For once, I have managed to grow paperwhites without their ending up eighteen inches tall and falling over, because it’s been so blasted cold,  but alas, they are insufficiently artless. They are in a celadon pot, and the hyacinths are in plastic, as bought from the good Calum. The Tete-à-têtes were sourced from the bad Tesco, but their plastic pot has been dropped into a well matured clay one of traditional shape. They are therefore, unlike the paperwhites and the hyacinths, artless, because in order to be artless in the right way, a group such as this is supposed to give the impression that Angus McFungus the dear old Scottish gardener has brought them round to the back door of the Old Rectory in a flat-bottomed wicker basket of archaic design. Nipping down to the garden centre to buy hyacinths someone else has started off is horrid premeditation, and made obvious by the horrid plastic bowl - the fact that the little daffodils are also of low origins has been concealed from sensitive visitors in an appropriately casual manner. But the hypothetical Angus McFungus would not use a celadon pot, so our Artlessness Quotient is only 33%, or one out of three, which is simply not good enough. Unfortunately, we are sufficiently without finer feelings that we have not been stricken with shame and rushed off to our artless pal’s website in order to keep the wheels of commerce a-turning.  The paperwhites in any case smell most delicious, and are a welcome distraction from the general horrors of the week. I have spent two days so far collating marks and playing Bingo with spreadsheets. I seem to have mislaid one (smallish) group of essays, and I’m just hoping that they’re in the office. I don’t propose to panic till I find they aren’t.