LONGIFLORUMS

It must be said that the light of my life and absolute better half does have a favourite flower and, because she does have a favourite flower, I have, over the years, become something of an expert at tracking down supplies of them at significant key points in the average calendar year.

You know… Birthdays… Christmas… and, yes, I’m even shallow enough these days to be hoodwinked by society’s pressure into forking out for Valentine’s Day too…

Actually, because that favourite flower happens to be the Lily, especially if possible, the white Longiflorum Lily, Valentine’s Day can prove a little bit tricky on the whole “buying those favourite flowers” front, because people seem to have come to associate Lilies with more sombre occasions and so they tend to get tucked away at that time of year.

Sometimes I sometimes have to go searching around a bit, fighting my way through the sad and defeated-seeming crowds of bewildered-looking people who feel compelled to fork out for the cliché of the “Dozen Red Roses” or the extortionate “Valentine Bouquets” to show how much they care, and not spend an evening in their own personal purgatory, in order to find my flower of choice.

Sometimes they are simply not to be found and the compromise of the “Oriental Lily” has to be considered instead, although preferably not ones in that much maligned colour of pink which might have lost me brownie points in the old days, but which has now become more tolerated, so long as it’s only in flowers…

Still, I have managed, in my own small way, to become a minor expert in tracking down a bunch of lilies when necessary and, despite one Christmas having to dabble with a “proper” florist because of time and weather constraints, and therefore discovering that the going rate could be as much as three quid a stem, I must admit that the supermarkets do a damned fine job of supplying a decent bunch for a reasonable price, and which will last far longer than the average sad bunch of colourful blooms that you might find on the average garage forecourt.

Okay, in terms of air miles, they might not be quite such a good idea, as they seem to be mass produced in African greenhouses and flown over, but in terms of value for money, they seem to be fabulous.

I’ve bought bunches which have managed to survive a full three weeks before finally being consigned to the compost bin.

One of the supermarkets, the one with the four letter name that begins and ends with the same vowel, seems to be particularly good at consistently providing me with very impressive Longiflorum Lillies, ones which actually come into bloom rather than dropping their pods, and then  open up beautifully to an almost “Royal Horticultural Society” standard, and, because I’ve been buying them for several years now, I think that I can quite categorically state that, of all the supermarkets that now sell flowers - i.e. pretty much all of them - it does seem to me to be the ones from that particular chain which are consistently the best...

If you’re looking, that is. After all, you might still believe that buying such things from such a common and vulgar place as a supermarket shows me to be absolutely the oik that you know I think I am and, do you know what…?

You’d probably be quite right…

But, you should also know what… I don’t really care. They make us and, most importantly, the beloved very happy indeed and that, really, makes it all worthwhile…