I was weeding in the back garden today. Where I started the ground was quite solid, and I was able to dig in one of the remaining bags of organic mushroom compost, and plant out a little Geranium versicolor I bought at the Open Gardens, which I am hoping will seed itself, since one looks rather pathetic, three Astrantia major subsp. involucrata 'Shaggy', and an Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium'. The Astrantia should grow about 75cm tall, once released from the confines of their small pots, and have strange, greenish white flowers with conspicuous bracts from which they get their name, since the flowers are indeed shaggy. The Acer has lobed leaves that do vaguely resemble those of an Aconitum, in a pleasant shade of mid green, which should go red in the autumn. The boss's label says it requires full sun, and it will be in part shade where I've put it, so we'll see. It's been sitting in the greenhouse waiting for the bed to be ready for a while, and I think that when I was thinking about buying one and checking in my reference books the consensus of expert opinion seemed to be that part shade was acceptable. Maybe the autumn colour won't be quite so vivid, but the leaves in spring and summer would be enough. It is supposed to go to 7m according to the boss's label, and I'll need to train it up to form a little tree rather than a giant bush. The coloured swing tag that came with it gave its height and spread after tend years as 1.5m by 1.2m, but I think somebody is fibbing about that so as not to scare off potential customers with small gardens. It was already the best part of a metre tall when I bought it. All of these plants require soil that's not too dry, and this is one of the relatively moister beds in the garden.
As I worked my way down the slope it got moister still, until I was standing in 30cm of mud on top of solid clay, at which point I managed to get my boots stuck. I rocked my feet to try and break the suction, and took one step towards dry land, but with the next my right foot shot out of the boot and, caught by surprise, I put it down on the mud to prevent myself from falling over. If I didn't love gardening very, very much I would have been a bit pissed off about that.
While I worked I listened to all three parts of the BBC R4 adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. All the Smiley novels were adapted for the classic serial slot a few years back, but I missed them, because working alternate weekends means that you miss every other episode, and it would have spoiled them listening in odd snatches. As I hoped, after offering some individual stories on CD, the BBC finally got its act together and released them as a boxed set, which after dropping some brick sized hints I got for my birthday. I am pacing myself very carefully as I work my way through them, as like the boxed set of The Sopranos once you've heard each episode for the first time that's it. They will bear repeated listening, or viewing, but the thrill of the first encounter can't be repeated. Hearing them for the first time is thrilling, because they are such taut and well constructed tales, and because Le Carre's evocation of period is so good, and the BBC did a fine job of adapting them. I've read some of the later books, and seen the recent film of Tinker Tailor (which is not about spying. Discuss) so they won't be quite as thrilling.
I have a practical problem listening to my iPod in the garden, which is that I hate wearing earphones. I really, really dislike them. I hate the ones that clamp over your head, and loathe the ones that you stick into your ears. I always recoil slightly in revulsion when offered audio guides at galleries or museums, when the earpiece phobia is exacerbated by the knowledge that they will have been on lots of other people's ears first. That is so unpleasant, I don't see how I could be expected to countenance it, and I don't. But even when they're my own earphones for my own exclusive use I don't like them. I don't like the feeling of being hemmed in. If I'm outdoors and it's wet, I would rather put on a hat than pull up the hood of a waterproof jacket, and have sat in the cockpit in a soaking fleece beanie for hours, only reluctantly yielding if the rain or spray is absolutely torrential. I don't like the sensation of noise being delivered directly into my ears. Several years ago I suddenly developed a sense of constant pressure in both ears, which medical tests utterly failed to find any physiological cause for, and which gradually went away, only recurring occasionally in wet weather or if I listen to loud music. I've never liked loud music since going to one disco in my teens that left me with ringing in my head, and being shown a photograph in school biology of a guinea pig's inner ear with its little sensory hairs all awry after being exposed to a loud sudden noise (I think a gun fired near it, rather than at it). Nowadays I avoid concerts I expect to be too loud, physically flee parties with loud bands to stand outside the building, and avoid earphones.
The Systems Administrator came up with the solution, in terms of a small connector to plug the iPod into my gardening radio. This is a digital radio by Oasis, originally waterproof, though now it's on its third battery the seal is probably not what it was. It is quite bulky and rectangular, reminding me of the cooker on the moon in A Grand Day out. After many years' use in the garden it is caked in mud. It is capable of cranking out an impressive volume, handy for gardening since I can step several paces away from it as I work and still hear what's going on. If we had any near neighbours it would drive them insane, or rather, I would not be able to use it outside, but happily we don't. So for all three episodes of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold I perched the iPod on top of the radio, wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it clean, and listened blissfully. I adore that radio, and will be devastated when it finally breaks, since I'm not sure Oasis still make them just like that.
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