I have not written about a jaunt for ages so this seems like the moment. The day begins quite early with an alarm going off at 5:15AM. An alarm clock is both a very simple and a very useful invention but my problem is always a lack of belief in either the technology of my own competence. As a result whenever I set an alarm I wake up hourly to check that I have not missed it. I haven’t and tumble out of bed into the darkness of the morning. Breakfast is a banana and an old Mars Bar that I found in my glove compartment.
6:12: I am at Bicester North Station chatting to Mick the ticket clerk while secretly panicking that there is going to be so much chat that I will miss the train. This does not happen. Honestly I used to be so laisse faire about travelling and would think nothing of haring across bridges to catch trains or through terminals just in time to leap on aeroplanes as the doors closed. I suppose it is age but I seem to spend far too much time worrying.
7:11: Marylebone. The rain has stopped and the sun gleams on puddles as I walk to Baker Street and the Jubilee Line. I must say that’s so far this has been a very dull travelogue: my apologies.
7:36: Change at Canning Town to the DLR. At this point I get on the wrong train which results in some recalculations and a small bit of running. Some jeopardy but, in the end, immaterial.
8:10: London City Airport – the world’s easiest airport. I have done a fair bit of domestic flying in my life and it is almost always hideous. If you are very bored you can trawl back through this blog and find descriptions of the horrors of holiday season security at Birmingham Airport or aeroplanes missed at Luton. London City is a breeze – you tumble off the train and 5 minutes later you are werestling with a pot of Pret a Manger granola at Gate Four.
8:50: There are seven people on the Loganair flight to the Isle of Man. They spread us out through the aeroplane to, presumably, prevent us tipping into a loop the loop if it gets a bit choppy near Liverpool. We all get a Tunnocks wafer. Before working on this garden I last visited the Isle of Man to do a talk with my excellent friend Nigel Colborn in 2008. We did a national tour called Green with Envy. I did write a blog about it but I dont think that it survived a migration. I know that the theatre was charming, it rained (a lot), we found a statue of Norman Wisdom – which has now been joined by one of the Bee Gees as I believe they were born on the island. Anyway here is a picture of us in our dressing room eating sandwiches.
Nigel Colborn
9:05: I realise that I have left my cap in the airport. Annoying as it was well worn in and much loved.
15:30: I have had a delightful day wandering around a client’s garden and decide that this would be a good moment to check that all is cheery in the aeroplane departures department.
It isn’t.
The plane has been delayed for a hour and a half. Very dull but it allows me to go for a bracing walk along the windy shoreline and return to eat a baked potato (with beans, tuna mayo and cheese) in the company of two delightful small children. We then bundle into a draughty Landrover for the five minute drive to the airport*.
18:15: I walk into the airport at the same time as my phone buzzes insistently. It is a text from LoganAir regretting, very politely, that the flight has been cancelled. There are no other flights to London City for 24hours so I have choices: (A) stay on the Isle of Man (B) fly to Manchester or Edinburgh (C) fly EasyJet to Gatwick I opt for option C and stand in various queues until 20:00 when there is a chaotic boarding queue with everyone’s hand baggage being checked. One can only assume that this is so that the airline can screw a few extra quid from the travelling public.
21:20: Land at Gatwick. Walk miles through windowless corridors. Get on the shuttle.
21:46: Miss the train to Victoria
21:56: Get the train to Victoria.
23:07: Get the train home.
I should never have complained about the dullness of this journey at the beginning of this lament: the fates will not be mocked. The picture is of some hatching Virginia creeper Castletown.
I am back in Birmingham airport where the cost of car parking is positively criminal. I have written before of my troubled relationship with this airport here. Today I cruise through security and am off to Belfast. I h I am here to sticky beak the new Horatio’s garden at the Musgrave Park Hospital. It is designed by the excellent Andy Sturgeon and is edging its way to completion of the hard landscaping. There are pods and greenhouses and a huge entertainment area where film nights, Boccaccio games and disco dancing are being planned. I have an Uber driver called Adonis – no obvious connection to the devastatingly handsome young man from Greek myth who died in the arms of a weeping Aphrodite
From there I get on a very swanky train (accompanied by a vegan flapjack of dubious quality) that runs from Belfast to Dublin. It is fast and comfortable and generally uneventful. Tipped out in Dublin I then wend my way to a hotel which looks marvellous on her website but whose reality does not come up to snuff.
It is squeezed between a railway and a canal and all the rooms are in the basement and therefore underwater! I fling open the curtains and instantly regret the impulsive gesture as the curtain falls from the pole. The view is of a ten foot wall dripping with water. It has shiny cushions the colour of Quality Street Brazil but chocolates, mould on the walls, rust in the bathroom and a carpet that feels as if it contains a layer of Parmesan cheese just below the surface,
As if that was not enough it is noisy and the restaurant has been closed for six months which comes as a bit of a surprise as that was not announced on the website. So no food except for a tantalising vending machine that doesn’t work – I am millimetres from a Boost Bar, some Dairy Milk (and incidentally, some shampoo and s bumper pack of Durex – anyone who regards this place as a romantic location requiring condoms is, in my opinion, both misguided and a little perverse.)
I wake indecently early and wander around the canal as the sun rises. The locks are spectacular in the gloom but it is very busy – trains whizzz by, there is an aqueduct and the M50 above my head. Bargees are waking up, swans mooch and a collection of very sturdy Irish rats scutter around. I get an email from Booking.com inviting me to review the service – I am waiting until I feel very curmudgeonly and then I will let rip.
Finally we (Matthew Lee, the head gardener in Belfastand I) drive off in search of breakfast which is fine – although the sausage is a little flaccid which is never ideal. We like a bit of turgidity to our bangers.
