tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27163383668343524082024-03-05T06:09:20.151+00:00Victoria's backyardA subtropical suburban oasis in Wandsworth, south-west London designed to defy the depredations
of global warming, garden pests and kids without recourse to carbon emissions, chemicals or cranial damage.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comBlogger358125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-57465361080849128512013-08-03T23:02:00.000+01:002013-08-03T23:02:25.502+01:00For future reference, see Awkward Hill<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I moved from Wandsworth, in south-west London, in November 2012, and I now live in the Cotswolds. You can read about my garden there at</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://awkwardhill.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Tales from Awkward Hill</a>.</span>Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-53400462047177938462013-01-25T13:59:00.001+00:002013-01-25T13:59:41.207+00:00That "leave the garden for a year" ruleRunning two blogs is trickier than I thought. When I started up my new blog, <a href="http://awkwardhill.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Tales from Awkward Hill</a>, about life in Bibury, Gloucestershire, I thought I would use this blog, <i>Victoria's Backyard</i>, to write about gardening in general, and my new blog to write specifically about my own house and garden.<br />
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but only a couple of months in, I find myself writing about a subject that would sit equally well on either. So ... it's going on both! Apologies if you feel cheated. What can I say? I'm a cheapskate.<br />
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The classic advice when you move into a new house and garden is to leave the garden for a year before you make any changes. This allows you to see what is in the garden - to identify trees that may not have been in leaf when you moved in; to discover what bulbs come up in spring; to find out where the hot/dry spots and the cool/damp spots are; to determine the best place (shady or sunny, depending on your personal taste) to put your garden table and chairs; to see how your views of the neighbourhood (or their views of you) work when trees are both in leaf, and bare in winter.<br />
Indeed, there are a whole host of good reasons not to rush into making changes in a garden you have only just acquired.<br />
What the experts don't tell you, however, is that it is incredibly frustrating simply to sit and look at a garden if you are used to pottering happily outside, cutting a new lawn edge here or replanting an area there. Luckily, my garden is under a blanket of thick snow at the moment, so that has meant a few days less in the year when I am not driven mad by the urge to go outside and CHANGE THINGS!<br />
However, it's still only January. What on earth am I going to be like by the time I've been to the Malvern Spring Show, to the Chelsea Flower Show, to Barnsley House down the road, or to the local gardens that open under the National Gardens Scheme? Even a visit to the garden centre is sometimes enough to inspire me to rejig a part of the garden completely. Must I completely ignore all these sources of inspiration and temptation?<br />
Then there is the long list of plants that keep metaphorically poking me in the ribs, chorusing: "Plant us, plant us!" Must I really go a whole year without putting in <i>Rosa</i> 'Ballerina', or <i>Viburnum plicatum tomentosum</i> 'Lanarth', or <i>Physocarpus opulifolius</i> 'Diabolo', or <i>Dianthus carthusianorum </i>or the whole host of other things on my wish list?<br />
Yes, there are snowdrops coming through, which is very exciting (at least, it would be if I could see them). Somewhere under all that snow, there are primroses and bluebells waiting in the wings, and I'm looking forward to their gala performance later in the spring.<br />
However, there are other bits of the garden that I really don't want to see in their current state this time next year - or indeed in six months' time. One is the gap between the two terraces, at the back and the side of the house, and I have already had a new walkway built that connects the two. "Now you can follow the sun right round the house with a drink in your hand," said the builder. With a drink in my hand? Are you kidding? With a heavy load of plants in my wheelbarrow, more like.<br />
Running alongside the terrace at the back are two small borders. One is full of marjoram (where it isn't overgrown with grass, nettles and perennial weeds such as plantains). The other has a huge clump of what looks like <i>Iris sibirica</i> at one end, and a matching selection of grass, nettles and weeds.<br />
When I first viewed the house, in late August, the irises had long gone over, and the borders looked a bit of a mess. I thought then that tidying them up would probably be my first project.<br />
I've already made the borders deeper and deturfed the bits that were completely overgrown. They are full of bulbs - lots of snowdrops, by the look of them - so a full-scale replanting can wait until March. Technically, spring is too early to split the iris, but I'm going to take some of it out next month anyway, and pot up the divisions to plant in the other border or elsewhere in the garden. If they don't take, it's not the end of the world, and if they do, they will help create a sense of unity.<br />
The experts say <i>Iris sibirica</i> should be divided in summer or early autumn, but the experts also say its spread is around 30cm to 90cm, depending on the variety. This particular clump, or cluster of clumps, is about 6ft in diameter. So much for experts.<br />
I want a classic cottage-garden look here, with billowing clumps of hardy geraniums, lavender, <i>Verbena bonariensis</i> and roses, followed by sedums, grasses and rudbeckia to carry the torch on into early autumn.<br />
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Work on the new bit of terrace got under at the beginning of December. It's a basic block wall construction, with a traditional dry stone facade.<br />
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It's now finished, but for the first couple of weeks, I couldn't bring myself to walk on it. I was so pleased with it, I didn't want to spoil it with muddy footprints!<br />
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Making a start on the borders at the back of the house. Oh, for lighter evenings! If you do something in the garden at this time of year, you have a daylight window of about four hours. And by the time you've remembered to take a photograph, it's dark.<br />
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Ooooh, look - there's a paved bit hidden away underneath here. How lovely - almost as exciting as snowdrops.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-80404987742445851172012-10-20T14:32:00.002+01:002012-10-20T14:32:50.626+01:00Goodbye to the BackyardAs some of you will know, I have sold my house in London and I am moving to Gloucestershire. I've been a bit superstitious about telling everyone until I exchanged contracts (I don't know why - as<a href="http://looseandleafy.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank"> Lucy Corrander</a> remarked to me: "If only we people had the power...")<br />
But to quote an old proverb, "there's mony a slip twixt cup and lip", and I didn't want to tell everyone about this great upheaval if, a few weeks later, I had to tell them it wasn't actually taking place.<br />
Everyone asks me the same questions when I tell them I'm moving, so to save your poor little fingers typing them out, here is my attempt at a helpful FAQ:<br />
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<b>Does that mean I'm giving up my job?</b><br />
Yes! I've resigned from my current job which is editor of the Saturday edition of the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">i</span></b> newspaper. I will still carry on writing about gardening, mainly for <i>The Independent</i> and the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">i</span></b>, but I'll be able to work from home rather than have to go into the office.<br />
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<b>Will I miss London?</b><br />
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Yes, of course! I think London is the greatest city in the world. (Well, I'm biased.) But it is a tiring city in which to work, and sometimes it feels almost as if people go out of their way to make one's life far more stressful than it needs to be. Just the simple act of getting up and going to work, or coming home from the office, can sometimes seem like an obstacle race.</div>
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<b>Will I miss my friends?</b></div>
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Yes, of course! But I hope they'll come and stay with me in Gloucestershire. It's less than two hours' drive from London, and the train to Chippenham or Kemble takes less than an hour and a half. And you have to remember that, because of the hours I work, I hardly ever see my friends in London. There are many friends - not to mention family - I will see more of when I move.</div>
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I'll miss my colleagues too - I've worked at <i>The Independent</i> for nearly 13 years. There are many things about office life I love - the banter, the silly running jokes, the excitement of a breaking story. However, I've tried to imagine myself missing work as I sit by my fireside looking out over the meadows on my Gloucestershire hilltop, and somehow I can't see it. I certainly won't miss the canteen...</div>
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<b>Will I miss the Backyard?</b></div>
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I don't think so. In a way I feel as if I've got to the end of the road with my current garden.</div>
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I'm very excited about having a new garden, which will be totally different. In London, you can create your own landscape, but in Gloucestershire, the surrounding countryside demands a much more appropriate garden. I already have plans, and I'm looking forward to telling you how it all goes.</div>
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I will keep the Victoria's Backyard blog, however, and I think I will use that for discussing gardening issues and news and so on. </div>
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I also now have a new blog, <a href="http://awkwardhill.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Tales from Awkward Hill</a>, which will specifically be about life in Gloucestershire.</div>
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I've written a piece for next Saturday's <i>Independent Magazine</i> about leaving my garden, and I have to say they've done a fabulous job on it, so do get a copy if you can.</div>
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<b>Will I be taking lots of plants with me?</b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I don't think so. Many of them wouldn't survive </span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">outside the London microclimate. Bibury is about 2ºC colder than London most of the time, and the garden is not nearly as sheltered. Having said that, I will still need an extra removal truck just for the garden...</span></b></div>
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Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-80539538682251195362012-10-17T23:02:00.003+01:002012-10-17T23:02:37.480+01:00Revenge of the Yellow BookAnne Wareham tells me that her garden, <a href="http://veddw.com/" target="_blank">Veddw</a>, has been dropped from the National Garden Scheme's Yellow Book next year, apparently as a punishment for the piece she wrote in the Spectator earlier this year.<br />
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She say the Chief Executive of the NGS, George Plumptre, told her: "I don't think you have any concept how many hundreds of humble, innocent garden owners and NGS volunteers were deeply hurt by your <a href="http://images.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7779188/please-shut-the-gates.thtml" target="_blank">diatribe in The Spectator</a> earlier this year."</div>
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Anne has a reputation for being controversial; some would say abrasive. That's what she does; in the cosy world that is British horticulture, she is the grit that helps create the pearl in the oyster. Perhaps a better analogy would be to compare her to the stone in your shoe that stops you in your tracks and makes you question your preconceptions.</div>
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The NGS, on the other hand, is a charity. It has no business being controversial, abrasive or - apparently - vengeful. I don't know George Plumptre very well, but he has always seemed to me to be a sensible sort of chap, so I very much hope that this is a misunderstanding.</div>
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Personally, I don't always agree with Anne's views. We differ greatly on the subject of lawn edging, for example. However, I think she has very interesting things to say about garden design, and about the way we appreciate gardens.</div>
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I went to a lecture by Sir Roy Strong during the Olympics, and he was talking about how the British inhabit a landscape of the imagination - a make-believe world which has more to do with sentiment and nostalgia than it has to do with reality.</div>
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He cited <i>The Haywain</i> (below) by John Constable - one of the most famous paintings in the world - and pointed out that Constable didn't paint it from life, but in his London studio. Not only that, he painted the scene as he remembered it from his childhood.</div>
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We British have a very irritating tendency to look back, like Lot's wife, or Orpheus (and remember what happened to them!), at past glories. Gardeners are always trying to recreate a Sissinghurst or a Hidcote, and public taste applauds and colludes. </div>
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I'm not at all convinced that it is healthy to wallow in <i>les temps perdu</i>. Tempting, yes, but ultimately unexciting and uncreative. At least let's not get cross when someone tries to prod us out of our Edwardian daydream.</div>
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Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-20983032796379195502012-10-10T14:15:00.001+01:002012-10-10T14:26:14.900+01:00Harvest festival for hipstersI had a rather novel experience yesterday evening - I went to an RHS show and found I was one of the oldest people there. It was the RHS London Harvest Festival Show, and for the first time ever, the show was open until 9pm.<br />
Now, this was good in itself. I can rarely get to the London RHS shows because they are held during the week, during the day. I have to take a day off, or slope into work a bit later. The idea of being able to go to a show on the way home, instead of lugging my purchases onto the Tube and into the office, is brilliant.<br />
