I remember sitting on a group. Sitting on black chairs. Very elegant chairs. Chairs that had wicker seats. Then broken wicker seats. Chairs with brown moulded plastic to look like wickerwork seats. I remember sitting in a group on elegant chairs that were plastic. And somebody was talking about his father who had just died. He said he had been closer to his father than ever before. And he was asked if the emotional response being stronger had any other effects. And I don't think the emotional response had changed. I think a father's emotional response to his son is the same whether the son is close or distant. I do not think the father had come closer or could come closer. I think the son did.
And I am certain that mothers are like that. Mothers emotional responses are the same no matter what. It is the maternal technique. The process by which mothers are mothers. It is an emotional restructuring of priorities. It is holding me as a son before anything else. Whatever happens, whatever the context, the first thought is this is my son. No right, no wrong, no fault, no correctness. Just this is my son. Anything else comes after that.
It is raining and perhaps in Penzance it will not be. But it was. For the first time I was quite keen to go to Penzance Show. Usually I do not want all the work of the show. So I go but I do not want to go. But this time I am just a visitor and so I quite want to go. I did not put up, a stand because I was not asked to put up a stand. I was told that many people were not invited that should have been. Coincidentally when I got back the telephone rang. I had not been invited to put up a stand at the Cornwall Garden Society's Show and then the telephone rang and I was invited. It was a strange coincidence. But I had been talking to a couple of people about it at the show and news travels very fast in the world of horticulture. Perhaps very fast indeed. And perhaps it was all coincidental.
Walking into the hall strikes familiar faces which is very satisfying. Some faces smile, some do not, as it their habit. Pale Rhododendron racemosum catches the eye. Pale flowers, pink in bud and pinker at the edges of the petals. Long leggy stems. Stout brown stems. Clusters of flowers on the end. Pale pink flowers. Scentless flowers. And once again 'Crossbill' strikes the eye for its curious range of colours. Yellow to salmon and back again. I could easily grow to like it.
Everybody has double primroses this year. All by name. Kind after kind. I bought some I didn't have and was unlikely to get. The floor creaks towards double primroses and they end up in an orange carrier bag. Crushes of people flood by by. Cut stems and flowering Jasmine fill a space. Someone has decided that this year there will be a competition for the artistic arrangement of old garden tools. As a result there are piles of old hoes and spades bedecked with flowers and I though I glimpsed some artificial turf. Old wooden handles mock the ruthless flower arrangers.
The stiff stems of aggressive pink rosebuds make a mockery of a flowing shape, like a rolled out hedgehog. Sue has a stand of spring flowers and old moss covered branches flowing out of the table. Somehow it works even here. Faces are smiling. Orchids are all seen as Cymbidiums growing out of nothing. They are miostly in the same pots they were bought in. Nothing really leaves an impression. The most notice is for people who have not exhibited here.
Camellias and Pelargoniums compliment each others foibles. Pressing people press politely into spaces they have yet to make. It is a friendly show but not a very comfortable one. A cluster of evergreen Magnolia leaves throw drama over a stringy line of Phormium leaves. People dressed in greys and browns are just starting to wear bright accessories to match the extending spring. A headscarf, a handbag, perhaps a pair of earrings. Muted mutter of money and machinations of society. All accurring under the banks of broccoli. Floral arrangers seem to reflect less and less each year. The first collection of lifeless Camellias sit in serried ranks and spit abusive colours into passing eyes. Here are lined the poison dwarves of spring. Pudding shaped bundles of flowerheads make meaningless mounds along white paper tables. Nothing here that can change. Some Red-hot Pokers stand sentinel loyalty in upright vases to show their earliness to the world.
Childrens paintings of the sea and clouds in blue and white and brown. Sea and boats. Welling up in tin-foil. Pached and patted mud. A magnificent caterpillar made from a rolled cabbage leaf. A potato with sections of assorted withered vegetables stuck all over it. A duck made from a potato with phillips screws for eyes. A string of sprouts caterpillar and a tray of wilted vegetables that defy description. A parsnip headed elephant. A parsnip and potato snail crawls stationary movements with a mushroom eye stalks extended. I bought a chocolate monkey and gave it to Jack.
If you have the right words for something and you give them away, you no longer have them.
There is nothing that is me. There is nothing that is not me. I bought a bunch of daffodil buds and already they are breaking out of their sheaths.