Rain pounds on the roof, and our only customer sits at the bar, sipping a tonic water. He doesn’t mind the mess, or that I am on another table, typing up this weeks’s blog.
Guests at this stage of the year need easy supplies or the briefest of respite. They risk the Scar in spacecrafts designed for planet hopping and tourist runs. Vintage models with rusty parts. If we drive past them in the fern cart, they pull their coats round their faces, or hide in an airlock. Their shame is more frustrating than anything else. I wish they would pop in for a whisky or two. I am running short of stories.
These ships brings parnsipheads. They carry deliveries from weird backwaters in storage containers full of holes. They buy ships without checking the nooks and crannies. Over the next three months there will be ten times the number of undead across Buber as the rest of the year combined.
If enough of them get a whiff of the plants inside, or make a run for the trees on the other side of the bar, we might get knocked over. I have my farmers, but for many days to come I am alone. A Big hit mean big trouble.s
So I am shoring up the bar.
Our security measures are long used and well tested. Temporary fencing forms a funnel around the building, with the aim to split and confuse crowds. I leave heaps of grass cuttings and vegetables peelings at strategic points across the planet, far away from anything of value. The glue traps discussed in a previous blog are full, and checked every morning.
But they may still descend upon us. So using an old school hammer and nails I board up the ground floor windows, and barricade the back door. My usual cocktail spot is out of action, so last week I picked a wall near the stairs to my bedroom.
There is one way out and one way in. It is not the red carpet for guests, but the handful of arrivals appreciate the situation. The whisky flows just the same.
I keep a crowbar next to me at all times. After morning coffee, I patrol the fence in a circuit, and dispatch anything unwelcome. It is no more difficult than weeding.
My backs aches every day of the autumn and winter. Thank goodness the farmers deal with the crops. But I can knock on the boarded up windows, and know we are safe for another day.
