Glad they had done what they'd done to the garden

Now that the days are greying and cooling despite the heat I've been remembering those times when I've watched from too great a remove, such as when those people ahead of me in the queue at Woolworths had managed to get the woman at the till to tell them about how a lightning strike had cracked straight down into her garden in Woodford the evening before -- and how there had been a terrifying ten or more minutes when she and her husband had thought that their free roaming peacock had died -- the storm was that bad -- but then Matey had come honking through the sheets of rain when they went out looking -- and how her husband had been glad that they had done what they'd done to the garden so they could make the most of the rain -- the folding of her hands as she waited for the people to pay even as they were smiling and nodding. But then she to me: do you have fly buys? And me: no.