I'm at the office rather early this morning for a Saturday. My body clock is all over the place at the moment because my life is being controlled by a large, green tank of water. What do you mean, Matthew? Tank of water? You're making no sense to us, man. Have you been inhaling glue? Why can't you just speak normally?
Sorry. We sterilise all our daffodil bulbs in hot water before...
they are replanted. We do a 6 tonne batch each time and they require a three hour soak at a constant 44.4 degrees C. The bulbs, in one tonne boxes, are stood onto cradles which are lowered into the tank with the JCB Loadall. The tank holds about 20 000 litres of water and is fitted with two heaters and two recirculating pumps. This process kills any nematodes.
In order to fit four batches into a day we need to get the first batch in at around 5.30am and the last one comes out at around 10.00pm. (Stick with me here, this is a bit boring but the entry gets funny at the end) We run the steriliser 7 days a week throughout the season but normally only do three batches on a Saturday and Sunday which means we are all finished by 7.00pm. Chris and I are trying to take in in turns to do late and early shifts.
Annoying I arrived at 5.45am this morning and the autostart on the heaters hadn't worked for some reason. So now I've got to wait for an hour before it gets back up to working temperature before I can put a batch of bulbs in.
My main gripe about the daffodil sterilising is that it means I have to get out of bed an hour earlier. I'm a real fan of sleeping - it's probably my favourite hobby. I function best if I can have 8 hours a night. If I get up earlier, as I have been doing, then I run out of steam by the end of the day. The "Senseo" coffee machine in the office is being put through its paces. (Hopefully that mention will mean that I will be receiving some complimentary coffee pods in Monday's post.) It has to heat nearly as much water as the bulb sterilising plant at this time of year.
I suppose the dairy farmers amongst you will think that I'm a whinging pom (You're Australian dairy farmers now, are you?) and they are probably right. It's actually quite nice to get up early, providing you aren't the dairy cow of course - being woken up early and handled "down below" with cold hands is a specialist form of entertainment.
Anyway as I drive into work each morning, I always meet the same people, at the same time, in the same location. Like the bloke in glasses driving the Toyota Carina at 20mph and the woman walking her dog who looks like Rick Wakeman (the woman, not the dog - the dog doesn't look like anyone famous). Normally she is walking back towards her house. At this new, earlier time, she is just coming out of the house and zipping up her colourful ski jacket (She's a bit of a style icon, is Rick). The bloke in the Carina is nowhere to be seen. He's presumably still brushing his teeth, slowly..
It's a bit like Groundhog Day. Meeting these people ahead of the normal schedule, makes me feel as though someone has wound the clock backwards, I feel ahead of the game for a change. It's a time of year when I don't get to travel very far so all these subtle differences are well appreciated.
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