NO. 3318/1
| STEM / VARIETY | COLOUR | QTY | COND. | RATE | AMOUNT |
|---|
WIRE SERVICE — MEMBER 0412-SA
SHAPE — PENCIL
COOL ROOM — PLAN
CARD MESSAGE — COPY EXACTLY
FROM ALL AT
THE GLADSTONE RD. OFFICE
BUCKETS AT BENCH EDGE · SECATEURS DOWN
ALL GOODS SOLD SUBJECT TO THE FOLLOWING: goods are sold by the stem and not by the head and no allowance whatever is made for variation in the number of open heads carried on a spray; the buyer is deemed to have inspected necks, stem bases and foliage on the floor before the goods leave the bay and no claim on condition is entertained after the goods have left the bay; boxes are charged at 40c and credited on return in sound order within seven days; no credit is given on boxes returned wet, crushed or without the stall's stencil; where goods are held in the stall's cool room at the buyer's request they are held entirely at the buyer's risk and the stall accepts no liability for temperature at any point in the chamber; water, buckets and standing space are provided as a convenience only; goods left standing on the floor of the hall after 12 noon are removed to the bay and charged storage at 30c per box per day; wire service orders are filled to the value received by this stall after deduction of the sending member's percentage and the service's commission and not to any figure quoted to the sender, and no complaint as to size of arrangement is entertained where the quoted figure and the received figure differ; accounts are strictly 30 days and interest at 9% p.a. is charged on overdue balances; delivery times are estimates and the stall does not guarantee any stated hour; the driver's signature on the tear-off portion of this note is conclusive evidence of delivery in apparent good order; conditioning additives supplied by this stall are dosed for water of approximately pH 3.5 and the stall gives no undertaking as to results in untreated mains supply; E. & O. E. FORM 14-B (PLATE CUT 1962, ELEVENTH REORDER — WILLARD & SONS PRINTERS, HINDLEY ST.).
AT THE BENCH, 11.10 a.m. — BAY 14
Forty-eight in the box. Forty-eight is not forty-eight. Sixteen of those are soft and a soft one is not a stem, so write thirty-two and write why. Not "poor", not "second". SOFT. In red. The neck's gone bacterial, it doesn't come back, the head drops off it clean inside a day. That isn't a cheap stem. That's not a stem.
You're turning that bucket wrong. Turning a bucket is tipping it out. Not topping it up. You top a bucket up you're keeping every bug that was in it and feeding them the leaf you left under the waterline. Strip to the waterline, every time, and it's not tidiness — leaf under water rots and leaf above water is where the loss goes out. Take the bottom leaves off and you've halved what the stem has to pull.
Recut under the water. Under it. Air goes up that stem the second it's cut and there's your block, right at the face, and a stem that's flopped since five doesn't want a drink, it wants an inch off the bottom while it's submerged. Water won't shift air. On the angle, and the angle isn't decoration, it's face area and it keeps the cut off the flat of the bucket floor. And if you're crushing them you've killed them. Those blades have been on this bench since the Tuesday and they don't come back either.
Right. Thirty-two. No — I had that wrong. I counted a spray as one stem and this order's costed off open heads, and a spray carries three, four, sometimes six. Count heads. Nobody counts heads, that's why every argument in this hall starts at a spray box. Recount.
And wrong again. I took the room reading at the door and it reads 4 at the door and 9 at the back and that box has been at the back since five o'clock this morning. Every hour over six is spent and it doesn't come back. Move it to the door and it's still six hours at the back. That's arithmetic, not an opinion.
Third time. I costed the trough against the new brick and the store's got the old size. Old brick doesn't fit the trough — two and a half off each end, that's the waste, and it's charged to this docket because it comes off this docket's bricks. Float them. Float them, let them go under on their own weight. You push a brick under you've left a dry core in the middle of it and a stem will find the dry core and a stem in a dry core is a stem stood in air.
The commission's taken twice. Once by the shop that took the order and once by the service for carrying it, and this bay fills to a figure it never sees quoted. I've written to the district secretary. Fourteenth of March, docket 3318/44. Nothing back.
Barrow's up the end of the bay again with the stone fruit on it. That's not a nuisance, that's a cost — fruit throws ethylene and the carnations shatter on it long before you'd smell a thing. Sweet pea, snapdragon, same. If he parks that thing at my end again I'll have Trevor shift it, and I'll say it to his face.
Three sachet jobs and they're three jobs, not one. Sugar because the bloom's got no leaves of its own and won't open without it. Acid to bring it down near three and a half, because uptake's quicker there and the bugs are slower there. And the biocide. The tap in this hall is hard and alkaline and every dose written on every packet in that store is written for somebody else's water, so it's a guess out of a packet either way.
Daffs stand on their own for four hours before they go anywhere near anything. They bleed and the bleed blocks whatever shares the bucket. Tulips keep growing after they're cut — real centimetres, overnight, and they'll pull the whole trough out of proportion by the morning while you're not looking at it. Woody stems split and long drink. Hollow ones fill and plug.
Three bays down has white gladioli. He won't sell to me. That's it, that's the whole of it, and I'm not asking twice.
The commission comes off twice, and I'll say it again — the sender's twenty and the service's seven, off a figure I never see, and I build to what lands in this bay and not to what somebody in Marion was quoted over the phone. District secretary's had that letter since March.
Nothing has gone out of this bay with a soft neck in it since I took the lease. August 1958. Not one.
Thirty-two stems, heads counted, trough's forty-six, two bricks and a trim, driver's at twelve and the service is at two. Write the wire docket, it goes back with him. And nothing goes out of here with a soft neck in it — August 1958, Kostas, and I'm not starting today.