A Word from the Unwise

Uncanny that you should not only mention the “October Storm” but also be so specific about time. I had planned to write about it on its forthcoming 40th anniversary … but it’s finding the time …

After Michael’s fishy report, it was at 03.07 that I looked out and, at the end of the garden, saw the poplar at 45 degrees. It never occurred to me that the angle spelt a point of no return. At 8 am, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. The poplar had gone; a fenceless, dystopian universe unrecognisably presented itself, as if the whole world had been sucked up into thin air. Gradually, the flattened reality dawned. The poplar had been at the back of a garden I shared in Wimbledon with a medical student who became one of the youngest ever (and controversial – in more ways than one) professors of his discipline. His tree had gone crashing down diagonally into our neighbour’s garden. When he was told how much it would cost to remove it, he placed old planks under the trunk and sent his insurance company photographic “evidence” of his neighbour’s “crushed shed”. The tree man (a surgeon of a different sort but equally shady) said he would cut up the tree into logs and burn them in situ. The student – now equipped with assuredly appropriate financial resources – said that would not be convenient, as it would irretrievably scar his garden, and that the way to go was to cart the logs across the neighbour’s garden (now expediently (de)fenceless) and loaded up onto a lorry parked in the adjacent street. To my amazement, the contractor, despite the incredible workload, readily agreed to this. After work, we came home to a blazing tornado, as the flaming poplar joined other fires illuminating the neighbourhood. My medical co-lessee sued the arborist for breach of verbal contract, giving credence to the old adage that “it’s an ill wind …”.

 

Does that make science?

 

I got rid of the lawns to make room for more interesting plants. The the best place for grass is in a field

 

You remind me of a tennis player (whom I hope you are too young to remember) called John Newcombe to whom I had been boasting that I was getting tips about greenkeeping from the AELTC head groundsman. Newcombe (who, next to a slumped, incoherent James Hunt, was getting quietly plastered with Tony Roche at the Crooked Billet) unequivocally countered a crisp, unanswerable volley: “ Grass is for ******* cows! ... ******* grass!” That put his preferences in perspective. Je me le suis tenu pour dit! and did not repeat this in the (in)appropriate places. But it is now out of copyright!

This new train of thought in the rallying of this post enables me to add here something I have wanted to share with the forum for some time whilst feeling that perhaps it was not sufficiently relevant and in keeping with the intellectual rigour and moral integrity generally displayed on this platform, but I think we reached a point, even if it is a close call, where a lenient umpire would allow it. It is a cartoon (you will detect the lobb(y)ing reference to grass) of double wit and single brilliance on lines parallel to the best of “double entente” (yes, NOT “entendre” – grrrrrrr) and reciprocal to and fro:

 

I can remember all three of the gentlemen mentioned, however I was not old enough to frequent an establishment such as the Crooked Billet until some years after their retirements. Sadly having just checked I was old enough as both Roche and Newcombe retired 78 - 79.