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  Mr Milton replied that is was a gulf profound as that Serbonian bog betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, where armies whole have sunk.

  Mr Pope said my God was he really going to go on like this for twelve bleeding books at public expense? Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, to draw nutrition, propagate, and rot?

  Mr John Keats said that, as convenor of the Plumbing Sub-Committee, he was looking into the whole question of the refurbishment of the toilet facilities. It would not stop at a new pan and lilac seat; what he had in mind was a bower quiet for them, full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

  Mr Pope asked Mr Shelley who his friend was.

  Mr Shelley replied that he never was attached to that great sect whose doctrine was that each one should select out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, and all the rest, though fair and wise, commend to cold oblivion.

  Mr Pope enquired whether Mr Shelley had met Mr Milton. It was his opinion that if they ever put their heads together, they would be able to come up with thirty-eight books on anything, Still, cold oblivion wasn’t a bad phrase to describe the Members’ Gents, if that was what he was talking about; better than a quiet bower full of people breathing, mind, though he couldn’t, of course, answer for Mr Coleridge.

  Mr William Shakespeare enquired of Mr Keats why they did pine within and suffer dearth, painting their outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, did they upon their fading mansion spend?

  Mr Keats replied that they required an unimaginable lodge for solitary thinkings; such as dodge conception to the very bourne of heaven, then leave the naked brain.

  Mr Shakespeare said that if he understood correctly what Mr Keats had in mind, were the walls of the new khazi not going to end up covered in verse jottings, and would this not be an irritation to those wishing to lock themselves in cubicles the better to read the small print on their contracts so as not to end up with three bloody tragedies running simultaneously on Broadway and not even a percentage of the gross after producer’s profits?

  Mr Keats said he couldn’t help it, the stuff just poured out of him. He informed them that he had been taught in Paradise to ease his breast of melodies.

  Sir Edmund Spenser reminded them that at the last meeting, he had sought an undertaking that the new lavatory would be painted in goodly colours gloriously arrayed, but had as yet received no word from the committee as to what these colours might be. Three months had now passed.

  Replying, Mr Shelley said he rather fancied azure, black, and streaked with gold, fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

  Mr Marvell said what about orange bright, like golden lamps in a green night?’

  Or, interjected Mr Shakespeare, what about having the majestical roof fretted with golden fire? It might cost a bob or two, he added, but it would not half impress publishers.

  Mr Gerard Manley Hopkins said that he personally had always rather gone for dappled thing.

  Green, said Mr Walt Whitman, green, green, green, green, green.

  The committee looked at him.

  Mr Milton expressed the opinion, after a short silence, that they were not getting anywhere. Chaos umpire sat, he continued, and by decision more embroiled the fray by which he reigned.

  Mr Pope asked God to help him.

  Mr Wordsworth said that as he had opened the proceedings, it was only fitting, not to say nicely constructed, that he should sum up. He then invited the committee to remember that dust as they were, the immortal spirit grew, like harmony in music; there was a dark inscrutable workmanship that reconciled discordant elements, made them cling together in one Society.

  Mr Pope said ho ho ho.

  The meeting rose at 4.26 pm.

  31

  The Hounds Of Spring Are On Winter’s

  Traces, So That’s Thirty-Eight-Pounds-Forty,

  Plus Making Good, Say, Fifty Quid

  This is the week, according to my much-thumbed copy of Milly-Molly-Mandy Slips A Disc, when winter officially knocks off for a few days, the swallows return from Africa to foul the greenhouse roof, and you and I be a-diggin’ and a-stretchin’ and a-sweatin’ as we work away with that most indispensable of gardening tools, the wallet.

  And, as no newspaper or magazine is currently worth its salt without a few inches of pithy advice to the dehibernating gardener, it has fallen to my lot to deliver this year’s handy hints. And if you think a sentence containing both salt and lot has been cobbled together as a subtle augury of the doom lying just beyond the french windows, then you might as well stop reading immediately: anyone who has time to work out textual cruces of that convoluted order clearly has nothing more effortful to bother about than a window box with a plastic begonia cemented to it. This piece is for committed gardeners only; although those who have not yet been committed may, of course, read it while waiting for the ambulance.

