One Woman Goes To ....

Green fingers

I am not a gardener so when I caught the tail end of Chelsea on the TV rather then admiring the planting and sight lines or whatever should be appreciated I got stuck in my shallow as a rill way on Alan Titchmarsh. Particularly on his hair which seemed to have been oddly espaliered. Whatever his parting was up to it was not working in linear harmony with the candy stripes of his blazer.

The only living green thing I am primary carer for is an umbrella plant. All other fronds and foliage whether inside or out tend to be here on short term tenancies before meeting their Christmas tree style eviction. A grand sweeping staircase and Bing Crosby entrance and exiting as a bundle of size zero twigs a few weeks later.

The umbrella plant however is now entering its teen years and has grown to be a gangly youth of 6ft. It arrived as a housewarming present and is now in its 3rd pot. It should have had more and has probably suffered the root ball equivalent of out grown shoes and scrunched up toes. But at least that way we avoided the platform sole arguments. However now it has grown so tall I am beginning to feel it might be moving into a slightly malevolent phase. I look at it and think what am I going to do when it reaches the ceiling and I fear it looks at me and thinks future compost. At the moment the ultimate winner of Darwinian gold is not clear.

It will be no surprise therefore that my garden is a masterclass in hard surfacing and that my sight line is stone and gravel to panel fencing where the only creeper is next door's cat in search of a feathered floss. The closest to nature my garden gets is on Google Earth where the two round stone patios look like crop circles.

However in the way that peer pressure when young leads you astray into unsuitable but enjoyable activities, peer pressure mid life, leads you up the garden path to the mixed bedding plants. As a result I am now the owner of 19 plants corralled into 9 pots. Lightweight I know although it didn't seem like it when hauling 75 litre bags of compost.

I have potted and watered and stood back to admire. At the moment we are mutually unsure. Will I remember to water, let alone pinch out or dead head so that the plant can put all its energy into new growth? Is gardening advice meant to sound like the self help section? Do Deepak and Percy Thrower share the same script ?

The plants themselves look like they were on route to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, took a Tom Hanks wrong turn and ended up at a ferret fanciers meet instead. Peering nervously out and over the tops of their pots , anxious in case something fast and furry is going to make good its escape and mistake their stalks for a friendly trouser leg.

We will see. Will it play out as Bill and Ben meet The Terminator or will pots multiply and my garden become the floral equivalent of the Christmas lights garden drive by. Either way I am going to be keeping a close eye on my parting.

Green shoots

The farmshop has generous asparagus bundles. 2 for £5. Picked from the neighbouring field, yesterday. Seasonal and local, they tick the add to basket box and join the new potatoes with their papery skin and box of eggs .

Whilst growing, asparagus is not the most companionable of veg so it seems mean to make it share the limelight for what is its brief star turn.

The ways to make it centre stage seem to be to simply serve with one of the following:

• Butter
• Hollandaise sauce
• Soft boiled eggs as green soldiers
• Shaved Parmesan

Whichever you choose you also have to decide which mast to stick your prepping colours to. Chop or Snap. To chop is to get a bit more spear to eat. To snap is to enjoy a veggie sound sensation that has been much missed since Patsy Kensit stopped making pea-popping sounds in exchange for saying 'I do'.

My favourite is to snap, chargrill,anoint with butter and adorn with Parmesan.

Simply Summer.

In real life she's....

Parking has been suspended. Barriers and cones put in place. Baseball capped police have been here since first thing. Sniffer dogs and a stash of Jaffa Cakes seem a crucial part of operations. All morning people have been looking out office windows to check on progress. After nothing much happening, women in dresses, and shoes that will be killing them by the end of the day, and men in suits and brio buffed shoes start waiting in line gripping their invites.

Nearer to the time we swap our 3rd floor window view for standing on the street behind the barriers, taking test pictures of the pacing meeter and greeter, in readiness for our 1 shot moment.

A flash of blue lights and then the stately purr of the Bentley herald her arrival. Sat in the back, dressed hat to toe in green, she is tiny. A royal pea rattling around in a royal pod. A wave and a smile and she steps inside.

It may have been brief but nevertheless there is something undeniably unique and moving about seeing the Queen in 'real life'.

Magical Places

Petersham Nurseries for a Birthday lunch. It's on the celebrant's list of 'places I have always wanted to go'. The taxi takes us down a pot holed lane,bumping our way alongside lush buttercup meadows. To complete the 'we just took a turn off the main road and found ourselves in a completely different world feeling' cattle wade knee deep in the verdant grass and as the taxi drives away and we stop to admire the view, the calves start gamboling.

Before we succumb to bucolic plague we hopscotch through the puddles and take shelter in a large glasshouse, at the back of which tables are laid for lunch. The scent is not yet of cooking but of the rich loamy smell of a greenhouse and instead of rows of clay pots and tomato seedlings the propogation is of starched linen napkins,glinting long stemmed glasses and polished cutlery.

