Here and now
One of the curious things about writing for magazines, as I do, is that you will inevitably experience a kind of virtual life three or four months before the fact, in order to accommodate print production schedules. This means that in summer, while kith and kin are ensconced in one of these, gin and tonic in hand, in our heads we magazine writers will already be celebrating the perfect Christmas, complete with happy families, a magical tree and the gifts you’ve always wanted.
I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when, on a rare weekend at home, I walked through the fields that surround the village in which I live. The birds were out in force and some time over the past fortnight blossom had appeared, as had daffodils, hyacinths, muscari and forsythia. ‘So this is what spring is really like,’ I said to myself, absurdly pleased about being outdoors without a coat and feeling real warmth on my shoulders.
Some months ago, around Christmas in fact, as snow blew down from the north (and the east and the west), flights were grounded and any excursion outdoors involved warming a cold bottom against the Aga – ok, ok, the radiator – I had imagined everything about yesterday and, indeed, had yearned for it. In my head I’d inhaled the scent of washing dried on the line, heard the robin, sentinel on a bough of hawthorn springing into leaf, felt the twitch of fingers aching for an allotment and had ridden a step-through bike from the most beautiful bike shop in Great Britain. It had worked. My work looked fine. But there is nothing like the real thing; nothing quite like proper sunshine on your shoulders.
Of course the demands of work mean that June and July are already here but for this season, this spring, twee though it may sound, I shall endeavour practise the pleasure of being in the moment. No longing; no wishing to be anywhere else; here is good.
* I had nothing to do with this image but use it courtesy of the International Bulb Flower Centre, a collective body that was established in 1925 to promote Dutch bulbs around the world. If you are thinking of growing a few bulbs yourself, do have a look.
New year, new start
And so it is that I’m back. After leaving you on a cliff hanger in May last year, promising Irish holiday snaps and Chelsea thoughts, I’ve fallen off the edge of the earth, swum my round and have popped up – ta da – in the new year. I am, once again, your loyal blogger, here to rescue you from an online malaise like a St Bernard appearing to fallen climbers with a barrel of brandy around its neck.
The big news is that I have moved from my beloved Brixton to the heart of Gloucestershire, in order to take up a lovely job in a town which I’m sure has the highest incidence of Barbour jackets in the land. And Hunter Wellington boots. And jodhpurs. And riding crops. Actually, I think I’ll stop there before my fella gets any ideas.
[Have you noticed that I have started a lot of sentences with 'and'? This is because I know I would never get away with that at work, so I am taking as many liberties as I can this evening before the frisson of grammatical rebellion wears off.]
I have intended to overhaul this blog for sometime now and part of what was putting me off posting was my complete and utter failure at mastering CSS – not something to which one can readily admit given the current taste for social media. Every time I looked at my dashboard my heart would sink and I’d sign out faster than you can say Twitter. If you blog yourself I am sure you will recognise that feeling.
However, onwards and upwards as they say. This is a new year abounding with virtual possibilities, even if they do come via Elance. So in that spirit I leave you with a few shots taken over the past month or so, to keep you going.
Firstly Christmas in beautiful Suffolk where at this time of year the landscape seems to exist in a series of horizontal planes, both inside 17th-century cottages where right angles are few:
And out on the fields, where, if it is not reeds, it is barley and wheat that grow on the county’s expanses (can you sense my shivering in the blur of this picture?):
And even in the vegetable garden…if you squint your eyes a bit:
And then onto a hoar-frost, taken before Gloucestershire received buckets of snow and while I was still enchanted by the ice and the cold.
And another couple for good measure:
Catching Up
Apologies for the silence over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been rather out of the loop recently with deadlines and such, followed by a few days on holiday in Ireland. I came back right into the Chelsea Flower Show press day on Monday.
While I process all that to deliver to you in some kind of digestible form, I’ll leave you with a short made by journalism students at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. It’s about some women selling pineapples on the side of the road in the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s poorest provinces.
The film is a little off the regular feel-good beat of this blog, to be sure, but it’s rather good and certainly puts into perspective the neatly packaged chunks of tropical fruit seen in British supermarkets.
To put the women’s earnings into context, the current exchange rate is around 12 rand to one pound. The women are speaking Xhosa.
Aloe, Aloe
A little late with this perhaps but welcome if you’ve come here from my post on the Guardian gardening blog.
If you haven’t read the post but would like to debate the merits of native/indigenous gardening both in Britain and South Africa, you can join the fun here.
The picture of the quiver tree (Aloe dichotoma) was taken at the South African garden currently on display outside the British Museum. As I’ve said in the Guardian bit, it was a little strange seeing South African plants against a backdrop of cabs, buses and the ornate architecture of the Museum itself.
The garden is, however, part of theme: last year plants from the Indian subcontinent were featured in what appears to be a regular collaboration between Kew and the Museum. You can read more about their efforts here.
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