The Post that shall be Nameless – Because I Forgot!

There’s an unintended horticultural theme to this week’s blogs – probably influenced by the impossible loveliness of the Chelsea Flower Show. For readers not familiar with this bastion of British blooms, Chelsea is the creme de la creme of Flower Shows for growers and designers alike. All jingoism aside, it is pretty spectacular.

Anyhoo, there I was last night thinning out some seedlings whose identity was unknown because I forgot to label the seed tray and an idea occurred to me – the growing process has much in common with developing ideas. At least it does in my world.

When seedlings are young they need light touch handling and when an idea is young I find there is nothing more likely to make it cock up its heels and snuff it than grabbing it full on and mangling it prematurely into a form for which it is patently unready. No, seedling ideas need time to develop their true form just as plant seedlings need time to develop their true leaves before too much handling.

As with seedlings, when an idea has matured a bit, that’s the time to thin out a weakling and either consign it to the compost or re-pot it and let it develop a bit further. But if it’s grown well you move it on, giving it more space to develop and feeding it with liberal doses of “what ifs?” and “how abouts?”.
This is the time when many ideas will wilt and die; some will have grown leggy and ungainly because you forgot about them; some you will bring into the world of drafts, revisions and rejections where they will finally fade away. However, if you’re lucky, talented and green-fingered, just a few will grow on to become a stunning creation, worthy of that coveted Chelsea Gold Medal and then you can sit back and smell the roses.

Don’t Come Into the Garden, Maud

There was a time when Sunday morning was for lie-ins, love-ins and breakfast in bed. Now it’s the time for weigh-ins as I check the damage a week of hedonism and TV dinners has done.

Yesterday the pointer on the scales (don’t like digital you can’t cheat) hovered treacherously where no needle’s been before and for the fourth week running I decided Something Must Be Done.

An hour later with hoe in hand and a merry whistle on lips I headed for the garden. Good exercise to be had in the garden; all that push and pull, bend and stretch and copious cups of coffee and chocolate cake for energy. Sorry, old habits, I mean of course sports water and a luscious dry Ryvita.

I set to in the Home for Distressed Fruit and Vegetables aka the veggie garden. This is part of my cunning plan to pay for as little in life as possible. Horrendous cold winds and an excess of early planting zeal on my part meant that I was faced with the reproachful remnants of peas and beans; raspberry and blueberry bushes afflicted with frost-bite; early carrot crops that had clearly turned tail and are probably now rootling their way through the earth’s core to Australia.

By teatime, I’d fettled the place up; bullied the peas into standing up straight; strung up the broad beans and searched out every bit of couch grass, bitter cress and anything else I didn’t like the look of. I pounced on any lurking snail which was then dropped in a bucket and disposed of.

My last inspired act was to bestrew all the plants with something called “soil enricher”. There was a sackful of the stuff that I inherited when I moved here. It had been lurking in the woodshed all the while and the writing on the sack had faded away but it looked like good rich compost. Just the stuff to perk up the veggies.

Tired but happy I showered, changed and hung my blue solar lanterns on the apple tree before enjoying the evening sun and a glass of…um, grape juice on the patio. As I sipped the golden nectar I looked around to admire my handiwork and saw my veggie plot gently steaming and with the steam came a familiar, pungent aroma.

Suffice it to say that some folk have the smell of sizziling sausages on the barbecue to accompany their sundowner, I get ammonia and from what source I really wouldn’t like to say. But I am sure there is no way I’ll be eating my greens unless they’ve been doubly sterilised first.

Best Moment Award – Who Me?

Well, this is a surprise – a Best Moment award. I can’t tell you how encouraging this is. Finally after fumfty some years some cultured soul has seen my talent. There aren’t many on this planet who have done so and lived to tell the tale. But I digress. This wonderful person who has nominated me is none other than WordPress’ own Experienced Tutor. Experienced at what, I know not. I first discovered ET early in my blogging career when a happy turn of phrase – “going at it like a pig at a potato” had me rolling in the aisles way past bedtime. Since I love both pigs and potatoes, I knew this was my blogger mentor to be…I just forgot to tell him.

