Glasgow Archives | James Alexander-Sinclair

Hullo. I have decided to venture into one of the dustier corridors of my life – this blog. Time was when I used to check on its progress every day, I would write regularly and comment on other people’s stuff. This was in the heyday of the blog but, as most things in the modern (or indeed ancient) world things move on and we all now spend more time on social media than wading through blogs.

Still, it advertises itself on my website and therefore it is important to update these things occasionally. I have noticed that most of my posts over the last couple of years have been about travel. I have been lucky enough to swan around the world looking at and talking about gardens. Obviously that stopped a year or so ago – soon after I came back from Seattle where the North West Flower and Garden Show was probably the last (1) flower show before the world ground to a halt. Now we are slowly emerging, blinking like naked mole rats, into the light of normality. I have been very lucky in that I have not stopped working and, indeed, have become ridiculously busy as people spend more time at home and decide to do something about their gardens.

So today I have decided to go on a public transport jaunt…

04:50AM: The alarm goes off and I stumble out of bed. An apple in one pocket, a banana in the other and I am out into the cold morning. Unseasonably icy but bright and beautiful.

06:15AM: Milton Keynes station as I am catching the 06:23 train to Glasgow. Day trips to Scotland are something I have been doing for ages but there are very few aero planes at the moment so train is the only option. Four and a half hours each way but the views are interesting, the trains virtually empty and, because I am old, I get a special deal on first class so things could be worse.
And I am going to Glasgow to see my Horatio’s Garden and that is very exciting.

06:45AM: I have been given a breakfast box and a cup of coffee. The latter is pretty disgusting but better than nothing. The former contains two doughy croissants (the sort of pale imitation that would drain the blood from the ruddy complexions of the Parisian guild of boulangers), a yoghurt and some cheese spread.

08:04AM: I should be working but instead am writing this as we hurtle through Crewe and whizz past Warrington Bank Quay

08:48AM: Drawing on a train is really shoogly. The train manager is making frequent announcements in a Glaswegian accent as thick as a slab of black bun (2) which makes the message (that we are six minutes late) difficult to fully comprehend. Outside the window the Lake District is sparkling. Sheep, drystone walls, the River Lune and the picturesque open cast Kendal Mint Cake mines.

09:30AM: Carlisle. We always used to stop here on the way to visit my grandparents in Scotland. The most exciting thing was a bakery that sold bright green, mint flavoured meringues. They were laden with artificial additives and were probably revolting.

09:52AM: The novelty of this journey is wearing off mostly because the train is swinging around and is making me seasick. We are in the borders where there are far too many conifer plantations. Dark and depressing when growing, worse when harvested.

10:36AM: The edges of Glasgow are never terribly alluring but the station is a good one. Quite odd though as all shops firmly closed – except Boots where I found a bargain box of Sushi for £1.00. It never seems quite right to buy food from the same place as once might buy corn plasters or condoms but I was starving.

11:20AM: Horatio’s Garden, Scotland is glinting in the sunshine. Fresh birch leaves, loads of Narcissii, Fritillaries en fete etc etc etc. The best thing though is seeing Sallie and the other volunteers, to see patients picking flowers in the woodland and everybody happy.

5:00PM: I am back at the station where I am greeted by some extremely stoned people lying on the ground and doing a lot of shouting. Nothing like a bit of local colour. I am given an Afternoon Snack box which is considerably weirder than ther breakfast offering – it contains a fruit scone and some chicken pate.

7:30PM: The Lake District is still sparkling as we trundle south finally ending up at Milton Keynes at about 11:00PM which, if I am honest, does not sparkle much although that might just be me as it has been a very long day… only another hour’s driving before bed.

I was listening earlier to Just A Minute. The top picture is Tulip Slawa

for some unfathomable reason spellcheck decided that at this point I was not writing the simple word “last” but “lasagna”.
for those unfamiliar with this – it is a Scottish cake traditionally served to first footers at Hogmanay. It is basically a fruit cake wrapped in pastry because (obviously) a fruit cake on its own will not provide enough saturated fat.

My apologies but I started writing this blogpost a year ago and then forgot to post it – as you will see if you decide to read on it is quite season specific and would have been a bit weird if I had put it out there in the spring. So I have waited twelve months and the moment has come round again: as things tend to do in gardening so the story is still relevant.

Another early morning start in order to get to Horatio’s Garden in Glasgow by 9.00am. Increasingly as I get older I am becoming a creature of habit and don’t like my routine being disrupted which is, of course, a very good reason for so doing. It is good for me to do different things otherwise I will become unbearable and cantankerous too soon.

