The garden show

I knew it: I am not as others are!
http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/gardenersweekend.bcc
I got waylaid today into going with two of my same-age-same-gender friends to a garden show in our locality. First of all I resented having to pay £4.50 to walk about looking at great big produce and great big marvellous flowers with no1, no2 or no3 rosettes (for 1st, 2nd and 3rd "in show"...Reminds you of anything you've experienced recently?)

The ground was a bit soggy and there was a definite risk of muddying one's shoes!Alright, that link isn't where I meanto be, but, you know what, it is a link, still! (and you will see why I didn't enjoy myself after all).

The thing is there were crowds of people, and crowds just ain't my thing...I have always had a profound dislike of milling around together with hundreds of others. For me, there is something humiliating as well as irritating in being in a crowd. I want to see all the beautiful things alone, or alone with one or two choice persons.

At THE Picasso exhibition in Paris a few years ago I had that very same feeling. For this I blame TV: where you can -and do- see the most wonderful sights on your own or with your close companions. At the cinema ,which I love in spite of crowds, there is the advantage of darkness which fairly obliterates the other-ness of others. There, apart from the fact that I find myself laughing at odd places and that I am aware of having to rein in my undisciplined laughter mental muscles, I can almost forget the proximity of so many...But in a park, in full sunlight, that is quite impossible. I end up observing the faces, the clothes, the expressions, the purchases rather that the plants.

That is not to say that there is not something perfectly sweet in an amateur garden show, or that the displays are not well laid out and impressive.

No, but what I want, is to be alone, to be able to pick anything I like and take it home and to be allowed to eat the displays.

When colours are so beautiful that your eyes hurt and when you know that such intense reality can only be appreciated: there, then and for that split moment, a great big frustration wells up. I need to be a painter, a photographer, a botanist. I want to capture that beauty in more than a memory. I want to dance among the flowers in a fire dress that matches them, with music that will make them forget that they were cut and that they will now fade and die. I want to juggle with big pompom dalhias, I want to take away the scent of the best rose. I am a doer, a participant, an extrovert and looking just isn't enough when I can't improvise and let go.

Someone in my neighbourhood gave me the name and 2 telephone numbers of a gardener who might be free to do some work for me. I phoned the first number, and it was a totally unrelated office number, and I phoned the second number and spoke to Robert, who obviously is not the Steve who can rescue my garden...Is there a lesson to be learnt there? Must I do my own gardening? In that case, I am back to square one, because I did not bother to buy any plants at the show.

Oh well, too bad...

I left my friends there, came back home to the comfort of my solitude, and had myself a good old cup of tea just for the form.

To-morrow I will go and see a funny film instead!

With hundreds of flowers and the most massive cabbages-ever- crowding my thoughts for no good reasons, I am glad I am neither a vegetable, a plant or a flower.

Love and apologetic greeting to all gardeners everywhere,

Jocelyne.