After all the hurly-burly of last week’s Blog I am feeling rather wan and exhausted. One of the nice things about WordPress is that I can reply individually to each comment although this becomes rather time consuming and exhausting when a brawl breaks out in the comments layer. Still, it seems impolite not to reply – especially to new people who have emerged from the shadows. Thank you all for your contributions.
I have seen various important people over the last week or so: firstly I had lunch with Sue Biggs the Director General of the RHS. A deux. In James Rudoni’s office at Wisley . I had a delightful time discussing all sorts of things about the RHS while eating slabs of rather weighty quiche and small round chocolate cakes. Also on offer were oranges cut into quarters: rather like those which used to be on offer at half-time during football matches. I don’t know if they are still standard fare or if today’s players prefer a bag of monster munch and some intimate massage: anyway, neither of us could work out an elegant way of eating them so they were left untouched.
I have also been to visit the offices of Somethin’ Else who make Gardeners Question Time. I like a fizzy office especially one with a pool table and table football. It reminds me of Thirtysomething which some of you might remember. It was a late Eighties television series about rather perfect couples with young children and exciting jobs: this was a time when we had a very small baby and were permanently exhausted.. The blokes worked in an advertising agency with a basketball net into which they potted (i) balls while having creative thoughts. I had a mad crush on Mel Harris who played a character called Hope. Unlike them this office also had a roof garden with fine (though cold) views and a selection of containers bearing the fading vestiges of sweetcorn and other things. Apparently the pumpkins were removed as it was considered a health and safety issue to have large vegetables teetering on ledges six storeys above the street.
The frost (ii) has, as I am sure you have noticed, spectacular. It was minus 10c here on Monday and the only way to sit at my desk was by wearing a velveteen Turkish skullcap, a large scarf, many layers of thermal underwear, two fleeces, a travel rug and a pair of luxuriantly cashmere socks. The alternative was to jog around the house stopping occasionally for a strenuous press-up or two or to go out. We went to the cinema at one point because we were so cold (iii) and at one point I went and sat in my car because it has heated seats and my buttocks needed thawing. The countryside and garden looked delicious and I, like many others, spent time tootling around taking photographs like this. My sympathies go out to Andrea Jones (photographer de luxe) who spent the night with some truckers on the M8. It was doubtlessly quite tough on the truckers as well.
I feel I must warn you about the January crop of garden magazines. House and Garden features the first instalment of the Top Twenty Garden Designers (about which I wrote here and Nigel Colborn went all ranty: which is always gratifying to the rest of us). It consists of a rather nice group picture and then a (I think) deeply unflattering individual picture of me looking as if I have just emerged from a chilly evening spent marinading in a deep pool of lemon juice. But that is foolish vanity and it is very lovely to be included: even though not everybody will approve of the choices. Part Two featuring the much sexier Sturgeon and West is next month. Also English Garden features my column, my garden and a piece I wrote on Tom Stuart Smith’s garden: such saturation is only for those with stronger constitutions. To make things worse there is more to come as I have a piece in January Gardens Illustrated (iv) and a snippet in The Garden. Sorry.
To top it all I am on Eggheads this Friday at 6.00pm on BBC2. You might remember my writing about it in the summer, here to be exact. It is for Celebrity Eggheads (v) (using the word in an even looser fashion than they use it on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here) and I was on the Home and Garden team with Toby Buckland, Chris Collins (the Blue Peter gardener), Aggie McKenzie (the unscary one of the two people who clean people’s houses) and Craig (off Big Brother).
Did we beat the Eggheads? You will have to watch and see. Set your video recorders or new fangled Sky Plus machines. 6pm Friday
The picture is of Viburnum opulus berries in the frost.
I am listening to Baby Please Don’t Go by Van Morrison.
Two years ago I was shamelessly trying to flog you copies of my book – which are still available, incidentally, if you send me a fiver.
- Is that the right word? Almost certainly not. Dropped? Slotted? Basketed? Popped? Dunked? (or is that only appropriate for the Slam Dunk?)
- Spectacular for us but probably nothing to write home about to those of you from Omsk, Finland or Alaska.