So it is mind broadening to force myself out of a warm bed at 4:30am, to forgo my breakfast and to bundle myself out into the darkness in order to get to Birmingham airport for the 7.00am flight. Quick snooze, bumpy landing, Croque Monsieur and a cup of coffee in Starbucks and off to the Spinal Unit and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

I have been meaning to write about Horatio’s for ages and have failed spectacularly. The background story is pretty well known now (details here) suffice to say that from an appalling tragedy and extraordinary thing has been born and I am so thrilled to be part of it. It has been a truly extraordinary experience full of remarkable people. Moments of extreme joy, moments of mild anxiety and waves of powerful emotion – I have wept a lot over strange things like Corian worktops and pond coping stones. I think, no actually I know, that it has been the most moving and most important garden I have ever designed.

The greatest pleasure has been watching patients emerge, like blinking moles, from the antiseptic gloom of the wards and beginning to use the garden. Be it for sitting, for cake eating, for salad harvesting, bird feeding of just watching the flowers move in breeze from the Clyde.

So, as you can see from these pictures, we have built stuff (at the least the endlessly patient Kenny McFadyen from Endricks Landscapes has built everything), planted everything shrubby and herbaceous so it is time for……… the bulbathon…

I have been plotting this for a while (along with Sallie the head gardener). My part of the arrangement is to organise the delivery of 12,500 bulbs, her part is to find enough people to help plant them. That may seem, justifiably, to be a slightly uneven distribution of labour but she was amazing and the place was swamped with volunteers, doctors and assorted gardeners. My job was to direct and supervise and also to actually get down in there and dig some holes and plant stuff – yah boo sucks to those doubters amongst my readers who thought I was too old and fey for such on carryings.

For those interested in lists we have planted
Allium Mont Blanc/atropurpureum/Purple Sensation/cernuum
Anemone blanda/nemerosa
Chionodoxa Forbesii
Crocus Cream Beauty/Remembrance
Eremurus Cleopatra/White Beauty
Fritillaria meleagris
Gladiolus The Bride
Iris Katharine Hodgkin
Iris Gordon
Iris Kent Pride
Lilium martagon Hansonii
Lilium martagon Manitoba Morning
Muscari
Narcissus February Gold/Cheerfulness/pseudonarcissus/Actaea
Tulip Abu Hassan/White Triumphator/Ronaldo/Spring green/Negrita/turkestanica/China Pink
All of them in abundance…..

It was a glorious couple of days with shiny weather, smiley people and the wonderful sense of anticipation that comes with bulb planting. All that glorious flower wrapped up in a brown nubble of concentrated energy. Bulbs are so basic – plant them, go away, have a jolly Christmas, endure the dark days of January and then come back to four months of continuous flower.

A note from a twelve month later…
Well that worked – come the spring we had sensational tulips, cracking daffodils etc etc. Weeks of joyous bulb filled ecstasy. Every day something new happened and all patients and visitors were thrilled. What a start to the season.
So now November has come round again and we have had Bulbathon part two and have planted another 6,000 bulbs – I was worried that we would not have room for them but I was wrong, there is loads of new space that needs planting. Nine volunteers and various patients and staff rallied round and my goodness they worked hard. For the listy among you here is another – we also planted more of the same as last year.

Allium afflatuense
Crocus Barr’s Purple
Narcissus Cheerfulness/cyclamineus/Altun Ha
Tulip sylvestris/Ronaldo/Royal Pretender/Purissima/Jackpot/Armani

The garden has now been open for a year. All four seasons have passed and I still adore everything about the place. The volunteers are amazing – their energy and dedication is indefatigable the patients are complimentary about the garden, the staff are amazing and our little bit of Glasgow is so much better than it was a couple of years ago. This is a garden that will, over the next years, make hundreds of peoples’ lives better and that is something that makes me very, very happy. And has also made me start sobbing again..

I am listening to Kiss with a Fist by Florence and the Machine*, the picture is of various tulips in jugs.

*I built a garden for Florence’s parents in Camberwell many years ago. If I remember rightly we did a very neat bit of stone cutting around a drain.

I am flying back from Glasgow after quite a long day accompanied by (although separate from) a raucous party of ebullient Glaswegians off down south for a weekend of shenanigans.

