Now that Midwives has taken over from Downton Abbey as everyone’s favourite, the usual questions are being asked about how authentic these tales of childbirth in the old days really are. They should ask my mother, whose story of the day she had me proves that life then is about as far removed from how things are today as you could imagine. There was no pain relief and no attentive Dad, but she did have a bottle of Champagne on hand. Her confinement took place at home, where a nurse was on hand, who came equipped with a gas and air machine, but didn’t find out, until it was too late, that she didn’t know how to work it. The doctor had been called, but he arrived when it was all over, as did my father. This is how my mother described things in a letter to her parents the following day:

“After Charlie (my father) and the doctor arrived they made a hammock of a sheet and carried me through into my own bedroom and we straightaway celebrated Jonathan’s arrival with a bottle of Champagne. And never has wine tasted so wonderful to me! The doctor, whose only part in the whole procedure had been to take my pulse, then retired to the lounge with Charlie and between them they drank all but the dregs of that bottle of whisky you brought us from Scotland. Nurse and I were disgusted with him, but actually I was too happy to be mad about anything. Jonathan is Charlie’s choice of name – he cabled it to you before I could decide whether I wanted it or not. An hour after Jonathan was born we were all discussing how soon it would be wise to start with the next!”

The “next” didn’t arrive for 15 months and the doctor drove home merrily at half past ten, happy with a job well done. Yes, Midwives is spot on.

The organisers told us that 100,000 had applied for the 5th series of Britain’s Got Talent, but whatever the numbers my youngest daughter Sara was delighted to be invited to audition. From the time we arrived, at 8am on a bleak Manchester Sunday morning, the TV cameras were there. And they were there to pounce on the most outrageous, the most outlandish, the most freakish. The first was a man with a saucepan on his head who sang with a Dalek voice. Then there was the fat middle aged man in the white Elvis suit; then the even fatter middle aged man in a suit made from the flags of the British Isles. Then “Veronica”, a 6ft 2 transvestite.

Sara was allocated to group A where we were delighted to make the acquaintance of the man with the saucepan. He calls himself Armitage Hanks, “because my act is complete toilet”. We were also with Hero (her real name) a lovely girl of 12 who plays the harp and whose mother told me she was named after the character from
Much Ado About Nothing. Hero is something of an old hand, after being a finalist in a similar show on sky- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ImMPqWtRo.
Sara auditioned as Red Blaze and sang a rap song which she had been busy composing while we were having dinner last night. I’m not sure that all the contestants were as nonchalant, but they will have to be patient as we won’t know until next year who has got through to the next round

The video shows Armitage Hanks entertaining the crowds whilst we were queuing to enter the auditorium.

Someone at English Heritage has played a cruel trick by giving listed status to the derelict Lido at Grange. This poor old wreck has been closed for 20 years, its entrance covered with signs saying Keep Out and Danger of Death. Now, it has been given elevated status as a listed building leading some poor souls to believe that a magic wand will bring it back to life. The Lido is essentially a lump of decaying concrete and there isn’t the remotest possibility of it being restored, not least because no-one would be daft enough to spend a fortune rebuilding something which would cost another fortune to keep running.

My comment that the decision to list it was “bonkers” formed the headline in our local newspaper, which so impressed the BBC that they came up to ask me to repeat it for the evening’s news. My reaction may have been a tad forceful, but I was entitled to have my say because the listing puts at risk my proposal, which has the full backing of the Town and District Council and received a majority vote in a Grange plebiscite, to turn the Lido into an attractive public area, with a garden, cafe and fitness centre. My proposals are fully funded and costed and don’t require a magic wand. The photo above shows the Lido as it is now, the photo below, an artist’s impression of how it might look.

Big in Japan – Gardening World Cup from Tracey Cragg on Vimeo.

Not many people know it, but England won the World Cup last year- the Gardening World Cup that is.
This year the competition is even more fierce, with gardeners from all five continents taking part. Last year’s winner, Andy Sturgeon, is taking a rest this year as a competitor, but is returning as a judge. His place as the senior English competitor is taken by Sarah Eberle who won her 8th RHS gold medal at Chelsea this year with her stunning Monaco garden.
I’m very proud to have been chosen as the other English competitor and I’m going to take a slice of the Lake District to Japan with a garden which will feature a Cumbrian Dabbin.
This video is a clip from Lookaround, the regional news programme which is shown after the ITN early evening news, in which intrepid reporter Hannah Lomas in a piece about last year’s event, takes the footballing metaphor to its furthest extreme by calling me “The David Beckham of Gardening”. It’s very entertaining and I hope we have as much fun this year.

After Crug Farm’s triumph at Chelsea, another of our plant suppliers, Cath’s Garden Plants, has won a Gold and “Best in Show”- this time at the RHS “Gardener’s World Live”. Cath’s Garden Plants are just up the road from us, at Sizergh, on the outskirts of Kendal. In the old days they were known as Heaves Nursery and were a specialist wholesale nursery. They supplied a good proportion of our perennials when we were first getting started 11 years ago. At that time their prices were so reasonable that we wondered how they could do it. I think its fair to say that if it hadn’t been for the good value they offered we wouldn’t have been able to afford to stock the garden. Quality will out- they now have a retail side and prices have caught up- but they are still bloody good value- and, as we now know, the best in the country to boot.

I heard a scream and one of my girls came running out of the computer room. “There’s a massive spider on my keyboard” she cried. One of the pleasures of being a Dad is being able to deal with crises like this, which I did by grabbing the spider by its legs and flinging it out of the window, alive (just).

