Garden obstacles

Well thank you, Briar Rose Garden Centre for putting up a notice yesterday telling the Grit family that you'd be closed today. Twenty minute drive and no notice, actually. Today or yesterday. As it was with Wyevale (another 30 minute drive), Pagoda Garden centre (add 10 minutes) and B&Q (another 10 minutes). At B&Q I wasn't the only idiot driving around in petrol fumes, wasting the planet. A constrant stream of expectant DIY-ers with misinformation about B&Q opening hours were driving through the car park, pausing to read the hand-written note sellotaped to the door, and driving off again. Probably to Wyevale.

Now how did this happen? Has the world changed? I thought that Easter weekend was the biggest garden and DIY weekend of the entire year. Isn't this the weekend that A&E departments are stuffed full of folks who fall off ladders and cut their arms open with hedge trimmers?

Dig says it's probably the work of the Christian right or the anarchist left or that we might have been taken over by the Taliban since he hasn't heard any news for a few days. It couldn't possibly be the work of the Sunday Trading Act from 1994 that states any shop above 3,000 sq ft must close on Easter Sunday. I mean, how ridiculous is that? Don't these people responsible for the government of this land know that I have Shark, Tiger and Squirrel all expecting a medieval English herb garden and a Celtic roundhouse by four o'clock this afternoon or else, and I just wasted one quarter of my available project time driving to a set of closed glass doors?

Well, it's put some grit in my day, that's for sure. I've rummaged around looking for long sticks for hours to stake the Celtic roundhouse up and I've had to throw a bucket of water over Squirrel. Shark and Tiger moved too quick.

And I'm jolly well not going to any garden centre or garden department of B&Q tomorrow. Because tomorrow is digging out the vegetable patch, giving Buddha a scrub and clearing out the little house at the bottom of the garden so I can hide in there with a cup of coffee when I've had enough of places like B&Q.