The topiary trees and the customers: a cautionary tale

Why is everything TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) does the retail equivalent of wearing a fur coat and no knickers? It looks good on the surface, (if you like that sort of thing), but underneath it’s all total disorganised carnage.

(OK, probably best to pop a quick note in here: I have no idea what your nether regions look like, and I’m certainly not saying that everyone’s knickerless loveliness is disorganised carnage. I mean, it might be, but that’s your business, not mine. No, this is simply a metaphor for how generally shit TBE is about the stuff behind the gorgeous image. But you get that, don’t you?).

Definitely best kept covered........Photo: Shop Girl Tales.

So, the latest idea is two 5ft high, puffball shaped topiary trees, one either side of the doorway to the Out Of Favour (OOF) shop.

I can’t deny they look gorgeous. I can’t deny they make the tatty outside of the shop look attractive. And I can’t deny the customers really like them.

Unfortunately, so do the wasps.

At first it was only one or two, and they were easy to avoid. But then they told all their mates, and now it’s like wasp central every day.

Attack of the Killer Humbugs. Photo: Shop Girl Tales

The customers are afraid to come in. 

I can hear them, shrieking outside the shop doorway and running away, (I feel like shrieking outside the shop doorway and running away every morning, but that’s a different story…). 

I’m afraid to go out. 

The outside stock can sod off. It could all be scooped up and whisked away by thieves and over-zealous, blue rinsed charity shop volunteers, I don’t care, I’m not going out there any more than I absolutely have to. 

Those hovering balls of crankiness fly around my head and up my skirt.

One of the bastards even stung me as I instinctively went to swat away whatever had landed on my leg. 

It’s like living in a scary yellow and black snow storm. 

With stings.

I blame TBE.

Oh come on, of course I do.

Only TBE would buy two trees about to go into the sap overdrive stage of their life cycle, (Basically, the production of crack cocaine for wasps stage), and stick them either side of the main thoroughfare into the shop.

In effect, TBE has installed two guard-post hangouts for hangry, sap-crazed stinging machines with territory issues. Marvellous.

In true TBE, ‘shut the stable door after the horse has bolted,’ style, she has given me various inadequate tools with which to try and deal with the buzzing wasp-ball door furniture:

·        Wasp spray. I haven’t used this. I’m not stupid. I’m not making the bloody things any angrier than they already are.

·        Wasp traps: These are basically sugar liquid in a non-escapable hollow plastic hanging ball. They can’t get out and drown in their own choice of nectar. Probably not a bad way to go. The only trouble is, I think these nectar balls are attracting a completely different set of wasps to the ones that prefer tree sap; there’s more of the bloody things flying around, not less. 

     Pretty much a fail there then. 

·       Washing up liquid. Yep, apparently a strong solution of washing up liquid sprayed onto the trees reduces their sap ooziness to basically zero. Less sap means less wasps, theoretically. Actually, this stuff works surprisingly well; it has actually reduced the sap on the trees. The only trouble is, it’s so messy to apply (especially if there’s any sort of draft around), that all the outside stock displays now resemble the pebble-dashed front of a 1970s semi-detached suburban house. 

     Ah well.