Fortified we go off to deliver the David Robinson Memorial Lecture to 250 students. All goes well and we lunch and trot off to look at various research and teaching projects – mushrooms, hydrangeas, peat substitutes and vegetables.
Back at the airport I realise that I am very tired indeed. I eat noodles and chocolate and watch the rain battering the windows. We trail into the plane and I write this and watch That’s Entertainment 2 while we wait for a takeoff slot – it might take a while as one runway has been closed due to boisterous weather.
Buckle up people, it may well be a bumpy ride…..
The picture is of a rogue dog rose shaking its hips and I am listening to Lucinda Williams’ “Wild and Blue’.
I have just come back from Dublin. It was a lightning visit – leave on Friday morning, do a talk in the evening, fly back on Saturday.
Bish, bosh nicker, nosh. So quick was it that I have no photographs of the trip so will have to pepper this blog with stuff that is irrelevant – but hopefully pretty.
Anything involving travel these days seldom goes completely smoothly. Rabbie Burns sums it all up quite nicely in the bit he wrote about mice and men ganging all agley. And that was well before budget air travel was even a glimmer in the eye of Freddie Laker.
I am here to give a talk at the Carlow Garden Festival: an annual jamboree that is always jolly- I have been once before and always enjoy talking in Ireland. On this occasion I am doing a Design Off with Adam Frost. This is not yet an Olympic sport but the just of it is as follows: he shows off a garden, I show off a garden, the audience votes and there is massive adulation for the winner and universal excoriation for the loser.
Colonnade Garden – not in Ireland.
You know the sort of thing… on this occasion as the Irish are not only sweet but diplomatic it is a draw.
We are driven back to Dublin and dropped at an hotel that has the charm of a lay-by on the A34 – albeit one with beige curtains. I leave early in the rain – this in itself is a novelty as we have not had rain at home for weeks * and take the airport shuttle.
Dublin airport is pretty chaotic with far too many people, long queues and piles of baggage. That said everyone is charming in that Irish way – very different from security people in Birmingham who are generally pretty irrascible.I am starving so breakfast on stuff that would not earn more than a raised eyebrow from even the most undiscerning of Michelin inspectors.
Green Rise
I arrive at the gate on time and eager but sadly the neither aeroplane or the crew share my keenness. Eventually an aeroplane is found. We get on one of those annoying buses. We are not allowed off the bus as the plane is uninhabited and we need a pilot. The crew arrive but one of them is then injured by a suitcase and has to retire hurt. The exact nature of the valise wound is not clear. We wait an hour for a new crew member. All so tedious that I revert to my advanced comfort position which involves watching Thunderbolt and Lightfoot again. ** We fly, we land and eventually I get home again.
I am listening to Hurtin’ (On the bottle) by Margo Price. The photograph is of the hotel carpet.
*for those reading this in the future it is late July and we have just had our first experience of 40 degree heat. It has not been universally welcomed.
** 1974. Michael Cimino. There is a scene featuring Jeff Bridges laying turf that was the reason that Cleve West took up landscaping as a career.
I know that many of you have sat through various indulgent travelogues that I have written in this blog over the years – most of them concerning slightly eccentric jaunts to Russia. I am afraid that this is another story but this time I am on my way to China to judge a show and to give a talk to various assembled eminent horticulturists. I have never been to China before and my garden at home is full of the joys of spring so it is with mixed emotions that I pack too many shirts, a selection of striped ties and lots of charging cables and truck off to Heathrow.
Wednesday 25th: I am going to Shanghai about which I know next to nothing – there was a Bay City Rollers song called Shanghai’d in love but I don’t think that counts as a genuine cultural reference. From there I am going to a place called Haining about which I know even less except that it is the site of a flower show.
It is the grandly named World Garden Show and I am here to judge stuff and give a talk to quite a lot of Chinese horticulturists.
Thursday 9:30: I am met at the gate by a stern looking Chinese lady who escorts me through passport control and baggage claim before depositing me with three more people who put me in a car. It is like being a cross between a visiting dignitary and a prisoner under escort.
The sun is bright and my car zips along wide motorways populated by interesting trucks carrying interesting things like copper wire, watermelons, the contents of septic tanks and lots of building supplies. Shanghai seems to have cornered the market on cranes. They are everywhere. My driver says nothing but does a lot of horn honking.
Eventually we pull up at a massive resort hotel and I am ushered into a very cushty fifth floor suite. They know how to look after a chap: charming interpreters and delightful guides. I am quite knackered but push on with lunch – apparently the Chinese have lunch at 11:30 so we are unfashionably late by expecting to be fed at 1:00. We eat shrimps, broccoli, a bearded fish and very good soup with translucent phallic mushrooms floating in it.
14:00: There is a vast river at the rear of the hotel – vast to me, modest to the Chinese – which apparently has a spectacular 10m high tidal bore every so often. I cannot get at it though as there is a large fence between us so am writing this while sitting on a stone bench under a loquat tree. There are outdoor speakers unconvincingly disguised as rocks so I am listening to Simon and Garfunkel singing Scarborough Fair which seems a bit odd.
Dinner is not suitable for vegans. A couple of us opt to walk back too the hotel through the town. There is a dance class on the street every evening which is a lovely thing to watch – only women, mostly of a certain age participate. It is perfectly coordinated and very elegant. A lot of China is regimented – even the security detail at the airport and the road sweepers march onto shift in close order – but nobody seems to mind as much as we would. There is plenty of room for entrepreneurs and businesses but the government reigns supreme. All infrastructure is financed by them, all development is supervised by them and, although people are happy to outline the flaws and mistakes, they population seems mostly content with their lot.
