Sunday 24 June 2007

Back Where I Belong

After my dangerous forays into the land of the Turkish Barber and my recent Metro-sexual experience I felt it was time to get back to where I belong: cloth caps and allotments. All it took was a good meal in the Ram's Head and two pints of Black Sheep Rigwelter to put me there (although I suspect had I not been been back on track pretty smartly Mrs C would have soon lost patience and facilitated a rapid return).

I was enjoying Mystic Veg's musings on the horticultural horrors committed by celebrity gardeners, when he happened to mention being brought up on Fitton Hill estate in Oldham. Fitton Hill still sprawls across the east side of the town and, like many similar estates, struggles to shake the social ills that have plagued them since they were built in the sixties. Meant to be their panacea they have proved, in many cases, to be their exacerbation. I was born 100 yards from Fitton Hill's borders, round the corner on Honeywell Lane and it may be that I have a bit of Fitton Hill in my genes; for Mystic waxed lyrical about the garden sculpture of his youth that consisted of sundry car parts in the front gardens of council homes. Now, take a look at Mrs C's fabulously creative solution to the fact that we had used all our pots and planters when it came to this year's salad leaves:

It's the wheel of a Renault Laguna that has been cluttering our garage for months and is now full of lovely nutty Rocket leaves. Of course I should never have expected our sons to see the true creativity, nor the ecologically sound recycling sense - Matt's reaction consisted of a consideration of wheel's worth on Ebay - but they weren't complaining when Mrs C dished up a salad with more Rocket than Cape Canaveral. Ah, the short sightedness of youth.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As someone who was once considered to be a socially ill plague in Fitton Hill, I could easily take exception to your comments, if I did not know the man who wrote them.

As a resident of Fir Tree House for a number of years, we always looked down on our far neighbours in Honeywell Lane with a mix of envy and wonder, particularly as the rain lashed vertically against our 10th floor windows (as it did on most days, when it wasn't snowing).

Anonymous said...

Excellent idea for a planter! I just love Rocket as well! :D

When I was a little girl we had two tyres that had been turned inside out and painted white. Mum used to plant them up each Summer with bedding plants. I always thought it was the norm to use old tyres as planters!

My garden looks shocking this year! It`s full of brambles. Of course now I don`t want to cut them down because I`ll have a lovely lot of Blackberries this year! lol