The Green Man

Rain stopped play

So, rain has stopped play here for a few weeks, despite all the talk of droughts and hosepipe bans. I was told the other day that it would have to rain constantly for two years for the water table to reach an acceptable level, which, to look at the verdant sponge outside the window, seems totally implausible.

Scotland, we discovered last year, is made of water, so even if we had a fairly dry time down south, we could always wring out Scotland a bit and we’d be fine.

J and I watched the final episode of series two of Lost last night, entertaining programme about a group of people stuck on an island full of wierdos and monsters. A bit like a warmer version of Britain. We’re now in mourning because the series is off air until September.

Garden is coming along OK, under the influence of the natural sprinkler system. I was holding off planting the lawn at the back, fearing that the drought would hamper its growth. By Wednesday I was out in the deluge raking in the blood and bone and scattering the seed. Alan Titchmarsh says that it takes fourteen days for the first signs of green haze to float above the soil. With the amount of rain it’s getting, it should be fourteen hours.

World Cup fever is upon us, with a matter of weeks to go until England’s first game. Flags are flying from one car in seven, according to the straw poll I did the other day on the way to work. A faith healing nation is concentrating on Wayne Rooney’s foot. I was lucky enough to meet Jack Charlton last week – I hired him for the launch of a promotion in one of our stores in Oxford Street. He was telling me how much things have changed, how he used to have to clean his own boots, how the tongues of the shoes were so thick and well padded that there was no question of a player breaking a metatarsal – that nobody would have heard of them when his team won the World Cup in 1966. And today, it’s the de rigueur bone to break. Beckham’s done it, so has Owen.

P has just taken I to do some clothes shopping. I’m hoping that jeans will feature and that they’ll be of the sensible full-cut variety. I can’t really get in to this icecream cone look that seems to be popular these days – jeans a good two sizes too small, low cut, so that the upper arse oozes out like whipped icecream. Coupled with vogue for tattoos that spread just above the “builders’ cleavage” and it makes for a monstrous concoction.

J, I and me had our first “art day” yesterday, out back in the new shed. We made a green man, the stuff of legends, using what we could find in the garden to assemble him. The eyes I like especially – both I and J arranged groups of twigs and petals and then photographed them. Here they are:

Suburban textures: first in a series

The suburban '30s house, with its traditional render, has the same coating as a raw fish finger. Some might suggest that one begat t'other.