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Slow Life has been in suspended animation for the past eight months whilst I’ve been writing a dissertation for my MA in garden history. The 33,000 words which I would have written for Slow Life in that time have gone into the dissertation instead. One of the subjects which I’ve been researching has been the houses which the owners of large estates provided for their head gardeners. The one pictured here is at Levens Hall, whose formal gardens, which are full of topiary, are one of the biggest tourist attractions hereabouts. The gardener’s house was built in 1701 for Guillaume Beaumont, a Frenchman, who had trained under Le Notre at Versailles, before coming to England to work for James II at Hampton Court. Beaumont created the gardens at Levens Hall which by some miracle escaped the attention of vandals such as Capability Brown to survive today.
The above is a slideshow, set to music, of Artists’ Day at Yewbarrow House.
The worst pain I’ve ever experienced was when I was staying in London and spent the entire night with my foot in cold water in absolute agony. When I saw the doctor the following morning he diagnosed gout and told me that it was the closest pain to giving birth which a male could experience. He also said that the idea that it was caused by drinking too much red wine or port was a complete myth – it was just an extreme form of arthritis. My gout was controlled at first by drugs and then cured completely when I had an operation for a bunion and the surgeon cut out the arthritis in the joint in my big toe joint while he was about it.
One consequence of switching from horse to cow manure is that we have many more weeds than before, especially nettles. We were about to mow down a patch of nettles to make some liquid compost, when we noticed that they were covered with caterpillars, which reminded me that nettles are very good breeding places for butterflies. They are quite handsome, aren’t they, with their bright orange stripe? I’m hoping that they will turn into something colourful and exotic looking, such as a red admiral, but I rather suspect they are large whites. In any case, they are well worth saving the nettle patch for. I think I’ll have to put up a sign saying “Butterfly breeding sanctuary” so that our visitors don’t jump to the conclusion that we’re too lazy to do the weeding.
I’d love to sue them myself, but I won’t be eligible as I haven’t bought anything from a supermarket in the last 8 years. But for anyone who has bought one of the “value” ranges from Tescos which they promised would be beef and turned out to be horse, there’s a great opportunity to get their own back. Tescos (and all the others for that matter) are liable in damages for misrepresentation to all those customers who they duped. How will anyone be able to prove that they bought the stuff? That’s easy if they have a Tesco loyalty card.
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