- The American with George Clooney. Quite good and particularly notable for an exceptionally beautiful Italian playing a small town prostitute. So beautiful was she that her presence in the brothel of some rural hill town in the middle of Italy seemed fanciful to say the least. If one took the British equivalent – for example, Melton Mowbray or Banff – I am pretty sure that the standards would not be quite so high. I may, of course, be wrong and welcome comments from those among the readers of this blog who regularly patronise rural cathouses.
- The more observant of you might have noticed (I did not) that my article in December’s GI about the charming naked folk at Abbey House included a slight misprint. The owner Barbara Pollard was called Su Pollard at one point (after the actress best known for playing the bespectacled chalet maid in Hi-De-Hi): fortunately it was taken well.
- For the benefit of the uninitiated (or foreign) Eggheads is a television quiz programme where a team of people (could be a pub quiz team, work group, football club or, as in this case, a scratch team of the best brains around exhaustively selected from literally hundreds of applications) challenge the Eggheads. This is a group of serious social misfits who have dedicated their lives to absorbing trivial facts. Some might say that this is in compensation for their having few friends but I could not really comment.
You have to hand it to him. James does unashamed self promotion quite charmingly
Charles, the sound of your Tongue being slotted into your cheek is audible from miles away!
Crikey – was it two years ago I bought your book! how time flies I still like it a lot as it makes me laugh and is a good starting point when thinking about new plants.
I also like the picture of the viburnum very much – it has been on my wish list for some time.
I have put Egg heads on the calendar … excellent.
K
Two years and I have yet to be asked if I want to write another! I may have put everybody off.
That Viburnum is excellent and should be easily available as a bare root shrub at this time of year.
Hope was ‘a bit too good by half’ if I remember correctly. I didn’t like the one with ginger hair.
I am so sorry you are being so cruelly over-exposed, particularly at this time of chills, snow & cut-backs. I am sure you will bare it all with your usual wit & wisdom!
I think it was her “too good by half but if you get through that bit then Heaven knows what might happen” look that was particularly appealing.
The gingery bloke was called Timothy Busfield who was very good in a short-lived series called Studio 60 quite recently(ish)
While you are feeling ubiquitous, the rest of us are enjoying it and not in fear of your omnipotency. Apart from those strange people who have been forced to write to GW mag in complaint about your similes in the monthly highlights feature. I enjoyed their writings almost as much as I enjoyed yours, but entirely different ways.
Enjoying the blog too. Will we get some opinion on the latest GW TV shenanigans?
Thank you
A good old fashioned letter of complaint is, as you say, a joy to behold.
I always wonder why they bother to read the stuff if they find it so annoying – although I can also well understand the scab picking element!
Dear James, I had to go back and read the million comments on the last post so I would know what was going on here. Glad to see you are enjoying that reply function on wordpress. Would that all the blog platforms offered such ease of answer. Give and take is what makes the blogs so interesting, beyond the original witty post, of course.
We were huge Thirtysomething fans too. But how come you get US TV programs but we cannot get yours. We have zero good garden shows anymore. You would think there would be a market here for the British ones, since they obviously have them in the archives by the thousands. Someone could make a quick buck!
You see. Much more commodious over here than camping with ol’ Swampy West back at the old site.
I am sure you used to get old garden programmes at one point: on BBC America. Maybe that has been cut due to financial things. I also think that you are due to get BBC iPlayer over there soon so you will be able to bask in the warming rays of the new look Gardeners World.
I am not convinced it will be a fair exchange for ER or even Friends.
For a moment I feared you’d given up – glad to hear you were only exhausted by the hurly-burly.
I too have become a frost addict; I’ve never taken so many photos and icy conifer branches and ghostly spiderwebs as this year.
To follow you in print means I may have to cut back on the mince pie shopping over the festive period so would you mind if just purloined the mags listed above from my local hospital waiting rooms – once the covers start looking a bit dog-eared that is. The last time I had to ramraid W H Smith there was a terrible to-do.
Now I have a rational reason to want to see the Eggheads “stuffed” – other than because they look so damn smug. I realise they’re probably not, that they’re probably all lovely people, etc. Don’t let me down.
It is annoying that so many magazines are now sealed in plastic bags. It used to be that one could read almost everything in WH Smith’s without parting with a single penny. Waiting till they reappear in the Dentist is perfectly acceptable.
As is rifling through the recycling bin at your local tip.