It is my practice to try and sleep during take off – partly because I am knackered but also because I don’t really like flying too much as it makes me confront the frailty of flesh and mortality in general. Especially during the safety briefing which always seems to me rather futile. Nobody is listening and we all know that if we hit the water a life jacket is not likely to help much. Especially when flying from Glasgow to Birmingham which is entirely over the land and the biggest bit of water is Lake Windermere.

Anyway, I am woken from my peaceful doze by an announcement that we are going back to the terminal – we have not even taken off yet.
“Somebody has to leave the aeroplane ” announced the pilot mysteriously. Is there sickness? Am I going to have to administer CPR to somebody? – I hum Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees as a warm up.

We return slowly to the terminal, there is uneasy chatter and jokery amongst the raucous.

The police arrive: five of them all bulked up with stab vests, hi viz and belts clattering with the general paraphernalia of modern law enforcement- batons, radios, mobile telephones, handcuffs, tazers, notebooks, tins of boiled sweets, cameras, latex gloves and whatever else is deemed necessary for the efficient implementation of modern policing.
It must be really hard to chase after fugitives when you are as laden as a one man band.

A largish man was removed from the flight and everything settled back down. Had we been saved from a terrorist attack?
Was it a desperado on the run?
A robber with Krugerrands sewn into the hem of his coat?
An international gun runner?
Tony Blair?

“Sorry for that” said the pilot “I could not explain earlier for fear that I might exacerbate the situation”

A gem smuggler with a condom of uncut diamonds up his jacksy?
Was there a crack den in the lavatory?
or a ticking bomb in the luggage compartment?

The pilot returns to the tannoy: “I am afraid to say that a man was caught smoking an electronic cigarette and was removed by the authorities as we will not tolerate that sort of behaviour”.

Great. Got home a hour and a half later than usual.

I am listening to That’s How It Was by Spanky Wilson and the Quantic Soul Orchestra. The picture is of an Acer at the Harcourt Arboretum

I have a second home.

Sadly it is not a villa on the Côte d’Azur , nor is it a chalet in Gstaad (complete with on tap emmental and fur bedspreads). It is not a palm roofed shack on a beach in the Carribean nor even a chic pied a terre in Shoreditch or Montmartre.
It is much more unusual and niche than that – it is Birmingham Airport. I seem to be spending an increasing amount of time commuting back and forth to Glasgow…..

Birmingham airport has both good and bad sides. The car park is conveniently close to the departure terminal , it is relatively close to home and the lavatories work. What is not so good are the rather stentorian security staff – it is somehow worse to be told to take your shoes off at 6:30am by a large Brummie than by a large Scotsman. I also have a deep and unreasonable loathing for the Duty Free area.

Screen Shot 2016-08-19 at 19.24.50 — Birmingham Airport – Dawn and Dusk

It meanders its way through glossy stalls selling the usual vastly overpriced Eau de Toilette (note to those who care: buying aftershave endorsed by Karl Lagerfeld or Johnny Depp is unlikely to get you laid any more than if you just washed more often), bottles of novelty liqueurs and giant sacks of M&Ms. I want to get through this as quickly as possible in order to get on my plane without having to run and thus arrive unkempt and wheezing at Gate 26. I do not wish to buy stuff and would really like a straight through path rather than being sent all over the houses on a long and winding road: sadly I have no option but to follow the crowd trying to avoid tripping over their very small wheeled suitcases. To rub salt into the wound the floor is as sparkly as a stripper’s tush.

As I am flying to Glasgow the plane usually leaves from approximately gate 16. If all goes well I will arrive there with not quite enough time to have a cup of coffee but will do so all the same. The cup of coffee arrives, I have one hurried swig and the slightly grumpy woman on the gate chooses that moment to announce a final boarding call and I have to go. This happens almost every single time and I seem incapable of learning my lesson.

My third home is, obviously, Glasgow Airport. In fact I tend to spend a bit more time here hanging around. It too has an identically irritating Duty Free bit but, because I am always there in the early evening I do try to find time to eat chips. A chap needs chips every so often and a damp day gardening in Glasgow is definitely sufficient excuse. The worst moment was just after I had spent the day fossicking around amongst some very pungent compost. A smell I took back with me to the airport – and beyond. I must apologise to the unfortunate fellow sitting in Seat 12b: it cannot have been one of his better journeys!

Why am I doing this? Because we are getting terrifyingly close to the opening of Horatio’s Garden, Scotland. This is possibly the most meaningful garden that I have made in the last thirty years. I am thrilled to be doing it but am still stressing about edges and details.

