I visited my old boss recently. She’s a high-powered local government high-up with a background in management voodoo and a coolly dispassionate approach to blood-letting. She doesn’t take advice, so I thought I would take her a present instead. We had to meet to discuss opposing sides of an argument about land use planning; they had put together a closely reasoned argument about letting a huge brown-field site lie fallow rather than allowing the creation and retention of a considerable amount of employment, and I thought they were stupid, parochial and small-minded.

So a present right from the get-go would have a nicely unsettling effect, a kind of tooth-fairy approach to the old maxim about keeping your enemies closer. That posed me with the problem of what to get; my old boss is a bean counter and as unworldly as a Greek mountain monk. I discounted food; as far as I was aware, she lived off coffee and nervous energy. Clothing wouldn’t do either; as befits a senior council official, she wore clothing that was neutral to the point of invisibility, so a gaily coloured scarf would have been like bringing her a bottle of ether and two straws, or half a pound of Moroccan black. And that thought led me on to another, which saw me roll up to her office door bearing a pot plant. Or more properly, a Pot Plant.

Thanks to internet auctions and a burgeoning Chinese economy, it’s possible to buy just about anything conceivable nowadays, and a fair few things that I would have considered inconceivable. Not obvious, garish things only a teenager would consider subversive – guns, knives, explosives recipes and the like – but genuinely invidious and dark items, like capsuled underwear (pre-owned and worn), Bible action figures and electronic puppies that die if you don’t ‘feed’ them. I’d foud, after a little diligent searching and some truly weird on-line literal translations, a plastic imitation Cannabis sattiva plant, which for an extra £4.95 arrived just three days later and in plenty of time for my meeting. Wrapped in some old pages of the South China Daily, it looked every inch the fake plastic botanical, so I obtained a plastic pot, and a pleasant looking steel-grey ceramic planter to make it look like a real gift, and assembled the lot with genuine potting compost. Completed, it took on the look of a real plant.

As soon as her door opened, I could see her eyes were drawn to it. She already had a couple of plants atop a filing cabinet, and in a corner of her desk, so I felt comfortable the gift would be acceptable. Pleasantries were exchanged, and I offered up the plant as planned. She was delighted, or at least went to enough trouble to fake delight that I would consider polite, and I demurred with a comment about having picked it up from a friend who’s big on his horticulture, and that apparently it was ideal for an office because it doesn’t need watering too often. She placed it proudly on the end of a bookshelf untroubled by literature, and we set to on our discussion.

The meeting was boring, and not much was achieved – it takes heavy duty equipment to pull someone out of an entrenched position, and this was only an opening skirmish. We left, agreeing to disagree, and looking forward to the next round. So, sat in a prominent position in her office, there is what looks to the world like a Cannabis plant. The incalculable in all this is which gets identified first – the artificiality, or the purported species. I’m giving 2/1 that her PA, a young woman who knows what’s what, to be the one to identify it as grass first; but she was away when I delivered it. Maybe one of the local Constabulary will pick it up – I know they have periodical meetings about community safety, and the Scourge of Drugs, so that would be interesting. Given that it is a strong facsimile of the real plant, I’m confident that the species will out first, which should cause a stir. With luck, it will be either a visiting dignitary or a member of the press who spots it first. I’m guessing that the nylon nature of its foliage will follow on shortly afterwards, unless it’s guessed out by a councillor who sneaks back to pinch a leaf for smoking.

I lay a watch on the A&E departments, and the local rag, and sit back to wait.