Um. I think there is a difficult tension in Twitterblogland. Which is that we all are friends and equals and that’s all very good. Great in fact.
But it also, to work well, needs a little management. We have minor conflicts, then work hard to resolve them and stay good with each other, for example. We play and sometimes get serious then – whoops! Careful!
We probably generally choose our real world friends amongst our social, career and financial equals but in Twitterblogland we mix much more indiscriminately. More strength to that, I say. It’s part of what’s exciting. But there is a very hard underlying reality – some people have got a lot of what other people might like or even long for.
This one big tension,which cannot be resolved or often acknowledged, is that in Twitterblogland we have different statuses and successes in the real, shared ‘garden’ world, while acting like we’ve all got the same. And how people handle that matters. Look what a pasting MD got for not quite getting it. He wasn’t given as much slack as a unknown twitterer might have got.
All this in a context where we ‘sell’ ourselves, congratulate each other (and ourselves) on successes, and pimp our blogs and books, performances and so on, See above.
So it’s kind of delicate. Not easy. I think all James’s important commissions seem just nice to him and good to tell about, but some people would give eye teeth for just one. That gets to make open and honest communication difficult. So we’ll all be very very nice…
But I find both the being very very nice and the differentials hard to navigate. (as does my delinquent husband) That’s our natures and it does make us a pain.(Think neither of us is nice. We deserve each other…) But everyone of us have to find a way to handle it all, whichever part we are in.
So – we need the Arabellas!
And I wonder what else we need to make it as nurturing and fun as possible? Me, I always need to say ‘hey, what’s really going on here?’ and hope it frees some people up and makes those who struggle with saying ‘hey, well done, James!’ again feel a little less alone..
Hope this is coherent – not easy to articulate.
XXXXXX
Hi Anne
very interesting. i hope ive understood yr point well…it is a funny line and sensitive one but i think people should (if they can) sing about any success and let others join in with the chorus if they like, otherwise ‘success’ could be very lonely. Weirdly i think however successful people may seem it often doesnt change how that ‘successful’ person feels – theres always the next carrot. I had someone round here a yr or two ago who had just had a really successful series, book selling like mad, next series commissioned, worried about when their big break was going to come! Any success or exposure is so ephermeral, so fragile – look at Alys and Toby..at the top of their field and something huge can still happen. Im not very comfortable doing it but i do think ‘sing’ and let those join in who fancy it…what point a little success if its not a pleasure?…and when I feel envious of some bastard who’s got the gig i wanted I make corn dollys and stab the sod
Was forever being told “if you can’t find anything nice to say about someone, best say nothing at all” Consequently a career as a political sketch writer was mercifully cut short.
That was exactly what Thumper’s mother said to him in Bambi.
The wisdom of cartoon rabbits is often under appreciated.
Thank you for this Anne.
As Mark says nobody is really successful in their own eyes. I have lots of work and for that I am very grateful but there are still things after which I hanker – a spot as main presenter of Gardeners’ World is not one of them! I am aware that I may seem loathsomely fortunate in some areas: it is not my intention to rub anybody’s nose in anything.
However, this is my blog and in it I write about things that affect me (most blogging is generally egotistical). Sometimes it may be serious but usually it is frivolous and inconsequential: it is a diary with frequent wanderings off into side alleys and up trees.
Some of it may be self promotion but I do try and promote other people’s endeavours wherever I can (for example there is a book called The Bad Tempered Gardener coming out in May).
I have always been under the impression that you had no wish to be a garden designer and eschewed the mainstream media while Charles and I do not really crossover at all (I do not think I would make a very good social worker) so I am sorry if anything I write makes you both feel awkward.
I do also think that the “niceness” of which you speak is the result of a decision rather than a genetic condition.
As I am sure you know I am not going to change the way I write as that would be deeply dishonest and no fun at all. However, as you must also be aware, I do not wish to upset anybody. I suggest that the simplest thing would be for anybody who does not like what I do is not to read the stuff.
But, one caveat, I am also fully aware that nothing lasts for ever and one day I will have to write that such-and-such a thing has finished or I have been sacked by so-and-so and if you stopped reading then you would miss out on some excellent schadenfreude.
I know you promote other people most generously. In fact you are consistently generous. Partly why I hoped you’d see the wider point and not just feel criticised.
I’m not especially speaking for myself – my point to Mark, too.
