My goodness, two blogposts in under a month: it is quite like the good old days when people used to read blogs and the world was not completely swamped with words.

Anyway it is that time of year again when I skip off to Moscow to judge the Moscow Flower Show. This will be the fifth year and it is always interesting – the gardens are usually a bit of a mixed bag but never dull. This is my week

Sunday:
Hampton Court for a recce, watch Iceland lose to France then return to the Teddington Travelodge. This is worth a brief mention as it is basically a multi storey car park with rooms and if possible should be avoided. There was a postcard on the bed which said (and I prĂ©cis this rather than quote verbatim) ‘Welcome to the British summertime. For your convenience we have drawn your curtains to keep out the heat of the day, we have also removed your duvet and left you with a single sheet. We suggest that you open your window at night when the temperatures cool”. This is, we assume, in lieu of air conditioning

Monday is judging which was all very jolly. Then lunch, then feedback then drive home and try not to sleep on the M40.

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Tuesday :
Fly to Moscow. Aeroflot this time which has it air crew in very jaunty orange uniform: like a group of Slavic satsumas. I am eating mushroom risotto and fried almonds followed by a perfectly passable tiramisu
Clouds are funny things’ all soft and fluffy to look at but as soon as you go into one in an aeroplane they get all uppity and shake you about in a most alarming way. I had my knee firmly grasped by the very large man next to whom I was sitting on a flight from Glasgow the other day as we lurched through a crowd. I think he was very embarrassed.

Wednesday :
Began with Russian pancakes, boiled sausages and Brussels sprouts but, more importantly, it was judgment day.

Eccentrically the rest of the panel had already judged in my absence so I was mostly on my own and then added my marks to theirs. This resulted in some slightly odd decisions which I had to moderate. There are some okay gardens and a couple of shockers but this is a very young show which needs time to find its place. It would be even better if everybody thought about things a little earlier – some garden applications did not arrive until June – which is not something that we would tolerate at the RHS!

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Obviously, as this is Russia, we have to have dignitaries and speeches and a full blown awards ceremony with fanfares and clapping. I signed all the medal certificates and then, after a moment for a swift change of suiting, I showed the deputy British ambassador round the show. He was rather captivated by the idea of gardens uniting countries etc etc and it gave him a rest from talking about the Chilcott report to inquisitive Russian journalists.
We also had the minister of culture who made a longish speech* about something. Then various other people popped onto the stage and talked about how amazing everything was and how grateful we all are etc etc. Russians love a speech even more so if it is made by a government apparatchik. Then I made a speech and dished out medals: this involved two girls – one dressed in a Russian flag and one in a Union Jack – who darted forward and gave each winner a bunch of roses, a bag contains a book and some tea, another bag containing more tea and an MFS pen tidy. My job was to give out a certificate and kiss people when appropriate ** then there were more speeches and more certificates to everybody involved. This included the show’s pet Orthodox priest who has an amazing beard and comes every year to bless us all. He made a speech and was rewarded not only with the tea and roses but a Bosch cordless screwdriver.
Dinner followed in a former chocolate factory with a great view of the river.

Thursday:
I woke up this morning to a bit of a bit of a judging rumpus which always adds a bit of a frisson to proceedings. Facebook was jumping with a certain amount of disgruntlement so I had to pour a lot of oil on a lot of waters – if there had been a cormorant in the vicinity it would have been in trouble. I think all was fine in the end – the problem was that we gave one Best in Show rather than rewarding a best in each category of which there are many – Show, Russian, Balcony, Urban, Art, Chic,Trade etc etc. For some a Gold Medal is not enough…

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Having done this I tootled off to give a seminar to the assembled designers and interested parties about judging and show gardens and garden design in general. It was a long seminar with many questions.
I am now also the (apparently) only foreign member of Russia’s largest ecological society. Founded 90 odd years ago by Lenin’s wife they are responsible for planting about 5 billion trees and do work to improve the street planting in towns and cities all over Russia. I have a very smart badge.

Lunch was bortsch and dumplings followed by more feedback. Then a couple of interviews and time for a very swift change and off to a Ukrainian restaurant for dinner. This involved a particular national speciality called, I think, sala. Paper thin slices of pig fat wrapped around a sliver of raw garlic – it melts in the mouth but I am not sure that I am in a hurry to eat it again. This was not all there were, I hasten to add, many delicious things that were less piggy in particular little savoury pastries called Pirojock which I could eat all day if called upon so to do.

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More interestingly the restaurant was on the second floor and, on the other side of a glass partition was a large cow – chewing the cud and regarding the assembled diners with a look of abject scorn – a goat, a vast rabbit, some peacocks, a couple of golden pheasants and a very sturdy woman in national costume. It was very weird.