So Best Moment – I was going to say ask my exes but then I realised it was the Best Moment I had experienced not given. Ah but there are so many like:
taking part in the Pontefract Pianoforte Competition, aged 7 playing Mozart’s Minuet in F. The judge said he’d never heard a performance to compare with mine.
Or perhaps the time I entered the local Dog Show with my dog Grunge – I mean what did the man expect when he said “nice doggie, let me see your teeth.” Anyway it was only a little nip, I mean what’s seven stitches to a grown man? I don’t know what all the fuss was about but you should’ve seen the look on his face.
Then there was the moment when a guy in snug-fit bathing trunks was supposed to teach me how to snorkle without swallowing half the Indian Ocean. Once underwater,the pressure got to him and he came over all romantic instead. Pulling me onto his knee, he tried to show me his corals. I bet Trident never surfaced as fast.

I could go on – I have had so many “moments”. But today’s your day and your turn. I’ve thought long and hard about whose blog should next be graced with this award and I have come up with an idea. There are those of you, out there in Blogland that have demonstrated both intelligence and good taste by following my blog. It is to every single one of my followers that I pass on this award. There is only one rule of Blogclub:
you must entertain Blogland with your acceptance speeches and your Greatest Moments. This may be in video or word format.

There – the judgement of Sheila – eat your heart out Solomon.
Have a great weekend one and all and I’m looking forward to a week’s reading of Best Moments.

Coral Garden & Chromis

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I’d Like to Thank…

whale shark

Hawksbill turtle

Manta Ray

Just a quick note before I have to go off to dinner to say thank you Experienced Tutor for the Great Moment in My Life award. I will concoct a suitable acceptance speech on Friday when I’m home again. I haven’t figured out yet whether I’ve given a Great Moment or whether it is one of my great moments that I’m to share with you.

If the latter as I suspect, then following in the giant footsteps of Experienced Tutor,(only in warmer climes) I offer some piccy’s from my best holiday ever in the Maldives. Sadly they were not taken by me because…doh…I forgot my camera. Instead they were taken by a good friend of mine.

Hope you like them and I’ll be back to torment you on Friday.

Was I the victim of a changeling plot?

This week is a “day job” week so it’s just a quick hello from me before I disappear to lovely Liverpool. However, I wanted to share a momentous insight with you. Recently I read a couple of biographies about ancient worthies of this land and their families.

In one, the biography of Charles Waterton, a notable but lovable eccentric, we learn that on his death his only son completely obliterated, trashed and destroyed his father’s life work and burned his papers. Why? Was he scarred so deeply in some way by the admittedly odd behaviour that his pater displayed from time to time? Was his old man so tight-fisted his son had to go without the latest in horse and carriage? Who knows – but there seems to be something more than the typical father-son edgy relationship that is often seen.

Then take the wonderful Fitzwilliam family, made fabulously wealthy through “black diamonds” – in other words the coal fields they owned in South Yorkshire. (Black Diamonds is also the title of the family biography). At different times down the generations they hide away and exile to Canada (no offence dear Canadian readers) the epileptic heir to the estate; then there are the claims that the next heir is actually a changeling – a boy child substituted for the baby girl actually born to his lordship;later down the family line a mother disowns her son for marrying someone of whom she disapproved and sets in motion a huge and costly lawsuit.

These are not isolated incidents in the lives of the so-called great and good. History gives us untold examples of dysfunctional families in the upper echelons of British society. How is it they could get it so wrong? You would think that with all they had going for them materially, economically and with the privileges they took for granted, they could have made a better fist of it as families instead of tearing themselves apart.