Friday 7:00: The mystery of the breakfast buffet. I have always been confused by hotel buffets, I am never sure where to go or what to eat especially on the first day. By day three I am swaggering around juggling muffins and custom made omelettes. Chinese breakfast buffets are even more confusing as they add even more layers to the yoghurt and fruit or full cooked shebang choice. There is also pork porridge, noodles, potatoes, rice, assorted cakes in many colours, peanuts, gummy bears, weird bread, croissants, ice cream, shellfish and baked beans. Eating a fried egg with chopsticks is a challenge.
7:51: Missed the bus but caught up eventually and arrived at the show in time for judging duties. I am judging 26 plants, 16 gardens and 36 tradestands. It is fearfully hot so I am issued with a red Donald Trump style baseball cap to protect my tender imperialist bonce. There are five of us, three distinguished Chinese, a delightful Anglo-American nurseryman and me. Our deliberations are independent so no discussions or debate. This involves a great deal more mathematics than makes me comfortable.
Assorted judges.
16:30: Judging complete we stagger back to the hotel for an eccentrically mixed dinner. It includes pasta, pizza, sushi, a chocolate fountain, chicken feet, suspicious looking chops, pumpkin soup, lettuce, boiled eggs, tripe, cucumber slices and sundry other things. Chinese cuisine is always interesting.
Saturday 8:00: Bus to the convention centre which is quite large. There are various other Europeans and Americans in attendance but they all know each other well and many have been selling their wares in China for years. We all sit down in this anteroom where we are brought coffee and interpretation kit by very young, well educated people of whom there seem to be an abundance.
By this stage I am getting a tiny bit nervous as I am first up and I have absolutely no idea what to expect. The auditorium is in an enormous university and holds a thousand people, there are lots of speeches to get the whole thing launched including a bit when the assembled dignitaries (all men) lined up on stage and pushed buttons which released a lot of fanfares and flashing light action.
10:45 ‘tis done. I pranced and pontificated as is my wont and it seemed to go down okay if judged by my usual criteria which is that if nobody sleeps, interrupts or throws things then it is a resounding success. It is nice to get it over with so I can now spend the rest of the day listening to other speakers. It is always good to see how other people speak.
11:50 Lunch. I am oddly starving especially as this is becoming quite an intense day as there are a lot of talks in very quick succession. The Chinese are only half listening as they are completely obsessed with their telephones- people answer them (quietly) during talks and are endlessly checking We Chat which is the Chinese WhatsApp. WhatsApp, incidentally, is not available in China – nor is YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Google so if you wish to avoid having your data harvested you could always contemplate moving to China
There were many selfies…
18:30 A banquet. It is quite a grand affair but not terribly relaxing as every five minutes I have to stand up and drink a toast with an important local dignitary. This happens at least fifteen times during dinner – they are drinking wine and I am on the cucumber juice so at least I unfuddled. I have, however, run out of business cards so the ceremonial exchange is somewhat one sided.
The banquet has also managed to give me food poisoning. I suppose that if you to be forced to spend the greater part of the night in close communion with a lavatory then better it is caused by a banquet than a casual sarnie.
Michael, Gary and some of the many other guides and interpreters
Sunday 8:00: I wake up feeling a little wan as I bustle off to a ‘fan meeting ‘ which, disappointingly has nothing to do with the fan dance and more to do with me being asked questions by fifty assembled putative garden designers. From there we zip off to the city of Hangzhou along rose lined motorways that are quite crowded due to the fact that we have picked a public holiday for this jaunt. We wander round various sites of historical interest and inspect a tea garden all of which is interesting but would have been more interesting if I was feeling less like a flounder who had recently had a contretemps with a mangle.
Final call of the day is the office of a large landscape architecture practice where they are doing extraordinary things. Huge developments in distant cities, a revival of the rural economy through building and tourism, mansions on islands and the conversion of a power station into a complex of shops, offices, flats and parks.
Nothing in China is little or unambitious.
I thought I was just having a look around but actually was taking part in a small seminar about rural development. Until you have sat through a picture free PowerPoint presentation in Chinese for over an hour you really haven’t lived. After that I talked about I am not sure what for half an hour and answered questions about gardens, the RHS and Britain.
In the end it was great but I was quite pleased to get back for a lie down.
7:00 Monday: I am back in a cab speeding towards Shanghai airport. It has been a brief but fascinating visit: I should have stayed for a couple more days and seen more places but that is life.
This is a country of such energy, variety, vastness (there are 110 million people living in the city and suburbs of Shanghai – there are 65 million people in the whole of the UK) and potential that it is easy to see how screwed we are in the west. Makes you realise that democracy is possibly not all it is cracked up to be.
16:30 (UK time or 23:30 Shanghai time): Land at Heathrow having watched five films, eaten two indifferent meals, read half a book and written this blog).
I am listening to Rumours by Fleetwood Mac through the inflight system. I have no idea why.
Below me are the lights of Moscow. I know this is a totally rubbishy photograph but it has a sort of surreal charm and is the best I could do – actually it is an example of our age when we take far too many photographs of things that really do not deserve to be photographed. There is the amazing statistic that we take more photographs every day (or is it every hour?) than were ever taken in the whole history of photography before the digital age. Every so often I sit down and spend an hour or so deleting photographs but still have 32,000 on my telephone. I reckon about 1,000 are precious or interesting, the others are just resting.
I digress, we were in (or rather above) Moscow as the sun sets into the flaming west. Why? well those of you who read this blog relatively regularly will know that for the past six years I have been involved with the Moscow Flower Show (there are Russia based blog posts here, here, here and, if you still have the stamina, here and here) and that time has come around once more so this is what happened….
