Four Quid Pro Grow

A lovely summers day and a coach full of pensioners are heading down a lovely country road in Dorset. They are having a sing song .

The coach then passes a Garden Centre & Café .The pensioners see it and instantly kick up a fuss indicating to the driver by pointing that they want to go back.

The driver shakes his head in dismay as he tries to execute a three point turn in a very narrow lane. As he performs this several cars and a tractor are held up and they let him know with irate horn punching and the pressure is getting to the driver.

For their part the pensioners are all jolly and giggling conspiratorially as they rummage through their bags and coats and pull out plastic bags and pruning shears.

One woman even stands up in the aisle discreetly waving a trowel at seat height much to the amusement of all the other passengers.

The coach then pulls up on the Garden Centres gravel car park and stops.

The Boss of the garden centre is at the gate as the pensioners disembark. They all troop past him waving and nodding at him in a friendly manner.
For his part as they've past him the Boss smiles with a 'Who are you lot kidding' look.

The pensioners then pass the café and disgustedly point at the prices on the menu board as they pass, they also pull faces and shake their heads .

The pensioner do the same at the shop window pointing at the prices of a small cactus in the window marked £4 with a note saying 'Cheapest in Dorset' again the pensioners show their disdain.

The pensioners then split up and start acting like discreet locusts all over the place.

A young girl in a body warmer has been watching the pensioners from the shop window. She smiles and then hurriedly walks through the centre and over to the Boss.

Once by the Boss the girl points at all the trees and bushes rustling and swaying and smiles. The boss then makes a few mimed movements of him lifting a box. He then points for her to go back to the shop.

As she leaves so the boss walks across the gravel toward the coach.

The girl returns to the shop all the plants she passes are moving due to the rustling pensioners.

The girl n enters the shop and crouches down behind the counter and reappears with a large box marked SAGA LOUTS.

She removes all the items around the till marked f1 and puts them in the box then she surrounds the till with the small cactus's marked for £4 .

She then takes out of the box a sign that we only see the back of and replaces a sign next to the till that says ' Please Feel Free to use our facilities' which also has a man and woman WC icons. She replace that sign with the other and then puts the one she took down into the box .

The pensioners have filled their boots and begin to troop out waving at the Boss as they do so like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.

As the last one is gone the Boss rubs his hands together and goes into the café and turns the urn on and wipes the prices of the menu board. He then grabs the chalk on a string and puts new higher prices on it.

Once he's done that he starts laying out cup and saucers upside down on the counter and gets a large teapot and starts putting tea bags in it. He pops in four bags at first and then smiles to himself as he puts the fifth and sixth bags back into the box.

He then grabs a step ladder and a sign that was down the side of the fridge. The sign is on a piece of string he climbs the step ladder and hangs it on a hook that's already there. We don't see the sign.

The coach driver is turning the coach over to no avail and the pensioners looked pissed off. He then turns his head back to the passengers and shakes it.

The passengers disembark and stand around on the gravel as the driver makes a call on his mobile. As he finishes the call, he shakes his head and points to his watch.

The pensioners are even more pissed off as they look at their own watches. They then all look at each other and decide en-mass to troop back into the garden centre.

The first thing the pensioners do is enter the café and sit and the tables and start getting out their flasks and sandwiches.

The Boss coughs and as the pensioners turn and he points to the sign on the string that he hung up. It reads.
NO FOOD OR DRINK TO BE CONSUMED ON THESE PREMISES OTHER THAN THOSE PURCHASED FROM THE COUNTER.

The pensioners troop up to the counter, they can see that the prices are freshly written in chalk. The Boss sees this and shrugs his shoulder as they reluctantly start to pay for teas.

The first one who tastes their tea almost spits it out likes its cats piss as the Boss looks at the box of tea bags behind the counter and smiles.

The café is full to the brim with pensioner sipping tea with irate faces. The Boss smiles then wipes his hands on tea towel and walks into the shop.

In the shop the young girls is busy at the till selling the cactus to pensioners who then join the line of other ones who are disgustedly holding their cactus. .

The boss then watches as a pensioner enters the shop from the café and joins the toilet queue without purchasing a cactus.

The girl spots him instantly and points at the sign by her till. that reads 'Toilets for the use of SHOP paying customers only.NO EXCEPTIONS'.
Defensively the man points behind him to indicate that he was a café customer.

The girl shakes her head and then uses her long finger nails to sarcastically point at the words 'SHOP' and 'NO EXCEPTIONS' . The pissed off pensioner then buys the last cactus and joins the toilet queue.

The girl sees the boss and uses an open arm sweeping gesture to indicate that all the cacti have been sold.

The Boss winks and then walks back through the café where he can see that the pensioners are all sat around empty cups with no intention of paying for refills.

The Boss then walks out the café and across the gravel car park and discreetly takes a potato out of the coaches exhaust pipe.
He goes to the front of the coach where the driver is sat reading a newspaper. The boss knocks on the side of the coach and does a twirly key motion. The driver shakes his head, the boss does the key twirling again only more firmly. The driver tries and the coach starts first time.

The Boss and the girl are at the gate waving off the very surly looking pensioners a few of whom put two fingers up at him which he laughs off.

The coach drives off and the Boss and girl go to re enter the garden centre another coach full of pensioners passes and the coach brakes slam on .

As this happens the Boss rubs his hands together and rushes into the café while the girl runs into the potting sheds and starts putting more cacti onto a large wooden tray.

I like the title.:)
This is not a criticism but I prefer the shorter dialogue type stuff.
But that's just me ,I prefer plays to novels.
There's usually less reading involved.

Thanks fr the read John, this is a version of a post I did today called SAGA Louts. This ones an exercise in writing a silent script I'm not even sure if I have it right. This same sketch is in SAGA LOUTS only that's in my normal dialogue format.
I know you never criticise you just say what you see as wrong or could be changed, that s not criticism it's insight.

For this to work, I think you'd need to a) make it less verbose and b) put some sort of format on it.
Certainly split it into scenes with EXT/INT headings, and maybe SFX

I wouldn't even split it into EXT/INT, I'd have it all take place inside the cafe shop. For me it comes alive inside, the rest is padding.

Thanks for the advice Lazzard I just Googled 'Verbose' and it hits the nail on the head. Chip I think your setting would work better'
I'm not use to laying this type of script out.
Even I can see that its clunky and way way to extended word wise and it would certainly benefit from being laid out better with directions breaking it up as it feels like one long clumsy paragraph .
Once again thank you both for the read and for taking time to offer your advice as I can see its solid.