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Ian McMillan: A Slice of Paradise in my theatre of dreams
I'M sitting at the top of our garden in what I call my Slice of Paradise; it's a shady area that catches the play of light on the leaves in the late afternoon sun, and it's a place where I feel the cares of the world are far, far away.
I love this little bit of the garden so much that if I was an MP, I'd claim for it. Twice, with knobs on. Knobs that I'd also claim for.
Here at the top of the garden I feel like I'm in a film, one of those French films that I love, where nothing happens except that somebody sits in a garden for a bit and then somebody else comes in and sits down and there's a bit of talk (in French, of course, so I have subtitles) and then somebody throws a baguette and somebody runs away.
As I sit in my Slice of Paradise, though, I have to acknowledge that the garden means many things to many different people.
To my wife, it's her hobby and her delight. She loves gardening and, when she can, she's out in it for as long as possible, making it beautiful, being creative with it in a way I could never understand, redrafting and restructuring the garden like I redraft and restructure these columns.
Maybe this paragraph needs more compost; perhaps I should water my sentences more, and weed out the words I don't need.
That's how she is with the garden; I simply experience it, but she makes it happen. I've tried to help, but I know she tolerates my clumsiness and she can't wait till I've gone, just so that she can rearrange things how she wants them. I suppose I'd feel the same if she started raking and hoeing the things I was writing.
To our grandson, Thomas, it's an enormous and mysterious playground. The bit where we keep the bins was a jail last summer, where he'd lock me in and then pretend to fall asleep so that I could escape and then he could wake up and lock me in again.
When he was a lot younger, the Slice of Paradise was a Deep Dark Wood where Hansel and Gretel got lost, and the shed was the Gingerbread House.
These last few weeks, the garden's been the site of some epic football matches, with Barnsley beating Arsenal 23-nil. When Thomas is the goalkeeper and I score a goal against him, I shout "Pick that out of the onion bag!" which he thinks is the funniest thing he's ever heard. His version of it is "Take that, you onion bag!", which is possibly even funnier.
Slice of Paradise, workplace, theatre of dreams: the garden is all things to all people. And what about the animals and birds? To the blackbirds, it's a combination of brownfield new house-building site and lovers' retreat. There's been a blackbird building a nest in the hedge about a yard from the conservatory. All last week he was zipping in and out of the hedge with pinpoint accuracy, which is hard to do when you've got a mouthful of straw.
The other day, I caught my wife gazing at the hedge, which was all of three feet from where she was sitting, with a pair of binoculars. Well, she keeps saying her eyes are getting worse.
"Can't you see the hedge?" I said. She looked annoyed. "I'm looking at the blackbird dodging in and out of the nest," she said, testily. As though it was obvious and as though I was a bloke in a French film whose subtitles weren't working.
When the blackbirds aren't building their nests, they're, to use the old-fashioned term, courting. In fact, to use another old-fashioned term, they're courting strong.
They start whistling at each other from about four o'clock in the morning and then, once we're all up and we've had our breakfasts, they're chasing each other round the garden like honeymoon couples.
The wood pigeons are the same, although they're slightly slower, slightly less urgent. They're like a plump, middle-aged couple wandering down the front at Scarborough with a bag of chips. Somebody once described a wood pigeon as "walking like a tea kettle", and they're not far wrong.
Slice of Paradise, workplace, football stadium, house-building site and lovers' retreat. My garden is all these things. And it's a race track as well.
Most mornings I see a couple of snails (presumably different ones) inching down the path. They appear, to my untrained eye, to be having a race. The Watching Paint Dry Stakes. The Time Stands Still Handicap.
I go and make a cup of tea and they're still in the same place. Well, almost. It's like a slowed-down French film.
Welcome to my garden: Slice of Paradise, workplace, football stadium, house-building site, lovers' retreat, and racetrack.
But mainly, it's a Slice of Paradise.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
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