60 Going On 16

In Devon, gates are for . . .

. . . looking over, especially when they are at the end of your road.

Meanwhile, in the heart of a small village . . .

One thing we are are blessed with, here in the South West, is artistic talent and it turns up in the most unlikely of settings. Yesterday, for example, my Good Friend M, from Random Distractions, and I met in Rackenford, a small village which - like mine - isn't really on the way to anywhere. So, you could live in this area for years and never go there. You'll find something about the history of the shop over at M's place, so do take a look. (As it happens, I had been to the outskirts of Rackenford, as it's where I learned to ride when I moved to Devon.)

We'd gone there to see a demonstration by fellow Devon dweller (and blogger), Michele of Hedgelands Glass Gems, whom we'd first come across here at Musings from a Muddy Island.

Michele explained that she had originally worked with stained glass and then moved on to beads and gems - and dichroic glass. It was fascinating to watch as she manipulated pliers with tiny pointed ends around thin shafts of silver wire and from disparate beginnings created pieces of real beauty. She'd brought along a selection of her work including necklaces, bracelets, keyrings, bookmarks and brooches and we could not, of course, leave without buying a thing or two - or rather more, in fact. But I'm not going to say what because some of these things will be turning up in the not too distant future, gift-wrapped . . . You can read Michele's account of the morning on her blog, which is right here.

After which, we walked down the lane to the Stag Inn (see yesterday's picture) for lunch. Home-made leek and potato soup in proper, large bowls, each served with three thick slices of freshly-baked bread and generous pats of butter (not a foil wrapper in sight). Impossible to resist. And followed by a very large plate of local cheeses that included Sharpham Rustic, which you can read about and buy online at the Cheese Shed.

See? I like to do my bit to support local producers and suppliers. If the Stag Inn had a website, I'd include that too but, sadly, it doesn't, so I can't. You'll just have to take my word for it.

(The views from the village are - well, just what Devonshire hilltop views should be.)

Very Devon

Entrance to the Stag Inn, Rackenford

Spirit of George - at Chelsea

From Life to Life, A Garden for George

Perfect weather for the Chelsea Flower Show today. Back in the 1980s and then again in the 1990s, I happened to be working with charities, each of which had a garden at Chelsea. Apart from all the work before Chelsea, it meant going along on press day, usually with a celebrity in tow, and hoping that we would a) get a gold medal and b) wake up the next day to find that our garden was featured in every newspaper. And on Gardeners' World. It won't surprise you to hear that, as far as the newspapers were concerned, the likelihood of this was far more dependent on who the celebrity was rather than the garden design. Generally speaking, the more minor the celebrity, the more they behaved like a prima donna. No surprise there then.

Fundraising directors always expected us to produce A-list celebrities, just like that.

"You've got contacts," said one particularly pushy chap. "Get Frank Sinatra to come over; tell him we'll get a rose named after him."

"I don't have contacts like that," I muttered.

"Well, get Joan Collins then."

Amazingly, we did manage to get Joan Collins, who agreed to come along at some ungodly hour and dazzle the photographers. We rang all the newspaper picture desks, the picture agencies, magazines, televison news and anyone else we could think of and prepared dozens of press packs. And then the day before, Joannie pulled out, clash of engagements and all that. At the last minute, a singer and dancer who was appearing in a West End musical agreed to take her place. Lovely woman although, sadly, not in the same celebrity league as Our Joan. One or two photographers wandered up to the garden and took a few shots in a rather desultory fashion and wandered off again; they had better pickings elsewhere. Needless to say, our hoofer did not make the front pages or any pages come to that, although the garden did pick up a medal.

Chelsea is hard work for everyone involved and after a few days - whoosh - it's all gone. I don't miss it, well not much; however I would love to have been there this year to see From Life to Life: a Garden for George, designed by Yvonne Innes as a tribute to George Harrison. George was a passionate gardener and a regular visitor to Chelsea and the designer really has captured something of his spirit. And although it's not obvious in this picture, the garden is full of colour and joy - and flowers, yes! - unlike so many of this year's über-cool winning gardens, which are very linear and muted. I do like a bit of wildness and exuberance in a garden, especially in England, where we have so many days when we are covered by a grey lid. I like being able to stick my nose in great big old roses and being surrounded by masses of scented plants. More cottage garden than stately home. (I know my place.)

But the garden for George - that's something special. Shine on, George.

(BBC2's day-by-day coverage of this year's Chelsea Flower Show starts here.)

On the margins

I was tidying up, sorting out, rearranging cataloguing several piles of books yesterday, and came across my old copy of Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point. It's a 1965 Penguin Modern Classics edition, one of those elegant pale grey and white ones, with a rather fine line drawing - by Leonard Rosoman in this case - on the front. Hadn't read it for years, probably circa 1975 when I was in my D H Lawrence period. . . and couldn't remember if I ever finished it.

So, I opened it up and realised that it was one of many hundreds of my secondhand bookshop buys, price 10p. Previous owner, one Charles D******** of Wimbedon Common, book purchased on 14 May 1966. I know because he'd written the date inside the front cover. And even before I could get past the flyleaf, it all came back to me. Mr D had been a compulsive margin scribbler. Not for academic purposes but more personal - agreeing and disagreeing with the author, lots of exclamation marks. All in green ink and occasionally with a word or two in French or Latin . . . not to mention the odd reference to his (Mr D's, that is) travels in Iran, which he almost certainly would have referred to as Persia.

Which is when I remembered that I had never finished the book because Mr D's counter points were gripping stuff. Probably more interesting than the book itself. And they tell us a great deal about Mr D.

He starts on the flyleaf, which has a brief author's biography and bibliography. Several of the titles have been heavily underlined in green and he has included a note stating 'signified read', just in case he forgot, I suppose. Here's a random selection:

"Only the uneducated, she knew, made scenes." (Yes!)

"In the spring of 1898 she was Lady Edward Tantamount." (Another Mrs Simpson!)

"She enjoyed herself but never to the detriment of her social position." (Clever woman.)

"Killing time with a book was not intrinsically much better than killing pheasants." (Rot! They're both excellent pastimes.)

" . . . the Jupiter Symphony." (Which I've just been playing!)

" . . .in an accent that had certainly not been formed in any of the ancient and expensive seats of learning." (Pity, damned pity!)

"John, you're incorrigible . . ." (Which I've just been called by Margie and Caroline.)

"But he should have commanded. he should simply have orderd the man to drive on, and taken her in his arms again.." (Clot!)

"'Superannuated from Harrow . . . passed out from Sandhurst . . ." (Impeccable so far.)

"Even when she planned to take a lover, it was still of him that she thought." (He's an absolute twit!)

"She would have known all about these young girls - their class, the sort of homes they came from, where they bought their clothes and how much they paid for them . . ." (Yes, their class despite the socialist view of the majority today. How I hate them.)

You can see why it was impossible to finish Point Counter Point. I could hardly take it seriously amid all Mr D's expostulations and rantings. (And to think, he was writing this stuff in 1966, while some of us were chilling out to the Byrds et al.) It also explains why, apart from using them in text books, I'm now slightly paranoid about writing marginal notes - and prefer those stick-on ones instead.