Flourishing
Jeffrey Bernard
Everything in the garden is lovely. As a matter of fact,. if I didn't loathe the public as I do. I'd think of opening it to them. But I don't think I'd make a very good host. Last week, an obvious town dweller knocked on my door and asked me if the track that goes through the estate was open to the public. Looking over his shoulder I beheld his wife and two children in the back of their Rover waiting eagerly and impatiently to assault the scenery with a Tesco picnic, In a rather surly. aggressive and miserable way I told him that it was.
'Good.' he said. 'In that case, can we leave our car here while we go for a walk?' I looked at them again, a typical family as seen in an advertisement for insurance, and I said, 'yes, you call leave it there if you really think I want to look at it all afternoon.' He gave me a muted, 'Oh', and went back to the Rover to consult with his wife. A minute later, they drove away back where they'd come from.
I feel rather guilty about having been so churlish. They would have loved the view of the Downs and he was certainly captivated by the glimpse he got of my garden.
Yes. it certainly has changed since I first moved in and addressed you on the subject. Almost everything I put in has flourished, and I'm quite pleased with my first efforts at gardening. We now have greenfly the size of parrots and we have a variety of caterpillar that I think must be related to the python. What has surprised me most of all is the row of raspberries. We moved in far too late to prune them and what few I thought we'd get I felt sure the birds would have. As it is, there's a surfeit of them. I've got dysentery from them and I've run up a cream bill that I think is now bigger than my Ladbrokes bill. What's more I don't know what on earth to do with the red currants. The jelly potential is quite staggering, and I think I may have to phone the local Labour Exchange to see if they've got enough people on their books to pick them. What I'm most pleased about is the ongoing tomato situation. I didn't realise you got 10 lbs of tomatoes from each plant. The way things are looking I shall probably have dysentery right through till October. I think what made them really come on so well is talking to them. I thought that business of talking to plants was an old wives' tale but it really does work and what works even more. I've found. is reading to them. The variety I've got is called Moneymaker and I've been reading them Cyril Coninolly's Enemies of Promise which they seem to adore. They particularly liked the chapter. 'The Poppies'. in which it is written, 'Sloth in writers is always a symptom of an acute inner conflict, especially that laziness which renders them incapable of doing the thing which they are most looking forward to.' At • the end of that sentence, a green slip of a tomato turned a dull red and shlurped to the ground. an instant windfall.
A small but tasty literary carrot has been in front of me and I keep thinking of it as I thread my way between the roses and the onions, staggering from the scent of both. A neighbour who is literary editor of a national newspaper told me he was taken out to lunch the other day by his publisher to be told that his novel was being, more or less, rejected. Where on earth. I wonder, do they take you to tell you it's being accepted'? More to the point, how can One tell if the stuff will be accepted?
Well, for that, it's back to the garden again. I decided last evening to read some of my autobiographical notes to three anaemic-looking sunflowers in the hope that they might perk up. Just three paragraphs concerning my loveless childhood and they wilted beyond recall. My message to Alan Brooke at Michael Joseph is that I'll have the taramasalata followed by the moussaka. Oh, and lots of wine.
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