  FENCES

  This is the time of year to get together with your neighbour over the question of repairs to fences, trellises, and so on, that have deteriorated or even collapsed during the winter. I have always found that the best implement for dealing with this problem is a small hammer. If you have a large neighbour, then take a large hammer.

  BLACKWOOD

  Similar to the above, and particularly satisfying for bridge-players. You creosote your fencing somewhat enthusiastically, with the result that your neighbour’s herbaceous border drops dead. He then digs a large trench on his side, until light shows between the soil and your new fencing. This is known as the Small Spade Opening. The conventional reply is Two Clubs.

  CORM, BULB, TUBER AND RHIZOME

  Not, of course, the long-established firm of country solicitors they might appear to the uninitiated, but the business end of those perennial plants which we gardeners carefully took up at the first sign of winter. At the first sign of spring, take them carefully out of their boxes and throw them away.

  Exactly why all perennial roots die during the winter is an issue on which botanical opinion has long been divided: many experts argue that those stored in garages have an adverse reaction to being run over, and that this, coupled with the frost coming through the window the sack fell off in October and that nobody’s wife got around to putting back up, explains why so many bulbs go flat and black during the weeks immediately prior to replanting.

  Many other things, however, can carry off the apparently healthy corm, e.g. dogs, children, dailies with empty tubs at home, but since the plants will be dead anyway, these do not call for the hammer treatment.

  THINGS LIKE GERANIUMS

  Now is the time to go and look at the things like geraniums which you left in the ground all winter, knowing that if you lifted them, potted them, and stored them the way the books recommend, they would all die of mould. Left in the ground, they die anyway but at least you don’t break your nails. If they haven’t died in the ground, they are not geraniums but merely things and your best bet is to burn them off with a blow-lamp (see below under BLOW-LAMP) because otherwise they will take over the entire garden by March 23.

  BLOW-LAMP

  Now is the time to take down your blow-lamp and run. Because of an extremely complicated chemical process it would take far too long to elaborate upon, much gets up blow-lamp spouts between Michaelmas and yesterday morning. When you attempt to prime and light the blowlamp, it ignites your suit. The way to avoid this happening is called £3.95.

  MOTOR MOWER

  The motor mower is exactly similar to the blow-lamp in principle, but rather more sophisticated, which means that after it ignites your suit, it takes your fingers off at the knuckle as well. The best thing to do is call in an expert, but make sure you phone before April 3, 1948, as they get pretty booked up at this time of year. You can always use a HAND MOWER if you want to lose the entire hand. This comes about through trying to remove last year’s long grass which has become wound round the axle and, by an extremely complicated chemical process it would take far too long to elaborate upon, turned to ir
on. Again, there is a traditional country remedy for both these problems and your bank manager would be pleased to advise you.

  LAWNS

  Now you have your new lawn-mower, you will want to get something to cut, since all lawns are annual. A few tufts here and there may have survived the winter, but upon closer inspection these will turn out to be clumps of clover, sawgrass, couch-grass, and the cat. What your lawn needs now is feeding and planting. Many people ask me how I achieve a lawn like a billiard-table, i.e. no grass anywhere and full of holes, and I usually recommend any one of a dozen products now on the market in which various chemicals have been carefully blended to ensure that you will be back next year to try again. If you read the labels on these products, you will see that they may not be used either after it has rained or before it is due to rain, thus protecting the manufacturers from complaints lodged by anyone other than an astrologer with his eye in. Sprinkle these on the grass, watch them blow onto the roses, dig up and burn the roses, wait two days for the grass to be eaten away, dig over, pave, and sell the mower back. You can, of course, avoid this costly process by using lawn sand, a preparation used by experts wishing to turn lawn into sand, and there is much to be said for having a nice stretch of beach between your fences: put up an umbrella, a couple of deckchairs, and an electric fire on a long lead, and you could be in Baffin Land.

