I wish the Met Office forecast was a little more reliable on a twenty-four to forty-eight hour basis. Or, to put it another way, I wish it was any use at all. As of yesterday, today was forecast to be wet, which is one reason why I volunteered to cook, while Sunday was going to be dry, and I agreed to go to Kew with a friend. Lo and behold, it didn't rain today, but I was committed to coming in for lunch from the garden forty-five minutes early to prep the onions for my home-made cheese, tomato and caramelised onion quiche, but there are now yellow rain warnings in force for London on Sunday.
We've agreed to postpone the Kew visit. It takes quite a lot of time and effort to get to Kew from north Essex (or in her case, Suffolk). I used the north London loop for my last visit, but that has engineering works and a substitute bus service this weekend. The travel advice my friend received from the staff at Manningtree station was to go via Euston and Willesden, which would have taken the best part of three hours. The Systems Administrator's suggestion was to get the District line Richmond branch (getting off at Kew Gardens, obviously), which would still take getting on for two and a half hours from Manningtree. It is not worth it, to go and walk around in lashing wind and the pouring rain, especially as one of the glasshouses is closed for repairs (it had got to the point where it was unsafe for visitors).
We'll find a date to reschedule, though I hope it will not be a visit of ill omen. It's a curious thought, but I am no longer on close terms, or any terms at all, with anybody with whom I have ever visited Kew Gardens. I went there for the first time in the closing days of my last City employer, in the bizarre period when we were required to present ourselves at the office every day, but forbidden to do anything. I took an afternoon off to visit Kew with a secretary I was friendly with. She felt obliged to explain her absence by saying that she was going to the dentist. I merely said that I was going out. I don't know where she is now, since the friendship outlasted the life of the company by the duration of about one Christmas card. Her erstwhile boss went on to be Lord Mayor of London.
Writtle College took me to Kew. I still have a friend living locally, and a pen friend in Japan, from my Writtle days, but neither of them were on that trip. I took another former colleague as a birthday treat. We're just about in touch, but the friendship has dwindled considerably since our Kew day out. That was a good visit. We were able to climb the pagoda, which I think is shut to visitors nowadays, and a peacock displayed to us, which I was excited about at the time, but would be blase now, when I have one at work. The last time I went I took yet another colleague, from the plant centre, to cheer her up because she was going through a bad patch, but she has since moved on and changed her mobile without giving me her new number. That visit was in autumn, and the Carya were looking spectacular, great pillars of yellow. The trains back were badly delayed, though, and we spent a long time waiting at Stratford.
Still, fingers crossed. Kew Gardens are beautiful, and I can't believe they exert a malign influence over human relationships. Odd, though, how the only literary associations I can think of offhand for botanical gardens are unhappy. Lyra and Will in Oxford Botanic, each sitting on their bench in their separate worlds, thinking of the other. Irene weeping in a glasshouse in the Forsyte Saga. Maybe I could stretch my case to include General Sternwood in his orchid house, old and haunted by fears about his daughter he cannot fully articulate.
No comments:
Post a Comment