Is it just ME?

Or is it impossible to buy the right blooms?

THE florist’s shop in my nearest train station is a rhapsody in blue. But it’s not the blue of forgetme-nots, hyacinths or bluebell woods.

No, the blue of the tulips in their buckets of water is Slush Puppy blue, lurid sweetshop pick ’n’ mix blue. Who buys these blooms?

You might say the same about all sorts of flowers. Carnations with their frillygarter petals. Scentless gerberas. Waxy poinsettias at Christmas. Anything from a petrol station forecourt.

Thought flowers were an easy-please present? Not a bit of it. Never mind the faux pas of taking a hostess wine or chocolates when she’s given them up for Lent, there is no snobbery quite like flower snobbery.

One of my girlfriends is violently against orchids: too easy to buy now, each one exactly like the other, two for a tenner.

She picked a fight with her boyfriend when he bought

A bouquet an easy-please gift? Not a bit. There’s nothing quite like flower snobbery

one for her birthday. Didn’t he know her at all?

I can’t see a long-stemmed rose without thinking: ‘Naff, overdone, such a cliche.’ I am dismayed by freesias, gladioli and sunflowers, but smitten by snowdrops, crocuses and sweet peas.

Friends who are getting married have reported secateurs at dawn over the choice of wedding flowers.

The bride has set her heart on lilies, her mother can’t think of anything more common, the mother-inlaw wants hydrangeas: no one is on speaking terms.

Tulips used to be foolproof. There was a stately sense of history, a reminder of the ‘tulipomania’ of the 17th century when a single bulb could bankrupt a man.

Now they come in such garish colours and with tight, bullet-like heads that never open properly.

My boyfriend bought me a cactus and I managed to stab myself on a spike. Next time, I’m hoping for purple irises.