Wednesday- I got back from Canada (see previous post) yesterday and less than twenty four hours later I am back in a taxi heading to Gatwick, this time in the company of the divine Nina Acton. I am not good company as my brain is a little coddled and slow acting. We eat hummus and get on a plane where I eat dubious chicken and watch Hell or High Water which stars Jeff Bridges and is remarkably good. Films for planes are sometimes difficult to choose as you want something that will divert but will not suffer from being watched on a small screen. Usually I go for light froth – I watched Bridget Jones’ Baby on the way to Canada. It was far too long:when I am elected to be ruler of the universe* my first act will be to pass a law insisting that no film should be longer than ninety minutes. If you can’t say what you need to in that time then you deserve to seven years penal servitude. The same may go for bloggers who do not stick to the point and ramble off about irrelevancies.
We land and get a taxi – eventually after a bit of a wait which allowed us the opportunity to enjoy some enthusiastic horn tooting ** – to a very large Soviet era hotel whose lobby is the size of a domestic aircraft hanger but with extra chandeliers. Bed is welcome.
Thursday – Judging Day. It appears that Nina has taken pity on me as the original plan was for me (and my International Jury) to judge seventy exhibits: gardens large and small, childrens’ gardens, art exhibits and trade stands. Nina will judge the latter and I will stick to gardens.
Judging gardens in Russia is a little different to judging at Chelsea. The criteria are a simplified version of the RHS criteria but the judges tend to wander off mid judging to make telephone calls, greet chums or take photographs of other gardens. I have to be quite fierce and bark at them occasionally but, being Russians, they are quite used to that and respond better to that than any English ‘Excuse me, sorry to bother you but would you mind? So kind, thank you so so much” sort of thing.
It is quite hot and we are interrupted by my having to go and make a speech about the year of ecology at the opening ceremony and then being whisked off to do an interview with Russian television – during my absence my panel wander off and give full marks to a garden that is far from perfect and a silver to one that is really very good. Cue more barking from me – and posing (this photograph is by Andrey Lysikov
Finally we finish at about 9.00 and mooch off and eat things in a largely empty but very beautiful restaurant. Russian restaurants have very comfortable seating – not for them small tables and upright chairs but squishy sofas and deep armchairs. Comfy but sometimes it makes access to the actual food a bit tricky.
Friday: I give a seminar on the trends at RHS shows which is always a bit difficult as they are looking for particular fashions and there aren’t any really so I talk about gardens generally in that strange staccato fashion that is necessary when being interpreted. When we come out the sky is an ominously brooding black which does not look good – a hurricane is forecast so the prize giving (or Solemn Rewarding as it is translated to me) is brought forward a few hours to avoid universal drenching. The problem with this is the medal cards are still being processed so there are gaps between categories. To fill the time we do communal dancing to a slightly dubious version of Super Trooper by ABBA – I dance on stage, they dance in the aisles.
Then the rain comes – it is quite spectacular and is accompanied by gales that whisk the puddles along the ground and rattle the trees. We remove ourselves from a tent and decamp to the rather more solid surrounding of the Museon where there are decent loos and proper coffee. Eventually it clears and I wander back to give feedback to as many gardens as possible – Russian designers love feedback. Almost without exception they take it well and enjoy the critique as they are eager to improve. When I first came here they were all badly planted with lots of gaps and plastic: the gardens are so much better now, although they still build them at the last moment.
We finish just after six and we are off for a treat – we have been given tickets to Il Trovatore at the Helikon Theatre. It has only been open for a couple of years and is in the old coach house of a large mansion once owned by the gloriously named E. Shakhovskaya-Glebova-Streshneva who put on all sorts of musical events in her home up until 1918. It was fabulous – although, like many operas, the story is a bit ridiculous and far fetched. A meeting with the organisers at about 11:30 finishes the day. They have stamina these Russians much more than us soft Brits who are used to being in bed by 10:15.
I fall into bed at about 1:00 with the pleasurable prospect of four hours sleep before the taxi arrives to take me to the airport. Except that this is Moscow and there is an all night rave going on just under my window which is joined in at 4:00 by what sounds like people dropping lengths of scaffolding onto a hard surface and then hitting them with hammers – listen carefully to the video below and you will understand.. Enthusiastically. Incidentally there is also an enormously long queue across the river of people waiting to see a particularly rare relic that is visiting from Italy. Russians are very pious.
Saturday:Airport is Saturday morning chaotic – imagine Luton in holiday season. We muddle through and I go to the executive lounge (which is very crowded) to eat free food of dubious quality and try not to sleep through the departure of my flight.
A short but, as always, eventful and entertaining trip. Next stop Hampton Court, Tatton Park and then no more travels for a while.
I am listening to Time of my Life by the Watson Twins. The main picture is of a baby rabbit in a show garden – eat your heart out Chelsea Flower Show.
*If Donald Trump can do it then I reckon that we all should get a go.
** Horn tooting is something that we British only do in extremis while other nations seem to rejoice in the practice. It seems to me to be remarkably pointless especially in a traffic jam as one has to assume that the people at the front are also trying to leave as soon as possible so horn tooting does not help. It is a futile gesture like appealing to the referee in football matches – he/she is never going to change their mind. Or indeed getting stroppy while receiving feedback at RHS Shows.
Sunday:
I am off on a trip…
Firstly, it involves a train from Banbury to Heathrow via Hayes and Harlington. Very simple in theory but, as is the way sometimes with the oft laid plans of mice and men, likely to gang aft agley. It is like dominos- one train is ten minutes late so you miss the next train by nine seconds (after a frantic rush across a bridge and a shove through an oncoming crowd ). This means being stranded on an empty platform at Hayes and Harlington for an hour before finally arriving at the airport.
I am going to Moscow to give a seminar nominally entitled Gardening across Continents with the aim to jazz up the world of Russian horticulture. More specifically to talk to them about show gardens, design and planting and also to talk about an exchange we have instigated at Malvern and about which I wrote in my last blog.
Red Square at night
Monday:
It is an overnight flight- not long, only about 3.5 hours – in that it leaves at 10:30 (london time) and lands at 5.00 in the morning (Moscow time). I, however, am far to old and set in my ways for this sort of interruption to my routine. I go to the hotel and go straight to bed.
