The Garden Designer

We've had our garden designed.

Off the Wall, by Herr Saush

"Well, you are lucky", said Emma (the garden designer) "because the structure of your garden is actually good! It's just the, um, plants that we'll work on".
I asked Emma what she meant by structure. It means we already have a sunken sitting area; and brick walls.
So I asked what was so wrong with the plants then? And Emma took out some photographs she had taken in our garden in March and spread them out, gingerly, on the kitchen table. I noticed that the picture was taken from a folder labelled 'befores'.  


In her photographs our plants looked strangely random, and mainly brown. I glanced outside the window; she hadn't been enirely unfair. Mrs Botogol and I studied the pictures gravely, trying not to feel defensive.  
Then Emma dived into a folder labelled 'afters' and then alongside her monochromatic snaps of of our drab beds she laid some photographs of gardens. Gardens of beauty and elegance; Flower-beds of exquisite colour and texture; Desirable havens of scent and pleasure, of sunshine and warmth.  Mrs Botogol sighed approvingly, while I looked desperately from one side of the table to the other with a gowing realisation that I had been out-manoeuvred, this Emma was good, she was very, very good and this was set-up
And like Steve Martin before me I had no alternative. I hands-upped to overwhelming force, agreed with everything, and made just two demands to salve my self respect: I'd decided we'd keep the coloured paint on the walls at least, and as part of the general clearing out the overgrown Bay Tree on the patio had to go.
It turns out that white walls are an intrinsic and important feature of Emma's design: white walls, removal of manky old pieces of trellis to be replaced with vine eyes and wire.. and a selection of plants that would give our beds some structure.
"Yes, you mean brick walls and somewhere to sit?"
"Don't be silly, dear", said Mrs Botogol, and Emma explained that with plants structure doesn't refer to seating areas: it means using fewer colours and, especially, repetition.  
"So did you get a job lot or something, then?", said Mr Botogol Snr when he came round for lunch two weeks later.
- "Yes, Dad, something like that, do you like them?"  
- "Well, could it do with more variety?" 
I resisted the urge to smack him round the back of head and muttered instead about structure, and patterns and repitition.. "Well, I expect so, son", he said, when I had finished, "Yes in fact I am sure you are right", and he surveyed the garden carefully. "Indeed", he said, "it's lovely ... but while they were doing all that - couldn't you have got them to cut down that giant Bay tree?"

Man Down

We have a house, we have a very old house in the country......and the drains are blocked.


This week, I have been mostly in our garden watching the excavation of a deep trench by two cheerful men from Dyno-Rod fortified only with Earl Grey tea laced with organic fruit sugar. ("tastes like washing up liquid")

Dyno-Rod. Dyno-Rod Dyno-Rod. Does the name conjure up for you a national squad of trained and uniformed drain-busters, gradually working their way up the Dyno-ranks?  Dear Reader, if you think that then you, are as mistaken as I was: it's a franchise.  You order Dyno-Rod, you get a couple of blokes from Bexhill who paid £40,000 for a bright red van. And why not?

First off, they prised up the ancient manhole cover on the terrace ("yeah, it is gull-poo, yeah, sorry about that"), and then with the clang of cast iron still ringing in our ears the three of us gathered to looked gravely down into the inspection pit. Professionals to the core all mention of the unpleasant contents within was politely eschewed, as two expert pairs of eyes, and one amateur, carefully sized up the direction of the foul drain.

It ran down the slope directly toward the only obstacle on my lawn: my carefully-level 12 foot trampoline... of course it did.

The trampoline had to be shifted. The three of us grabbed the sides and on Dyno-Rod's smooth count we heaved, manfully. The contraption rose from its moorings and we grinned triumphantly to each other, brute force triumphs over nature..

"OK, let's move it ... which way?"
"Up the slope!  let's go, 1..2...3... keep going.. keep going.. bit further..bit further.. MIND THE MANHOLE!"

I gotta house in the country...

I am not a number, by pinkangelbabe

The nice thing about our house in the country is that - actually - it's in a town.

An ancient town.

So while we are 70 miles from London (and quite beyond the reach of google streetview) we are nevertheless - in extremis - never more than 100m from a double espresso.