I was trying to make a more general point and not only about you or your blog. I am sorry – you must be getting to feel a bit beaten up, and I wouldn’t wish that at all, but lots of people read this and it seemed relevant to raise this issue here on the back of your last two blogs. Understandable you would take it personally but it’s not especially about you. And I know my point did resonate with some people.
I don’t expect you to change and many people would be disappointed if you did.
Everyone knows they can go away – from twitter too, if they don’t like it. You could not put my comments up, too.
Kind of feel you missed my point. I think it’s a difficult issue and one worth a little discussion. I thought.
Sorry it caught you like that. XXXXX
PS. And when my book is published I will no doubt push it every way I can dream up. #cananyoneraiseadebatethat’snottakenpersonally
Should you wish me to kill the blog comments at any time I know a great anedote that will do it!
You keep your lower acreages to yourself, Madam Sock.
You have to hand it to Anne, (who tweets under the name @bulchey and whose book called The Bad Tempered Gardener is published by Frances Lincoln in May ) she is Quite Brilliant when addressing these issues.
Charles, I think Anne should be encouraged to write a blog of her own: you could give her one for Christmas.
Easy to do.
Hi,
I love your frosty photo, very pretty indeed! I’m not so certain I would’ve enjoyed being out in it, so I think I’ll enjoy it from the warmth of my own home
In answer to i) you shoot a basket
I grew up with basketball (british) and had season tickets for years. You could say dunked, assuming they were literally jumping, throwing the ball in and hanging off the rim (this is a slam dunk, of which I assume it wasn’t quite so extravagant). And here ends your lesson.
See, full of useless information, I am.
Thank you very much for the Basketball terminology ( and for courageously reading as far as the footnotes).
Slam Dunking sounds a bit show offy and probably not suitable for indoor basketball.
I used to love ThirtySomething – I had a crush on Hope’s husband but I also quite liked the gingery bearded one! The people who worked on the floor above where I worked then had a fruit machine and basketball net and they always seemed to be having a better time! Again they were in the advertising business – obviously a lot of displacement activity is required or maybe that was just the early 90s!! But these habits are returning, sons employer has recently bought them a table tennis table and there are heated battles at lunchtime
Ooh – my brother in law was recorded for Eggheads just after yours. Must remember to ask him this weekend if he knows when he’ll be on. That’s assuming our return to wintry weather later this week doesn’t prevent our mega trip up north.
I think it is just the Fake Celebrity versions up until Christmas: normal service will resume as soon as possible.
A friend from choir phoned me to say you were on yesterday
Well done on getting so close to beating the Eggheads – I was shouting the last answer at the telly, but sadly shouts don’t time travel
To misquote Dorothy Parker – You can always find someone richer or thinner than you if you look hard enough…
I remember watching ‘Amadeus’ in my 20s – the Salieri character caught my attention especially – the curse of mediocrity – the ability to appreciate great talent in others while being nowhere near it yourself. Accepting one’s lowly place in the pecking order is a challenge, but I think I’m comfortably settled down there now…
I haven’t taken any frosty pictures this year – took hundreds of really pretty ones last year and this winter it all just looks the bleedin’ same. Am taking my foot, head cold and current stroppy temperament off to bed for a restorative sleep. I promise not come back until I’m fit for polite company.
The most annoying thing about frosty pictures is that one trundles around taking lots of pictures and then the light changes and one has to do it all over again.
Hope the foot is recovering.
I love all this cold weather. the frosts and snow brings up a beautiful purity of form – no clutter of colour. That said, we have been blinkin’ freezing down here in the south too. Some days did not get above -5, which in a house with no heating is not at all fun. Plus the studio is undergoing an eco renovation so no joy there, except we did huddle around the open fire to warm up and emerged smelling like a kipper. What is also interesting is the difference in the cold between here and the continent – when we lived in the alps -5 was quite warm, and we happily pootled down to the boulangerie in just a jumper.
I do hope you won Eggheads. That CJ hacks me off something rotten and has soiled my teenage nickname.
Lovely Viburnum by the way.
Our house has precious little heating but at least it has a warm kitchen and an electric blanket.
I suppose to be fully Eco it is necessary to suffer a little.