I also have troubling dreams about Pachysandra terminalis. I will post pictures once we are finished: the opening is on September 2nd.

I am listening Speak to the Rose by Wilco. The picture is of some lettuces.

Hooray. It is only a month since I last posted here.

I really do not understand spam.

This blog has always had some of the stuff but recently much more has slipped past the electronic equivalent of the Group Four security guards. It used to be very simple – a clamour of sites usually trying to sell me, ahem, ‘augmentation’ pills. Now it seems much more complicated and involves a number of different approaches…
Flattery – this blog is amazing. It has given me an insight into the world that I have not found elsewhere.
Caring: It is important to be under direct medical supervision when dieting. Tea is safer than several small incisions.
Helpful: Your website may be having browser problems: in Internet Explorer they may be some overlapping.
Grateful: This is a cool and useful bit of information.
Critical: This blog is good but it has a lot of spelling mistakes.
Busy; Great information. I have saved it for later
Technical: Your Google rankings are rubbish.
Business like: Would you be interested in doing a guest post on my blog (which was about dumpster rental in Philadelphia).
More criticism: Your content is great but have you thought of changing the layout on your blog to allow more content?
Cheeky: Can you help me stop my blog being bombarded with spam? any tips
Weird: Religion may also be a reason for divorce rates increasing, Today the Hygienitech Mattress Cleaning System is the worldwide leader inn providing environmentally friendly mattress cleaning equipment.
Confusing: I do know what I will be stitching and wearing this spring and summer!
Supportive but confusing: Wonderful issues altogether, you just received a brand new reader. What may you suggest about your post that you made some days in the past? Any positive?

As an example I quote directly from a spam blog comment that appears to want me to buy a jacket – “Insert the yardstick, leaving about 8 inches for the handle. Tape around the sword and handle in moncler paris a figure eight pattern to hold the stick in place. Decorate moncler jackets the handle.”

Or: We spend about $40 on gas for personal use per week, putting $20 per week in our vehicles. His car gets better miles per gallon than my jeep, but I drive less than 5 miles to and from work everyday. If I would run low on gas, I would plan to either borrow his vehicle or ride my bike to work, however, that hasn’t happened yet..”

Another: – “But traditionally, those children borne by legal wives and concubines and those who were adopted are all designated and ranked differently, indicating their order of significance and influence.”

Attached to the various comments are links trying to sell me everything from ice cream makers, cartoons, Instagram followers, travel bags, vibration platforms,pressure washers, YouTube channels, ceiling fans, nudie jeans and, of course, ways to enlarge those areas that need enlarging.

How does this sort of thing benefit anybody? I am sure that somebody, somewhere is making money and I understand that if you sent a million people an email (net cost pretty much zero) and two buy something then you are quids in but how does bombarding a blog such as mine with a modest readership work? Especially as most of it gets caught in a filter – at the time of writing there are 3,632 such messages wriggling in my spam folder gasping their last.

I am bamboozled.

On the same subject when was the last time you actually ate some Spam? as in the proper stuff named as an acronym of ‘Spiced Ham’ or ‘Shoulders of pork and ham’. (Although it might not stand for either of those things – nobody in the know has ever said). When a hungry child at boarding school I would eat pretty much anything and one of the luncheons provided was a slice of spam with some lettuce, half a tomato and ready access to a bottle of salad cream.
A few years ago, an older, less hungry and (perhaps) wiser person, I decided to try spam again. It was horrible: those intervening years of restaurants, excellent home cooking and occasional puddings had ruined my tastebuds. No longer would I be excited by the flabby rubberiness of a slice of processed pork.

Life is full of such disappointments.

I have not, you will be relieved to know, spent all of my time worrying about spam. I have also been doing busy things the most exciting of which was flying off to Glasgow to look at the site for the new Horatio’s Garden at the spinal unit in Southern General Hospital. I have written lots about it on my Crocus Blog here so will not repeat myself.
What else? Oh. I bought a house, a rather nice house that will hopefully be both nicer and more habitable by the summer which is when we hope to move in. I have also helped finalise the show gardens for both Chelsea and Malvern Spring Festival and planted two and a half gardens. And some other stuff which I will not go into as most people will probably not have got this far anyway as they would have been put off by all the drivel about spam.

I know I would have left by now.

I am listening to You Can’t Outrun ‘Em by Jenny Lewis. The pictures is are of some very handsome Gloucester Old Spot pigs – a little tasteless perhaps when talking about spam but there you go.