The Garden

My father is and my grandparents are/were keen gardeners. Both sets of grandparents, having gardened in their respective (long established) gardens, created new gardens in their retirement. I'd like to create a new garden, ideally starting before I retire, but need to find somewhere I believe I can live for long enough to make the exercise worthwhile.


I hope that my Edinburgh garden, while undoubtedly suburban both in location and scale, is not in terms of approach. It is not a tidy, well thought out space, but rather a gradually developing mass of plants round a square patch of grass - lawn would be to flatter it. It has fruit trees and vegetables; we have planted new trees marking significant occasions or received as presents; it has a very smart bench (currently undercoat orange, but soon to be elegant white again), out of keeping urns, a wire sculpture of a pheasant (my 40th birthday present), a swing, a Wendy House and various compost sources, including a wormery. It fulfils a variety of functions: a place to play; a place to garden; a place to sit in the sun; a place to entertain (in our tent if necessary); a place to practice golf/casting; a place to dry washing! It has two peaks, April when it comes to life with blossom, daffodils, tulips and new growth and June when, in the late evening, it becomes an almost beautiful place in which you can't see the weeds for the plants and delphiniums, self seeded poppies and sweet peas provide a show of colour which, while not passing for order, might seem meant.

Being a hick

I go to London periodically. I enjoy being there for a day and generally take the sleeper down and back to maximise the time I am able to spend and people I am able to see. I attend a regular committee where I am one of only two Scottish attendees - the other is far higher powered than me. There is no doubt I am a hick. The others emerge from the tube out of the City; many of them seem to work in businesses that allow them to concentrate on the sort of policy issues the committee deals with; they see each other at similar committees; they have firm positions on things; they are a pretty impressive crowd. I emerge sleep deprived from the train with my pyjama's poking out of my briefcase; my business encourages my attendance but I am conscious of the cost of doing so and rush around trying to fit other London things in round about it; I rarely have firm views on the matters being discussed and many of them would be a mystery to my clients; everyone is kind about the effort I make to get there, but I am not sure they understand it. Today I am behind with my work and have blisters - I am therefore not sure I understand it either.

There are compensations - yesterday rather then take the sleeper down I caught the first train. The GNER East Coast route remains a civilised journey - at least for the first hour or so I pass through places I know and like - even glimpsing them from a speeding train reminds me that they are there. The London train is one of the few places I can work, uninterrupted for four hours, and be served a decent breakfast. To have done all of that and travel 350 miles, all before 10.00 am is good. The sleeper home allows me to have dinner in London with friends. My London geography is dire. Yesterday I forgot my A-Z. Looking for Victoria (close to where we were having dinner) I walked to Waterloo. On the day of the 7/7 bombings I set off on foot, blindly believing in my ability to walk from Mayfair to Wimbledon - I have never been so pleased to see a taxi and regarded the £45 fare a bargain. Why I walk so many miles in London I do not understand as the public transport system is fantastic - tomorrow I am going walking in the Lake District, assuming my blisters will let me.

Weekends at home

This is the first week-end since before Easter I have not been to Northumberland (even if one week-end all I did was drive down, collect a book, buy the Northumberland Gazette and come home). It is also the first week-end in six months that we have had no real signs of builders, albeit they are not quite finished. It has an air of normality about it. We are going out to friends for dinner; we are having friends for lunch; I am going to a meeting of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop which is running a project about which I am enthusiastic; and best of all I am going to buy a picture. I have traditionally marked my firm's year end by buying a picture and I have intended, for some time, to acquire a Cornish screenprint. I nearly bought (should have bought) a Terry Frost in St Ives three or four years ago. Today The Open Eye Gallery has an exhibition of St Ives artists and so I go, with the intent to spend, to decorate my new, now builder free, walls.

Extraordinary things

Work frequently seems difficult. It involves the application of thought, often against the clock; decisiveness, often on behalf of others in circumstances in which the decision has direct financial or other commercial consequences for them; and a significant commitment of time. When it is really bad (I worked all night last Thursday) I tell myself that there are worse things and that, anyway, these periods of extreme pressure pass and are forgotten as one gets on with the next job.

One of the things I find most perspective inducing is the First World War, or more particularly the way in which those who fought in it seemed to cope, having been removed from ordinary life, with its extraordinary extremes.

My book club book this month is "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves - this is, if you'll excuse the pun, a choice of relative gravity after "The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman" which is what we read last month. I read, a year or two ago, Captain James Dunn's "The War the Infantry Knew". Both Graves and Dunn record, in different ways, the life in the trenches of The Royal Welch Fusiliers. It was a different age and lives and the attitudes of people have, of course, changed enormously. Both books however illustrate the capacity of ordinary people to do the extraordinary when required. So, if so many ordinary people could go off and live and fight (and frankly the going off and living seems extraordinary enough to me without the fighting) in rat infested, muddy holes in France and Belgium for years while being shot at, gassed and bombed by a hostile enemy, the odd night up in a relatively comfortable office, shuffling paper can't really be a problem.

Spring Days Out

The first blog I ever read was Wife in the North. I read about it in the paper and was initially attracted to it on grounds of geography - we have a small house in North Northumberland to which we make "occasional visits". I enjoy the writing and the humour and admire the brave decision to uproot and move to that part of the world on a permanent basis. It seems to have inspired an outbreak of blogging in the area - Mutterings and Meanderings; Mutterings from the Mill; Famous for all kinds of Wickedness. We have been in Northumberland this week-end (albeit briefly) and its beaches and countryside always ease my essentially fractious nature. Not even the relative busyness of the beach this bank holiday week-end Sunday morning could set back the feeling of better-will it always inspires in me. Hence...

I like the feeling of sitting in a warm car with the heater on after a cold afternoon in the fresh air; I like cheerful outdoor crowds eating, drinking and chatting with their friends. We have a number of regular spring time fixtures which, while not religiously penned in our diary, we tend to make more often than not - odd days fishing; various Point to Points, Melrose 7s. Today on the way home we went to the Lauderdale Point to Point - it wasn't' warm but the sun shone (most of the time); the wind blew across the hillside; and people met each other, chatted, scooped a drink or two and had a bet. I got back in my car, turned the heater on, felt my cheeks start to glow and cheered up.

First Visit (and hungover)

The idea that I might blog hadn't occurred to me until a month or two ago, but lots of you (as is bound to be the case as most people are) seem nice and sensible and, as I am rarely without some drivel to spout, but frequently lack the time to spout it I feel like joining in from time to time! While not the world's greatest fan of technology I love the way the Internet underlines the adage that "there is nothing new under the sun". As I randomly wander through it the extent to which we share experiences amazes me.

I have, tucked into a picture frame above my desk at work, a Social Stereotypes clipping of the Appalling Hangover from an early December copy of The Telegraph. I cut it out after an office Christmas party - it seemed apposite - and told myself my lesson was learned. This is, however, the second Saturday morning in a row which has, as a consequence of excess on Friday night, started poorly...but I've learnt my lesson?! The difficulty with hangovers is the feeling of seediness when contrasted with the relative wholesomeness of week-end activity (last Saturday very early I had to take my daughter to a riding lesson in a beautiful spot in spring sunshine; this week I am taking part in Edinburgh Gardens Open Day) and the consequent feeling of mild guilt. Chances of having forgotten about it by the time I reach for the corkscrew tonight - better than average! So to the penance of a few household jobs and being nice to garden visitors I go!

I hope this has worked - it all seems very straightforward.