Working as a florist isn’t a bed of roses (excuse the pun). People think I spend my entire day drifting around in a soft-filter moment; in fact there are some aspects of the job which are genuinely gruelling. Early starts at the market three times a week, loading the van by myself and then driving back to the shop, through the morning rush hour, means that sometimes it feels as though I’ve done a day’s work before we’ve even opened the shop door. Adam is right, being a florist has made me strong and fit – there’s a lot of heavy lifting. Besides the physical aspect, being a florist demands tact and patience and sometimes a bit of mind reading; you wouldn’t believe how many customers seem only to know what they don’t want but have no clue as to what they do want.

Still, this week I’m grateful for the gruelling and absorbing aspects of the job. I volunteer to take Ben’s turn to go to market, I lug endless buckets of water around the shop as though I’m performing some sort of medieval penance, I rearrange the stock every day, I bone up on the life span of exotic flowers, even those we rarely sell, and I leap on customers the moment they cross the

The first customer is a slight, unassuming woman with a no-nonsense approach to organizing her wedding flowers. She compares the prices of roses and carnations for buttonholes. She dismisses lilies because the orange stamen stains. She listens as I reel off a few options for her bouquet. It takes just twenty minutes for her to make her selection. She plumps for tight white roses for everything. She places her order for her small, simple wedding: a bouquet for bride and maid of honour, half a dozen buttonholes, and a corsage for her mum and the groom’s mum. She digs out a pen and a small notebook from the bottom of her handbag. She makes a neat tick in the margin next to the word flowers and notes down the figure I gave her as an estimate. As she leaves the shop I envy her restraint and contentment.