Farmer

It is with great sadness that I report that the inventor of the TV remote control has passed away and I seem incapable of thinking of a joke about it*. Frankly the jokes should be writing themselves. It’s a gift for the ungenerous-minded, much as the passing of the composer of the hokey cokey was**.

I think I have a form of Death Tourettes, a compulsion to joke when death occurs. I had a work meeting a few days after my dad died (the anniversary of which, coincidentally, usually falls in Chelsea week) and was wearing a shirt perhaps one size too large in the collar – although it should be said, it maybe more that my neck is one size too small for my body. A friend/colleague remarked that I ought to at least let my dad get cold before plundering his shirt wardrobe. I kept getting the titters through the meeting. Not overly professional.

Just before the meeting, my friend/colleague and I snuck a cheeky coffee in and walked up one of the roads parallel to Bond St. A man was leaning James Dean-like, one leg bent, foot up and back on the wall like a stork. He was being photographed. It was Eli Wallach, the man somewhat harshly cast as ‘the Ugly’ in The Good, the Bad and The Ugly. I like Eli Wallach. I said hello. This is what I do, unintentionally, when I see someone famous. My brain says ‘you know them, say hello’.

I have written about this before as it happens alot at Chelsea Flower Show as there are endless famous folk there. I have developed a strategy whereby if I say hello and they reply I don’t fess up that I’ve been a terrible plonker etc, I keep talking. It’s a fine idea – they think ‘I must know this guy but I meet so many people and I’m buggered if I can remember his name’….so they keep chatting. Barry Norman asked how the mrs was a couple of years back. I told him he must be mistaking me for someone else as I’m gay***.

The Show has two elements that make me dread it: this ridiculous urge to say hello to famous people and my inability to remember people’s names. I try everything – repeating it in my head dozens of times when they say it, associating objects or other people with them in my mind in an attempt to make it stick but no. It is very embarrassing; it looks like you don’t care or that they’ve made no impression on you. Sometime’s it’s true of course, but mostly not. Going on the Monday when the celebrities and the press go means you get to check out the press badges if you’re not sure of someone’s name – this is all well and good but you don’t want to get caught. It feels like you’re saying ‘Who are you, Ms Small Fry?’.  It might be less offensive to reassure them with ‘I wasn’t checking your press badge honest, I was just staring at your tits’.

I think my mind must be improving as I only did the cheeky press pass glance once all day, though I did smile at Carol Kirkwood (she who made a certain section of the nation laugh by not checking her Profanisaurus before a recent weather bulletin), said a jaunty hello to Amanda Holden, and was thankful that I missed Ringo’s non-tribute to Robin Gibb.

I got talking to John Hurt which made me very happy as I like John Hurt. He has the look of a man who’s just got in at 8am, fresh from a night with two ladies and plenty of gin. I was making cocktails on Jo Thompson’s garden but he went for a straight champagne. I’d been making the champagne into a pretty fine summer punch (which looked much better in the glasses, rather than the beakers the stragglers got left with) with strawberries, lemon zest, lemon verbena (which makes it seem a little sherberty), Bowles mint and a tiny bit of sugar. Before that I’d made a few to go into Jo’s caravan for when Sue Biggs (RHS Director General) and I were being interviewed by BBC Breakfast. As is usually the way with TV, it was a catalogue of rearrangements, including Sue and I shoehorning ourselves into then at the last moment (when the cameraman realised the metal blocked the signal) out of the aluminium caravan, followed by a bee taking an interest in my nose as I was asked a surprise question. The presenter called me a Celebrity Gardener; the caption said ‘Farmer’.  Such is life.

I paid more attention at the Show this year, spending Sunday afternoon there too. I have a stand at Hampton Court Flower Show as well as at Cottesbrooke and for the Hampton Court stand I’m putting together a small forest garden in which I’ll be making cocktails from the plants in the garden. I thought I might pick up some ideas, even tiny details about materials, from the smaller gardens and stands in the Floral Marquee, which I did here and there….but the garden that really got me was the the DMZ Garden that’s set in Korea’s demilitarised zone. Completely refreshing, entirely out of keeping with the large blousey eye-catchers on main avenue. I hoped it would win Best In Show. It didn’t, but it got a Gold. Happily Cleve’s won, although I still prefer his allotment (see below). That’s his 6th Chelsea Gold. I don’t think it’s all coincidence that Cleve had only won four Golds when he met me. Watch the film to see where he got the idea for the impressive topiary that lit up his garden. And was I credited in his speech? I’ll be bringing that to the attention of the judges in a long and detailed letter.

Little in the way of edible plants in this year’s gardens – a shame. There was quite a bit last year and I hoped it would be a springboard but in fairness it wasn’t done with much pizzazz other than Cleve’s flowering parsnips. And in fairness flowering parsnips doesn’t sound overly pizzazzy does it, but it was, honest.

