But me, I always have my eyes, ears and nose open for new experiences, I like tasting new foods, touching new things (careful of that one, it gets you into trouble). I can leave behind what is gone, what is used up, move on with no regrets. I made that a guiding principle throughout my life. And here, now, when I have created something beautiful, something I am proud of, where I have made new friends in a place where I am happy, this is where it must end. Where the looking is all forward, and not backward with tears in the eyes.
When I came here, trying to become a proper gardener rather than the hired labour I had been up to that point, I sold a house. Nice little 1930's semi, pretty gardens front and back, with play equipment for the kids that I had built myself, and an elaborate patio I constructed from materials scrapped in the yard at work and delivered by the tree gang, who sometimes were good buddies, and sometimes wanted to kill me. I'm going to show you a picture of that patio. That and the so-called 'feature fireplace' (estate agent speak) built from the same materials were unique selling points of the house.
Obviously, I built the patio level. It must have been the house that was squint. Or the photographer.
All that hard work had netted me £6000 profit on the sale after two years, which seemed like a lot at the time. It gave me the confidence to take a large pay cut to further my career choice and legitimise my gardening. We got through the whole lot within two years of taking up my new appointment, and it became obvious that we were going to go under financially. The answer, as always, was to find a new job. Doesn't matter how much you want to keep the old one, circumstance keeps you moving on. Burning bridges.
I applied for a step up the ladder, By fortuitous coincidence, I spied an advertisement in the horticultural press for a position of Head Gardener/Administrator at the far southern end of our island. This would be the kind of progress I needed, both financially and in terms of autonomy. I would be responsible not only for the garden, but also for the opening arrangements of the property, including the mansion, and for overall supervision of all volunteers and also overseeing the activities of the tearoom. For that I would be paid the extra £3000 a year that I so obviously needed. This one fact probably blinded me to all the pitfalls of such a broad brief, and there was more to come, as I found out later. Not only that, but it was in a much more expensive area to live, so the financial benefits were less advantageous than I first imagined. I got the job, though, partly because the interview panel consisted of one person, who happened to be the good man who had turned me down a couple of years previously for another job, and had written me a letter of encouragement, suggesting that I should keep trying. I found out later that the job had previously been offered to someone else who had, perhaps wisely, turned it down and buggered off to New Zealand. I had seen the advert when it came out for the second time. This was already an established principle for me, as it happens. Most of my best achievements have come from being assessed as second place. I rationalised this as 'top grade, first place - this means that the people judging you feel sufficiently superior to look down on you from above and judge you to be the best on offer. When you come second, this implies that the judges know you've got something, but they're not quite sure what, and are reluctant to commit. Second place is for those the judges don't have the capacity to comprehend.' Anyway, plenty of time for all that. I have months of this left in me, and gems of tangential guidance and self-justification along the way.
Oh. And I lied at the top of the page. I'm not going to show you how my first serious garden developed. Not today. I've sidetracked myself. That will have to wait for tomorrow.
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