Gladdelling notes

We had a gladdelling man once. He did the lawns and tended the plants and it was, of course, Ah Moi the Chinese cook who called him the gladdelling man. She couldn’t get her tongue around garden.

Ratnam was his name and since he found himself at the bottom of Ah Moi’s pecking order, he too was obliged to refer to himself as the Gladdelling man. It wasn’t long before we all fell into line.

Ratnam came several miles each day, pumping his stick-insect legs on his rusty stick-insect bicycle. I never saw Ratnam's kampong or his domestic arrangements but it was not surprising he had stick-insect legs and rode a rusty bicycle, because he was paid bugger-all and that was his lot.

In those uncaring days one did pay gladdelling men bugger all, and didn’t give a toss how and where they lived. I mean, there probably were people who gave a toss, but then one didn’t give a toss about them either.

Why I remember Ratnam after all these years, was his special way with maidenhair ferns. The manner of their propagation was a closely guarded secret. They appeared as if by magic, but appear they did, and covered every inch of the verandah. He talked to his ferns; he would bucket them unmercilessly and they would literally leap from their pots in abundant glory.

I tried hitting Ratnam up for a few pointers but conversations with chaps who describe themselves as gladdelling men are always apt to be problematical.

Over the years, I’ve tried my hand with Maidenhairs. I watch them wilt, I bucket them, I watch them die - not the dignified end befitting this most delicate princess of ferns, but a miserable death as a blob of algae.

It was not my job to pay him - the office did that - but I often wonder how things might have turned out had I bought Ratnam a decent bicycle.

This was first published in the Capital Times, Wellington, in 2001