Our hero, our intrepid first-person narrator of this unlikely story, moved the length of the country to take up a new job. The pressure to do so came from a condition known as penury, and in this particular period of history, that finds physical form as credit cards, loans and financial statements in aggressive red. To haul himself out of this and continue to feed his family, he took up a more lucrative appointment. The downside was that, more lucrative comes at a price. To earn more, you almost always have to do more. In this case, I left behind the cosy comforts of Head Gardener, and appended a 'slash Administrator' to that. I've already described the punch of reality in the face when it came to the gardening side of things, but it didn't stop there.
Sooner or later I was going to have a handover from the previous Administrator, who had been borrowed from another Property on a temporary contract. His job had been chiefly centred around the opening arrangements, and particularly on the two afternoons a week when the house was open to the public. I don't think he was particularly pleased to be moving on, and his briefing was calculated to put me off right from the start. He told me of the problems associated with opening a property to the public when it was lived in by a private family with no ties to house's history at all, and who brought with them their own staff, most of whom lived on site. Their priorities centred round their employer's, and were unsympathetic to the strictures of the landlord, which in this case was a conservation organisation with its own very demanding peculiarities. He drew my attention to some of the personalities he anticipated that I would have difficulties with, and then turned to the other area which would require a lot of my time - the management of volunteers.There was an extensive list of names and contact details, and he went through these one by one, telling me who he thought was good, and describing in detail the shortcomings of those he deemed to be rubbish. He also told me that he had managed to organise access to the Entrance Hall of the house for an end-of-season thank-you party for those volunteers in a couple of weeks time, when he was sure that my introductory speech would seal my appointment in their eyes.
Well, all that was a bit of a shock to me, but I went with it, resolving to ignore most of what I had been told, and allow myself to make up my own mind about who was an ally and who was a thorn in the side, for better or worse. As it turned out, it was mostly worse, but not necessarily in the ways my predecessor anticipated. I was going to have additional difficulty with the occupants, as I was also responsible for the garden as well as opening the house, and as I was only there during working hours, while they were there all the time, a lot of unsupervised activity took place which overexcited my vascular system, and on occasion, my bowels. Also, in the matter of volunteers, all was not quite as described, as it turned out that the previous Administrator had imported a large number of volunteers from his previous property to supplement those who had dedicated themselves to this one, and unsurprisingly, tensions and loyalties were stretched. I was going to have to sort that out.
Additionally, I had to meet the Tea-room Manager, who was an ex-volunteer who had stepped up to take on the challenge. A ferocious lady with society connections, I suspect she looked upon me as staff rather than management. However she was extremely hard-working and dedicated to serving a genuinely local product, all the cakes being made by bakers in the village. She did get side-tracked by issues beyond her brief, such as the lengthy discussions she initiated on the subject of whether it was more appropriate to have signs directing visitors to the 'toilets' or to the 'lavatories'. I don't remember which criteria she applied, but we had signs up already which communicated the essential information, and I considered it to be academic whether the wording precisely fitted the grandeur of a Stately Home or not. For all I cared, you could call it the bog or the carsey, as long as the sign was clear enough and got me there in good time for the event.
Say no more.
Keep in mind that throughout the meandering progress of this tale, all this will be going on behind the scenes, and like a volcano, will only erupt on to the page when brought to mind by desperate circumstance. The rest of it will, I continue to promise you, lead eventually by its circuitous route to a philosophy of gardening, made all the stronger by having endured and overcome the series of affronts that stood in the way. In the way of my ideas forming, in the way of my career reaching maturity without premature termination on either side, as it states in most contracts. Fifteen years is a long time to hang on by the skin of your teeth. I reckon I must have had a good layer of fat on mine, like a hibernating bear's bum.
Just so we don't forget what this is all about, here's a photograph of a young, energetic Head Gardener (slash Administrator) in his first autumn at his new job. Note the already thirty-year old three-wheeled Martin truck, beloved of the team, who would exercise their shoulders beyond the call of duty every morning, trying to get the thing started with a crank-handle. An early casualty of the new regime, which replaced it with a bright orange mini-tractor with a tight turning circle and a key start. One that wouldn't get its front wheel stuck down the cattle grids. Those were the days.
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