Friday
Home again, home again jiggetty jig via a certain amount of turbulence near Visby.

I am listening to Louise sin the Blue Moon by Alison Moorer.

*I have a very patient and diligent interpreter called Evgeny. He is a great pleasure to be with and is very good at his job. He also has an interesting mixture of pastimes. He looks very bland – which is his job as he is there to blend into the background – with a suit and tie but in his time off he has three cats, he reads an enormous amount, he goes to the gym and is a devotee of House dancing. He is a diamond.

** Russian social kissing involves three points of contact (right cheek, left cheek, right cheek again) so when you have thirty odd medals to give out and most of the awardees are women this takes quite a while and involves a lot of friction.

Golly, it has been rather longer than I anticipated since my last Blog. Did you miss me? No, don’t answer that: scrupulous honesty might be unsettling and outright fibs may be bad for your Karma.

What has happened? Quite a lot really but at the same time not much. You know the feeling. I have been to Luxembourg to write about another garden but this time, instead of tearing back again, I was accompanied by both my sons so we overnighted in Brussels on the way back. Life is odd sometimes: haven’t been to Belgium for about thirty years then twice within a week. We decided that we needed to do a bit of rapid absorption of the ways of the Belge so we took the train from Luxembourg (very slow and rather uninteresting) to Brussels Central and then mooched about.

It is a remarkably scruffy city with a lot of graffiti, many empty lots and all the parks look a bit unkempt. Rather disappointing really, I thought it would be awash with EU sponsored spiffiness. Luxembourg is oozing shininess. We ate at the restaurant where, apparently, they invented Steak Tartare. That may, or may not, be the case (i) what it did mean was that one of us (me) had to eat an indecent quantity of raw meat – with chips. It was then considered churlish not to try the puddings which were all extremely large. I was defeated and Max had to step in. I know, I know it is very shaming when one’s child can eat more whipped cream, hot chocolate sauce, meringue and ice cream than you but that is one of the many humiliations a chap of declining years has to endure.

The next day we went to the Magritte Museum where two statuesque Flemish women fussed over whether we were allowed to put bags in the left luggage or whether they should be hung on hooks. Then we attended the music museum where you wander around wearing headphones and, whenever you pause near an exhibit, you connect with a wireless link that plays a snippet of solo Sackbut or a duet of Mandolin and Fife. Very jolly.

We then ate buckets of Mussels (with chips) and went off to catch the Eurostar.

On our return we then went off to Scotland where it was sometimes sunny and occasionally very wet (as is its won’t). I spent much of Saturday night dancing reels with the net result that my knees were a bit shaky the next day. Amongst others there were reels of the 51st, Dukes of Perth, Postie’s Jigs, Eightsomes, Willows were Stripped, Sergeants were Dashed, Gordons were Gayed, Canadian Barns were sorted and two completely knackering Highland Schottisches (thank you Jill) were cavorted. For those of you who have never done any Scottish Country Dancing then, believe me, you are missing out on a very joyous part of life. We have only one kilt in this family (that was made for my Great Grandfather – born 1860 – so it is quite ancient): it fits both my sons and I so we had a bit of a contretemps as to who was going to wear it: Max won. Which in retrospect was fortunate for the wider public as I had to spend some of Saturday evening up a ladder and one thing you do not want to do is accidentally look upwards when there is a bloke in a kilt half way up a ladder. Believe me, nobody looks that hot from that angle.

And now we are back and August stretches out before us: all the frantic excitements and rushing around tarting about on stages is over for the Summer. It was fun. The weird thing is that you never know whether or not it will be the last. Those of us who work for ourselves get used to answering to nobody – if I want to design a garden then I will. If I want to take a day off and do the weeding/eat bacon/go and watch my children do something/  then I can. When it comes to the other stuff there are people in conference rooms deciding who stays and who goes. So who knows if I will get to do it all again next year: I hope so.

Nothing at all one can do about it except smile. And never let them look up your kilt. In the meantime there are assorted clients that need sorting: I feel that I may not have actually written much about gardens for ages. Before we know it, it will be autumn and there will be bulbs and plants and wind and rain and business. Every year I decide to be organised and spend August preparing: every year I fail dismally by being distracted by other things. I have a huge distraction looming about which I will tell you more very soon.

I have also been reading quite a lot of RHS stuff in readiness for my first Council Meeting at the beginning of September. There is a lot to take in, fortunately most of it is quite interesting. I am sorting out which of the many committees I should be on: if I am let anywhere near anything to do with finance then you should probably pull the communication cord and have me ejected. The garden here is going through a bit of a sulky moment so this weekend I must roll up my sleeves and do a bit of thrashing about.

