I picked two roses recently. One was in a charming country lane near Santander in Northern Spain. The second was 10 minutes ago.
Both of the roses were stolen. You may have already concluded from reading this blog that I am a bit of an arse. Personally, I prefer the word ‘wagon’.
We have roses galore in our garden. Most of them have scrambled up above the tree-line and are a mixture of red and yellow on the same petal, which is pretty and cheerful to spot from the desk I have here in what is laughingly called The Zen Room. The Zen Room is the box room of the house, repurposed from a bedroom to be my ‘office’. Why it’s an ironic name for any office of mine is because I am a hopelessly disorganised person who somehow manages to turn blind eyes to all of the clutter that accumulates daily from any kind of purposeful activity.
You open a reference book, you’re supposed to put it back on its shelf (not I). You give up on the worthy stuff and and find the fabulous shade of black enamel for your nails, you’re supposed to put that back on its shelf downstairs in the utility room where your better half even affixed a shelf onto an unsuspecting wall so your cosmetics have somewhere to live. Not I.
Cut to the chase Áine, you swiped two roses that were not yours to pluck because you found they had the heady perfume you associate with beautiful old-fashioned roses. Ours are too high and the ones planted by the Tidy Towns Committee at the Well Road in Swords, though a wondrous white full bloom; have no discernible scent at all so you deigned to leave them in the public place where they belong.
There’s no point in showing you the picture of today’s stolen rose, because you won’t be able to smell it.