It’s a natural reaction to be scared of spiders, mice, bats and all small creepy creatures. The final episode of The Hotel included a hilarious scene when several housekeepers ran screaming when they saw a baby bat crawling along the corridor of the Damson Dene Hotel. I said at the time that it was a racing certainty that we would hear from some do-gooder pointing out that it is a criminal offence to harm a bat and sure enough, to my great amusement we did. They said, completely seriously, that we should have a programme in place to train our staff how to deal with bats.

What these idiots don’t appreciate is that the whole of Cumbria and much of the UK is alive with bats and that the laws to protect them do more harm than good (see my posting of November 30th 2010). How much harm has become apparent this week when a stray bat brought down a bank. The unfortunate bank is the Southsea Bank, based in Havant. The bank’s chairman, Bernard Stanley, explained that the bank had lent money to a property company, which was converting a building into 10 apartments- “We were very unlucky. Some chap from Natural Heritage happened to be passing when a bat flew out. Because of this construction of the flats was stopped for six months. No bats were found, but by the time the apartments were completed the market had gone flat”. The failure of the property company led to the collapse of the bank, which the government has refused to bail out. There will be compensation from the taxpayer for all depositors with balances up to £85,000, but any deposits over that amount will be lost. Which means that some people have lost most of their life savings. Even that, I’m sure, isn’t enough to wipe the smile of self satisfaction from the face of the man from Natural Heritage.

Tucked away behind the Damson Dene Hotel, underneath the Leisure Club is an old decrepit store room which nobody visits. Walking past earlier today, I was surprised to hear what appeared to be a party going on. I popped my head in and there amongst the old abandoned sofas and mattresses, was the astonishing sight of Wayne sounding very much like Elvis! In fact so much like Elvis, that I wondered for a moment whether he was miming into the microphone. Could this be the same person, who, only a fortnight ago was seen shirtless in his caravan singing an off-key Band of Gold to his faithful dog Fly? This, it turns out, was the key to his clandestine crooning. Wayne had been so shocked to hear his singing voice on TV, that he was determined to get it back into shape. This video shows what a brilliant job he’s done and I think the time is right for him to bring his singing out of the shadows.

I remember, a long time ago, when Sunday afternoons stretched out interminably, watching the black and white version of Goodbye Mr Chips on TV and enjoying a good cry at the end. Mr Chips gets a mention in another weepy about a retiring schoolmaster, The Browning Version, which was broadcast this afternoon in a new production starring Michael York and produced by Martin Jarvis. Nearly everything that Martin Jarvis does is good, but this was superb. It was such a welcome contrast to all those dreary plays which fill the ‘Afternoon Play’ slot on Radio 4. This new production of The Browning Version is the start of a Terence Rattigan season to celebrate the centenary of his birth. If the rest of of season is as good as this, we are in for a treat.
The video is taken from the film with Albert Finney in the lead part of Crocker-Harris and shows the scene in which he breaks down, after being given the unexpected leaving gift by his pupil Taplow.

These are some random thoughts from the Chelsea Flower Show.

Because of lack of space 7 designs which had received preliminary approval and were fully funded were rejected. I wonder how those designers feel about the inclusion of Darmuid Gavin’s flying pod, which bears the same relationship to gardening as Tracey Emin’s bed has to art. I don’t think they will be consoled by the thought that this is a show and the pod is showmanship.

Out of the 17 show gardens, 8 were given gold, an exceptionally high ratio. Bunny Guinness, who courtesy of the main sponsor, M & G, had one of the best plots and who had the deeply fashionable theme of “sustainable excellence” must have been very disappointed not to be among the golds. I was chatting to the people who supplied all the vegetable plants for her garden, W. Robinson and Sons (known locally as The Mammoth Onion) and they said they were amazed at the sheer volume of her order. It all looked splendid and the result must be a disappointment to Mammoth Onion as well. Apparently the judges said that her paths were too narrow!

ALL BLISS CONSISTS
IN THIS
TO DO AS ADAM DID

Traherne 1637-1674

These words are carved on the monument to Sir William Walton at La Mortella, the garden on the island of Ischia designed by his wife Susana together with Russell Page.

This remarkable garden, created from a barren quarry, was recently praised to the heavens by Monty Don in his TV series on Italian Gardens. Monty Don is nicenesss rolled into a ball; he’s also knowledgable and charming and yet his programmes on foreign gardens (first the world, now Italy) have tended to fall flat. The reason, I think, is that he is so uncritical, so flattering, so easily impressed.

I visited La Mortella in October 2009, shortly before Lady Walton’s death. La Mortella has been described as the best exotic garden in Italy and I wanted to see if it was as good as that other great exotic garden, La Mortola, created by Sir Thomas Hanbury fifty years before the Waltons started work on their garden. There’s no doubt that it was a magnificent achievement to make this garden out of nothing and Russell Page’s planting, now 50 years old, has produced some magnificent specimens. But that’s as far as the hyperbole goes. The setting is poor. The outlook is grim suburbia with the sea in the far distance- very inferior to the gardens on neighbouring Capri and nothing to compare with La Mortola. And then, when you’ve climbed to the top, you come across a truly hideous creation, which they have incongruously named Glorieta. My photo gives you some idea of its ghastliness, but you really have to be there and see it from every angle to appreciate how truly awful it is. Monty would have made a much more interesting programme if he had put down his book of superlatives for a moment and spoken about the garden with a little more objectivity.