It is cold out there: about minus 10. This raises a few sartorial dilemmas: I emerged into the street all wrapped up like a bear in a duvet. Coats, hats, Horatio’s Garden Alpaca Socks (available here and a perfect Christmas Gift), gloves etc. I walk five steps and get into a car so hot that you could probably roast a duck in the glovebox. I then go to an equally hot office followed by a sweltering restaurant, another car and back to a hotel room where, in my absence, a diligent cleaner had cranked up the radiator. I flung open the window and welcomed as much icy air as possible. Tomorrow I will not be so thermally aware. The restaurant, by the way, was next to the Bolshoi Theatre and involved crab from Kamchatka (a species of red king crab that has a leg span of nearly six feet) and six different sorts of caviar.
Tuesday:
Theatre filling up
The reason why I am here: I tootle along to the auditorium of the Moscow Museum where there is a milling multitude of assorted interested parties. I am quite happy giving talks of an hour or so but today I am doing four talks of about one and a half hours each plus a two hour Q&A. It is quite tiring – there is a relay of simultaneous interpreters who do a sterling job trying to keep up with me: they change over every twenty minutes to prevent exhaustion. It is interesting as the audience each have a headset into which the interpreter drips a translation of what I am saying but, like an old fashioned transatlantic telephone call, five seconds after I have spoken which means that timing of jokes and frivolities can be a little tricky. You deliver a punchline, pause for reaction and then, just as you are about to give up, a small section of the audience – those who get the joke – laugh politely.
Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
The main purpose of the day was to drum up some entries for the Malvern/Moscow exchange so many participants brought sketches and ideas which continue to flood in – it will be a good thing and you should all come to the RHS Malvern Spring Festival to see what happens.
I have no idea why there is a chicken on the lollipop stall
We retire to a Chinese restaurant where all the waitresses are dressed up as members of the Red Guard which seems like an odd thing to celebrate. They jazz up their khaki uniforms with very red lipstick. The food is delicious and we then troop off to Red Square where there is a bustling Christmas Market and a skating rink – which was sadly barred to us as it had been booked for some spiffy private party for Prada (I think). We posed for many photographs – for that is one of Russia’s favourite national activities and Valenkis (felt snow boots as worn, if I remember rightly, by Solzhenitsyn in “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch”) were bought for me. The snow is light but the air is a strange dry cold which seems innocuous at first but then gives you a headache and seeps into the bones.
It is fun and I dance with a group of people dressed as Christmassy Cossacks.
Wednesday
And home again – first breakfast in the hotel, an early cab through the appalling Moscow traffic, second breakfast in the Aeroflot Executuve lounge (hmmm.) Third breakfast (strictly speaking an early lunch*) on the aeroplane as we fly through clear skies over miles and miles of snow dusted birch forest. Then an equally fabulous approach to Heathrow all along the river from the Thames barrier. Every landmark is clear and glinting in the sunshine – I can even pick out my mother’s flat.
Then four trains and home again.
The time difference may only be three hours but I feel as if I have been pushed slowly but steadily through a mangle .
Birch forests, lakes and snow
Millennium dome and the Thames
I am listening to Slow Movin’ Outlaw by Waylon Jennings.
The picture is of the Bolshoi theatre.
*Russians have a very charming way of saying lunch. ‘Then we will have a lunch…” pronounced larrrnch. Sometimes it is a “friendly larrrnch”.
I have a second home.
Sadly it is not a villa on the Côte d’Azur , nor is it a chalet in Gstaad (complete with on tap emmental and fur bedspreads). It is not a palm roofed shack on a beach in the Carribean nor even a chic pied a terre in Shoreditch or Montmartre.
It is much more unusual and niche than that – it is Birmingham Airport. I seem to be spending an increasing amount of time commuting back and forth to Glasgow…..
Birmingham airport has both good and bad sides. The car park is conveniently close to the departure terminal , it is relatively close to home and the lavatories work. What is not so good are the rather stentorian security staff – it is somehow worse to be told to take your shoes off at 6:30am by a large Brummie than by a large Scotsman. I also have a deep and unreasonable loathing for the Duty Free area.
Birmingham Airport – Dawn and Dusk
It meanders its way through glossy stalls selling the usual vastly overpriced Eau de Toilette (note to those who care: buying aftershave endorsed by Karl Lagerfeld or Johnny Depp is unlikely to get you laid any more than if you just washed more often), bottles of novelty liqueurs and giant sacks of M&Ms. I want to get through this as quickly as possible in order to get on my plane without having to run and thus arrive unkempt and wheezing at Gate 26. I do not wish to buy stuff and would really like a straight through path rather than being sent all over the houses on a long and winding road: sadly I have no option but to follow the crowd trying to avoid tripping over their very small wheeled suitcases. To rub salt into the wound the floor is as sparkly as a stripper’s tush.
As I am flying to Glasgow the plane usually leaves from approximately gate 16. If all goes well I will arrive there with not quite enough time to have a cup of coffee but will do so all the same. The cup of coffee arrives, I have one hurried swig and the slightly grumpy woman on the gate chooses that moment to announce a final boarding call and I have to go. This happens almost every single time and I seem incapable of learning my lesson.
My third home is, obviously, Glasgow Airport. In fact I tend to spend a bit more time here hanging around. It too has an identically irritating Duty Free bit but, because I am always there in the early evening I do try to find time to eat chips. A chap needs chips every so often and a damp day gardening in Glasgow is definitely sufficient excuse. The worst moment was just after I had spent the day fossicking around amongst some very pungent compost. A smell I took back with me to the airport – and beyond. I must apologise to the unfortunate fellow sitting in Seat 12b: it cannot have been one of his better journeys!