All Eggheads are weird: CJ is just a bit weirder that the rest.
really thoughtfully-thought thoughts from Anne and Mark: a lot of us are so bound up by etiquette that some people try to impose an older version of it on new forums(fora? foratides?). I see my children being frank in their ‘social media’ exchanges, sharing their good/bad news and being genuinely happy for others’ good news. Perhaps we should take a lesson from that. PS while I’m on the subject, I’m going to be in the March House and Garden issue as an ‘up-and-coming horticultural star of the future’ so preparing myself for any stick that that description truly deserves – with any luck it’ll be good-hearted ribbing and not ranty stuff from ranty people.
I heard about the ‘up and coming young stars of the future move over Grandad’ March issue and was hoping that you would be included.
I will buy a copy and rant as necessary.
It is just possible that it is people who have no good news and great achievements to tell about that find it hardest to find a way to speak.
Or.. “Empty vessels make most noise” as dear Old Ma Sock often told me.
Oh my goodness that sounds like my mother x
The gnomic sayings of Old Ma Sock should surely be collated into a festive (though slightly grumpy) stocking filler.
She is not as wise as Thumper’s father but much less cutesy.
Everybody’s lives are a mixture of some good and some bad news.
They also have the choice whether or not to share either sort: for bad they can expect sympathy, for good applause.
As I see it, there is not a competition as to who has the best or worst deal. It is just life which is (and always has been) a mixture of luck and judgement.
You really should write a blog Anne as you need more than 140 character Tweets or slots on other people’s pages to get across all these genuine opinions.
You cannot start a revolution in somebody else’s house: you need your own territory.
Sorry for revolutioning in your house. Though I don’t think I have enough to say for a blog. Thank you for your kind hospitality.
XXXXX
Anne!!! You ‘don’t have enough to say for a blog’? People all over the land are spluttering into their porridge/cornflakes/oatbran galettes. I’ve re-read all the comments and come to the conclusion, thicko that I am, that I may have completely missed the point. I THOUGHT you were mooting that it may be a GOOD thing that people can have a platform and use it for whatever reason without readers getting all twitchy-jealous – whereas if we went on like that at a party people would just walk away, a bit like you do when you realise the person you’re talking to may have taken a little of the ol’ Columbian marching powder.
I suppose we all make our own luck, and in words of Mrs Sock, yes I have been told by my ma at least weekly for as long as I can remember, that I am full of hot air. I prefer to call it ‘vivid imagination with a little bit of optimism thrown in’
May I join you in your museli spluttering?
And coffee’s been spluttered here in Chippenham – it was too late for the porridge
Splutter on, splutter on! Think one book will be quite enough of me for everyone.
XXXXXX
I would never say that -10c wasn’t cold. It’s sounds very respectable indeed. After forcing the computer to do the conversion to Fahrenheit, I’m pleased to announce that we are only about 13 degrees colder (F). So that’s -17 c…I think. What’s rather shocking is that you didn’t have a tarp around for emergency preparedness purposes. Think of how warm you could have been wrapping up in one!
Last night whilst refueling my car during a gale force winter wind and in capri pants with paint in my hair (something I wouldn’t recommend, by the way), I watched the moisture get sucked out of my hands. Regular hands to dry, old woman hands in three minutes. When it’s that cold, even Alaskans whine.
Christine in Alaska, whiny with lots of tarps
I do have an Alaskan Style tarp but it is kept for special occasions and public holidays.
We regard it as a cultural icon rather than a practical object.
Capri pants in -17 is just foolhardy. Don’t you have any gloves?
Or at least a couple of warm polar bears.
You have just increased the January sales of English Garden by one.
Enjoy the holidays and perhaps a little rest on your laurels. Figuratively, of course.
Only by one? Do you not have any deserving relations?
I’m not going to get a bonus if I only manage to increase the circulation by one!
x
I shall certainly purchase a January copy of English Garden, even if I lurk about in the Celtic shadows.
And of course I approve of your taste in music.
Happy Christmas.
I am ridiculously annoyed with myself for missing the ‘Su Pollard’ moment in your Abbey House Gardens piece. However, I do feel this should be the start of a new brand of subversive horticultural journalism. How about slipping Gordon Kaye or Vicki Michelle into your next GW plant descriptions?
PS Loving the image of you in veveteen Turkish skullcap. I think this could be your new hatwear image for 2011.