hay festival
After years of squatting and renting I managed to get onto the property ladder and buy a lovely first floor flat in Camberwell, south London.

During the first few weeks we decorated the place and put our personal mark on the house. I even bought some power tools now that I was a responsible adult and I put up some shelves in the study. While I was cutting wood outside the house my neighbour who lives downstairs came out and we had a chat. He said he needed to put up some shelves because his mum was an editor and she sends him lots of books and he just had them piled up in his room.

It felt quite manly and grown up when I lent him my jig-saw, drill and a readers digest DIY book and he made some shelves and bought me a bottle of wine as a thank-you.

A few weeks later I was going to the Hay Literary Festival because my sister's boyfriend was having an exhibition there. When I saw my neighbour again I asked him if he was going to the festival and he said he wasn't but his Mum was going because she loved it, he said “It's like Glastonbury for old people” and it is. The streets are full of the blue rinse brigade just dawdling about and randomly stopping in front of you for no reason or to stare at buildings. He said his Mum was doing a talk there so I got her name and said I would look her up if I had time.

I got to the festival for the second weekend and found in the guide that she was doing a talk at 11am on the Sunday morning about her new book about the history of English gardens. My family had arrived in Hay as well so I went to the talk with my Mum and my Nan. We had all had dinner the night before and I was a little hungover but I made it to the talk. My Mum is hard of hearing so we had to sit in the hearing-loop in the middle of the audience of about 400 people.

It was a very interesting talk. She spoke about how the potato arrived in England and how no-one ate it for seventy years and how it was a catholic vegetable and protestants wouldn't eat it. The tomato was thought poisonousness and had come from the devils own garden. She said how 17th century sailors used to come back from their travels with bulbs from exotic places and sell them to the aristocracy who would grow them and have a “glorious hyacinth that no-one had ever seen the like before.” It was all quite twee but I found it quite interesting.

At the end she said she had ten minutes for questions and answers and one of the blue rinsers asked her about bindweed or something and how to get rid of it or something. I hadn't planned to say anything but for some reason my hand went up and they passed me a microphone. My Mum and Nan were both mortified and were trying their hardest to look like they weren't anything to do with me and sink into their seats.

I said “Lovely speech. Thank-you. I've just moved into a new flat in Camberwell, above your son actually, and I have to look out of my kitchen window every single day of the week at the state of your son's garden and I was just wondering when you were going to come round and sort it out.”

The place erupted. She stood on the stage and pointed her finger at me and said “I despair, I despair with my son's garden. My husband will agree that I despair over his garden. My son's garden is just paving stones and three big pots of grey dust!” She then went on to talk about how lovely her daughter's garden was and that her son said he would only become a gardener when he retired.

She said that her son lived with his friend Anna and they had know each other since they were babies (that cleared that up for me because I didn't know if they were a couple or just flat mates) and that Anna's parents were at the house this very day, working in the garden and “sorting it out” and she pointed her finger at me again.

She disappeared after the talk and I didn't get a chance to apologise like my Mum said I should. When I told my uncle what I'd said he said it was unfair of me and I started to think I had upset her.
I rang my wife who was studying at home and asked her if she had been in the garden and she said “Yes, but Anna's parents are tidying up their garden” and I said “I know.”

A few weeks later we had a party and we invited the neighbours but they said they were away that weekend but we could use their garden. Then during the party he came out of his house and I went over to have a chat with him and thank him for the use of his garden and as I walked up to him he said “Dad, dad, this is the guy that asked Mum that question at the Hay Festival”
and as I shook his hand I said “Sorry about that, I didn't know if it was out of order or not”

and he said “No not at all. That was fantastic. We've been dining out on that for weeks! You've given her a great story to use in her talks and a way to talk about her children's gardens because most of her audience have children and are interested in what she thinks of their gardens. Thank-you.”
(twistngo, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 18:05, 1 reply)

Nice story!
Actually believeable as opposed to half the stuff on here.




Not enough wanking though.
(TheColonel, Mon 5 Oct 2009, 14:08, closed)