If I were an influencer, which – thank goodness I’m not, because it’s almost impossible to remember an occasion when I’ve ever influenced anyone – I might try to persuade you to buy an imaginary lifestyle aid from this imaginary pub in the countryside. Could one of my zircon encrusted (thanks Mr Zappa) podgers change your life?
This modestly brilliant idea came to me shortly after I typed the last few bits of data into the database of my plant finds which I started on August 21st last year and finished two days ago. It was always a pretty hubristic venture: to attempt to gather together all my random photos, notebooks and printed lists from the last fifteen years into one unified searchable database. It has been a huge deal; soaking up many hours and days checking and verifying all those years of misidentifications, absent locations and mystery plants in six thousand data chunks.
The idea of the lifestyle podger came into my head when I was trying to think of a way of harmonising all the things I (we) get up to. To name three, for instance, there’s botanising (looking for plants), allotmenteering and writing; any one of which could soak up every bit of energy I possess. An image from the past popped into my head which I thought might serve as a metaphor for juggling with half a dozen balls.
One of my first jobs was as a labourer in a steel erecting firm where I’d got in by lying about my ability to arc weld. I could write for days about that factory; the noise, the smells and the language – but I remembered a tool which I’m sure we called a bodger but which a bit of research reveals as a podger. So intense was the noise from the machinery we were using I was probably mishearing the ‘p’ for a ‘b’. My deafness and tinnitus now are in all likelihood the result of sawing up RSJ’s with a huge hydraulic saw and no ear protection. Anyway, when you reached the stage of putting the steel up with all its bolt holes correctly drilled you had to align the pieces which were heavy and difficult to manoeuvre into place, especially at height. The podger – a tool with a bent spike at one end and a spanner at the other – was how you did it. If you could get the podger through he corresponding holes in two lengths of rolled steel joist you could put the first and then a second bolt into place to align the pieces and then bolt them together securely.
My idea was to represent the airborne ballet of swinging lengths of heavy joist as we joined them together and made a structure from all the random pieces – as a metaphor for the way you might try to form all of the demanding activities of a life into a structure that makes some kind of sense. All I would need would be a form of invisible podger – and the nerve to believe that any kind of organisation is better than chaotically staggering from one demand to the next like someone with a huge credit card debt and just a few tenners to hold the bailiffs at bay.
And so – the Potwell Inn zircon encrusted lifestyle podger – on sale today at the heavily discounted price of tuppence – before the hostile reviews put me out of business!
I thought I’d be more pleased than I was when I finished bringing the database up to date. Seven months of work and I’d turned a heap of reminiscences into something sensational and powerfully useful, and yet the price had been to neglect writing on the blog – which slowed to a crawl, and to leave the allotment to its own devices for the whole of that time. When the unstoppable tide of spring started up a few weeks ago I was feeling completely demoralized; and months of sitting in front of a computer screen had wasted any physical strength and resilience I might have built up last season.
So it was time to wield the podger and align the elements in time for sowing, planting, writing and botanising while we waited for the campervan to be repaired after a botched cam-belt replacement had left us stranded on the motorway for hours. Words were exchanged with the garage owner who only slowly acknowledged his responsibility and offered to do all the repairs under warranty. The latest report on the blogging showed that the number of loyal readers (thank you all) is slowly increasing. Meanwhile we spent the time (planned for two missed adventures) on the allotment and the new season (at last) looks do- able. I suppose a time will come when our bodies will refuse to rise to the occasion but – it seems – not this year, praise be! Next year – with new knees installed, Madame will be dancing the tango once more.
A couple of days ago we were in a garden centre buying some new raspberry canes and a Malus for the container garden outside the flat when I ended up having a flirty conversation with a couple of women at the till. Madame thoughtfully stepped back and allowed me my moment in the sun; then later asked me if I was planning on bringing one of them home. Even the faintest miasma of possibility was further than I could stretch – and in any case we’re soon off to Cornwall for our first adventure of the season. I haven’t managed to bolt the bits of my life together yet, but my default melancholic disposition has slunk into the background.
Oh and a couple of discoveries that I made over the past seven months-
- Always identify a plant on the day you found it and while you can still see it and look at the bits you’ll wish (ten years on) that you’d paid more attention to.
- Don’t trust a mobile phone grid reference – they’ll sometimes leave you literally at sea. Those glorious lat and long numbers on the exif data will convert into a completely inaccurate National Grid reference that might have some poor soul in the future searching on the wrong side of the river.
- Don’t disdain the very ordinary common plants. They lead fascinating lives notwithstanding their roguish reputation as weeds.
- Notice everything. I’ve been seeing but not looking at the mistletoe plant above for ten years and never paid any attention to it. No idea why it suddenly popped into my mind.
