I’ve been busted before for bringing artificial stuff home, like a blooming bouquet of mimosa to cheerfully celebrate besottedness without knowing the receiving party had a serious allergy for them, so I don’t know what I was thinking when visiting our local market yesterday to buy food, only to get irresistibly side-tracked by these pink-purple Barberton Daisies, Madeliefies in Afrikaans, which might explain a lot, my love.
Because of the sudden nightly frost this year’s Spring equinox brought in, they ended up in our windowsill, nosed at and bitten by Young Mec, eliciting Ivory’s comment that “There is a distinct smell”, merrily suggesting something fishy about me introducing them to our existence, regardless or on top of my preference for its color.
We live under rather exceptional circumstances, with at least half of our hamlet’s population being openly gay, thus we’re hardly considered a minority. Our first introduction with not being the only ones in the village, by friendly being referred to as ‘the other gentlemen’, instantly revolved around their fear of being pushed from Their Royal Seat, the throne they were put on for years and years, having nurtured the prettiest, most extravagantly flowering garden of the area.
Covid has sadly ripped them from the celebration of their continuing success story, where we would all applaud them whilst they were having their picture taken for our local magazine, but the title has remained theirs across the board anyway, as it should be.
We all have joked around a lot about organizing a village pride parade, knowing very well that not having a big audience would for sure take every bit of fun out of the effort of flaunting our preferences. The layout of our hamlet, with a total of four houses lived in, but only three up our hill, accounts for even a bigger contrast with ordinariness, yet reveals and propagates a similar message: it doesn’t matter anyway you look at it.
Exorbitant exposure and a certain gentle concealment have turned out to be the cornerstones of even a small paradise like our Les Pierres, where shame is given a run for its money and outspokenness rules, in all the colors of its rainbows.