On my Garden

 I’m having a little trouble with my blog. It’s something to do with cookies and means that I can’t add pictures. I managed to sort it out the other week but only by clearing all the cookies on my computer, which has made it harder to access other stuff I want. It’s a pain.

Normally, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem because this isn’t a very picture heavy blog. I like to use one picture at the beginning and my dandelion signature at the end, but my intention for today was to talk about my garden and show pictures of it.

When I bought and moved into this house, the garden consisted of a cracked concrete path going up to an outbuilding (probably of asbestos) and, where grass might be, a sea of stones and gravel. On further inspection, this gravel was on rows of plastic sheeting and underneath that was compacted mud and moss. As I’ve lived there, various plants, weeds and ‘things’ pierced through holes in the sheet and through the stones. As Jeff Goldblum once said, life will uh, find a way.

Having created a cosy, dry and pleasant space inside (bathroom and stairway excepted), it was time to have a go at the garden. I am not not a rich man. Even less having bought a house and done it up. So I’m trying to create a simple, pleasant first-timer’s garden out of what is there.

With the help of my intrepid parents, I’ve moved the plastic sheeting over the cracked concrete path and then scooped the stones onto it, so now I have a gravel path up to my outbuilding. Then I’ve broken up the surface mud with a strange tool that looks like a milking stool on a stick. Today we plan to rake the mud back and forth, removing as many stones as we can, and making it as flat as possible. We are laying turf tomorrow, leaving a gap to put in flowerbeds and bushes - I’m hoping for as many fragrant ones as possible, to encourage birds and bees. It won’t be any grand garden, but should be a pleasant place to sit and read in the summer.

The only one of my eighteenth century pals to mention a fondness for gardening is Christopher Smart, who enjoyed the activity when he lived in a private mad house. This is probably because he has access to a private green space, something less accessible to Johnson, Goldsmith and others. 

Johnson would have been able to walk the gardens owned by the Thrales in Streatham, and the eighteenth century was a big time for grand garden projects. There was an emphasis on creating a perfected nature, not the strict lines of a Tudor garden but bends, turns, vistas - and the odd allegorical temple or folly. It was not yet usual for houses to include a small domestic garden, that was an invention of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I won’t be able to create a grand eighteenth-century vista in my little patch of mud, nor do I have the money or expertise to create a luxurious cottage garden (though I fancy giving a hollyhock a go) but I’ll be able to create something better than concrete and gravel. I’ll even be able to show it off, if I can get this site to allow me pictures again.

Some Peculiarities of Grimsby

 It’s been just over a year since I moved into my Grimsby house, now much more homely than it was then. It’s also almost two years since I moved into this area, and I thought I’d write some impressions of it.

Before I moved away from Willesden Green in London, I wrote a piece about some of the oddities of that place and I thought I’d write about some of the oddities of this one.

Fire

I’ve never lived in a place where so many of the places had been set fire to. From my position on my cosy armchair, I could walk to a burnt down Methodist Church and two burnt down pubs. There are frequent house fires and the fire engine frequently comes to my local park to put out plastic wheely bins set on fire. 

I’m not sure why this is. It’s certainly true that people seem to enjoy smashing windows in up north - it’s something that’s always struck me, yet the element of fire seems particularly local. Perhaps its because so many buildings are simply left alone, perhaps it’s the Viking past, fiery boat burials and all that.

Rooftop “Seiges”

Even the local people note that it’s a peculiarly Grimsby thing for people being arrested to climb onto their roof and wait. They don’t have guns, this isn’t the US, they just go up there until they come down. In the time I’ve lived here, this has happened three times but it’s a bit of a feature. I’m not sure why they do it, I suppose it’s to be awkward.

Balaclavas on Head-rests

This could be a popular thing in other places, but I’ve never seen it anywhere else and I see it in at least one car or van on every road here. People put ski-masks, balaclavas, sometimes masks on the head-rests on the front seat of their cars. At a glance, it looks like dodgy people are sitting in the car.

I heard this was a security measure, but it’s quite an easy one to see through. It might look like someone threatening is sitting in the chair at a glance, but a second glance shows it to be what it is. It could be a prank, a joke, a way of personalising a car. 

On a related note, there are plaques on certain houses advertising that they are paid up to a number of different private security firms. The headquarters of one is a few roads up. They have a car that sort of looks like a police car, but a bit more heavy duty. I’ve not heard of what these companies actually do, or what they could prevent. I imagine they have no real authority to do very much. It’s something else I find quite perplexing. 

(Flags)

Since I’ve moved here, flags have become a thing throughout the country, with various losers tying English flags (and occasionally Danish) to lampposts and painting them on roundabouts. Before this was a general thing across the country, flags were already a big thing round here. Especially towards Cleethorpes, there are many houses with flagpoles. They fly the English and British flags, but many of them also fly the Lincolnshire flag. Again, in all the various places I’ve lived around the country, they’ve never flown their own flags.

This list looks pretty negative, it would imply a people fond of setting things on fire, climbing their roofs and paranoid of crime, yet I like it here. I feel at home walking the streets, I’ve found a brilliant community at the Caxton Theatre (where I’ll be going at the end of this week for a poetry night) and I’ve create a brilliant haven in this little house of mine. It’s the last place I thought I’d end up, but I’m happy I’ve washed up here.