But back to my revealing insight. Yesterday whilst shuffling dutifully on a tour around one of these weird family’s ancient pads, (now a true seat of learning) it dawned on me that I too was probably a victim of a changeling plot. It came to me in the duchess’ boudoir. There was something so familiar about the delicately painted gilded ceiling, the rich curtain hangings, the soft ankle-deep carpet. It was as though I had come home; as though I knew the place just as if it were my own. It has convinced me that breeding will out. I was never intended to get on my hands and knees to mop up the spill on the kitchen floor, nor wield an iron so ferocious that I give myself a facial sauna. So now, I am on a quest to take my rightful place in society, preferably with the £2m income (in today’s money) the Fitzwilliam family enjoyed. I will have justice.

Now where’s the bell? I must ring for tea.

Have a good week y’all.

Finding Drogo

After last weekend’s looting and pillaging I’ve spent much of this week quietly, in a darkened room, applying a dot of lavender water to my throbbing temples – such was the impact of a tribe of Britons at play in the sunshine. But I don’t mean to whinge. You can read last Tuesday’s post for the whinge. All I will say is that I’m thankful that I’m the shy, retiring type who doesn’t get out much.

However, it was a profitable weekend. I was able to track down numerous sites of places that have been lost to the sea. How the hell can she do that if they’ve disappeared into the sea? I hear you ask. I will try to express myself more clearly. I found their traces in street, field and house names; in remains on beaches or hanging off a cliff edge; in the memories of natives who wistfully recalled (prompted by a pint or two)the days when they could walk cliffside, from village to village instead of trekking two miles inland; who remembered blissful childhood holidays staying in a cliff top chalet that each summer shifted nearer the tipping point until…Get the picture?

I found the last vestiges of WWII defences against invasion – concrete pillboxes, one of which I’ve earmarked as a bijou home should I default on my vertiginous mortgage payments. Others I found sprawled across the beaches where they’d fallen.

Talking of bijou residences I also found local landmark Drogo’s Castle or the earthworks thereof. Smart cookie Drogo, he marries William the Conqueror’s favourite niece, builds a snug little hideaway in the middle of nowhere, rushes his new bride up there to live but not happily ever after. Presumably the guy got bored with her or, as they say, found another interest. He did her in – poisoned her, then rode like the clappers to uncle William to borrow vast sums of dosh from him before disappearing overseas never to be heard of again…all this before ever his crime was discovered. What a guy!

Walking back across the fields from the castle I ran into a band of hooligans. At first they were curious and just a little wary, shadowing me across the field. Then, egged on by the ring leader who had glossy golden hair and bold blue eyes, they grew confident, crowding me, tugging at the back of my jacket. I started to walk faster, they broke into a trot. I threw dignity to the winds and legged it over the nearest fence. The wild bunch,snorting derisively skidded to a stop on the other side.
“Ya, shoo you buggers” I wheezed. With a jeering “Moo-oooo” they turned away to graze.

I did enjoy my steak in the restaurant that evening.

Hell on Earth

I have seen hell on earth. It is:

the five mile tail back as minor road meets major at a T-junction.
The family pet left panting and distressed in the car with just a sliver of window open.
The cry of a toddler as his ice-cream slithers down his T-shirt to the sand and his mother gives him the rough side of her tongue.
The double parking down the beach road blocking the emergency ambulance’s access.
The group of bored teenagers throwing stones at a seagull with an injured wing.
The cliff top caravan park where the caravans are packed in so close you can shake hands with your neighbour without ever leaving the comfort of your sitting room.
Men’s white thighs and chests turning red-raw as they refuse to be anointed with Ambre Solaire.
The queues for loos denuded of toilet paper, soap or means of drying hands.
Irritation turning to anger; the sound of hard hand on soft flesh; the crescendo of a child’s wail punctuated by “I warned you.”

I have seen hell on earth – it’s a sun and heat starved nation enjoying Bank Holiday Monday and the first hot day of the year.
Why do we do it to ourselves and each other?