Last weekend was a rare weekend off. So we got in the car and drove a long way, to Cottesbrooke Hall in Northamptonshire, home to an annual plant fair in Northamptonshire. I have no warm affections for Northamptonshire. I went to college there for about 3 months in 1991, or maybe it was 1990. I have found few places so unappealing as Northampton.
The sum total of my recollections from those few weeks are a sickness bug, getting drunk and dancing to the Happy Mondays* too often, listening to Kate Bush’s The Sensual World a lot, going back to Exmouth where I lived at the time, mostly to get drunk and stagger around to the Happy Mondays. I didn’t even like the Happy Mondays that much. Life was less than fascinating at the time but Northampton wasn’t going to spice it up any. I packed it in. Not before I’d bought a few course books I needed, one of which – the Norton Anthology of American Literature, has a gazillion books printed in small font size, on very thin paper crammed into its three inch thickness. I owe it any scant familiarity I have with Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. I owe a childhood neighbour any scant familiarity I have with Slim Whitman; for some reason his voice was always wafting out of the small kitchen window open in all weathers.
Cottesbrooke is a very very fine plant fair indeed. Excellent, interesting stalls with plants of very fine quality. Lots of edible plants too from Crug Farm, Pennard Plants and Edulis amongst others. It was partly just enjoyable and partly checking it out as I’m doing a stall there next year. If you haven’t been, it’s very well worth a day. Nice shortbread too.
It also served as a limp excuse to visit James Alexander-Sinclair, his wife and one of his children. This was not so much social as a response to a challenge: his son Max was, I was assured, a Scrabble demon. The female contingent repaired to their respective quarters, leaving us males to lock horns over the Ipad Scrabble board**. A fine quality game ensued: I won by a small margin, appropriately enough by placing BLETTING across a triple word score, late on. I declare myself Undisputed Lord of Scrabble.
I also had the chance to see James’ garden. He’s a garden designer of some repute…apparently. I got up early on Sunday to sneak a quick look…
* One thing you can say for Kinky Afro, it may have the finest opening lines of a song; so too this…and now I come to think of it this, or maybe this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this or even this.
** I should be awarded points for not saying ‘a night on the tiles’
The photo of the garlic bulb is fabulous – really feel the depth of field on it – virtual 3D.
Video was entertaining – competition for 3MWTM
Typical Otter Farm spin.
The truth, ladies and gents, has been twisted.
You did not show my field of prize Yakon, my gutters full of coriander shoots or my peat free Chilean guava orchard.
Or my half acre of withered Pecan trees and rows of neatly pruned Cabernet Sauvignon grape vines
There would be no Otter Farm without the pioneering ways at Blackpitts, the world's first climate change farm.
The time has come to stop living a lie and come clean with the great British public.
Thank you for pointing your camera into the places where JAS doesn't dare reach. I'm rather relieved to find he has a jumble of things in pots hidden round a corner just like I do 🙂
i know what you meen about northampton i now live in northamptonshire and have done for the past year i whent in to the town once and have never been back since for reasons of there is nothing there and personal safty so i dont get betten up by a woman impersinating a man not that i am implying that the locals may be a little interbred when to cottesbrook my self at the weekend lots of good stuff on sale
I like the pillars all different heights. I like the contrast between the clipped hedges and lawn and the blowsy borders.
And we all have pots tucked round the back of the house. Mostly plastic ones on their sides, dried out. Nothing like as pretty as James's terracotta collection.
Couldn't help wondering if some of the structures were ones that customers changed their minds about. Liked the poles with blue bits on top – didn't get a proper look at them.
Surely the best opening line is this
Northampton is a black hole which will suck you in and you will never escape. A bit like the end of Sapphire and Steel but instead of spending eternity in a café at the end of the universe you will be condemned to driving around the endlessly awful housing estates that surround what passes for the town. My brother was forced to move to Northampton and has been lost for years in one of these. All he ever wanted to do was surf.
As for JAS Mars bar pillars. He is not that tall as you Mark and probably can't reach the top bit of the taller ones to trim them.
There we were, thinking of upping sticks & moving to Northampton. Your filmlet has, however, shown evidence which wasn't in any of the estate agent's puff we have seen, of severe earth tremors. I would probably feel as though I were permanently pi$$ed. (Not a good thing I can assure you).
Thank-you for this valuable piece of information, I am indebted to you.
Yours Sincerely
etc etc
Zoe – thank you
JAS – you are, of course, the wind beneath my wings
Rosalind – I'm sending in the diggers next week to remove the last few ornamentals from the JAS garden…
VP – everyone should have a collection of pots to trip over
HW – it must have some delights, surely…
EG – Ive volunteered to go in with the trimmer….
Sue – there were dozens of broken plastic pots with dead plants in to…I was just too kind to film them….
Nick – much as I like Elbow…Im not convinced!
Arabella – Sapphire and Steel…I remember there were a few weeks of previews before it started, I was so excited. Top telly. And as well as me being more fully developed than JAS, he is rather older too
SS – My aim is to serve
Having only beaten you twice at scrabble I can confirm that you are not bad at it, but perhaps not actually Undisputed Lord of it.
Funny vid tho.
Hello Lia…I believe you have beaten me twice at 'scrabble' rather than scrabble…'scrabble' being a faux online scrabble which crucially gives no 50 pt bonus for 7 letter words. Despite these two disappointments, i believe the current score is 63-2
Very funny! Garden (space) envy, despite dodgy pillars.
Cottesbrooke is a very fine plant fair indeed. Excellent, interesting stalls with plants of very fine quality..
Thanks for sharing..