Not only that, there was a cocktail bar. Yes, a cocktail bar! It was Lottie Muir's Midnight Apothecary bar, which Lottie, aka the Cocktail Gardener, started at the <a href="http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/events/midnight-apothecary-on-saturdays/" target="_blank">Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe</a>, and which has already become an institution.<br />
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There was a huge queue for cocktails, with hardly a person over 30 to be seen. Being a cynical hack, I suspected that the RHS had drafted in some of their younger members of staff to swell the crowds. However, this was not the case: the two women behind me said they'd read about the event in Time Out, while the women in front of me had seen it advertised on an events listings website.<br />
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While waiting in the queue for our cocktails, we were entertained by the London Vegetable Orchestra. I'd seen them at Hampton Court a couple of years ago, but had never heard their full repertoire. <br />
It wasn't all cocktails and courgette clarinets. There was the usual Fruit and Vegetable Competition, with specimens of quite extraordinary size and length laid out on the tables. Wesley Kerr pointed out to me the rivalry between the Duke of Marlborough (known as "Sunny") and the Duke of Devonshire (whose prep school nickname was Stoker), who compete every year to see who can win first prize for their grapes. I love the idea of "Sunny" and "Stoker" jostling for first prize with their bunches of muscats. Talk about pistils at dawn.<br />
There was food too: cheese, from <a href="http://www.godsellscheese.com/home.html" target="_blank">Godsells</a> in Gloucestershire (whose cheeses include The Three Virgins and Singing Granny); mushrooms and sausages, plus apples from the Wisley orchards.<br />
Anyway, if the RHS is still concerned about ways to encourage the under-30s into gardening, I reckon they can stop worrying. All it takes, apparently, is a few cocktails and a group of men fingering weirdly shaped vegetables.<br />
<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-38829759899653031392012-10-07T20:47:00.000+01:002012-10-07T20:54:01.703+01:00Britain in BloomI'm ashamed to admit I've never been to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Islands" target="_blank">Channel Islands</a>. My knowledge of them is limited to the 1980s BBC detective series <i>Bergerac</i>, which was set in Jersey. So I was thrilled when the Royal Horticultural Society invited me to attend the annual <a href="http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Community-gardening/Britain-in-Bloom/News/RHS-Britain-in-Bloom-results-2012" target="_blank">Britain in Bloom</a> awards, held in St Peter Port, in Guernsey, at the weekend.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Britain in Bloom is seen by many as a rather cosy, middle-class affair - a kind of Neighbourhood Windowbox Watch. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">This is a bit unfair. Taking part in Britain in Bloom can effect a genuine transformation in neighbourhoods, not only aesthetically, but economically, environmentally and socially. It's not surprising, then, that the judges aren’t just looking at the quality of the summer bedding but also at the level of community participation and environmental awareness.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="color: black;">Take <a href="http://herm.com/" target="_blank">Herm</a>, for example. One and a half miles long and half a mile wide, with a population of 63, it lies between Guernsey and Sark, and it was one of the gold medal winners in the 2012 awards, as well as carrying off the RHS Britain in Bloom Tourism Award, presented to the finalist that demonstrated the most effective use of their "In Bloom" participation as a means of supporting tourism.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">Herm could be said to have more in common, horticulturally speaking, with Madeira than Manchester. A</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;"> holiday island paradise, brimming with sub-tropical specimens such as echiums, brugmansia and osteospermums, it might not be the first image that springs to mind when you hear the phrase “Britain in Bloom”. However, as with </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">many places in the British Isles, the beautiful surroundings it can offer visitors are crucial to bringing in tourist cash. If the only way people can get to you is to take a three-mile boat trip from Guernsey (itself a 40-minute flight from Gatwick), you have to be able to provide something with a bit of a wow factor once they get there.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">Two full-time gardeners, Brett Moore and Roseanne Wheeler, ensure that the tiny island looks its best from April to October, and as well as the sub-tropical plants, there’s a wealth of wildflowers – dog roses, foxgloves and rare orchids.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">Perhaps the economic imperative explains why the affluent south-east doesn’t figure as prominently as you might expect (given its mild climate) in the Bloom awards. The number of long-range commuters and the prevalence of second homes also means that it is difficult to build the sense of mutual endeavour that glues a community together.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">The only finalist south of Watford in the Champion of Champions category for 2012 was Thornbury in South Gloucestershire, while the outright champion of champions was the Northern Irish village of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19860464" target="_blank">Broughshane</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">, in Country Antrim.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="color: black;">It’s been a tough year for anyone involved in horticultural endeavours. The weather was horrible and money is tight, so all the participants deserve credit, believes Roger </span>Burnett, chair of the RHS Britain in Bloom judging panel, for rising to the challenge.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He said: “I love seeing the imaginative ways communities overcome challenges. It was reported that groups were pulling out of Britain in Bloom because of these problems but, in fact, we had a ten per cent increase in the number of groups signing up, making it a record year.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">For the St George’s Crypt homeless shelter in Leeds, joint winner of the RHS Britain in Bloom Young People’s Award, the emphasis is on cultivating pastoral care rather </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">than pansies and petunias.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">There has been a homeless shelter at St George’s since 1930, but three years ago, following a huge refurbishment, the charity decided to redesign the garden and incorporate it into their Social Enterprise scheme.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Chief executive Chris Fields explained: “The theme is nurture, and we offer either catering or horticulture. Anyone who comes here is offered 15 hours of personal development to see if they like it, and at the moment we have six ex-offenders and six ex-addicts on the scheme.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The trainees run a small market garden, and are just about to take delivery of 30 chickens. They’ve taken part in guerrilla gardening projects in the city, liaising with local developers to plant up unused plots, and they also provide garden maintenance for local people – under supervision, of course.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Mr Fields said: “I don’t believe in the Playstation/pool table culture. Getting back to nature really suits certain individuals, who wouldn’t benefit from sitting in a room with a group of people talking about their problems. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">For addicts, especially, it can be helpful, because they can measure their progress against the growth of the plants and the passing of the seasons."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">Hearing about this sort of scheme is quite humbling. Indeed, being at the dinner in Guernsey on Saturday made me very aware of the astonishing efforts that are being made through the UK, by ordinary people, to make our cities, towns and villages better places to live.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">All the Britain in Bloom volunteers I spoke to had one thing in common; a huge pride in their local community. I was on a table with the group from <a href="http://www.harrogate-news.co.uk/2012/10/06/harrogate-wins-gold-at-rhs-britain-in-bloom-awards-2012/" target="_blank">Spofforth</a>, a village near Harrogate. They weren't in it for the money (they themselves don't get any), or the publicity. Their idea of reward was to get a certificate with an RHS gold medal, and when they won their gold, they all burst into tears. </span></span></div>
Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-83279164233004861402012-10-03T20:50:00.002+01:002012-10-05T22:32:43.378+01:00Gardeners' World comes to Victoria's Backyard<div class="widget storyContent article widget-editable viziwyg-section-507 inpage-widget-8099193 articleContent voicesArticleLayout">
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"Hey, the garden is going to be on Gardeners' World!" This piece of
news failed spectacularly to excite my son and daughter, who were
packing for the start of the university term, and more interested in
whether they'd remembered to buy teabags than in my horticultural
hooplas.</span><br />
<span class="storyTop ">“You gonna be on it, Mum?” asked my son, barely lifting his
eyes from a tangle of cables, clean socks and phone chargers.<br />
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“No, just the garden,” I said. “…K,” he mumbled, visibly losing interest.<br />
No
one is interested in you – as a person, I mean – if you are showing off
your garden. People want to know about the plants, and how you grow
things. You could be a scarecrow for all they care (although if you were
a particularly efficacious scarecrow, capable of clearing entire
allotments of pigeons and other thieving avians, they'd be very
interested indeed). Gardening is very good for keeping one's ego firmly
in its place.<br />
I'd been rung up by BBC Gardeners' World before, a
couple of years ago, but nothing came of it. A couple of times,
photographers have contacted me, but then decided my garden – a
subtropical jungle in South-west London, full of bamboos and hardy
bananas – wasn't suitable for their purposes. Oh well, another blow to
my self-esteem.<br />
This time however, the GW advance party came
round, they enthused about the garden, and they said they'd ring me.
Yeah, right, I thought. To my astonishment, they rang a few days later
and said they'd love to come and film. So at sunrise one day last week, I
found myself mowing the lawn, sweeping the terrace and fishing dead
leaves out of the pond. At 9.30am, the crew arrived, along with
presenter Joe Swift (below). I set about making copious amounts of tea.<br />
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I
open my garden for charity under the National Gardens Scheme, so I'm
used to seeing strangers in it. I love watching how they react to it –
where they sit, what they look at, how they use the space that I have
created. With a film crew it was even more fascinating. I kept wanting
to say things like: “The sun hits that bit of the garden in about an
hour,” but I didn't dare. What with all the mowing, and sweeping, and
tea-making, I felt a bit like I was on work experience.<br />
The idea
of the segment they were filming, apparently, was to show how to achieve
layers of planting in the garden, so there is a seamless transition
between low-growing plants and gigantic ones. So, was my garden an
example of how to do it, or how not to do it? I'll have to wait until it
airs to find out. After all, I'm only the gardener.<br />
<br />
<i>I've been trying to find the time to blog about this for ages, without success. So do please forgive me for recycling this piece, which appeared in the i newspaper last week. As soon as I know when the programme is going out, I'll let you know. </i><br />
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Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-19978462921421030882012-10-03T20:45:00.001+01:002012-10-03T20:45:06.349+01:00Choir tour: VENICE!!!Saturday 14 July dawned hot and sunny - just the sort of weather you want when you have to spend most of the day in the coach... There were lots of wistful backward glances as we left Lake Bled, nestled amid misty mountains, but huge excitement at the prospect of our next stop. Venice. The Queen of the Adriatic, the City of Light.<br />
The journey took about four hours, with a quick stop for water and loos, and by late lunchtime we had arrived at what must be one of the most charismatic cities in the world. No traffic is permitted in Venice, so your first impression is of an enormous car park, situated across the lagoon from a oil refinery. Lovely.<br />
Don't let it put you off, though, because once you're on the boat, heading for the Piazza San Marco, it's impossible not to fall under the Venetian spell.<br />
George Bernard Shaw once said that youth is wasted on the young. I suspect he might have agreed that travel is also more rewarding when you are older. I hadn't visited Venice since I was a teenager, when I spent most of the time trailing round freezing cold churches looking at Tintorettos, and the rest of the time shivering in a cheap hotel with stone floors (we were there in early April). Far too little time, in my opinion, was spent lurking in coffee bars, warming my frozen fingers on a cappucino.<br />
We went in spring, because there is a general belief that Venice in high summer is unbearable, with smelly canals and squillions of tourists. And in winter, the city is often flooded, so all in all, the opportunities to visit seem limited.<br />
We arrived in the middle of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festa_del_Redentore" target="_blank">Redentore</a> festival, which meant that the city was busier than ever. It was a bit of a nightmare trying to herd 42 children of varying ages through the crowds, but despite the tourists and the heat, it was fabulous.<br />
We stopped at the Piazza San Marco, in front of the cathedral, to make a note of our meeting place and then we dispersed into the alleyways around the square before meeting up again to eat.<br />
If you've never been to the city before, do not be tempted to hang around in the open in the piazza. It's quite safe, but there is very little shelter from the sun. In any other city, one might be a bit wary of diving into dark narrow passageways surrounding the main square, but in Venice these are where you will find the nicer shops, the quieter canals and perhaps even a peaceful piazza.<br />
It's impossible to get lost, because there are yellow signs on the street corners giving you directions to the major landmarks: "Rialto" (for the Rialto Bridge) or "San Marco". <br />
Venice is unique. It even has its own brand of tourist tat: the shops are laden with <i>carnevale</i> masks, Murano glass and gondoliers' hats. I wanted a Murano glass bracelet and Kitty wanted a cup of coffee, so we wandered over to the Rialto and found a cafe. The cafe prices are eye-watering - but then so is the view.<br />