Now I’m home, having seen a field of solar panels with sheep grazing beneath from the train on the way back, and I’m mowing like crazy, watering like crazy and writing about chickens like crazy. And the sun’s come out. Soon to France.

 

* At last….The Inventor of the TV remote has today passed away. his family say they intend to bury him in the last place you’d look

** Apparently the undertakers had trouble getting him into his coffin…they put his left foot in…etc

***  That last bit of the story may not be entirely true.

  • Hello Farmer, I think I will probably just call you that 4 all time now. I have got a weird visual field thing where I cannot recognise people again if they are in a different context or even change their clothes. (I once sat next to my ex’s ex at a wedding and thought ‘why is this woman staring at me angrily?” and then looked at her dress -which she wore to about ten weddings in a row that year – and recognised her from the FABRIC.) Anyway, there was jauntery of that nature this year at Chelsea too, nearly v embarrassing and i will not repeat here. Suffice to say i am glad it’s over, though on the way home I definitely felt like i hadn’t talked to you enough – but i had a lovely time, looking forward to h ct now i know you are an exhibitor too! Maybe I can find a way to write about that… hmmmmmmm

  • I have the opposite problem at these events.. I see people I know and think I only recognise them because they are famous so I don’t say hello and thereby offend people. Now I have probably offended a lot of people I did say hello to who are thinking “oh, clearly I’m not famous enough”. Ringo is a bit charmless isn’t he.

  • Despite a dreadful memory generally I am the opposite when it comes to faces and names and remember people from the briefest contact and the longest time ago. It always makes me look rather uncool and needy (‘yes, we have met, at your sister’s 18th birthday party in 1992. You showed me where the fridge was’) . Far better to affect aloof importantness with some strategic name forgetting.

  • Always knew that John Hurt bloke had class.

    Flowers and ‘guff’ ruining perfctly fine champagne? It’s on a par with adding vegetables to otherwise delicious cakes (AKA a Leena Linedance recipe).

    You farmers and your weird ways…

  • As I have to do lots of meeting & greeting in my job & hosting I have got past the point of being embarrassed when I forget names. I just ask in as charming as manner as I can and make a joke about my memory etc, never seems to offend. I suppose we are all the same we just assume everyone remembers these things.

    As for laughing about death, I have a terrible habit of seeing the funny side in things that arent that funny or are very serious. But as my mother says “You have to be silly to stay sane”

    Will there be cocktails at Cottesbrooke – I might come

  • I too have Death Tourettes and am so relieved to learn that I am not alone in having this affliction. There was an awful occurrence last Christmas when, at a family gathering, my sister-in-law asked me how my mum was. She had obviously not been told by her husband that my mum had passed away 18 months previously. I immediately blurted out, in my best John Cleese impersonation, ‘She is deceased! An ex-mum!’ I would have continued, had not the appalled look on my sister-in-law’s face told me that I had committed a social faux pas. I started mumbling something about ‘Very sad’, ‘Terrible time for the family’ etc, whilst wishing the floor would just open up.
    My family has a fine track record of laughing in the face of death, such as the time my great uncle Jock was accidentally buried in the wrong plot. This was only discovered after the coffin had been lowered into the hole and great discussion ensued about whether to lift him back out again – this was decided against because 1)it would have required a court order and 2) Great Uncle Jock weighed close to 25 stone and the gravediggers were protesting in the strongest terms. Meanwhile my dad was helpless with laughter.
    There are many other stories, involving heavy breathing, liver transplants and cerebellar ataxia but I feel I’ve exceeded the bounds of good taste sufficiently already.

  • >>I seem incapable of thinking of a joke about it*.

    Errrmm … what about ‘He has gone to the other side’.

  • Jo – he has got previous in all fairness
    5olly – oh yes
    Emma T – I am very disappointed that we couldn’t meet up yesterday as I would have done my utmost to lever that story out of you using cakes, pastries and other confections. I am confident of success.
    Arabella – I wish you’d treated me like that rather than taking very many incriminating pictures
    Simon – I AM a butch farmer you know
    Helen – I’m not sure about cocktails at cottesbrooke – I might save them for Hampton Court, whip up a bit of pre-show hysteria eh
    Fiona – My pleasure. I will try to make up some more
    Eileen – that’s fantastic….if you have any other funny ones please email them to me then I can change names etc and pretend theyre mine.
    Yan – yes indeed
    Dawn – I’ll have you know I’m the enfant terrible/loose cannon maverick of the vegetable/cocktail world *wears leather shirt* #feck

    Lia – I’m sorry, do I know you?

  • I always recognise faces, but not names so badges are useful aren’t they… tricky too eye them without being too obvious & ‘I was just staring at your chesticles’ would not be at all reassuring from me. Will be trying that cocktail this weekend ….. with or without sunshine, tho sunshine does seem like a key ingredient?.

Comments are closed.