Not that it's all so sophisticated as that, mind: it's also rural. On Sunday, walking 15km of the 1066 Country Trail we picnicked in an apple orchard, tiptoed past a somnolent bull, sighed at a dead sheep, admired, awestruck, a pale and silent, eerie and creamy daytime owl, and at lunchtime found ourselves in a pub of quite unexpected charm. We sat outside in the garden with the smokers but buying a round in the Sunday-roast-infested table-packed interior I saw a blackboard: "From 4-6pm today" [it said] "the Fling".

"What is it? Some sort of traditional game, rustic and charming, yet competitive and violent?" I asked the barmaid, hopefully

"No", she replied, "He's a one-man band. He's very good"

We discovered a previous engagement, and pressed on.

We were back home in time for a Chilean Semillon-Chardonnay in our late-evening-sun-soaked garden. A long way away from Canary Wharf.

===========================
Rye, East Sussex
Apothocary
Queens Head, Icklesham

Shut Out

by Robby Garbett

This evening I kicked down the side door of our garage.

Well, the lock had somehow broken, and I clamped the up-and-over door completely closed some years ago after the garage was burgled (they stole an electric drill and pair of gloves... ie equipment with which to perform more burglaries. "Burglar bootstrapping" I said to the police with a chuckle, and they asked me how to spell that and said they would come round eleven weeks on Friday.


The key was revolving round in the lock with nothing happening. "It's broken", I pronounced gravely and I took a credit card and slid it into the small gap between the door and the frame. This works in films. It doesn't work in real life.

I fetched my boots and prepared to use force. Mrs Botogol came out to watch, this she was not going to miss. I was not without trepidation - would it do a lot of damage? did I need a sledgehammer? how much force would be required - would it bruise my heel?

I took a deep breath and kicked as hard as I could.

The door flew open immediately and I fell over onto my backside.

Levelling Out

Vodka Level by - Martin Koitmäe

It turns out the floor of the cellar in our house is far from level and every time the washing machine reached the spinning bit it rattled and it shook, and it walked down the slope until its power lead came out of its socket.

"We need to get a longer extension lead, perhaps", I remarked to Mrs Botogol when I took down her supper, and placed it carefully beside her on top of the the shuddering appliance, "it's a shame you having to spend so much time down here, and in the dark as well"

Mrs B invited me to try and think of a better solution, please, and within days I had it: "I'll build a platform", I said, "lightweight but sturdy, closely-contoured yet level, of chipboard or MDF, as wide as the cellar and exactly 605 mill deep"

"Lovely, but do you think you can dear", she asked, not unkindly, "after all: it's a long time since you did any DIY, and isn't your tape measure marked up in inches?"

Reader, I will leave you to judge by results: for a platform it indubitably is.

I had to buy a new saw to do it (from the tiny store) and on that multi-toothed blade I cut myself four times. On the floor there you may just be able to make out traces of mopped-up blood.

Our House...

picture by Florinda©

(our new house)
... is in the middle of our street.

Which is good because within 100 metres of our front door are no fewer than two different DIY stores. One of them is very small and very expensive. The other is quite a lot smaller but just a little bit more expensive. I am their best customer (both of them)

The nearest B&Q is eleven miles away.

So, on Tuesday, after the tiny DIY store sold me a washing machine waste pipe extension hose for only £34.99 (don't ask - it's a temporary measure) but didn't have any washing machine waste pipe extension hose connectors I went on to the small store, where the assistant looked at me entirely blankly and invited me, very cordially, to search the shelves for myself and, please, to buy anything that might possibly connect two such hoses together and if it doesn't work then you can always bring it back, except that the computer is down so I'll write you a manual receipt so that Alice - she isn't here now, but she'll be here after lunch - realises what it is, is that OK? But anway if you just tell her you're the new people in Sally's house she'll be fine about it.

Before me in the queue was a lady of a certain age. "You can leave a message on my London number", she said. "or you can call me here! It's IDEN 600. Or...it used to be anyway"

STD dialling arrived in the 1970s

It's weird outside london.

I bought two small pieces of plastic (one was free) and forty-seven jubilee clips (no flies on me) and just thirty-six later hours the the washing machine was working.

Today we got broadband.