We were due to sing at Mass at St Mark's at 6.45pm, but we still managed to have a coffee, buy a handbag or two, and some gloves. On a previous visit, Kitty had found a glove shop where they could tell your size just by looking at your hand. Amazingly, we found it on our way back to the cathedral.<br />
Kitty bought a plain black pair, but I splashed out on a dark brown pair trimmed with a strap in Hermes orange. I then found a bright orange leather handbag for 60 euros. We had a <i>fantastic</i> time.<br />
We weren't allowed to take photographs inside St Mark's. Indeed, we weren't allowed to do anything other than sing at Mass - we were ushered into the building just beforehand and out again at the end. But it was a wonderful feeling - even if the deacon did glare at us all the way through.<br />
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It's very exciting when the smudgy skyline you can see across the lagoon starts to take shape as you approach Venice by boat. Little by little, the rainbow colours of the houses, and the domes and spires of churches come into focus as you speed across the water.<br />
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The unmistakable outline of the Campanile (the bell tower) and the Doge's palace, which looks like a beautiful Oriental jewellery box. The Doge was the ruler of Venice, but not in any royal sense. He was elected, and strict rules were in place to ensure that powerful men did not turn the position into something that they could pass on to their sons.<br />
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Look at the ant-like procession of people on the quayside. You can see how busy it is. </div>
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Before you've gone more than a couple of yards in Venice, history steps forward to greet you. The church on the right, with the big columns, is known as the Vivaldi church, because it was here that Antonio Vivaldi taught at the Ospedale della Pieta, a combination of convent, orphanage and music school. It was a girls' orphanage, and the girls had to sing the tenor and bass parts as well as the alto and soprano lines. The present building was completed after Vivaldi's death, but the Metropole Hotel, on the right, stands on the site of the original.</div>
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Here is the Bridge of Sighs, which connects the Doge's Palace with the New Prison. It was named by Lord Byron, who romantically imagined prisoners taking their last view of Venice through the windows before execution. Apparently this is poetic tosh - the New Prison was full of Venetian ne'er-do-wells and pickpockets, not tragic victims of oppression.<br />
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As we approached the Piazza San Marco (St Mark's Square) the crowds seemed to get thicker. As we turned the corner, and got our first glimpse of the cathedral, it was only possible to take quick snaps before someone bumped into you, or got in the way.<br />
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Here's the winged lion, the symbol of Venice and of St Mark the Evangelist. <br />
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Here's another symbol of Venice - the gondola, with its attendant gondolier in his traditional straw hat.<br />
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Here's Kitty - never happier than when she has a cup of coffee in her hand!</div>
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And here's the Rialto, traditionally the centre of commerce in Venice and even now a busy shopping centre. There are tourist stalls galore, but if you step off the main alley you'll find yourself in a market place, with Venetian buying their groceries.<br />
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<br />The view from the Rialto. Isn't it beautiful? Venice really is one of those cities that looks just as good in real life as it does in the brochure.<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-88765758505501663372012-08-28T00:34:00.002+01:002012-09-21T21:09:42.973+01:00The garden opening, the guests and the obligatory EEEEK! moments<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now this is great. I'm still exhausted, more than 24 hours after opening my garden, but I find that talented friends have done all the hard work for me. So if you want to see what the garden looked like, you can see it through the eyes of <a href="http://zoelynch.co.uk/2012/08/27/garden-hopping-victorias-backyard/" target="_blank">Zoë</a> and <a href="http://www.carolinegarland.com/2012/08/victorias-backyard-in-wandsworth/" target="_blank">Caroline</a>.<br />
It's always fascinating to find out how other people see my garden, and I'm sure their photographs will make a nice change for regular readers.<br />
We had a wonderful day yesterday. We had just over 120 visitors, who arrived in a steady stream from 2pm onwards, and we finally closed the gate at 7pm. Lots of friends came - from my gardening group, from church, from the neighbourhood, from the blogosphere - and it was hugely enjoyable.<br />
In terms of talking to visitors, I think it was the best year ever. Everyone seemed to "get" the garden, and had interesting things to say about the plants, and their experiences with them.<br />
We served lots of homemade cake, of course! This year, the favourites were carrot cake, and coffee and walnut (always in the top spot), but also chocolate fudge cake, which I felt a bit guilty about because I used shop-bought chocolate fudge frosting. Thank you, Betty Crocker.<br />
Zoë was able to come for the first time this year because for once the August Bank Holiday did not coincide with her wedding anniversary. It was particularly good to see her because she was the first blogger I ever met in the flesh - as she explains in her post.<br />
Other bloggers included <a href="http://lazytrollop.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lazy Trollop</a> and <a href="http://woodmansterne.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Simian Suter</a>, plus Sue Carter who should be classified as an associate blogger, since I met her through an American blogging friend, <a href="http://www.diggrowcompostblog.com/" target="_blank">Jean McWeeney</a>. I love the fact that I now know someone who lives a couple of miles down the road from me in SW London through someone who lives in Louisiana.<br />
So, the EEEEK moments. I know <a href="http://vegplotting.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">VP</a> will be very disappointed if I don't mention these - she looks forward to them so much every year. So here goes.<br />
The garden was fine. All that I had left to do by Saturday lunchtime was the cakes. I put the oven on. I got a couple of coffee sponges under way, and sat down at the computer to check the weather forecast.<br />
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We had a massive storm here in London on Saturday afternoon (it was as if someone in the sky had turned a tap on), and I wanted to make sure the forecast for Sunday was still fine and clear.<br />
Just as I called up the weather page, there was a flash of lightning, a <i>crump</i> of thunder - and the computer went off. So did the oven. And the fridge, and the freezer, and the television and the microwave. Anything, in fact, that was plugged into a socket.<br />
I went to the fuse box, and pushed up the trip switch. It flicked back down. I tried again. It flicked back down. I called the home emergency service and asked them to send an electrician out asap. They said they'd have someone with me by 6.30pm at the latest. It was 3.30pm.<br />
By 6.30pm, when the electrician still hadn't arrived, I was beginning to panic in a mild sort of way. I told myself that if the worst came to the worst, I'd just run out when the shops opened on Sunday morning and buy some cake. But as we all know, that's not the same as homemade...<br />
I started switching off the sockets one by one to see if I could eliminate the fault. I'd stupidly assumed that it was something to do with the computer, since I'd been sitting at the computer when the power went off, or the oven (since that had been on).<br />
After a few moments of slightly clearer thinking, however, I worked out that the fault was probably on the garden circuit, where I had an Armadillo (one of those plastic extension boxes). I switched off the garden circuit and - hey presto! - the power came back on. (And the Armadillo, I discovered, was full of water...) I finally finished baking at 4am.<br />
The next morning, I managed to climb out of bed and put the finishing touches to the garden - arranging tables and chairs, mowing the lawn - while my mother and my daughter swept the terrace and tidied the living room. By 1pm we were ready to open, and my daughter, who was serving tea and cake, set out the paper plates, the paper napkins, the plastic cutlery ... and we had no cups.<br />
I rushed to the supermarket and came back laden with polyfoam cups, just in time to find the first guests waiting for the gate to open. They looked summery and relaxed. I looked like nothing on earth, with unwashed hair that had been drenched in the downpours of the day before. Oh well, I thought. They've come to see the plants, not me.<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-60047167551497851572012-08-27T17:31:00.001+01:002012-08-27T17:31:12.718+01:00Flower power and camouflage tricksI've always been a big fan of <a href="http://www.thecamouflagecompany.com/" target="_blank">The Camouflage Company</a>. My local garden centre sells their collapsible boxes, which are ideal for holding shopping, or plants, or using as storage. They also make a range of bags, and they supply items that protect garden furniture, such as benches and barbecues.<br />
Even if your garden furniture is weatherproof, as mine is, it's useful to have something to put over it in the winter to protect it from rain splashes and bird poo.<br />
The best thing about their garden range, however, is the choice of designs. As the name suggests, their products are designed to camouflage items, so instead of the usual utilitarian dark green, the bench covers and so on come in a long grass print, a rose print, and a daisy print.<br />
I've always wanted one for my rotary dryer - not so much to protect it while it's in the garden but more to keep the dust and spiders off when it's stored in the shed or garage. There's just one problem. Given a choice, I can never make a decision.<br />
I said jokingly to Louise Unger, who co-founded the company, that if she sent me all the covers, I would photograph them, put them on my blog and get you guys to decide which one I should buy. And she agreed! So here we go: cast your vote. (Click on the pictures if you want a bigger version.)<br />
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I love this daisy design - it's really fun. There's something rather surreal about a column of daisies sitting in the middle of the garden, and just photographing it made me smile.<br />
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The long grass design looks like a wildflower meadow, with grasses, red campion, cow parsley and forgetmenots. I think this is the best design if you want the camouflage effect - no one could accuse my garden of looking like a wild flower meadow, yet it blends in amazingly well.<br />
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The rose design worked the least well in my garden, but in a more traditional English garden it would look great. And who doesn't like pink roses?<br />
PS: The Camouflage Company often run "win a bag" promotions on their Facebook page. Go <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheCamouflageCompany" target="_blank">here</a> to have a look.<br />
PPS: I know I should be posting about my garden opening and how it went, but this is my day off, and I felt like having a bit of fun.<br />
<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-56206202349529258792012-08-26T01:42:00.000+01:002012-08-26T01:43:30.856+01:00You know it's Garden Open day when ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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... the garden looks unnaturally tidy<br />
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... and that bit where you've been meaning to put down some pebbles for, ooh, years now finally has some pebbles<br />
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... and even the shed area looks neat (ha! you can't see the tottering pile of empty pots behind the bamboo!)<br />
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... and there is no rubbish, or bags of compost, or unplanted purchases, or rakes, or brooms, or other bits and pieces lying around on the patio</div>
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... (although you might find the odd cat)<br />
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... and even the self-sown tomato plant has been transformed into a thing of elegance (though I do say so myself)<br />
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... and there are burgeoning banana plants, and cannas about to come into flower<br />
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... and the black-eyed susans are waving hello. They hope to say hello to some of you too.<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-38721018083279762512012-07-31T21:37:00.003+01:002012-07-31T21:37:52.839+01:00Choir tour! St Peter's, RadovljicaI suppose it was inevitable that on Friday 13th, things should start to go slightly awry. It was raining in the morning, so our scheduled trip to the Bled Adventure Park- and the famous <a href="http://www.bled.si/en/default.asp?id=2300" target="_blank">Summer Toboggan</a> - was called off. Instead the kids went rafting before returning for a last lunch at our hotel. I'm going to miss those Slovenian salads.<br />
That evening, we were scheduled to perform in Radovljica, about half an hour's drive from the hotel. We arrived to find a little town that looked like something from a movie set. Pristine houses with beautiful frescoes lined the town square, while the gingerbread shop, Lectar - with its lovely little hearts (<i>lect</i>) decorated with flowers and mottoes - is famous throughout Slovenia.<br />
It all added to the impression that Slovenia is not quite real - it's a fantasy place, like Ruritania (if you're old enough to remember Stewart Granger in <i>The Prisoner of Zenda</i>) or Genovia (if you're only old enough to remember <i>The Princess Diaries</i>). I even saw someone wearing <i>lederhosen</i>.<br />
Indeed, it seemed almost too good to be true, and I had to sit firmly on the journalistic bit of my brain, which was busily noting that there seemed to be no poor people, no rundown areas and absolutely no ethnic communities whatsoever. Being Protestant seemed to be about as multicultural as it gets in this part of the former Yugoslavia.<br />
Historically, Slovenia is the most liberal - as well as the most wealthy - of the former Yugoslav states. After independence, however, non-Slovenian Yugoslav nationals had their residency rights rescinded. Around 30,000 people - ethnic Croats, ethnic Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, Albanian Kosovars and ethnic Roma - had their names erased from the civil registers, a move described by human rights campaigners as "administrative genocide".<br />
