NON-FICTION
As well as writing books and short stories, I also do non-fiction pieces - bits of observation on whatever is currently relevant. They're usually needed at short notice but that's fine - I'm keen on displacement activity and anything that provides a short break from the work-in-progress is welcome, especially if it still counts as 'work'. So if you happen to be a magazine editor in urgent need of a new (or guest) columnist, I'd like to be up for an audition please. The two items that follow were originally published in The Times.
This Year's Garden
Long ago, a garden was where you grew your dinner. Or if you were Polly Garter in Under Milk Wood you grew babies and washing. Anything remotely decorative, plant-wise, served merely to disguise the pigsty and the privy at the far end of your plot.
Whoever decided that the garden should be decreed an outdoor room must take the rap for turning gardening into a hugely competitive neighbourhood event. If you've seen more than one garden makeover show you'll never again simply sling down a nice rectangular lawn, hang up your begonia baskets and relax into an old stripy deckchair, assuming all's well. These programmes were responsible for a huge run on those willow fronds for woven screens. They are why, from your seat on any suburban train, you can spot rows of backyard fences painted the colours of sugared almonds. This spring, I'll predict with quiet confidence that every other car emerging from a nursery will have a well-grown silver birch hanging its sad head out of the boot and that women of a certain age (eg me) will have Monty Don in mind when wondering if they should Get A Man In for a bit of a dig-over.
Any follower of truly elegant garden fashion will know that if it's selling like hot-pink surfinias down at the garden centre then it's laughably passé. Those frondy New Zealand tree ferns for example, they're just so last century. If you bought a big, vicious agave last summer you should be praying the frost turns it to mush to save you from this season's derision from your more clued-up neighbours. Luckily for you and your credibility, those glorious banana trees you planted last June in voguish optimism will be thoroughly dead by now, unless you ruthlessly hacked off the leaves and bound up the stumps in agricultural fleece. All-white border planting has long gone the way of chintzy curtains and as for acres of decking, well, frankly, chop it all up right now and burn it in last summer's terra cotta chiminiere. Replace it (and bear in mind I'm talking this week only) with sensuous water-drizzled pebbles in a thousand lavender hues.
This summer's supremely chic garden demands A Structure: something large and useful down at the far end (glimpsed from the house through rare, expensive foliage) that doubles as a home office, a haven from the infants, an entertainment area or, realistically, somewhere for guests to huddle and drink while a poor fool braves the rain and tends the barbecue. (You're still allowed one of those but only in stainless steel, absurdly shiny and shaped like a tombola drum). A massive pink adobe cave just beyond the chunky 100 year-old olive should impress. Or a free-form, shanty-esque, post-modern shed in Perspex and aluminium with a rough-hewn back wall in cerulean blue dotted with tiny twinkly lights, randomly winking, firefly-style. Do not be tempted to paint up an ordinary shed in bold stripes and pretend it looks like a Southwold beach hut. Instead check out photos of dusty Caribbean roadside bars and copy those if you really favour something vivid on the cheap.
Plant-wise you're still allowed a small selection of flowers, so long as they don't obscure your plaited reed path. It is alright to have plants that clash a bit, as long as it's all madly random and doesn't resemble a municipal display. Poisonous ones like Brugmansia and aconites are excellent for that edgy, living-dangerously feeling. Colour-wise, orange has made a come-back though you must choose calendulas and nasturtiums, not those stumpy marigolds. If you put in tall, eternally classy chocolate crocosmias and delphiniums they'll distract from your hideous purple fence, which one day soon you'll need to replace with twisted hazel-stick panels. Or at least I think you will. After reading the above you might want to wait a week or two. I don't want you to blame me if it's all different by then.
Wimbledon
That's a nice little job, I used to think each summer, seeing the smart logo-covered Wimbledon tennis courtesy cars zapping around as I did the school run. Imagining the drivers' perks to include free tickets, insider gossip and a chance to gawp through the bars of that shiny cage labelled Glamour, I applied and was relieved that super-model appearance wasn't required. Middle-aged mummies, more used to ferrying squabbling children, were welcome so long as they had The Knowledge at near-taxi-level. You were not allowed to prop the A to Z on the steering wheel and follow the mysterious streets with your finger. You also needed the confidence to whiz round Marble Arch while working out the route to the Metropolitan Hotel via Queen's Club with furious losing players in the back seats raging long and loud about the line judges.
We were a diverse bunch: nurses, musicians, actors, genuine cabbies, new graduates, artists and tennis fanatics who spent every spare moment blagging their way into vacant seats on Centre Court. We had three training days learning the required route to Gatwick, how to search our cars for bombs and discovering that, far from having a prestige job, we were to be paid less than the lady who cleaned the loos and be told off like naughty fourth-formers for leaving coffee cups lying around and putting our feet on the sofas. Our one free ticket had Restricted View stamped across it. The uniform would have made even Kate Moss's bum look big and seemed designed specially to scupper the ambitions of the several glam-blonde hopefuls with big earrings, eager to pull a well-seeded player.
As the Wimbledon tennis fortnight began, I was disappointed not to be allocated my personal hyper-athlete to chauffeur around. You could be driving Roger Federer or a tearful Bulgarian first-round loser, an elderly ex-champ or a global tennis official savouring the annual fortnight of uniformed glory. You could also be sent anywhere: to one of the official championship hotels (oh joy, you knew the way) or to the far end of St. John's Wood or Woking. The players whinged constantly about the London traffic and one driver, taking the new winner back to his hotel after he'd bagged the championship, simply gave up and took him home to his own very surprised mother for a cup of tea till the crowds dispersed.
We were either frantically busy or doing of lot of idle hanging around. In the early mornings I would be sent to one of the hotels where a dozen of us would gossip and grumble and drink coffee till a player or two got up and sleepily requested a ride to the practice courts. One driver, booked by John MacEnroe, was treated to a slap-up breakfast while the great man conducted an interview. The glam-blondes tinkered with their mascara in hotel cloakrooms and their capacious handbags accommodated strappy little frocks and recreational underwear in the hope of a prized invitation to the Players' Lounge. One girl was fired for extending the 'courtesy' aspect of the car service a bit far and being caught in a Hugh Grant situation at the back of car-park 4 with a highly rampant Swedish player. A pair of skiving drivers were also discovered on Wimbledon Common amorously checking out the versatility of the Ford Galaxy's seating arrangements.
Our passengers were a severe patience test. A notoriously mouthy player rowed so violently with his coach that the driver stopped the car and sat calmly reading a newspaper on a nearby wall till they quietened down. Some players cried a lot, slopped coffee all over the car seats, left their racquets in the boot or talked non-stop (so irritating this) about how many millions they'd made that year. I found it pretty disconcerting, negotiating the Hammersmith one-way system, to catch a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of my pair of East European female passengers snogging passionately in the seat behind me.
We drivers saw the best tennis when it rained. The transport HQ overlooked the indoor courts with an exclusive view of, say Venus Williams and Anna Kournikova having a swift knock-about on one court with possibly Andies Murray and Roddick on the next one.
I did the job for six years - but once my children had grown up I decided I no longer needed to chauffeur unruly brats around, not even for money.