We are the first to arrive and it's a bit chilly but we are assured that the heaters are on and it will soon warm up. It does. It's not long before our perfect round butter pats start to glossily run away with themselves. So it's heaters off,later followed by jackets back on, then hand rubbing to keep warm between sips of wine. A patriotic experience of the temperature never being quite right for the occassion but the determination to sit it out and enjoy, regardless.

The chef has a personal philosophy and although the prices reflect this, the food is beautiful and not a crumb left on the plate, delicious. Lunch in this generously proportioned potting shed is a real treat. When it's time to go we put on our coats and dust off our handbags where they have been sat on the bare earth floor. Our waitress puts down her teatowel and takes a break from drying up the glasses to come and say goodbye and adds we are very welcome to take our table decorations home with us.

Delighted we stuff our booty into our bags and pick our way back down the lane to the bus stop to wait for the No.65 back to humdrum. It's only when we get on the bus and need to forage for our passes and in doing so pull out fresh garlic bulbs complete with long green stalks followed by oversized lemons with rustling leaves attached and the driver is obliged to give us a 'I thought I had seen it all but...'look that we feel a bit like Mr.Benn must have done when he came across a momento in his pocket that made him think that perhaps he hadn't just imagined his latest adventure.

Bad day cures.

Sometimes life presents you with the kind of day that needs a quick dependable fix to cure it.

First step is a Big Eat bag of Walker's Prawn Cocktail crisps and a bottle of beer.The combination of saltiness, crunchiness and flavour that surely in a million blind tastings would be unlikely to prompt the words, prawn cocktail but in no way should be considered any the lesser for it, washed down by ice cold beer,is instant balm.

Next a bacon sandwich. Brown bread but banksyed with ketchup. And a second bottle of beer. Normal service is being resumed. A cup of tea and the last chocolate in the box,delicately nibbled round the edges until the piece remaining at the centre trapped between your finger and your thumb gets popped into your mouth.

Day dissolved.

Could you not....

London Underground is running a campaign to ask tube travellers to consider being more considerate to fellow passengers. Illustrated by cute cartoon travellers , for those of us who are reasonably considerate commuters already we look and think QUITE and for those who aren't , well they probably don't ...

Presumably the themes were chosen for scoring a high irritation factor for a majority of people. What else was on the list and considered too idiosyncratic to make it into the campaign ? Did for example the focus group debate the following?

• Putting on makeup. The public transformation is unnerving and the rummaging through the makeup bag distracting but an accident waiting to happen is the misdirected mascara brush. And if you are running late enough to need to put your face on in public should you accept that you could probably make do without curling your eyelashes for a day?
• Filing all your nails ( a broken one might pass as an emergency) and then painting them.
• Picking off your nail varnish. Not only does it have a uniquely yucky sound and leave you with horrible looking nails ( unless you intend to be doubly irritating - see above ) but you leave the carriage littered with discarded flecks of dark colour polish.

I realise all the above are predominantly female activites ( well they are on my line ). So I am trying to think of irritating male travelling habits . One is shared and covers newspapers. They are free and even if you have forgotten to pick one up , the carriages are littered with discarded ones , so why can't you have one each ? Why do you have to share? And I've noticed that it's always the bloke who gets to do the holding and decide when the pages get turned - is it the print equivalent of the remote ? There must be some bloke alone ones but I can't think of them right now.

What would your commuting 'nails down the chalkboard ' be ?

Life's purpose

The role of a male manicurist.

'Can you have a go at getting this open'?

One meaningful alpha twist and the hot pink is good to paint. And a salon of grateful girls sigh.

Received

Familiar Handwriting

1 Jiffy Bag

Door Mat

Happiness

CD1 4ME

Semi Detached Viewing

I don't know if it's a sign of a successful TV programme that you can't actually be in the room when it's on.

The Apprentice can sometimes be watched from between fingers , sometimes from behind the sofa. This week it was from the other room. Sound but no picture. Even then there's no getting away from the screeching, squealing and shouting. I am practising punching the air right now and apart from the gentle flapping of a bingo wing ,it is a silent happening and as the oldest of the 'candidates' is only 36 I can't see how this would be an issue for them. Unbelievably they even managed to make the Marrakesh souk seem subdued in comparison.

I can only venture back in when I hear Margaret's stern but soothing tones.

As Jennifer said in a programme where confusion over religious definitions kept everyone as busy as the task -' can we all say a Hail Mary'. I think they may have been putting the batteries in a mosque shaped alarm clock at the time but I couldn't say for sure as I was in the other room.

Changing Lanes

Values change. What was important becomes less so and other things take their place.You favour measures like MPG over MPH and life in the slower lane doesn't seem so bad. Tapping the steering wheel has replaced hitting the gas. You might even reflect on all this and think that maybe you have grown into the adult you were overdue to become.

Until, idle at at red light, with an empty road ahead of you, Robert Plant is just about to get to the bit where he gives you the lowdown on how not to lose it if you come across a bustle in your hedgerow. And suddenly you remember why all that stuff you had consigned to the glove compartment of life is so important after all.

And then there is only one place to be.