Browsing in the gingerbread shop, the owner showed me a selection of mottoes which were available in English. "Home Sweet Home" and "With Love" and "From Me To You": that sort of thing. They had French versions, German versions, Italian versions - "any language you like," he said, "even Hebrew and Japanese". "And Slovenian, of course?" I said. "Yes, Slovenian," he said, laughing, adding: "For the Nazi slogans." Hmm.<br />
Wherever you go in the world, and whatever image you might have of a place, it is odd how often the people you meet - the ordinary citizens - turn out to be charming and generous. I have Iranian and Iraqi friends, for example, who rank among the warmest, most civilised people I know. Whenever I see them, I wonder how we came to be at odds with nations that produce such affectionate, tolerant individuals. <br />
It was the same in Slovenia. One could spend one's time feeling slightly uncomfortable about certain aspects of Slovenian history, but it seemed a bit churlish in the face of the kindness that our hosts showed towards the choir.<br />
St Peter's was a pretty little church to match a pretty little town. There has been a church on this site since the tenth century, and this building dates from around 1500. We were intrigued to find that it was hung with garlands and wreaths and wondered whether there had been a wedding. No, we were told, the decorations were for the installation of a new parish priest the week before. Lucky priest - what a welcome.<br />
The ceiling, in particular, was fascinating - painted with flowers both real and imagined. You could pick out a pansy, or a thistle - inspiration from the meadows and hillsides - alongside more fantastical blossoms which had flourished in the painter's fertile imagination.<br />
Beside the church, there was the Rectory, a two-storey building built around a courtyard hung with windowboxes that overflowed with scarlet geraniums. We were shown into a large room where we could dump our stuff and change into our cassocks. Windows opened out from the corridor onto the courtyard, and to our delight, there were hummingbird moths feeding on the geraniums.<br />
In such a small, quiet town, it was difficult to see how we were going to generate any kind of audience. (This became a recurring theme as the tour went on, always with the same result.) However, we processed into the church to find it crowded with people, and each piece of music was greeted with rapturous applause - so much so that it was sometimes difficult to start the next item.<br />
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Linhart Square in Radovljica's medieval old town, with its stone fountain and painted houses. The square is named after Anton Linhart (1756-1795), a Slovene historian and playwright, who was born in the town.<br />
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Sivec House, which has a fresco depicting the good Samaritan. Note the paint-effect stonework - many of the houses have this sort of decoration, but this was the most spectacular example.<br />
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A baroque fresco on the wall of the Koman House.<br />
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St Peter's Church, with a bust of St Peter, holding the keys to Heaven, above the door.<br />
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The green garlands inside the church were part of the decorations put up to welcome the new parish priest.<br />
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The flower-painted ceiling - some flowers are recognisable, some are imaginary.<br />
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An orchestra of angels adorns the ceiling over the central nave.<br />
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Gingerbread on sale at the Lectar House, which is also a B&B and a restaurant.<br />
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Isn't this gingerbread house sweet? I had precisely 10 minutes to get into the shop, take pictures and catch up with the rest of the choir. Just as well, really, or I would have bought the whole shop.</div>
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Many of the hearts carried mottoes, which made it even more difficult to choose. I bought four, very quickly, for me, my daughter and two of her friends, thinking they would like to keep them as souvenirs. I turned round five minutes later to see my daughter stuffing hers into her mouth.<br />
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Gingerbread hearts ready to be decorated. I tried not to think about E numbers!<br />
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Girls aloud: from left, Becca, Kitty (Becca's mum), me and my daughter, Nevada, dressed in the dreaded cassocks.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-85857944511137198422012-07-19T22:44:00.002+01:002012-07-19T22:44:20.868+01:00Choir tour! The Postojna Caves, SloveniaThursday 12 July was a day for chilling out - literally. It began with a trip to the Postojna Caves, an amazing warren of chambers adorned with stalagmites and stalactites of all shapes, sizes and colours.<br />
Our tour guide, Sara, had warned us that the temperature below ground would be really cold, around 8C, compared to 28C outside.<br />
I've been to limestone caves before, and was inclined to be of the opinion that when you've seen one lot of stalatites, you've seen them all. However, Postojna was very impressive, not least because you were taken into the caves on a little train, which rattled you through tunnels and under overhanging rocks at top speed.<br />
The cave system was enormous - chamber after chamber of different formations. Some looked like tattered flags or pieces of cloth (or prosciutto, said one of the permanently hungry Year 7 boys). Others looked like melted candles, and on some of the ceilings there were "spaghetti" formations, with endless small stalactites hanging from the roof.<br />
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We weren't allowed to take pictures, unfortunately, but in the very last chamber, called the Concert Hall, the chamber choir were able to perform, and here they are. They call themselves Vocalicity and they are directed by my daughter. They're very good (though I say so myself!) - they've been working with the a cappella group <a href="http://www.voces8.com/web/" target="_blank">Voces8</a> for two years and they sound very professional.<br />
The woman who was conducting the tour of the caves was about to announce that Vocalicity were singing when suddenly someone in the crowd of tourists collapsed. I'm not sure what was wrong, but she seemed all right once they got her outside. Perhaps it was a panic attack, brought on by being underground for so long - and we had walked a long way through the caves before rejoining the train.<br />
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When we emerged, the sun had come out to warm us all up.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-25531318824158545292012-07-19T17:59:00.000+01:002012-07-19T17:59:10.528+01:00Choir tour! Our first concert<div style="text-align: center;">
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Our first concert in Slovenia was in Ljubljana, at the Franciscan Church, which dominates the town square. We had a couple of hours to rehearse, then the concert, which began at 8pm.<br />
I'd been warned that my daughter that although we might wear a cassock over our everyday clothes for a concert at home, on tour it would be too hot to wear anything but underwear. This proved to be true.<br />
The people at the Franciscan Church were very welcoming and showed us into a big, cool room, where we could change and leave our stuff. We then trooped into the church for the rehearsal. The church was magnificent.<br />
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It took us all at least half an hour to stop gawping. It was great to see the kids appreciate all the decorative detail, and get their cameras out.<br />
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The organ was probably one of the best organs we had during the tour. It was huge, with a fantastic growly sound like a jungle beast, which really suited the first piece we sang, the Kyrie from Louis Vierne's <i>Messe Solennelle</i>.<br />
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Ljubljana is a very pretty, relaxed city, where you can sit at one of the riverside cafes and watch the world go by.<br />
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Here's the marketplace, closed up for the day by the time we finished our rehearsal.<br />
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The staff, enjoying a brief break. My daughter's school, <a href="http://www.emanuel.org.uk/" target="_blank">Emanuel</a>, has four full-time music staff, all of whom studied either at Oxford or Cambridge. One holds a Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO) and two others have Associateships (ARCO). There are a host of instrumental teachers who come in on a part-time basis, including four singing teachers. As you can tell, this is a school that takes singing - and music - seriously.<br />
I'm going to pause to have a little rant here. There is an attitude these days that classical music is somehow exclusive, or "posh". Working-class kids, the argument goes, don't have access to instruments, or expensive lessons, so singing Bach, rather than rap or cover versions of pop songs, is beyond them.<br />
I find this attitude quite patronising. Anyone who can sing vaguely in tune can sing choral music; you just need to learn the notes (although it helps if you have a competent choirmaster or mistress). And of course, you need a certain level of commitment to turn up for rehearsals and concerts.<br />
However, music is not seen as a core subject in many schools, and you have to rely on dedicated music staff - in the state sector or the private sector - to get good music-making.<br />
The weird thing is that numerous studies have found that musical instruction improves cognitive ability in children. It's not quite clear why, and it seems that the improvement may disappear again if the children stop learning music. You'd think that would make schools - and parents - rush to put music slightly higher up the agenda, but no. It's still seen as something that's a bit trivial.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeqUTkefACg3mMd1F0mTXgAizddBLZAZfZsbvkjzFMQY1DHEg1l_UT_xcFTHsbA0XPGvAlp9g4ytxq883GJgDf9FopklRsNUICm6oL7sFSXoFJ488JSQ_xrNYg_4wKqwlQ9PAAGYf_3TpB/s1600/DSCN5132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeqUTkefACg3mMd1F0mTXgAizddBLZAZfZsbvkjzFMQY1DHEg1l_UT_xcFTHsbA0XPGvAlp9g4ytxq883GJgDf9FopklRsNUICm6oL7sFSXoFJ488JSQ_xrNYg_4wKqwlQ9PAAGYf_3TpB/s400/DSCN5132.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Anyway, back to Ljubljana. Wandering around the narrow streets, there are lots of architectural details to admire. One of the landmarks is the three bridges, or <i>Tromostovje</i>, across the river. That's two of them, in the picture below. The original bridge was quite narrow, so two pedestrian bridges were added either side in the 19th century to ease congestion. Now all of them are pedestrianised.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic3SMJoCFa0ZK8W2aDaP3LXFp61wBbdQSbnRxXUxWIlC5Dn397_kvydeEUMZvsq79a3wMiR8jDBDLVqGHAgrw8Usrru0CK94GvD64Rr9tHvhHbmvwWTurvlmlkQFxmIJWfdN-7QxIXo0Ut/s1600/DSCN5133.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic3SMJoCFa0ZK8W2aDaP3LXFp61wBbdQSbnRxXUxWIlC5Dn397_kvydeEUMZvsq79a3wMiR8jDBDLVqGHAgrw8Usrru0CK94GvD64Rr9tHvhHbmvwWTurvlmlkQFxmIJWfdN-7QxIXo0Ut/s400/DSCN5133.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9BUDAaqnQXwg-fVKc1wSBLdOhl_szBcgOZVI6UmYPUXyKeDeKizm7sSW06DuTV9blIf27V220Djqkvh4plOReniRxDf-s1b-HCCul1ygUy3u8r5haErySe66jkj9HVBbk-JCjJk7S9ZZ/s1600/aurum+stella+sheet+music.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9BUDAaqnQXwg-fVKc1wSBLdOhl_szBcgOZVI6UmYPUXyKeDeKizm7sSW06DuTV9blIf27V220Djqkvh4plOReniRxDf-s1b-HCCul1ygUy3u8r5haErySe66jkj9HVBbk-JCjJk7S9ZZ/s320/aurum+stella+sheet+music.jpg" width="210" /></a>One of the biggest thrills of going on choir tour for me was to hear my daughter's composition, <i>Aurum Stella</i>, being sung by the choir in public for the first time. The choir was featured on a Slovenian television arts programme, and the concert was recorded on Italian radio and Russian television, so if I manage to get my hands on a recording, I'll post it here.<br />
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<br /></div>Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-85593264623175073832012-07-19T12:18:00.000+01:002012-07-19T12:18:07.947+01:00Choir tour! We arrive in Slovenia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'd been a bit worried about going on choir tour with my daughter's school. Sitting in a cafe on rainy London afternoon months ago, it had seemed like a fun idea to go with them and sing in St Mark's in Venice.</div>
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My friend Kitty (the mother of my daughter's friend Becca) and I had suggested it as a joke.</div>
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To our surprise, the girls seemed very keen on the idea. To our greater surprise, so did the school music department (though we do sing in the parents' section of the choir for big concerts, so they knew vaguely what they were letting themselves in for.)</div>
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Perhaps it would be too exhausting. Perhaps it would be too claustrophobic, spending our holiday with 40 schoolchildren. Perhaps sharing a room would drive us mad. But then Tuesday 10 July arrived and it was too late to worry about it any longer. We flew out from Gatwick to Venice, then travelled by coach to the lake resort of Bled. </div>
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Our tour guide, Sara, had been told by the teachers to tell the kids that the journey would take a couple of hours. In fact, it took four (including a quick stop for lunch). Kitty and I didn't realise that this was a ruse to stop the kids moaning about the length of the journey, so we spent the first few days making jokes about "Slovenian time", in which every hour seemed to be twice as long as its British equivalent.</div>
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Choir tours can be quite hectic. The point, of course, is to perform concerts, which means you need time to rehearse as well. In between, there is a chance to do other things, such as a bit of sightseeing, but there's not that much time to sit and do nothing. So when we saw the castle sitting high above the lake, and the clouds lounging lazily on the mountains, below, you could almost feel everything start to relax.<br />
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It is a lovely place, quite close to the border with Austria and about 50 miles from the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. Slovenia's neighbours also include Italy, Croatia and Hungary, and these different influences are particularly noticeable in the cuisine. You might be offered goulash, schnitzel and pasta on the same menu.<br />