Why am I doing this? Because we are getting terrifyingly close to the opening of Horatio’s Garden, Scotland. This is possibly the most meaningful garden that I have made in the last thirty years. I am thrilled to be doing it but am still stressing about edges and details.
I also have troubling dreams about Pachysandra terminalis. I will post pictures once we are finished: the opening is on September 2nd.
I am listening Speak to the Rose by Wilco. The picture is of some lettuces.
My goodness, two blogposts in under a month: it is quite like the good old days when people used to read blogs and the world was not completely swamped with words.
Anyway it is that time of year again when I skip off to Moscow to judge the Moscow Flower Show. This will be the fifth year and it is always interesting – the gardens are usually a bit of a mixed bag but never dull. This is my week
Sunday:
Hampton Court for a recce, watch Iceland lose to France then return to the Teddington Travelodge. This is worth a brief mention as it is basically a multi storey car park with rooms and if possible should be avoided. There was a postcard on the bed which said (and I précis this rather than quote verbatim) ‘Welcome to the British summertime. For your convenience we have drawn your curtains to keep out the heat of the day, we have also removed your duvet and left you with a single sheet. We suggest that you open your window at night when the temperatures cool”. This is, we assume, in lieu of air conditioning
Monday is judging which was all very jolly. Then lunch, then feedback then drive home and try not to sleep on the M40.
Tuesday :
Fly to Moscow. Aeroflot this time which has it air crew in very jaunty orange uniform: like a group of Slavic satsumas. I am eating mushroom risotto and fried almonds followed by a perfectly passable tiramisu
Clouds are funny things’ all soft and fluffy to look at but as soon as you go into one in an aeroplane they get all uppity and shake you about in a most alarming way. I had my knee firmly grasped by the very large man next to whom I was sitting on a flight from Glasgow the other day as we lurched through a crowd. I think he was very embarrassed.
Wednesday :
Began with Russian pancakes, boiled sausages and Brussels sprouts but, more importantly, it was judgment day.
Eccentrically the rest of the panel had already judged in my absence so I was mostly on my own and then added my marks to theirs. This resulted in some slightly odd decisions which I had to moderate. There are some okay gardens and a couple of shockers but this is a very young show which needs time to find its place. It would be even better if everybody thought about things a little earlier – some garden applications did not arrive until June – which is not something that we would tolerate at the RHS!
Obviously, as this is Russia, we have to have dignitaries and speeches and a full blown awards ceremony with fanfares and clapping. I signed all the medal certificates and then, after a moment for a swift change of suiting, I showed the deputy British ambassador round the show. He was rather captivated by the idea of gardens uniting countries etc etc and it gave him a rest from talking about the Chilcott report to inquisitive Russian journalists.
We also had the minister of culture who made a longish speech* about something. Then various other people popped onto the stage and talked about how amazing everything was and how grateful we all are etc etc. Russians love a speech even more so if it is made by a government apparatchik. Then I made a speech and dished out medals: this involved two girls – one dressed in a Russian flag and one in a Union Jack – who darted forward and gave each winner a bunch of roses, a bag contains a book and some tea, another bag containing more tea and an MFS pen tidy. My job was to give out a certificate and kiss people when appropriate ** then there were more speeches and more certificates to everybody involved. This included the show’s pet Orthodox priest who has an amazing beard and comes every year to bless us all. He made a speech and was rewarded not only with the tea and roses but a Bosch cordless screwdriver.
Dinner followed in a former chocolate factory with a great view of the river.
Thursday:
I woke up this morning to a bit of a bit of a judging rumpus which always adds a bit of a frisson to proceedings. Facebook was jumping with a certain amount of disgruntlement so I had to pour a lot of oil on a lot of waters – if there had been a cormorant in the vicinity it would have been in trouble. I think all was fine in the end – the problem was that we gave one Best in Show rather than rewarding a best in each category of which there are many – Show, Russian, Balcony, Urban, Art, Chic,Trade etc etc. For some a Gold Medal is not enough…
Having done this I tootled off to give a seminar to the assembled designers and interested parties about judging and show gardens and garden design in general. It was a long seminar with many questions.
I am now also the (apparently) only foreign member of Russia’s largest ecological society. Founded 90 odd years ago by Lenin’s wife they are responsible for planting about 5 billion trees and do work to improve the street planting in towns and cities all over Russia. I have a very smart badge.
Lunch was bortsch and dumplings followed by more feedback. Then a couple of interviews and time for a very swift change and off to a Ukrainian restaurant for dinner. This involved a particular national speciality called, I think, sala. Paper thin slices of pig fat wrapped around a sliver of raw garlic – it melts in the mouth but I am not sure that I am in a hurry to eat it again. This was not all there were, I hasten to add, many delicious things that were less piggy in particular little savoury pastries called Pirojock which I could eat all day if called upon so to do.
More interestingly the restaurant was on the second floor and, on the other side of a glass partition was a large cow – chewing the cud and regarding the assembled diners with a look of abject scorn – a goat, a vast rabbit, some peacocks, a couple of golden pheasants and a very sturdy woman in national costume. It was very weird.
Friday
Home again, home again jiggetty jig via a certain amount of turbulence near Visby.
I am listening to Louise sin the Blue Moon by Alison Moorer.
*I have a very patient and diligent interpreter called Evgeny. He is a great pleasure to be with and is very good at his job. He also has an interesting mixture of pastimes. He looks very bland – which is his job as he is there to blend into the background – with a suit and tie but in his time off he has three cats, he reads an enormous amount, he goes to the gym and is a devotee of House dancing. He is a diamond.
** Russian social kissing involves three points of contact (right cheek, left cheek, right cheek again) so when you have thirty odd medals to give out and most of the awardees are women this takes quite a while and involves a lot of friction.
“In one minute I bring you cake.”