And it is my birthday: today.

The picture is of harvested poppy heads and I am listening to Soul Man by Sam and Dave.

(i) Apparently it could be credited to the Tatars who never had time to cook so ate raw meat tenderised by being tucked under their saddles all day. Which may explain at least some of the 9th Century carryings on around the Gobi Desert. They must have dreamed about a nice Cauliflower Cheese or simple Pork Pie after picking all that horse hair out of their teeth. To add extra confusion the dish is called Steak a l’Americaine: which seems to be a cause of passing the buck.

And a joyful New Year to everybody. I hope that all your Christmases were a delight.

I have been very industrious over the holiday period. I have not only succeeded in eating my weight in puddings but have also been defeated in many games of both skill and chance. Including a shamefully low score at Scrabble, a major pool table debacle, a humiliating retreat in Conquist (an iPad based Risk derivative) and a shambolically ill organised Monopoly property empire. Although I am still a bit of a demon at Trivial Pursuit.

One of the great things about Christmas are the periods of general idleness. I have spent some of these moments thinking about stuff. Most of it fleeting and irrelevant but that is, I suppose, the jellied backbone of this blog. Many of these things were just fleeting thoughts that burrowed rapidly through my brain like weevils through mouldy hard tack while I was trying to eat cheese or cut wood or something like that.

This is the abbreviated list

1. Peppa Pig and, by extension, Dora the Explorer. My children are beyond such things and my grandchildren as yet unconceived (unless someone is keeping a big secret) so I have no connection whatsoever with such things. This is a pity and only goes to show that there should be more babies in my life. Please could those readers of this blog who are of child bearing age please get on with it. I am also aware that I may be much better off without our Peppa: my dreams are still occasionally haunted by the theme tune to Thomas The Tank Engine.

2. Twitter: I love Twitter but how on earth does a furniture manufacturer in Singapore end up following me? On investigation (Christmas allows guilt free investigation of such things) it turns out that I am not only the only gardeny person but the only British person he has chosen to follow? Why?

Likewise Rick Wedding aka The Supply Guy from Cincinnati, Ohio. Why does he want to follow me? I certainly have no particular wish to follow him – delightful company though he may be. No matter what I might need supplied I am unlikely to want it delivered from Cincinnati. The venn diagram that joins us has a very slim central overlap.

3. I never have to play Rugger ever again: this is an almost constant source of cheeriness. I have played the game but not since I was about twelve. All I remember is that it was extremely cold, we were not allowed to wear extra jumpers and it was considered un-British to wear anything under your shorts. This misery was combined with freezing mud and many unattractive people trying to harm me. I was a small child and unsuited to violence. I have also noticed that a side effect of playing Rugby is the development of massive thighs. Another reason to be grateful.

4. Ferrero Rocher and Other chocolates. A Ferrero Rocher is not a terribly good chocolate. Even the nut is a disappointment. I think the rot set in when they dumped the Ambassador. Conversely the Lindt Santa/Snowman (and its Easter Equivalent, the Lindt Bunny) is pretty perfect if you want slightly sicky milk chocolate. Which all right minded people occasionally do: it is not always about the Cocoa count.

5. The word Lottie and my unstoppable march towards a pedantic and slightly grumpy middle age. I know it is convenient shorthand and is used by many people but I just don’t like the word. It makes me think of floral aprons,saveloys,happy clappy bishops, Janice from Friends and stringy beards. This in spite of the fact that I like the word Allotment very much even though it is one of those words that I am liable to misspell if rushed  (like amount and , indeed, misspell). I also like the words Turgid, Encephalitis and Dromedary.

6. The Financial Times: I think I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never understand high finance. The world of equities, gearing, asset turnover, liquidity ratios and p/e ratios are a foreign language to me. And not just a common or garden foreign language like French or Ancient Norse. A really obscure foreign language like Navajo or Quechua.

7. Figs.They lose their eroticism when dried and look more like pillow stuffing made from dried mushrooms. A fig roll, on theother hand, is extremely sexy. In a Mrs Robinson sort of way.

I will endeavour to write more about gardening next time. Or not. I have a fair bit of catching up to do as the snow was most discommoding. Especially as it has left my garden looking absolutely foul and devastated. I made a start at tidying things up a couple of days ago but did my back a terrible injury so have spent the last few days lying around being irritable and moaning. It is one of the less pleasant parts of getting older: the fact that even the simplest and seemingly innocent things can cause injury. In this case I did it by throwing a bit of old carpet onto the compost heap.

This is not a glamorous injury.

I am listening to Leonard Cohen singing First We Take Manhattan.

Two years ago I had a different post-Christmas list. Different but equally frivolous.

The picture is of  a pleasingly frosted birch.