The Slovene language is Slavic, so quite similar to Russian (especially in terms of grammar), but basic phrases for thank you and please, for example, are quite different. It doesn't look like Russian, as it uses the Latin alphabet (ABCD etc) rather than the Cyrillic alphabet. In fact, the written language looks more like Hungarian or Polish, with various stress signs to change the pronunciation of vowels and consonants. Most of the population is Catholic, and there are hundreds of old churches, some dating back to early Christian times.<br />
Our hotel, the Hotel Park, was modern and spacious, and the food was good too - lots of salad and fresh fruit and vegetables. The sight of bowls piled high with peaches, apricots, and cherries was a treat for English eyes. (Cherries, in particular, cost a fortune in the UK.)<br />
The service was excellent and there was a pool, with a hot tub, on the top floor, so you could sit in the hot tub and gaze out at the lake and the mountains. Bliss!<br />
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If you wanted some gentle exercise, you could walk or cycle round the lake (cycle hire was €1), and the more energetic could walk up to the castle, where there was a restaurant and a panoramic view of the surrounding hills and mountains.</div>
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There was a tiny little church on an island in the middle of the lake, and you could hire a boat to take you over. Legend has it that if you ring the church bell and make a wish, your wish will come true.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwT-X8kglXDWOfvB0ujaxy7VOOYNZeK4RCOum8i3GGvULEx7CnqG0eyIRF1nJIV-D5mm204n1RUhXqHJqiN1E3kX8StQdh4ziG64PYRJaGNm-BymdbZkeVaX7mSaDAsZ8CnQoGDzfk_ub/s1600/DSCN5086.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwT-X8kglXDWOfvB0ujaxy7VOOYNZeK4RCOum8i3GGvULEx7CnqG0eyIRF1nJIV-D5mm204n1RUhXqHJqiN1E3kX8StQdh4ziG64PYRJaGNm-BymdbZkeVaX7mSaDAsZ8CnQoGDzfk_ub/s400/DSCN5086.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Between the trees, below, you can just see the summer toboggan zig-zagging down the hillside. A chairlift takes you up to the top, and then you whizz down a kind of monorail on a little cart. It's got a brake, so you can control it. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2MvJvIOcZafouqX1V51z6cnswg_pOnVxuLUTTMX3r04R2IlOD_F67jxeYBuB-j6cDOB2l5lDW6LpfalJRL1CjhEfORlQFZaL-X2EOhyphenhyphen-o5m0xp1rWZQRekT2JBW8t8oHqhR3mXhSfrDAk/s1600/DSCN5080.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2MvJvIOcZafouqX1V51z6cnswg_pOnVxuLUTTMX3r04R2IlOD_F67jxeYBuB-j6cDOB2l5lDW6LpfalJRL1CjhEfORlQFZaL-X2EOhyphenhyphen-o5m0xp1rWZQRekT2JBW8t8oHqhR3mXhSfrDAk/s400/DSCN5080.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-15701367396500821202012-07-19T10:41:00.001+01:002012-07-19T10:41:19.867+01:00Hampton Court - the fun side of flower showsSeveral people asked me if I went to the Hampton Court flower show. I sort of did - and didn't.<br />
I was working on press day, so it was Thurday by the time I got there. One of the reasons I wanted to go was to pick up some cannas from <a href="http://www.cannifer.co.uk/" target="_blank">Keith Hayward</a>. And it marked the first day of my holiday, so I felt in festive mood.<br />
I'd taken some cash to pay for my cannas, but by the time I got to the canna stand, I'd spent it all. So I had to go to the cash machine and get some more. The cash machines weren't working, so everyone had to queue up at the bureau de change windows and do their transactions manually. It took me 20 minutes to get to the head of the queue.<br />
If you wanted more than £50, you had to show ID. Had I got my passport with me, asked the man behind the counter. Oddly enough, my passport is not the first thing I think of slipping in my pocket when I go to a flower show, so no, I didn't. I eventually persuaded him that I was a responsible, solvent member of society and he handed over my cash. He also charged me £2.50 for the privilege of standing in line. You can always trust a bank to ruin your day!<br />
By the time I'd faffed around at the mobile bank, spotted some bargain Chinese pots that I just had to have, picked up my cannas, and made several laborious journeys to the car with my various purchases, it was time to go home. So I didn't see any of the show gardens - but hey, I had fun. And that's what Hampton Court is for, in my opinion.<br />
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Here's a chrysanthemum display in the Floral Marquee, where I spent most of my visit (and most of my money)<br />
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I don't grow bonsai, but I always love the displays. This one was fabulous. Going on a public day made me realise how privileged I am to be able to go to shows on press day - it was really busy, and it was quite difficult to take pictures.<br />
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For me Hampton Court is a fantastic opportunity to see flowers that are at their best in mid to late summer, such as these lilies.<br />
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These dahlias, exhibited by the National Dahlia Collection, were spectacular and thoroughly deserved their gold medal. The display was designed by Mike Mann, their new operations manager, who used to be with Winchester Growers, one of the UK's biggest dahlia specialists. If you think this is a wonderful display ...<br />
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... here's the other side. And there were two more sides as well! It was a good illustration of how sticking to a particular colour range can provide fantastic impact.<br />
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Downderry Lavender, from Kent, deserved a medal simply for scenting the whole marquee.<br />
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There are so many tempting things on offer at Hampton Court. I loved this fountain, designed by <a href="http://www.humphreybowden.com/" target="_blank">Humphrey Bowden</a>, and inspired by acer leaves. Luckily it was WAY out of my price range,<br />
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Hampton Court visitors are always determined to get into summer celebratory mode and have their Pimms, come rain or come shine (or black clouds).<br />
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Isn't this an adorable henhouse? One day...<br />
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Jubilee fever is still going strong, now overlaid with Olympics fervour. That is, unless you live - and drive, or work - in London, in which case everyone seems to be in a thoroughly bad temper.<br />
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My favourite canna stand! I bought 'Wyoming', which I think is a bit more subtle than 'Durban', and <i>C. musifolia</i>, which has olive-y green leaves with a bronze edge, so it looks good with 'Wyoming'. You don't really get flowers with musifolia, but it's a wonderfully exuberant plant.<br />
So what else did I buy? The same old, same old, really: more heucheras from <a href="http://www.heucheraholics.co.uk/" target="_blank">Heucheraholics</a> ('Sweet Tea' and 'Electra'), two <i>Mina lobata</i> (which I meant to grow from seed but never got round to it), and a colocasia.<br />
The <i>Mina lobata</i> (aka firecracker vine) was a bit of a drawback. People kept asking me what it was, and how you grew it, and whether it set seed, or whether you could grow it from seed. I didn't mind that, because I like chatting to people, but they were big plants, on canes, and I kept poking myself in rather tender places. Worse, I poked a rather grumpy woman in the leg, and she told me I had no business inflicting injuries on other visitors and I should take them back to the car forthwith. So I did.<br />
However, if anyone is interested, they grow as annuals in the UK, and they are unlikely to seed themselves around in the garden because they need a good deal of heat to germinate.<br />
You can buy seeds (from <a href="http://search.thompson-morgan.com/search?w=mina+lobata" target="_blank">Thompson & Morgan</a>) and the packet will tell you to soak the seeds in warm water for at least 24 hours to allow germination to start. In my experience, the best thing is to pour BOILING water on to them, and leave them for a couple of days. You can see very clearly which ones are viable, because the seeds will start to swell and even split.<br />
Once they start to swell, you can plant them up in seed compost in the normal way. Don't plant them too early in the season unless you have a greenhouse - they will just get very leggy and tie themselves in knots long before they are ready to go outside.<br />
<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-9937398176656856022012-06-29T09:09:00.001+01:002012-06-29T10:03:05.303+01:00The green stuff (and my new Bosch mower)Esther, who is one of my favouritest bloggers, has just written a post about <a href="http://esthersboringgardenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/what-is-lawn.html" target="_blank">lawns</a>. What is a lawn, she asks? How does it differ from a playing field or a tennis court?<br />
Very good question, and it's a very thought-provoking post. I started to write a comment, and then thought that I might turn it into a post myself.<br />
The subject of lawns is a fraught one. First, there are the environmental considerations - it seems mad to insist that people have lawns in dry regions, for example.<br />
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Conversely, if you have a very shady garden, you may find it difficult to sustain a healthy green sward because grass needs a certain amount of nice, warm sunshine in order to grow.<br />
My grass gets a fair amount of sun, and it's pretty trouble-free - the two patches you can see in the picture above are where I left a couple of pots of eucomis for, erm, rather longer than I meant.<br />
I don't bother to water, or weed and feed it (although I take out broad-leaved weeds such as dandelions and plantains by hand). I'm always chopping bits off it to make new planting areas. I have thought of getting rid of it altogether, but I like the sight of birds hopping about on it looking for worms.<br />
I commented on Esther's blog that lawns are for doing nothing in particular. They are a restful space for the mind and the eye - you can feel both extending their length of focus as you gaze out across the grass. There has to be a contrast, however: acres of mown grass, or the sort of grass verges that you get in housing estates, aren't interesting at all because there's no focal point.<br />
In my garden, I like the way the two-dimensionality of the lawn provides a contrast with the jungly plants. And I love the feel of it underfoot, that cool, refreshing dampness.<br />
So far, so green. But I have a confession to make: I LOVE mowing. I don't know why - maybe I was a man in another life. I love it even more now that I have a brand-new lawnmower.<br />
It's the first new lawnmower I've ever had, strangely enough. I've always inherited old ones from friends or family. So forgive me for getting a little overexcited about it.<br />
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It's a Bosch Rotak 37 LI Ergoflex, and it is truly wonderful. It wasn't free (though I did get a show discount, because I bought it at Chelsea), so this is an impartial, unsolicited review. The LI bit means that it is cordless, and the Ergoflex bit means that it is designed to be used by left-handed or right-handed people with equal ease. The figure 37 refers to the cutting width - there is good range of sizes.<br />
The handles are designed a bit like one of those folding baby buggies, which makes it much easier to manoeuvre. And there are four power buttons, so you can hold the power on with whichever hand is easier. (Interestingly, I've found that's my left hand, because I use the right to steer.)<br />
Compared with the old-fashioned straight bar arrangement, with the power on the right, it's much less strain on the back and the arms. For anyone with problems such as RSI, or back trouble, it is a joy to use.<br />
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The mower is powered by a 36V Lithium-Ion battery, which is housed on the front of the mower. It charges in only 90 minutes and the Lithium-Ion technology means that it doesn't lose its charge. Nor does it do it any harm to leave the battery on the charger, but I've found I can replace the battery, leave the mower in the shed for a week, and it still worked perfectly well.<br />
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The cutting height is adjusted with the red handle on the right-hand side. It moves all the wheels at once, so you don't have to faff about changing each one individually, or doing the front and the back. The handle folds down - you just undo the orange clips at each side - and there's a handy grab handle just above the battery which makes it easy to pick the whole thing up and sling it in the shed. It weighs 14kg, which is 28lbs in old money.<br />
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I dithered a lot about whether to get a cordless model. It's more expensive than the conventional electric mower, and initially I couldn't see the point of spending all that money just to get out of winding and unwinding the flex. We have a circuit breaker on the garden sockets, so safety wasn't so much of a concern.<br />
However, I found it was really easy to decapitate plants, or pull over pots, with my old mower, and I was constantly performing a kind of rodeo show, trying to flip or loop the flex out of the way. So I'm very grateful to my friends <a href="http://www.qualitygardentools.com/blog/" target="_blank">Dominic</a> and <a href="http://www.bulldogtools.co.uk/" target="_blank">Stuart</a> for persuading me that a cordless would be a good buy.<br />
If you're thinking of buying a mower - or any gardening equipment - shows are a good place to look. It's a great opportunity to see the whole range, and have someone who knows the product really well explain it to you. (I got teased by my friend <a href="http://anmblog.typepad.com/barron/" target="_blank">Pattie</a> because the chap who was showing me how the mower worked, Bosch regional brand manager Joao Barufi, was incredibly good-looking.)<br />
There's usually a show discount of some kind, which makes the prices more competitive. I couldn't find my model any cheaper on the internet - and my mower was delivered two days later free of charge.<br />
I'm sure that lovely Esther did not intend for me to go off into a lawnmower review when she started writing about lawns. Sorry, Esther!<br />
<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-91028170235471803802012-06-29T00:25:00.000+01:002012-06-29T00:25:12.999+01:00Hairy Potter and the chamber of secrets: Luigi's garden blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's something about this big empty terracotta pot that absolutely fascinates Luigi. Haven't a clue what it is, but he can spend ages walking round the rim, having a good look inside. He has occasionally got right inside it - and seems able to jump out again without any difficulty. He reminds me of one of those old brandy glass ornaments you used to get in the Seventies, with the cat climbing up the side.<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-44110094651416471562012-06-24T23:32:00.000+01:002012-06-24T23:32:46.328+01:00I "canna" make up my mind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yesterday, Saturday, I had a long-standing arrangement to visit Keith Hayward at <a href="http://www.hartcanna.co.uk/" target="_blank">Hart Canna Farm</a> in Surrey. In theory, I buy all my cannas from Keith, because his stock is virus-free. In practice, I am like Marilyn Monroe in <i>Some Like It Hot </i>and keep falling for rather unsuitable characters in garden centres that turn out to have canna virus<i>.</i> As Monroe's character, Sugar Kane, would say:<i> "</i>See what I mean? Not very bright."<br />
