Day Three: Strings Attached (and the Onion Chronicles)

 

“Nothing says glamour like a 7 a.m. roll call and a wheelbarrow full of onions.”

The workday begins at 7 a.m. sharp. We all line up outside the staff room door like schoolchildren waiting for inspection, while George doles out our daily instructions. There’s a curious sense of anticipation in the air—it’s a bit like unwrapping gifts, except the “gifts” are less iPads and more shovels.

My marching orders: go with Big Pete. Now, before you imagine a burly man with forearms like tree trunks, let me clarify. The “big” part refers to his height—at least, I think it does. (There are two Pete's, after all: Big Pete and Little Pete. Simple enough, though I dread to think what nickname I might be christened with in due course.)

Unlike the rest of us, both Pete's seem to operate on a higher plane of gardening authority. No instructions from George for them. Which led me to suspect my task for the day had already been plotted, and Pete was simply my escort into the mysterious world of the walled garden.

Once there, I was presented with a wheelbarrow and pointed toward an open shed. Inside, a ceiling full of onions dangled like botanical chandeliers. They’d been drying there long enough to look like shrivelled old gentlemen in a Turkish bath. My mission: string them up in true French style.

Big Pete kindly demonstrated the first one. A cord nailed to the rafters, a bit of leaf-twisting trickery, and voilà—a chain of onions more beautiful than a string of pearls (depending on your aesthetic). Then it was my turn. Each onion required peeling off its flaky outer layers (a bit like undressing a reluctant toddler) before being twisted into place. One by one, they climbed the cord until—ta-da!—a complete string was born. Oddly satisfying.

Half an Onion String.

By the end of the day, I had completed eleven and a half strings. (Yes, the half string counts. Don’t argue.) I even learned the trick of grading the onions by size—otherwise they looked like a drunken conga line. Big Pete, with his convenient altitude advantage, hung the finished strings in the storage shed. I would have needed ladders, but he simply reached up like a man casually plucking stars from the sky.

It was a quiet day, but a good one. There’s a special kind of pride in seeing row upon row of onions lined up, knowing almost all of them were my work. A humble triumph, perhaps, but a triumph nonetheless.

Tomorrow? Rumour has it I’ll be back outdoors. I just hope it doesn’t involve trousers by the ha-ha again. 暈