  MANURE

  Now is the time of year when you will want to think about top-dressing your rose-beds, and why not? There’s no harm in thinking. Many people, it seems to me, worry far too much about finding true horse manure, when the commercial preparations available are just as good, bearing in mind that by the time you get them off the shovel, the roses have already begun to succumb to rust, leaf-mould, white-spot, black-spot, and greenfly. There is little point, surely, in chasing up and down the country with a spade and bucket merely in order to give a few dead twigs a nice send-off.

  SEEDS

  Children, I find, are always amazed that everything in the garden was once a little seed; particularly so when the packet of Sweet William they have nurtured so painstakingly is soon burgeoning as an assortment of diseased hollyhocks, misshapen sunflowers, chickweed, and an evil-smelling ground-cover that spreads like lava and is almost certainly carnivorous.

  In the garden, seeds fall into two categories (a) the cracks in the path, and (b) where starlings have breakfast. To avoid wastage, therefore, grow all seeds in a greenhouse where, if it is properly heated, they will die before they can do any damage.

  WATER

  No garden can possibly flourish without adequate supplies of water. Now is the time of year to cut off the split ends of hoses so that they fit snugly onto the tap, or would if the jubilee clip hadn’t rusted solid during the winter with the drip that was coming out of the tap before the pipe burst during the cold snap. Having replaced the upstand pipe, tap, and jubilee clip, bandage the fingers and secure the neatly cut hose; which, as a result of having been neatly cut, will now be some nine inches too short to reach the one bed which requires permanent watering. Never mind, any nurseryman or ironmonger’s will be able to supply you with an extra length of hose and a connecting-link with which you can easily fail to connect the new bit with the old, since the old is too thick to go into the end of the connecting-link. The best course is to buy an entirely new hose of the required length; there is no other method of finding out that the tap you have just soldered onto the upstand pipe (since you had no means to hand of threading the pipe to take a nut) is itself .05 of a millimetre wider than the hose.

  While you’re at the nursery/ironmonger’s, be sure to buy a sprinkler: there are two main varieties, the one that fails to spin round, and the one that fails to sweep from left to right and back again. Personally, I prefer the latter: at least you get half the garden sodden and know which side the shrubs are going to rot. The other variety sets up little oases at random, and it is all too easy, when strolling across a recently watered stretch, to find oneself sinking up to the shin in a tiny local quicksand.

  GARDENING ADVICE ARTICLES

  Now is the time of year to stop writing gardening advice articles and move into a tower block.

  Appendix

  The Bulletins of Idi Amin

  32

  All O’ De People, All De Time

  ‘General Amin is to sell off the two thousand motor cars left behind by exiled Ugandan Asians.’

  Daily Telegraph

  Good morning, I see you is lookin’ at de famous Humber Super Snipe 1959 what only done 2,000 miles, all that on gravel drive by dis ole lady what is using it fo’ going down to de gate to git de milk, a bargain at fifteen hunnerd poun’, also you helpin’ de economy no end. What you lookin’ at there, boy?

  It lookin’ like de treacherous rust to me.

  Yeah, well you is an ignorant bugger, you go on like dat you is li’ble to wine up wid a spanner in de head, de price jus’ went up to eighteen hunnerd an’ fifty. What you got to say to that, boy?

  Dis brown coachwork is damn elegant. What de fuel consummertion like?

  Gittin’ aroun’ two hunnerd mile per gallon, cheapest fuel. Dis car designed to run on anything. Conk out in de middle of nowhere, jus’ piss in de tank, you is good for another fifty mile. Also note de fine upholstery.

  Hum. It all depending whether you a fan of de plastic. Pussonally, I find it stick to de bum, but . . .

  Look, it my normal opinion de customer is always right, but that don’t mean I ain’t gonna git a coupla colonels down here to walk about on your face if you give me any more of this kinda lip. You is looking at genuine pigskin there, boy. It bin treated to look like plastic on account of dis car bin built for gennelmen who ain’t in the habit of bein’ flash and goin’ on about de three-piece suite. Dis also account for de lack of windows, what gets specially knocked out at de factory. Look at cheap cars, fust thing you notice is they all got windows.

  Ain’t no carpet on de floors.

