The garden which came with the house was far too small. Buster — clearly a martyr to claustrophobia — regularly burst through the hedge into what used to be The Hall’s orchard. Then, unable to burst back again, he howled in frustrated rage until I rescued him. So, in a fit of uncharacteristic extravagance, I made an irresistible offer for the orchard and the kitchen garden which adjoined it. I dimly remembered that an extortionate price — paid for a specific piece of land, because no other piece of land would meet the purchaser’s needs — is called Ricardian Rent. As I made out the cheque, remembering that useless fact was a great comfort to me.
So I acquired a dozen fungus-infected fruit trees at the foot of a steep slope that was covered in feral rhubarb. Up on the skyline a greenhouse — which made the Crystal Palace look like a cucumber frame — leant against a 12-foot wall. There was also a potting shed, in which I found an old Vote Conservative poster. We demolished the potting shed, tore up the poster, gave the greenhouse away, sprayed or replaced the fungoid trees and turned the slope into steppes which a Russian kulak would have been proud to cultivate. The man who looked after my garden (now retired) determined to make the top terrace resemble the bowling green on which he spent his weekends. He would (no doubt) have succeeded had I not wanted to play rough croquet.
Rough croquet is like the smooth variety but involves less skill and more cheating. The hoops are sunk into the ground in the same geometric relationship to each other with a peg similarly stuck between them into the lawn — a word which is permissible when preceded by ‘croquet’, though not when used to describe the patch of near-bald earth over which my father pushed his rattling mower 50 years ago.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in