I have heard the a similar argument in the context of historic houses. To display them without occupants is to display a sterile museum environment. I get the argument up to a point, although I would argue that half the benefit of seeing a lived-in house is mankind's prurient desire to rifle through other people's underwear drawers. To have a load of half-read newspapers lying around, dirty coffee cups, and the tacky paraphernalia of people of a different era from the one being displayed, does not lead to an enhancement of the atmosphere, but simply provides a distraction from the point of the display. But then, I also disagree with the principle of restoring old houses to look old. I contend that when restoring, what we should be aiming for is a representation of the building as it was when it was built, when it was brand new and revolutionary. Why we stick to this idea that when our worn-out old house burns down we should rebuild it to look just as jaded as it did the day before the conflagration beats me. We spend millions on making our history looked ruined. There is a whole small industry invested in making wallpaper look like it has been fingered for three hundred years. Wouldn't it be nice once in a while to see a three-hundred old building as it was intended to be seen on the day construction finished, at the only time in its existence when it was truly new? When it was bright, pristine, innovative, not tired, bedraggled and old-fashioned? Wouldn't it be good to see it as it was on its first day, when people would have gasped at its originality and audacity? I expect to be criticised for this opinion. The experts always disagreed with me, but I wonder why no one sees the incongruity of displaying an old building in a state of near-collapse, full of the junk of a modern family detracting from the ancient ambience. There is a contradiction there, whatever your take on the argument.
Anyway, I've done a bit of preaching now, and it is good to get it off my chest again. I haven't really thought about it since I left this kind of work after my accident seven years ago, but it is still lying there dormant, I see. The social aspects of the job lie hidden in the background, however. And what people get up to gets lost in time. I listened to many of the stories told to me by my colleagues, one of whom in particular had been a cheeky chappie from birth and had some tales to tell, only some of which I can repeat here. He was an expert in repairing punctures, a talent fostered by his tendency to run his wheelbarrow through piles of thorn clippings. If I believed all I was told, I would almost be apologising for strewing them in his path.
From him I learned stories about how the old Head Gardener didn't like his squad getting away with anything, and used to claim that he had sprayed the windfalls with Paraquat to stop them taking them home. How the gardeners would surreptitiously throw carrots over the wall of the kitchen garden to collect later when he wasn't looking. How they would mischievously relabel the vegetable seedlings with fictitious variety names of a comical nature, but totally unacceptable nowadays in our politically-correct society. How they used to have to fill in time sheets, and his would read, after time spent fencing on the wider estate, 'Two weeks wire-pulling in the woods'. That sort of thing. I particularly remember the day he cut through a hornets' nest with his hedgecutter. Never knew he could run so fast. I still look forward to his Christmas morning phone calls reminiscing about the cruelty of my regime and all the punctures I supposedly caused to him for repair. Let it stand here, once and for all, that when I replaced the wonky old wooden barrows with lightweight modern ones, I had them fitted with solid tyres in the hope of getting more work done.
The other side of people within a garden, beyond the business of being open to the public, comes from having people living within the house. This is compounded in a large house like this by the presence of resident staff and their families, and the frequency of large parties. Sometimes it felt like I had gone back to my early employment on the council, working on rough housing estates. Inebriated adults after weekend parties would walk over the top of the yew hedges, snapping foot-wide holes in the surface. Broken glasses and trampled plants would be found in the borders. Children would take my hosepipes and throw them over the wall into the private areas for me to retrieve. They would take down my signs and hide them in the bushes. Swap the plant labels in the greenhouse, so we didn't know what was what. Plant trees in my borders hoping I wouldn't notice. Practice high-jumping through my box hedges.
Older kids would be given driving lessons in a 4 litre 4x4 up and down the main drive while we were open, despite being under age and uninsured. (Look out any kids jammed in the cattle grid!). Others would be driving motor-scooters on my lawns, tearing up the surface with emergency stops. In a severe frost one night, someone had been doing handbrake turns on the front lawn in the Bentley, just for fun. I had mountains of garden rubbish dumped in the public borders from private gardens. I dumped this back where it came from. Then there was the level of diplomacy required in appeasing a visitor after she got shot in the arse by a BB gun from an upstairs bathroom window. I did well to keep that out of the papers. The same gun was also used to shoot the fish in the pond. I could go on, but what's the point? The same dangers applied within the house too. All those valuable antiques under constant threat. When you are the man on the ground, there are many good reasons why a lived-in property does not seem a huge positive. But try telling that to the policy-makers in remote offices who don't have to deal with it every day.
So remember, when you smile at a gardener and tell him what a lovely job he must have, as many people do, don't be too disappointed if you don't get the enthusiastic response you were expecting. It's just possible that he has spent his day sorting out the pampered gobshite who has been shooting people, or has possibly been engaged in an aggressive stand-off with a bully and his cohort of canine guard dogs. (See Day 44 - No dog owners. For some reason this post only got a fraction of my normal readership, which is a pity as it contains a couple of hitherto unpublished cartoons. Link as follows: https://bigbillygoatgruff.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/day-44-no-dog-owners.html Anybody who has come to this blog late on and is enjoying it, would do well to go back to January's posts and start from Day 1, where the story begins. Thank you).
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