I always mean to have a canna "purge" but when the darned things start growing, I start feeling sorry for them and can't bear to chuck them out. However, this is going to be the year when my garden goes canna virus-free.<br />
I love cannas. Just look at that foliage above - you don't even need flowers. And yet there ARE flowers - big, showy orange ones that look like flamenco dancers. The one above is 'Durban' (or 'Phasion', or 'Tropicanna' - the experts tend to think they're really all the same variety). Below is 'Pretoria' (aka 'Bengal Tiger' - some cannas have more aliases than a bigamous con artist).<br />
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Don't like orange? Don't like flamboyant foliage? Here's 'Lolita', a gorgeous lipstick pink with yellow edging.<br />
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The species canna below is C. patens. It has beautiful, delicate flowers, and the seedheads are more attractive as well. I like species cannas, but I don't have room to have lots of them, so I need a something that gives me a bit more bang for my buck.<br />
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I think this is 'Eric', as Keith's assistant Annie calls him. His proper name is C. 'Eric Neubert'.<br />
Annie and Keith gave me a guided tour of the nursery and showed me the different varieties. They also gave me a short tutorial in how to recognise <a href="http://www.canna-collection.org.uk/canna-virus.html" target="_blank">canna virus</a> - although as Keith pointed out, this is easier on some varieties than on others. On 'Pretoria', for example, it is well nigh impossible to spot virus.<br />
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Oooh, a whole polytunnel full of cannas. Heaven! Especially on an overcast June day with a sharp wind blowing. It was lovely and warm in there.<br />
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I had decided that, in the Year of the Canna Purge, I was going to stop having orange cannas and have cream ones instead. I had this idea in my head that my garden was going to look classy rather than, erm, orange. This was one of the varieties (above) that I had decided to buy: 'Ambassadour'. There was just one snag: the foliage. Both the cream varieties I was considering (the other one was 'Creamy') have plain green foliage, which is faintly glaucous. I've spent years growing 'Durban' and 'Pretoria' and I'm used to canna foliage being an attraction in itself.<br />
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In the end, I decided to go for 'Wyoming', which has, erm, orange flowers and bronze foliage. It's more subtle than 'Durban' but still a knockout plant. And I also got a couple of C. musifolias, which very rarely flower, but produce the most spectacular leaves with an edging of bronze.</div>
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As the name suggests, they grow almost as big as banana plants. Like bananas, the canna family belongs to the Zingiberales order, and also like bananas, they are fairly low maintenance.They don't need staking or pruning or any fiddling about. They need a bit of protection in winter, but I've known them survive in the garden despite snow and frost. What they really hate is to get cold and wet - and stay cold and wet. Then you find the roots start to rot. </div>
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To avoid this, I grow mine in big plastic pots, with a bit of copper tape round the pot to deter slugs. It is then easy to cut down the cannas after the first frost and put them somewhere dry - a garage, or a shed, or a cellar - to overwinter.</div>
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You don't need light - it doesn't have to be a greenhouse. And it doesn't have to be warm. You just want to keep them fairly dry until they start to sprout again the following spring. If you have a fairly solid garden table, shove them under there.</div>
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These are 'Queen Charlotte' (or 'Konigin Charlotte'). And below is 'Panache', which I defy anyone to dislike. It has the delicacy of the species flowers, but the presence of the big varieties. I'd spent ages telling Annie that I didn't like pink - and then fell in love with this one. Sadly, they didn't have any stock ready for sale. Next year...<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-5891287981266904852012-06-22T23:28:00.001+01:002012-06-22T23:30:14.509+01:00At the Chelsea Physic Garden with a lady from LouisianaI've always loved the <a href="http://www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/" target="_blank">Chelsea Physic Garden</a>, which is often described as one of London's garden oases. It's a four-acre garden, just along the road from the Royal Hospital, where the Chelsea Flower Show is held, and a short walk from the bustle of the King's Road.<br />
It's often hired as a venue for parties, so I've spent many evenings there, sipping a glass of white wine at a book launch or some such. And I've been to the plant fairs. But I haven't "taken the tour", as it were.<br />
Anyway, all that changed on Tuesday when I met up with the delightful <a href="http://www.diggrowcompostblog.com/" target="_blank">Jean McWeeney</a>, formerley of Austin, Texas and now living in Ruston, Louisiana. I knew Jean was coming to London and we'd hoped to get together, so I thought the Physic Garden, with its highly recommended cafe and its central location, would be perfect for an afternoon out.<br />
The Physic Garden was founded in 1673 by the <a href="http://www.apothecaries.org/" target="_blank">Society of Apothecaries</a>. As one of the big London Guilds, their Livery Hall was at Blackfriars, in the City of London, so they needed somewhere where they had space to grow plants for their apprentices to study and learn to identify. The Chelsea site, subsequently bought by Sir Hans Sloane in 1712 and rented to the Society, was perfect.<br />
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This is one of the ponds - not just any old pond, but a Grade II* listed pond. When we build a pond, we go to the DIY store or the garden centre to buy hard landscaping materials. When the Physic Garden built this pond, they used the basaltic lava - see the black rocks? - which formed the ballast in the ship that took Sir Joseph Banks on a voyage to Iceland in 1772. And the bits of carved stone (see below) that look like architectural salvage? They're from the Tower of London. Naturally.</div>
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The garden was originally divided into four parts, and until recently this was still pretty much the case. One quarter was devoted to medicine, one to the "order beds", arranged by families of plants, one to the great plant hunters and their discoveries, and one rather scruffy bit - it might have been shade plants. It's recently been revamped though, by head gardener Nick Bailey, and it works really well, not only from an aesthetic point of view but also as a way of displaying plants. It still looks like a garden, rather than a classroom.<br />
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The garden faces south, and this, combined with the protection afforded by the surrounding buildings, creates a warm microclimate. Our excellent guide, Anne, told us that the Chelsea Physic Garden can be up to 7C warmer than the surrounding streets - and London itself is not exactly a frost spot.<br />
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This means that otherwise tender plants, such as the iochroma, above, or the towering echium, below, can flourish.<br />
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What looks like a flowering tree is actually an enormous rose. It's the Himalayan musk rose, <i>Rosa brunonii</i>, growing over a<i> Catalpa bignonioides, </i>or Indian bean tree.<br />
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Here's a superb yew - you don't often see yew trees like these days. Hedges, or topiary, are much more fashionable. According to Anne, our guide, the English cut down so many yews to make longbows during the Middle Ages that we were in danger of running out of yew trees altogether. </div>
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Anne was a wonderful guide, informative and entertaining. <i>Veratrum viride</i>, she told us, was used by some Native American tribes to elect a new leader. All the candidates would eat a leaf, and the last one to vomit was made chief. They ought to adopt it for the US elections. It would be much cheaper than months of campaigning - and far more entertaining!<br />
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This is the Madagascan periwinkle, or<i> Catharanthus roseus</i>, which is used in the treatment of leukaemia and lymphoma. It contains alkaloids in its sap - interestingly, one of the side effects of treatment is hair loss.<br />
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The gates of the Chelsea Physic Garden carry the arms of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries - it shows Apollo, the Greek god of healing, killing the serpent Python, which represents disease. These gates, which open onto the Chelsea Embankment, are not used by the public. They are only used on two occasions, said Anne - when a member of the royal family comes to visit, and when the manure is delivered. Hopefully, not on the same day.<br />
The river access would have made this garden even more convenient when it was first developed, as plants, seeds, supplies and so on could be transported by water, which at that time was safer and quicker than travelling by road.<br />
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These school children were having a great time pond dipping at the Robert Fortune tank pond, named after the Scottish botanist who helped to develop Assam as a major tea planting region.<br />
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This is one of the new areas of the garden, and this bit contains Useful Plants. Anything that is used to make paper, or rope, or dye, or fabric - you can find it here.<br />
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All the work on the new areas was done in-house. I like the way they've picked up the theme of the Order Beds, with the rectangular planting areas - it gives a sense of unity. The terraced beds at the end contain plants that used for perfume, such as carnation. The retaining wall on the lowest bed acts as a bench, so you can sit in the sun and savour the nice smells.<br />
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And here's Jean, the lady from Louisiana. We had such a wonderful afternoon. It is a real treat for me to spend an afternoon looking at a garden, in the pleasant company of another gardener, followed by a glass of wine and some good food. Thank you, Jean!</div>
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<span id="goog_118769369"></span><span id="goog_118769370"></span>Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-19176961587249824562012-06-14T10:15:00.000+01:002012-06-14T10:15:00.408+01:00The 'So I hadn't intended to buy anything at the Crocus sale' storyI hadn't intended to buy much at the Crocus sale - I really hadn't. I said so to my neighbour Ruth as we got out of the car. She just gave me The Look.<br />
The first plants we saw were those that had been grown to decorate the Royal boats in the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant.<br />
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Ha! I thought. I am immune to roses and lavender, and no, I do not want a complete knot garden - despite the fact that it had been on a Royal barge. (It was marked POA - price on application. If you have to apply to find out the price, you can't afford it. The sort of people who can afford it just say, rather grandly: "I'll take it!" and don't worry about how much it costs.)<br />
It's not that I don't like roses and lavender, but they don't fit into my garden, which is a relief. It saves me hours of dithering over rose catalogues. The roses for the royal event were 'Munstead Wood' and 'Darcy Bussell', which were tempting enough, but on the other side of the enclosure were the roses grown by Peter Beales for <a href="http://www.arnemaynard.com/journal.aspx?tag=Chelsea%20Flower%20Show%202012" target="_blank">Arne Maynard's</a> Laurent-Perrier garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. These were Rosa 'Comte de Chambord', a lovely old rose that repeat-flowers (it's the parent of David Austin's 'Gertrude Jekyll'.<br />
Incidentally, Peter Beales are holding their own open day on 23/24 June. It's their annual Rose Festival, held at their gardens in Attleborough, Norfolk, and it sounds like a<a href="http://www.classicroses.co.uk/view/events/peter-beales-rose-festival-23rd24th-june-2012/" target="_blank"> great day out</a> for rose-lovers.<br />
Every time Crocus have an open day, friends email or Tweet to say that they're going. I never manage to bump into anyone I know, but on this occasion, I did encounter <a href="http://zoelynch.co.uk/" target="_blank">Zoe</a>, which was lovely.<br />
The layout at Crocus is quite straightforward, but they do give you a map to help you find things. Some of the plants are in polytunnels, and some are out in the open, such as this sea of salvias, below.<br />
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There is always a huge selection of peonies at this time of the year (below) and roses. However, although it's a good idea to take a list of what you want (because in theory it will prevent you succumbing to impulse buys), you can't guarantee that the specific variety you want will be available. But that's the fun of a Crocus open day - it's a sort of horticultural lucky dip.<br />
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Some of the plants are either roped off or in a closed area (above) and this is usually because they are being grown on, or they are for a particular client. Of course, it's always the plants you can't buy that are the ones you decide you absolutely must have.<br />
Some people ignore the red and white tape and just take the plants anyway, but I think this is bad manners. And there is so much else to choose from, in any case.<br />
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When you arrive at the nursery, you're given a strip of stickers with a number on them, and you simply put a sticker on the plant you want and leave it in full view of the guys going round with the trailers. They pick up the plants, take them back to the sales area and put them in a crate with the corresponding number. When you get back to the sales area, you simply look for the crate with your number.<br />
If you think you're going to buy a lot - and especially if you're buying groups of perennials - it's worth asking for two sets of stickers.<br />