This is a phrase to lighten the heart of a chap. In this case it is uttered by a very slinky blonde air stewardess 30,000 feet above Poland en route to Moscow. It says a lot about my stage of life that the idea of cake is marginally more alluring than the stewardess.
I am travelling once again to the Moscow Flower Show this time with Transaero Airlines. This is not a company of which I had previously heard but they boast on their website of winning an award for Most Improved Airline so I must be grateful that I did not fly with them the first time I came to Russia. That was three years ago when I flew BA and had a full length bed in which to cavort. The next time was Aeroflot and not quite so luxurious. This time it is Transaero. My stock is obviously diminishing. However, as the flight is only 3.5 hours I reckon I can cope.
The in flight entertainment system is interesting. A screen flips down from the ceiling but it only has one channel showing a cartoon in Russian. The cartoon seems to involve handsome princes with improbably barrel chests; the ending will, not doubt, be happy but I am not sure that I have the patience to stick with it to the end. Instead I am going to read Raymond Chandler and watch Cat Ballou.
I have had lunch. Duck confit with something which is described on the menu as “coffee mustard jam” and a strange chicken thing with red potatoes which were very difficult to spear with the fork provided – I suppose that there must be a rule about blunt tines to avoid stabbings. Oddly the coffee-mustard jam was quite good – perhaps the fact that there appeared to be not a trace of coffee helped matters.
Arriving in Moscow is much the same as arriving in any airport anywhere except that the passport control people seem to look much harder at you than in other airports.
Day Two: Judging day at the Moscow Flower Show.
At Chelsea the judges usually assemble at about 6:30 to look over the notes and eat bacon sandwiches, we then sally forth and judge 17 gardens in time for lunch. In Russia things are a little different.
My schedule for today reads:
10:00 Judging commences
12:30 Official opening and press briefing.
13:30 Interviews
15:15 Break. return to hotel.
18:30 Gala evening (Cocktail dresses)
Which sounds perfectly manageable.
The reality is much more interesting.
10:00 A wander around getting my bearings and finding out a bit about the gardens. There are 31 of them so if we were to judge them all by 12:30 then we would get 4minutes on each garden which seems quite tight!
11:00 We are still waiting for one of the judges to turn up.
11:30 We start judging. There are lively discussions and lots of sparkiness. All good.
12:30 Official opening to the press. Judging is halted: we have managed five gardens, it is very hot. There are a number of speeches in Russian ( I have a delightful interpreter called Evgeny who whispers a translation in my ear) and then I suddenly hear my name being called so hurriedly rush onto the stage and add my speech to the growing heap of welcoming words.
13:30 I give interviews to various television stations, newspapers, websites and a magazine called Snob. My co-judges are similarly occupied.
14:15 One of my judges has to go to work so leaves. We carry on judging. Another judge has to go and give another interview so we are down to four.
15:15 Lunch is announced so we all trek off to the other end of the park for a very welcome break. It is still very hot. You may recall that this was the time designated for return to hotel, quick snooze, change and back for the gala.
16:00 Back to work. The missing judge has returned but we have now lost another one due to heatstroke.
19:00 Finally we finish judging. Medals are listed and allocated.
19:30 Gala (I am unchanged and not very cocktaily) in which various Muscovite glitterati wander around and we eat cold meats on skewers. Clive Boursnell (the photographer) and I have a cup of tea.
20:30 I may have made a speech but I cannot quite remember.
22:00 Taxi.
Day Three: Today I have done various things.
I have been rained upon.
I have helped to open the Flower Show to the public by sharing a podium with the Culture minister and the deputy mayor of Moscow.I made a speech.
I have given an interview to a journalist who was convinced that I was Prince Harry’s gardener. It seemed a shame to disabuse her.
I then went to Moscow’s 24 hour television channel where I gave an interview about urban greening to a shiny suited journalist called Ivan. We sat on opposite sofas in a huge studio. The conversation was very stilted as I would say something and wait for it to be translated for him, then he would say something and wait for it to be translated for me. It does not make for snappy repartee.
I had fish soup for lunch.
I made another speech and announced the winners of the medals – they were given out along with goody bags and huge bunches of Ecuadorian roses.
I then listened to more speeches.
I then made another, very short, speech.
I sat on a comfortable sofa and talked about museums and the restoration of imperial palaces.
I wandered around the show giving feedback.
I then danced with the show director to Mr Sandman.
I ate some rather delicious stuffed Russian buns. This is always a highlight – buns with spinach, buns with egg, buns with something obscure and buns with apple.
I drank some filthy pumpkin juice.
I went back to the hotel.
Day three
No speeches from me today which came as a bit of a relief to all concerned.
Gave out more feedback before being whisked off to the largest children’s hospital in Moscow to look at potential sites for gardens. It consists of a grid of early 20th century buildings surrounded by dour patches of grass and trees. I was photographed with the director who is delightful even though he looks a little intimidating.
Launch of a new variety of rose. More speeches.
It is French day at the show so the French trade attaché is being feted.
More time on the comfortable sofa this time with a very insistent client.
Off to Red Square and the Kremlin for a bit of touristing. Trundle around the metro a bit.
Day 4
It is raining. Hard. Lots of it.Proper old fashioned superpower rain.
I am going to the airport in the care of a taxi driver who is treating these monsoon conditions with disdain. As a result there is quite a lot of aquaplaning and nervous gripping of the upholstery.
We get there unscathed and return home. Quite knackered but in time for Hampton Court and to see my friend Ann-Marie Powell win a Gold Medal. Hurrah.
I am listening to Melancholy Polly by Alison Moorer. The picture is of a fountain in the Alexander Park by the Kremlin. You have to walk under these jets of water behind these enormously muscular horses bottoms. There has to be a metaphor in there somewhere.
