The sun is in his heaven, the roses have climbed with dreamy sensuous athleticism to the tops of the trees and combined their scent with that of the elder flowers whilst at ground level the lavenders are about to shoot forth into their dazzling porphyrogenic purple, - if you are too mundane to join me in Elysium perhaps I should  just say we flog named varieties of Lavender in two litre pots for £4.80 a go. So with  double the number of hits on our web site this week compared to the previous week, (which may have been the effect of Chelsea or this blog, who knows?) And with the whole place smelling like the cross between a queen’s boudoir and a  fortified wine distillery, we could have expected a rip-roaring sell-out week .

Not a bit of it, the Council stuck a sign at the bottom of the hill saying “Road Closed”. OK so the road three miles closer to Bristol is reminiscent of the one connecting Tirana to the airport before the Albanians did it up, and no less filthy what with the garbage fly-tipped from the sink-estates on the other side of the hill, but that’s nothing to do with our stretch of tarmac. When I rung the council some disinterested woman said she knew nothing about it but that someone who did would call back  and of course didn’t. I tried again this morning and got some considerably more switched-on bloke who demonstrated that if there wasn’t a floor-level glass ceiling in the Bath Council offices, they should install one forthwith. He said  that his lot hadn’t erected the sign, it was North Somerset, the adjoining Council. I suggested it was somewhat cavalier that they could invade neighbouring territory and trash the businesses on it. It would be good if they could follow Central Government initiatives and declare war over the issue. Of course both councils are taken up with the cruel dilemma of how they can appeal to the strident greenies and nimbys who make up a disproportionate amount of the local electorate by checking the expansion of Bristol airport, whilst continuing to line their pockets from it. Personally I am all for it, I am too deaf to be inconvenienced by the noise of the aircraft and look forward to the day when I don’t have to leave great plodding carbon foot prints all the way to Stansted  when I want to see my children in France.

I shall start to worry about my carbon footprints when members of the government renounce flying around the world in the cause of the white-elephantine Olympics, not so much leaving a footprint as dropping the turds of  an entire herd of elephants.

One person who did run the council blockade was the wife of a neighbouring nursery owner who launched forth on such a politically-incorrect tirade  that the PM’s ears must have been incandescent. Obviously given the frequency of such comments and his radar-scanner like appendages, it’s not surprising that the area in between them has become burnt out. I thought how pleasant it would be to have her sit on my sofa with a glass of wine and heckle the Blairites on “Question Time”, such thoughts of course had nothing to do with the fact that her figure clearly hasn’t changed since she was 17.  

Orders continue to pour in, keeping me reluctantly tied to the computers which enliven life by crashing constantly. If I was sufficiently energetic to be paranoid, I would say that the malevolent, virus-riddled brutes are picking on me, but ask anyone you know how their computer is functioning and you get the same groan, either that the man’s coming to fix it tomorrow or it’s in the repair shop.  Incidentally my virus software insists that the computers are pristine, would that the Bristol hospitals or even my kitchen were in a similar state

As a result of the day-job plus the computers, the idea of turning my paper on the History of Sicily into a blog has gone a bit splatty specially since the theme overlaps with the report the RHS asked for in return for partially funding the trip.  It all started out as an attempt to answer the old question of the extent to which Robert of Anjou and his daughter were influenced by Sicily in the design of their garden at Hesdin and how far their concepts rippled across Europe. Harvey says not one bit and others with all the wondrous ferocity with which an academic dispute can be imbued, take the opposite view I must admit that until I became involved in it, I was inclined to the latter standpoint but I have had to re-think and very fascinating it is too. Not just Robert’s fornicating monkeys which have captured (well, sort of) the imagination of garden historians everywhere, but the more gardeny sort of things like hard landscaping.  One recurring theme in the investigation is the “Tristan” legend, discussion of  its Sicilian connection has been knocking around at least since John Addington Symonds explored it in the nineteenth century. More recently it has been connected to ancient Persian legends as has the blue background  of “The Paradise Garden” of the Master of the Upper Rhine.  All of which is undoubtedly extremely  tedious to those whose only interest in this blog is to try and get a clue as to why their mint won’t grow…. but just think how closely the ability to make a decent cup of coffee followed the Islamic migrations around the Mediterranean basin and you too will be engrossed.