Two (more) ambitions

When you’ve reached my age, your ambitions should be small or you are likely to be in for a fairly disappointing life. Having met (and indeed employed) a man with a surname for a first name, there is little left for me to achieve. I should retire. Except I haven’t any money.

Still, it seems there remain a few quiet excitements for even one so miserable and jaded. The last fortnight has brought two. Last week, I accidentally achieved one – it is quite an achievement in itself, to achieve an ambition accidentally I think you’ll agree, worthy of being an ambition in its own right.

Part of last week was spent driving all over: Bristol, Birmingham, Saltaire, Shrewsbury, Knucklas, Bristol then home, all in 38 hours. That’s the kind of journey time stats that a man of my years must impart. Luckily (for you and my wife especially) I don’t appear to possess the gene which compels me to pore over and indeed communicate the options for which route to take: I plug the postcode into the phone and it shows me when the next turn is. I like this – I’ve got day dreams to have and other cars to avoid rather than try to figure out where the turn off is, with an oversized book of maps on my lap. Yes, I had Lena Linedance with me but concentration and mapreading are not two of the qualities that inhabit her unique skillset. She can write though, which is fortunate as we are doing a book about fine allotments – not the ideal year to do so, but do it we are. She writes, I take the pictures.

We were on our way to Shrewsbury to see Luigi Valducci, keeper of a very fine allotment. Here he is, with one of his many brugmansias. No me neither, but he has the National Collection of them.

Tapping in the destination poostcode and driving means I often have little idea which road I’m on, much less the roads still to come. Hence it was with extreme surprise that I saw, and almost missed, a farm wedged tightly betweeen the two directions of motorway flow. Why did I want to see this farm? Partly, having heard of it, to be sure that it actually exists but mostly as when driving along I have very frequently played John Shuttleworths’ The Yahama Years, which I heartily recommend to one and all. It has a particularly fine song ‘The Man Who Lives On The M62’. Here it is: poignant, I think you’ll agree.

The week before, I was in London. Again, shooting allotments but arranged around satisfying a very long-held ambition – to see Elizabeth Fraser sing. She used to sing with the Cocteau Twins who I loved, but inexplicably didn’t see back in the day. I still have the Maxwell C30 of their first John Peel session, recorded on my first stereo. Talking of which, we should all bow down to the (wo)man who made it such that a Bic pen fits perfectly in those two little wheels, making it easy to wind/rewind any loose tape.

The morning with Chris in Tottenham. The most incredible allotment – enclosed by fencing and a wall, it is a fabulous jungle of the edible and the beautiful.

And the bastard seems to be sidestepping all the troubles most of us are having simply by growing in such an integrated way and in an enclosed space. In this miserable, unsunny summer, we ate cricket ball figs, sweet, succulent and ripe to the point of falling apart in your hand.

We ate them dashing across town to the two other allotments we shot that day. One was fabulous, one a complete waste of time. One a fantastic idea seen through, the other a fantastic idea.

The evening was shared with my oldest friend, the friend I hung around with back in the day when I didn’t get to see the Cocteaus – he the son of the woman who will always be known as The Woman Who Shagged Mr Buttocks* (para 6 if you want to avoid the rest of the tedium). We dedicated the early evening to eating two large and excellent pieces of cow, looking out over the Thames before walking the few indoor yards to the front row at the Festival Hall, her two gigs the highlight of the annual Meltdown Festival.

She was, as I didn’t like to hope, incredible. She is maybe best known for her version of Tim Buckley’s Song To The Siren**, weird given that she later got together with his son Jeff, who is himself maybe best known for his version of a song by another 60s legend***, Leonard Cohen. Weirdly, his last appearance in the UK was at the Meltdown Festival in 1995. He had a voice for sure.

Like his dad, Jeff met an early end. He and Elizabeth recorded (as a demo) only one song, and look, it’s even vaguely relevant to a gardening/growing/food blog:

* In the interests of fairness, I should point out that my friend denies to this day that his mother and Mr Buttocks had intimate relations, but, as I point out to him regularly, who might be strong enough to resist the advances of a man so lustfully named?

** Which is all very good, but if you want to hear what happens when a white bloke puts down the acoustic guitar and finds his souly side, you can’t do any much than the song below

*** I like how the chap in the video looks out from behing the post, ahead of his cue, to check… yet still misses it

 

 

…although his son gives it a fair go