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Then you find a trolley (which may involve a little walk around the car parks...), load up your plants and pay for them. Credit cards are accepted, and in my experience the total always seems to be less than you thought it was going to be.<br />
So what did I buy? There's an old joke on the Scottish side of my family, where an Aberdonian visits London for the first time. On his return home, a friend asks him how his visit went. "Och," says the Aberdonian, in tones of great outrage, "I hadna been in London mair than twa minutes and bang went sixpence!"<br />
Well, I hadn't been in Crocus for more than two minutes when I found myself buying an azalea and three banana plants. I followed this up with some dahlias ('David Howard') and a couple of ferns: <i>Blechnum spicant.</i> The azalea was <i>Rhododendron</i> 'Daviesii', which is just the most gorgeous thing - creamy white, with a wonderful fragrance. I'd bought one at the previous Crocus open day, so I just had to have another one.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-85618052780347971802012-06-06T14:35:00.003+01:002012-06-07T10:49:24.707+01:00Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant: EpilogueI know, I know - more boats. I'll have to change the name of this blog to Victoria's Boatyard.<br />
However, it seems to me that the coverage of the river pageant - particularly by the BBC - didn't really do justice to the event. From what I can see, or hear from friends, it was as if they'd decided it was going to be a boring procession of boats and they needed to spice this up, for those of a limited attention span, with footage of spurious stunts by random celebrities.<br />
I'm not a particularly boat-y person, but I found the boats - especially the Historic Ships - fascinating. So I thought I'd do a final post, and try to give you some idea of why I think the BBC missed an opportunity.<br />
I took these pictures on Monday, when I went back to West India Dock to see my mum on her boat. It was a great opportunity to wander round and have a closer look at some of the vessels and hear their stories.<br />
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Here's the Jolly Brit, one of six open launches used on the Royal Yacht Britannia. It was used as a jolly boat (the boat that takes people from ship to shore) for the Royal family’s trip ashore for picnics or walks while cruising round the Highlands and Islands. I don't know if anyone knows for sure why they are called jolly boats - one suggestion is that it comes from the old Dutch word <i>jolle</i>, meaning a small boat.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.rnli.org.uk/who_we_are/press_centre/news_releases/news_release_detail?articleid=482661" target="_blank">Walton on the Naze lifeboat</a>, <span style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-weight: normal;">said to be the world’s oldest surviving motor lifeboat. Stationed
at Walton on the Naze, on the north coast of Essex, she was launched 126 times and saved 27 lives between </b><b style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-weight: normal;">1900-1928</b><b style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-weight: normal;">. </b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sold out of service in 1928, she served variously as a harbour l</span></span>aunch at
Maldon, as a fireboat on the Thames during the Second World War, and finally became a
houseboat. In 1998, she was bought and restored.<br />
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This is a 1960s power boat, lovingly restored both inside and out. I have to confess, I can't remember which one this is. I think it might be <i>Broad Ambition</i>, which is drop-dead gorgeous and looks like the sort of thing James Bond might have owned.<br />
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The <i>Gainsborough Trader</i>, one of the Dunkirk Little Ships. She was built in 1931, and after the Dunkirk evacuations, she was used as a lighter, the name given to a flat-bottom barge that unloads or loads cargo, until 1986. She's now privately owned.</div>
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The St George has had a longer working life than the Queen. <span class="details" style="display: inline;">Built in 1935, she was used as a Poole
Harbour trip boat until 1939, when she was taken over by the Admiralty
during the Second World War. After the war, she was re-named St George and moved to the Thames, where she ran river trips from Tower Bridge
until the late 1960s. She was then used for public fishing
trips in the lower Thames Estuary until she was bought by the current
owner in 1977 and converted to a pleasure boat.</span></div>
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<i>Janthea</i>, another heroine of Dunkirk (see her plaque below). A motor yacht, she was built in 1938 and cost £1,885.15
shillings. Her original owner named her <i>Reda</i>, but he never had a chance to sail in her. In 1940, she was used in the evacuation of Dunkirk, and then served as an auxiliary patrol vessel during the war. Her name was
changed to <i>Columbine</i>, and she served with the Harwich Patrol until June
1947. She was renamed <i>Janthea</i> in 1952, and her current owners have looked after her since 1984.<br />
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<i>Sundowner</i> has an extraordinary history. She was built in 1912 by the Admiralty, who sold her in the 1920s. In 1930 she was converted into a private motor yacht by
her new owner, Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller - the senior surviving
officer of the <i>Titanic</i>. It was Lightoller's wife Sylvia who named her <i>Sundowner</i> - an
Australian term for wanderer.<br />
During the 1930s, she was used for family trips both at home and abroad, even covering the 3,000 miles of a Baltic cruise without any mechanical difficulties. In 1939, as war threatened, Lightoller was
asked by the Admiralty to conduct a secret survey of the German coast.
He agreed and for two weeks, with his wife Sylvia acting as cover, he took <i>
Sundowner</i> on a reconnaissance mission.<br />
A
year later, on 1 June 1940, with his son Roger and an 18-year-old
sea-scout called Gerald Ashcroft, Lightoller - now aged 66 - set out from
Ramsgate to assist in the evacuation of Dunkirk.<br />
On the way they
encountered the motor cruiser <i>Westerley</i> on fire. Having picked up her
two crew and three naval ratings on board, they carried on towards the
Dunkirk beaches where the British troops were stranded on the beach under enemy bombardment. They managed to pack 130 people on board (including the <i>Westerley's</i> and their own crew). Boots and equipment were thrown overboard to make room, and <i>Sundowner</i> headed back to Ramsgate where she arrived 12 hours after
departing that morning.<br />
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Here's MTB 102 (above and below), a torpedo boat that served during the Second World War. Completed in 1937, she was stationed in the English Channel from 1939 to 1940, and during Operation Dynamo - the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 - she crossed the Channel eight times. She's what you might call a small boat with a big kick - with a top speed of 48 knots, she was fast and agile. She also served as the flagship for Admiral Sir Frederick Wake-Walker when his ship was disabled during Operation Dynamo - thus making her the smallest flagship ever (68ft) in the Royal Navy. In 1944 she carried Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower to review the fleet for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.<br />
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One of the RAF rescue boats taking part in the pageant, this is 441, built in 1941. She still carries shell and machine gun holes in her transom (one of the beams that runs across the boat at the stern). Below is HSL 102, built in 1936. These motor launches were used by the RAF to rescue airmen who had ditched in the sea. They operated from around the coast of Britain and saved more than 13,000 lives during the war.<br />
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This boat doesn't have a distinguished war record, but according to her crew, she has the best-maintained engine in the dock! She's the <i>Wheldale</i>, restored and owned by Yorkshire Waterways museum. She was originally a tug, used to pull what were called Tom Puddings (interlocking barges) full of coal from the Yorkshire coal mines - a bit like a steam locomotive pulling trucks.
She'll be moored at West India Dock for the rest of the week, until the
weather improves for the trip back up the North Sea coast.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.adventureundersail.com/" target="_blank">Pelican of London</a>, a tall ship used for training and sailing holidays (adults as well as children, if you're interested). In the picture below you can see her figurehead, a pelican with a little red fish hanging from its beak<br />
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This is Tenacious, another training ship, mooring at West India Dock. There is something about these tall ships that is magical - everyone on the dock stopped to gaze at her. <br />
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The tall ships are so glamorous, and the historic ships have such wonderful stories to tell, that they completely outshine the humble narrowboats, quaint and colourful though they might be. But the narrowboats have a part to play in our history too. For decades, they conveyed goods up and down the country via the network of canals. They were homes as well as hauliers, hence the painted decoration.<br />
And 30 years ago, when London's canal network was falling into disrepair thanks to lack of use and lack of investment, the St Pancras Cruising Club made a point of navigating the waterways, running campaign rallies to draw attention to this underused inner-city resource.<br />
If you're jogging or cycling, or just walking the dog anywhere on a canal path from Hackney to Hillingdon, spare a thought for the people who gave up their time to prevent these waterways - havens for wildlife as well as walkers - becoming little more than glorified rubbish dumps.<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-1716845069422849992012-06-06T09:44:00.001+01:002012-06-06T10:19:32.002+01:00The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant: Going homeI'm posting this as a tribute to the narrowboats who took part in the flotilla, and particularly the boats from St Pancras Cruising Club, where my mother and twin sister are members. I felt it was a huge privilege to be part of their "fleet" for the day (and of course it was lovely to spend time with my family).<br />
The day after the pageant, I went back to West India Dock and went part of the way home on <i>Galatea.</i><br />
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Here we are heading towards the lock. The grey building on the left, behind <i>Morpheus</i>, is the old <i>Independent </i>office at South Quay.<br />
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As we were sitting waiting for the lock to load (it can hold dozens of boats), the sun came out. It felt as if it was patting us on the head, and saying: "Well done!"<br />
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Some of the boats in the lock with us were quite tall, so when the lock gates opened onto the Thames, the bridge had to go up too. When we worked at South Quay, my <i>Independent </i>colleagues and I used to go to a pub called The Gun, opposite the Dome. We never had time for a long lunch, but if the bridge was up (to let a big boat into West India Dock), we couldn't get back to the office. The only option was to go back to the pub...<br />
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Out onto the Thames again. You can only go out of the lock at certain times, because of the tides - something that some members of the Tupperware Navy (the leisure cruisers) seemed incapable of comprehending. They wanted to know why they couldn't go out the minute they were ready to leave. The information that there wasn't any water the other side of the lock at that point, because it was low tide, was met with blank stares.<br />
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This time we turned left, past the Dome and heading for Bow Creek, where the Bow River takes you up to Limehouse, and from there back onto the Regent's Canal.<br />
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The gallant little narrowboat fleet gets under way on the Thames again. I hope the skippers won't be offended if I say it reminded me of the last verse of <i>Cargoes</i>, the poem by John Masefield:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,<br />Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,<br />With a cargo of Tyne coal,<br />Road-rails, pig-lead,<br />Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.</i></span></span><br />
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Simon's boat, <i>Scholar Gypsy</i>, right, with its black and yellow bunting. Simon's father is a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and black and yellow are the Brasenose colours. Simon's son also deserves a mention in dispatches - he acted as bugler during the pageant, which was fabulous. Sailing down the Thames to the strains of "Reveille" made it even more exciting - we felt like the Seventh Cavalry.</div>
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Here's the harbourmaster keeping watch over us. Strictly speaking, you always drive on the right (starboard) on the Thames. As a special dispensation, the narrowboats were allowed to keep to the left (port) side, because we were only going a couple of miles downstream. It would have been far more risky to have us all go over to the starboard side and back over to the port side again to turn in at Bow Creek.<br />
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Isn't that a glorious sight? I love the way the shape of the boats echo the shape of the buildings behind.<br />
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It looks fairly relaxed and idyllic, but it's hard work keeping your course on the river, especially if it's windy, or a bigger, faster boat goes past, creating a swell.<br />
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There were other boats from the pageant going home too. This is <a href="http://www.historicboatcharter.co.uk/raf-hsl-102/history.html" target="_blank">HSL 102</a>, built in 1936, and one of 22 high speed launches used by the RAF during the Second World War to rescue pilots who had gone down in the sea. 102 was in action during the Battle of Britain, and in the space of two months in 1941, she rescued 38 aircrew, including the crew of two German bombers.<br />
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Majestic barges making their way down the Thames.<br />
