Flowers to Brighten Up the Yard

After suffering the stir-crazy effects of marking, with the rain drumming on the roof and stodged-up with too much caraway seed cake, I decided to take a trip to garden-centre country, the other side of Enfield, to buy some flowers to brighten up the yard.
The rain thrashed against the car windscreen; new ponds stretched across the roads. The streets were deserted and the car park at the garden centre was empty.
I was just about the only person there; I eavesdropped a conversation between a very smart blonde middle-aged lady and a politely spoken teenage lad about cast iron chickens.
'That's a rooster', said the young chap.
'And this?', enquired the lady.
'That's a laying hen', replied the young chap.
Smart in their dark green uniforms, they continued to unpack the ornaments from their yellow wood-shavings in companionable silence, walled in by thick cardboard boxes.
A very grumpy looking man sat with his arms folded at a table in the cafe opposite his partner, grey with discontent and stifled aggression. I wheeled my red plastic basket past them, bumping over a drain and toppling off the strawberry plant that I'd balanced on the top.
At the counter, a sweet autistic man asked me if I'd like a trolley.
'No thank you', I said.
'Would you like a trolley?'
'No thank you'.
He waited.
'Would you like a trolley?'
Aware that I had got the answer wrong the first two times, I replied, 'Yes please', and he went out into the rain to get me one.
We packed the strawberry plant, the bag of grit and a miniature tree into the trolley, and off we went into the car park.
'It's raining', I said.
'It's raining', he said, 'I will get wet on the way home'.
He helped me to put the plants into the car and set off back through the rain to the building.
It wasn't till I got home that I realised I had not bought any flowers to brighten up the yard.