I have, for the third year in a row, been to The Moscow Flower Show. This is my diary…
Day One and there has been judging in extreme heat. It may not have been exactly standard RHS Judging but judging all the same. The Russian system is roughly one of my own devising with the various categories adapted for the Slavic mentality. This year they took it one step further by never having all the judges in one place at one time. After judging there was Georgian food – something about which I have written in depth after previous visits. Suffice to say that cheese and meat are the main ingredients with the odd cleft cucumber and bunch of parsley. If you are a vegan then Georgia may not be the best place for you to spend time.
The gardens themselves are finished much better than in previous years and some of them are really good – considering the short time they have to build them and the vagaries of Russian landscapers. One designer complained that the landscapers had refused to dig holes for his posts and instead had sawn off the bottoms and nailed them to a plank. Not the sort of thing to which Crocus often resort.
At least one would have easily won a Gold Medal at Hampton Court. Easily. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photograph so cannot prove it to you.
Day Two was a day for visiting clients. I have two just outside Moscow. The first visit involved a fair bit of hard graft. “James” she said (although she pronounced it “Jems” which I find rather appealing) “I have two carloads of plants arriving this morning for you to set out”. By “cars” she meant “closely packed lorries”.
The process I employ for setting out plants is to look at the plan, look at the plants and then change my mind and this was not exception. The difference was that I was doing it while ten gardeners, a client, a landscape architect, a foreman, an enforcer, a driver, an architect, a landscape architect’s assistant, an interpreter and sundry builders watched. Now I quite like an audience but this was a bit much. No sooner had a plant been placed than scores of eager workers descended on the poor thing and it was planted in seconds. At one point I queried the position of a 4m high tree (which had been planted in October) -and before you could say Vladivostok it had been dug up and moved to a better position.
The second client was much easier and just wanted to show me what had been achieved. The plan had been adapted slightly but that is the Russian way – one cannot be precious. She then fed me cherry dumplings which, I can tell you, is one of the very best things I have ever eaten. I ate nine of them and could have had more but thought that might be pushing diplomatic relations. If Mark Diacono can replicate them then I am prepared to do most of those things he keeps begging me to do. Trafficy drive back to the city chatting to my very charming young interpreter who has, over the past couple of days, developed a bit of a taste for gardening.
Friday is seminar day. I am to deliver a talk about Britain in Bloom.
It is very disorientating giving a lecture through an interpreter. Jokes are pretty much impossible, spontaneity interrupted and any kind of nuance is not even worth considering. It is particularly difficult when the interpreter sounds as if he is reciting the Siberian telephone directory very slowly indeed.
I am followed by a chap called Jago Keen who talked about trees in cities and then by the Mayor of a small city founded by the Soviets to house factory workers. He is a remarkable fellow who has taken the idea of urban greening to a whole new level. Fifty percent of his townsfolk are involved. There are flowers everywhere, vegetables in other places and almost every weekend there is a garden party somewhere. All the local residents bring food and drink, there is then dancing and games. It is a cross between a village fete, a street party and a ceilidh. There are no cigarette butts in the streets, almost all the rubbish is recycled and there is a strict policy of planting five trees for every tree that is felled. Much of the audience has followed him, they are almost exclusively women many of whom boast a lot of gold teeth which leads me to suspect that the dentists as well as the Gardeners are doing okay in that particular corner of the country.
The day then lapsed into one of those gloriously eccentric Russian days in which the following happened
I gave a television interview to a pretty but supremely uninterested girl. The cameraman picked up the whole camera including tripod. At one point and moved it. I doubt that it will make the programme.
I ate pasta which sitting on a sofa.
Wrote out medal cards for every garden and certificates thanking every sponsor, media partner, visiting dignitary and interested party.
Gave a guided tour of the show to the British Ambassador – who was impressively bearded and accompanied by charming children.
Presented the aforementioned prizes one hour after the scheduled time. The audience had been patiently waiting in the slightly chilly Moscow evening.
There was loud fanfary music, more speeches, emotional thank yous, applause, plaques and the solemn presentation of gift bags containing tea by girls in interesting corporate uniforms. One lucky girl was given a chainsaw. And all through this there were photographs – hundreds of photographs. Russians love photographs and no event remains unpictured.
This took a while.
One of the popular features at the show are a series of headless torsos made of flowers – people queue up to pose behind them. A variation on those cut outs through which you can poke your head at the seaside. Seemed like an unmissable opportunity.
There was then an extravagantly dressed buffet with cold meat, delicious cucumbers with very thin skins and a variation of the old pineapple and cheese on cocktail sticks thing but with gooseberries and raspberries .
I them spent a very jolly hour dancing to, among other things, Boney M with a collection of happy Russians and jolly French people. The Italians had bailed out earlier.
The evening had not yet ended.
The finale was a trip on the Metro: the Moscow underground is a serious deal. Built in ? the stations are as grand as ballrooms and as cavernous as a gilded pothole. The trains rumble through every minute or so and, at rush hour, are stuffed with fragrant Muscovites. At 11 PM it is almost empty and like riding through a cathedral.
Day four begins with a 5:30am taxi ride. The back of my taxi driver’s head is fascinating. He is slightly balding with short cropped hair but the skin on his head is rippled: like a little piece of sharpei grafted onto a kiwi fruit
He is driving very fast indeed.
Russians have a habit of saying “Good luck when they leave you in the same way that the German guard says it to Gordon Jackson in the great escape. Both the taxi driver and the pilot did it, maybe it is a transport thing.
Finally I am happily settled in the aeroplane being fussed over by a very flirtatious steward called Aleksander. There are no films on this flight so I guess that flirting is the alternative to inflight entertainment. Even though it is still very early.
The man across the aisle is sleeping loudly with his hand covering his crotch – I presume that he is probably having an interesting dream.
Home by lunchtime.
I am listening to Weary Blues by Madeleine Peyroux.