  Yeah, well you prob’ly noticing where there ain’t no dining table neither, with lace cloff and wine bucket. This is on account of you ain’t lookin’ at a whorehouse parlour, son; it got a wheel on each corner, and we calls it a car. Take no notice of de price-tag, we knockin’ dis one out at two grand, special offer, including free dog.

  Can I have a run roun’ de block?

  Sure you can, it a free country, boy, you run where you likes, I ain’t promisin’ de car gonna be here when you gits back, this here automobile is a hot bargain at twennyfive hunnerd, no cheques.

  Hum. What kind of guarantee you givin’?

  Normal guarantee. Anything you find you don’t like about dis top-class car, jus’ give us a ring and we’ll come roun’ and kick your teef in. Where de money?

  Hold on here, I don’t have to buy it.

  True, son, true. Don’t have to spend de nex’ ten years gittin’ about on crutches, neither. Remember, you is doin’ dis for de good of your country.

  You sure about that?

  Lissen, boy, would I lie to you?

  33

  A Word F’om De Sponsor

  You prob’ly seen de well-known David Frost on De Amin Programme de other night, just show you de strides Uganda makin’ under de new management, never got no David Frost comin’ out here for De Milton Obote Show.

  Pussonally, I got a lot of time for D. Frost, also for anybody what gittin’ to de top, irrespectable of de talent an’ de qualifications, no use havin’ de four O-levels includin’ Eng. Lit. if you ain’t got de drive to go wid it, all very well bein’ able to explain in your own words wot Macduff sayin’ to Banquo in Act V, also how many times anyone usin’ a oxymoron, but it ain’t much help when de Opposition want to know wot you bin doin’ wid de Oxfam money. Only thing you need then is a big stick wid a nail in de end, an’ bugger de plot of de well-known Sense an’ Prejudice, dat James Austin spendin’ too much time hangin’ about wid ole women to know wot life all about.

  Anyhow, after de consid’able success of my tee vee show,
I bin plannin’ de summer schedules, an’ I reckon we got a pretty good season lined up. Kickin’ off mose evenin’s wid It A Knockout, where we got two teams of Asians competing for de famous one-way economy ticket, got to shin up a greasy pole wid their families, winner gittin’ de ticket an’ a chance to go on de Treasure Trail for de val’able bus-ride to Kampala Airport. Dat shapin’ up as a chart-topper, look like beatin’ public executionin’ in de ratings. Close second we got Dis Your Life, where people comin’ on an’ sayin’ how they bin at school wid me and I a fust-rate board monitor and a natural leader, also all my own teef, and then we got de News wot gonna be all about de boomin’ economy and de footer results and how Nyerere keepin’ pigs in de bath. Also runnin’ Git Out, dat de programme for de foreign residents, explainin’ in their own language about where to leave de stamp colleckertions an’ de gole fillins etcetera and where to stand for de next bus. Big one for Sat’day nights is Sale Of De Century, got to shift these damn cars somehow, got de rust showin’ now, an’ de upper-holstery full o’ rats, followed by De Source Of De Nile where you get me tracin’ de history of Africa in song, doin’ such famous nummers as Swanee, Sonny Boy, an’ de ever-pop’lar Shine On Harvest Moon immortalised by T.S. Elliot and his Quartet.

  Also got an entire new line in de Late Night chat show. Amazin’ how people in England an’ America bin puttin’ up wid de crap all these years, nothin’ goin’ on but three people gettin’ asked questions under de spotlight, an’ if they don’t feel like answerin’ they goin’ ‘Har, har, har!’ or similar an’ Morris Parkinson sayin’ ‘Okay, now we gittin’ a song from Lord Wigg’s latest LP’, an’ that way people slidin’ out from de awkward questions all de time. Ain’t gonna be dat way in Uganda. People comin’ on my Late Night show, I gonna say ‘Right, Mbibi, what happenin’ to de Annual Outin’ Fund?’ and if Mbibi start goin’ ‘Har, har, har!’ he gonna git a kick in de mouf, jus’ for openers. If dat ain’t workin’, he gonna be hangin’ by his thumbs for de rest of de programme, an’ if dat ain’t de best way to git de rest of de guests shapin’ up, I don’t know what is.