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Here we are at the Bow locks. From here to Limehouse it's about 20 minutes, and altogether, the journey from West India Dock to Limehouse took two and a half hours. I got off at Limehouse and took the Docklands Light Railway back to West India Dock to pick up my car. That journey took me 10 minutes. That's narrowboats for you. But it's worth every minute to see another side of London, and its waterways - a side that not many people see.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-16004468107116368442012-06-04T22:08:00.000+01:002012-06-04T22:08:48.917+01:00The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant: Here we go!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By the time we got to the muster at Hammersmith, we'd been on the water for nearly five hours, counting lock time and the usual hanging around. So it was a bit of a relief to moor up and have some lunch. I'd made a patriotic trifle, and my sister had bought patriotic paper plates and cooked chicken en croute with new potatoes and salad, so it all looked very celebratory. Halfway through the meal, we noticed that the paper cups, which we'd thought said: "Long live E:R" actually said: "Long live G&T". It's a sentiment that I don't have a problem with, however.</div>
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Here is Andrew Phasey, former Grenadier Guards officer, and commodore of St Pancras Cruising Club. He coordinated all the rehearsals, and he and his wife Frances have <i>Doris Katia</i>, which with <i>Galatea</i> was one of the leading boats in the flotilla</div>
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As we were having lunch, there was a bustle outside and we looked out to see the rowers mustering for their flotilla. The green boat belongs to Jenny Jones, the Green candidate for the London Mayoral elections. It's called <i>Arthur Dent</i> and it was on our right in the front row of the flotilla.<br />
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Here are the other two boats in the first row - <i>Madam</i> and <i>Morpheus</i>. Sadly, <i>Madam</i> had some sort of engine trouble and had to pull out 30 minutes after we started.<br />
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Here we are, under way, in formation. We had to hang around a bit at Hammersmith while the leisure cruisers - the Tupperware Navy as the narrowboat people call them - sorted themselves out. They're called the Tupperware Navy because their boats are made of white glass fibre. They retaliate by calling the narrowboats "monkey barges", a reference to their use as freight barges, when the men loading the barges would run along a beam of wood set from end to end of the boat.<br />
Here's the thing: the narrowboats don't mind being called monkey barges because they see it as a historic tribute to their industrial past. But the Tupperwares LOATHE being called the Tupperware Navy.<br />
During a radio conversation at this point, someone made a reference to moving "when the Tupperwares have got under way". A rather posh voice (the Tupperwares tend to have posh voices) interjected, saying: "I don't think that's a very nice way to refer to us." I'd always thought it wasn't done to interrupt a radio conversation, but I had to laugh when an unmistakably London narrowboater retaliated: "Well, don't listen in to other people's conversations, then!"<br />
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Going under Hammersmith Bridge, hung with flags.</div>
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A music boat, waiting to join the pageant. On this boat somewhere is my daughter's schoolfriend Caroline Haddock, who was playing the trumpet. Hi, Caroline! We did wave, but we didn't see you.</div>
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Another bridge, another London bus. I think this is Putney bridge.<br />
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In the run up to Battersea, we saw whole blocks of flats draped with union jacks. </div>
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And here's the boat, on the left, draped with the awning, that had the London Philharmonic Orchestra on board, who provided the pageant finale.<br />
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Battersea bridge, which marked the official start of the pageant for us. The weather is starting to worsen.<br />
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Love this picture of my sister and her husband, above. My sister has her "yes, I am listening" expression on her face, but is obviously not paying attention to a word. Mike can tell she's not listening and is wondering whether to carry on talking. Bless them!<br />
Albert Bridge again, with crowds of spectators beneath a darkening sky. But the narrowboats kept their formation - not as easy as it looks, with the wind pushing you out of line.<br />
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Chelsea Bridge, and yet more huge crowds who cheered as we passed beneath them.<br />
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The Houses of Parliament. By this time it was really raining hard, as you can probably see in the picture below.<br />
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If you couldn't see the rain in that picture, you must be able to see it in this one. But still the crowds cheered. Unbelievable. All the way, my niece and her friend had been shouting a selection of chants at the crowd: "Hello, Great Britain!" "Happy Jubilee!" and - not exactly pithy, but heartfelt - "Thank you for coming in the horrible weather!". This was followed by whoops and screams. The crowds loved it and waved back at us. My right arm was wet right down to the armpit because every time I raised my arm to wave, rain ran straight down it inside my jacket, soaking my sleeve. Did it stop me waving? Did it hell.<br />
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It looks like a November afternoon. In fact, it was around teatime, but all the narrowboats have got their lights on because the sky was so dark. It looked rather cosy.</div>
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Hallelujah, Tower Bridge and the reassuring bulk of<i> HMS Belfas</i>t at last. Half of me didn't want the pageant to end, but the other half was beginning to get seriously worried as to whether my camera would work long enough in all the rain to get a picture of the Queen. It was becoming increasingly difficult to take a picture without rain getting on the lens.<br />
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Going down through the Avenue of Sail, we could hardly see the historic ships moored either side of the river.<br />
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But the crowds kept cheering, and any boat that had a hooter hooted, such as the steamboat Vic 56, below (the black and yellow boat), built in 1945.<br />
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That kept us going as we surged on, still in formation.<br />
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Hurray, here's <i>Artemis</i> with the four unmistakable turrets of the Tower of London behind her.<br />
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And the huge masts of <i>Tenacious ...</i><br />
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And finally, finally - the Queen's boat, the <i>Spirit of Chartwell</i>.<br />
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There was just time to catch a glimpse and a rather misty picture of Her Majesty (she's the white blob under the gold canopy. You can also make out Prince Harry's pale blue Army Air Corps beret.</div>
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After that, I had no more dry bits of clothing with which to polish my camera lens. A huge raindrop hit just as I was taking this picture and I decided to call it a day.<br />
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I'd like to say a huge thank you to my niece Sadie (right) and her friend Charlotte Paler, who whooped and cheered all the way down the Thames. Charlotte wants to be Prime Minister when she grows up and personally, I think she'd be an excellent choice.<br />
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And a huge thank you to my daughter, for making endless cups of tea, doing the washing up and generally just being there. Unfortunately my son couldn't come with us as he has his degree show to prepare - it's the weekend after next. But we made enough noise to make up for his absence.<br />
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<br />Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2716338366834352408.post-1748164850878079712012-06-04T19:19:00.001+01:002012-06-04T19:22:39.586+01:00The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant: a narrowboat's eye view of LondonIt's around 15 miles from West India Dock, where the narrowboats taking part in the river pageant had been moored for their preliminary muster, to Hammersmith, where we had to muster again and get ourselves into order for the pageant.<br />
Narrowboats normally travel at around five miles an hour, so it was going to be a long trip. Everyone was so keen to get to their starting positions, however, that the boats almost scampered up the Thames.<br />
Our first sight of the preparations for the pageant were as we approached Tower Bridge, where the Avenue of Sail - the historic ships that were too tall to negotiate the Thames bridges - had been moored. There were all sorts of vessels - here is the <i>Matthew</i>, a replica of the ship John Cabot sailed in when he discovered Newfoundland in 1497.<br />
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The tall ship behind <i>Matthew,</i> with the white stripe along the side, is <i>Royalist</i>, used as a training vessel by the Marine Society and Sea Cadets.<br />
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Onwards, in the grey drizzly morning, to Tower Bridge, surely one of the most famous bridges in the world, and an instantly recognisable symbol of London and Great Britain.<br />
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Here's the tall ship Tenacious, another training ship. She was launched in 2000, but she's a wooden ship, one of the largest still afloat.<br />
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As we passed through Tower Bridge, the grey bulk of HMS Belfast loomed up out of the mist.<br />
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Another tall ship, below. This is <i>Artemis</i>, originally a Norwegian whaler built in 1926 and now restored as a luxury cruise ship.<br />
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It was difficult to keep our minds on our own journey - there was so much to see.<br />
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Here's a shot of my mum, left, my brother-in-law Mike and my twin sister Sasha, with Tower Bridge receding into the drizzle.<br />
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Hang on a minute, look closely at this picture below. No, not at the boats, nor the rain, which by now was heavy and steady. Look at all those people, with their umbrellas, lining the embankment. And this was only about 10.30am - they still had four hours to stand until the pageant actually began.<br />
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And on we go ...<br />
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The Globe Theatre, Sam Wanamaker's astonishing vision, on the banks of the Thames at Southwark.<br />
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The Millennium footbridge, which opened in June 2000, and shut after two days because pedestrians complained they could feel it swaying. It stayed closed for two years, while modifications were made to it. I crossed it recently in the middle of a thunderstorm and it felt absolutely fine - rock solid. But Londoners still refer to it as the Wobbly Bridge.<br />
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Sea Containers House at Blackfriars Bridge, adorned for the pageant with a vast picture of the Royal family celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977.<br />
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Here come the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben. The golden eagle on the right is the RAF Memorial.<br />
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Goodness, who's this? It's my daughter.<br />
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The narrowboats slow their pace a little to get a good look at the Houses of Parliament.<br />
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The London Eye ...<br />
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The Houses of Parliament with the end of our boat, suitably dressed in union jacks.<br />
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Looking back, you can see the Houses of Parliament AND the London Eye. How's that for photoreportage?<br />
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And all these people! Hundreds of them with their umbrellas, lining both banks of the river where they can get a vantage point. Despite the rain and a long wait to see the Queen, they summon up the energy to give us a huge cheer as we go past. </div>
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Battersea Power Station, a target for German bombers during the war. It's often attributed to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, but he designed only the exterior. Still, it's the exterior everybody recognises, so fair enough. The Luftwaffe didn't manage to destroy it, but thanks to the vagaries of a stream of developers it is now derelict.</div>
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Here's the Royal Jubilee Bells, a floating belfry carrying eight bells, each named after a member of the Royal family. These rang out as it preceded the Queen downriver to Tower Bridge.<br />
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You can see the bells quite clearly here.<br />
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More crowds, lining the Chelsea Embankment. It's still only about 11.45am, remember, and the pageant doesn't start until 2.30pm.<br />
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Uh-oh, here's a police boat, and yet more crowds lining Battersea Park. What's happening here?<br />
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Approaching Albert Bridge, something gleaming catches the eye on the righthand side.<br />
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Of course! This is the Spirit of Chartwell, specially decorated to carry Her Majesty down to Tower Bridge, where she will watch the pageant from the canopied area on top of the boat (on the left in the picture). The original idea was that she would travel in Gloriana, the Royal barge, but luckily someone realised this was a bit impractical. Historical recreations are all very well but there was nowhere to go to the loo and nowhere to have a cup of tea. What were they thinking?<br />
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The pale pink span of Albert Bridge, and below, the little armada of narrowboats still making its way gamely up the Thames. Albert Bridge is probably the prettiest bridge in London, and the most fragile. Its nickname is the Trembling Lady, and it famously carries a notice requiring troops to "break step" when they march across. It's just been reopened after a year-long closure for repairs.<br />
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Battersea Bridge approaches, but there's still a way to go before we get to the muster point.<br />
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Keep going, guys! I'm off for a quick snooze.</div>
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I know, I know - we haven't even got to the pageant. I'll post it next, I promise.Victoria Summerleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05055381807236106596noreply@blogger.com