Almost Pulped By A Pilot

As far as we know, time always moves forward. Every second that passes can never be returned to, and each breath we take is precious.

In spite of this fact, there have been moments in my life that I wish I could rewind, and undo the results of what I like to call: "My Unhinged Mouth".

For example, I once walked into a hotel elevator, and pressed the button for floor eight. As the doors began to close, a flustered man in a pilot's uniform rushed in and pressed for floor nine. Suddenly realizing that this was not the level he wanted, he cursed and pressed ten.

To break the embarrassing silence as we waited for the doors to close, the man let me know that he'd just jumped out of a different elevator on the other side of the lobby that only went to floors fifteen and above. He hoped that this one would finally take him to his hotel room.

Pointing to his uniform, I asked him what airline he worked for. He told me and I instantly forgot. Instead, I joked:

"Gee. I hope you fly your plane better than you work an elevator!"

"Excuse me?" he asked sternly.

"Errm..." I floundered. "The elevator. I hope that your… ability with aircraft controls is... better than your grasp of elevator... buttons..."

Rephrasing the quip somehow didn't make the insult wittier. Fortunately for me, the man was probably coming to the end of a long day. Given the choice to either punch my freckled English nose, or simply say: "Huh!", luckily he opted for the latter.

"Huh," said the pilot, as I tried to will myself back in time.

I guess we all say things we regret, but my most awkward blunder happened at the moment I met one of the world's greatest entertainment executives.

In a previous essay I wrote about my extremely fortunate journey into the London animation industry, where I found myself working on the movie: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

At first, my bank refused to deposit my paycheck because it had a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. When I explained that I was working for Disney Animation they gave me a doubtful sideways glance, and when I said that my other boss was Steven Spielberg, they absolutely refused to believe me.

I couldn't believe I was working on this movie either. And the idea that I was about to actually MEET Steven Spielberg was almost too exciting to handle.

He was officially scheduled to tour our office the next day, and I was working late. The room was dark, except for the lamp that shone around my animation desk. My mind was focused on drawings of animated rabbits, and as headphones piped music into my ears, I was definitely, absolutely and completely unprepared for one of the world’s greatest entertainment executives to be standing to my left, asking me something.

Suddenly aware that someone had approached my desk, I switched the music off, and removed my headphones. Then I assessed the situation carefully, and thought of something really amazing and intelligent to say that would make a great first impression.

“You’re... Steven Spielberg,” I said weakly, in the strongest voice I could muster; to which he politely replied:

“Yes. I know I am.”

I would give anything to rewind that moment, and do it over so that I could say something more impressive; but time always moves forward.

For many people, this 2020 Coronapocalypse year of home isolation, social distancing and mask wearing has been mentally and physically exhausting. I frequently hear people complaining that one day blurs slowly into the next, or wishing that the year would move faster and go away completely. As readers of my past articles have seen, I’ve sheltered from this kind of stress, by immersing myself in my home garden. Here, I have grown a variety of produce, with varying degrees of success but lots of entertainment. The garden does not think about pandemics; time moves forward and the cycle of growth continues.

Obviously, the cold December weather is now bringing most of my plants to a halt, but there are still some things to keep a gardener's brain engaged.

Root crops are an excellent cool-season vegetable, and the white icicle radishes have done very well.

I also planted baby bok choy as a test in a small pot, and this seems to be thriving. Same with the mustard greens. Other leafy vegetables like spinach, arugula, endive and Swiss chard also do well in December.

Unfortunately, due to the unseasonably warm weather we just had, the carrots I planted a couple of months ago produced lots of green leaves, but no roots. I’m going try another batch now that it’s cold

 It cannot be a coincidence that these nutritious and vitamin packed vegetables mature at a time in the year when our bodies need additional energy resources to take us through winter.

Meanwhile, my raspberry plant has spent most of this year socially distanced in a quiet corner of the garden. I watered it occasionally, and other than that, it didn’t seem to care whether the sun shone or the rain fell. By the end of the summer it had grown to about five feet tall with green stems armed with sharp thorns and clusters of serrated leaves, but it produced absolutely no fruit.

Oh, and it was also stolen. (Or rather, it was “swapped”).

For those of you dear and loyal readers who have been following my adventures since the very first article, you may remember that in spring I uprooted a young poplar tree that had started to grow in my garden. I took it to a nearby forest, where I re-planted it near some other young poplar seedlings.

This wasn’t exactly an act of generosity, or done in the full spirit of conservation. I did this to ease a nagging guilt, because I had recently taken a small raspberry shoot from the forest, and transplanted it into my garden.

At the time, I thought that this evil swap would result in a feast of raspberries later in the year, but I didn’t realize that what I had taken, was a “primocane”.

Raspberry bushes are perennial, meaning that they come back every year from the same core, but parts of the plant actually work on a two-year life cycle. The first year in the cycle is when the primocanes grow. Some varieties of raspberries have been developed to produce fruit at the primocane stage, but most bushes develop fruit only on the second year growth, called “floricanes”.

I find it comforting to know that while the human chaos of 2020 was unfolding, my pilfered raspberry bush was patiently playing the long game.

I noticed this week, that the green primocane stem has turned a reddish brown. It will now go through a dormant winter period, and re-emerge to flower and grow fruit during the second growing season.

Hopefully by that time, this COVID world will be returning to a new and healthy normal. Then I will feast on raspberries, and maybe go back and say some carefully chosen words of respect to the poplar tree.