Gardener crushes

You know you’re of an age when you fancy a gardener. As long as it isn’t Alan Titchmarsh, you’re okay. I have nursed a crush on Dan Pearson ever since I first read his columns and watched his BBC2 series. You also know you’re of an age when you watch BBC2. Or when you switch to BBC Radio 2.

I don’t mind. I quite like being of an age.

Anyway, there’s an article about Dan in this week’s Guardian. He has his own column, so it’s nothing new, but it’s nice to read about him for a change.

The article says he’s like a character from a DH Lawrence novel, which made me laugh because he’s definitely not a Mellors. There can only be one Mellors for me, and that is Mr Sean Bean. No question. He reminds me about why we ladies might like a gardener. Technically, I think he was a gamekeeper, but who’s splitting hairs?

Anyway, it’s not just a crush on lovely men in corduroy (yes, I’m definitely of an age now…) with floppy hair and waistcoats… I think it’s more of a crush on the kind of man that becomes a gardener, since you’ve got to be both delicate AND manly, and love a bit of green stuff as well. There’s something very attractive about a man who can appreciate a flower. I can see what the writer means when she says Dan Pearson is a bit DH Lawrency – though I’m thinking more Gabriel Oak.

It’s not just a love of the unkempt, floppy hair and crinkly eyes, but I like where Dan Pearson comes from, gardening-wise. Yeah, yeah. I know. I sound about 97. He is a man who loves Japan and who hates formality. Plus, he thinks he suffers a little with the seasons, and I know what that’s about. Winter is restful, but it makes me miserable when it drags on too long. Luckily, we usually get a fair share of sunny days here in winter, even if it is cold. He gets what gardening is really about, too – that it’s meditative and thoughtful. Gardening is a total state of mind.

I think that’s what I love most about this place. In England, I had a nice garden that I made from nothing. It was a small, modern, new garden but it was still getting to be something.

Here, everything needs so much more space and grows so quickly. It’s been wet all week and the grass is knee-high again. One week without mowing and it’s like I never even bothered. That’s kind of good though because these warm, wet conditions means that everything grows really fast. I get to see everything that might take ages to grow in other conditions. I’m tired of waiting for a proper burst of warmth though. We’ve had two days that have broken the 20° barrier and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change much. Bloody gulf stream!

When someone says something…

… so eloquently and so perfectly that describes something so personal and so destructive, it’s worth a share. I follow a blog called Hyperbole and a Half and the lady who writes it hadn’t posted in a while. A long while. But when she posted this blog about depression, it was like she had written down every single thought and feeling I ever had when depressed. In every single technicolour (or omni-grey) detail.

This cartoon of hers so perfectly captures my anomie and existential angst (yes, I gave it a posh name for wallowing around contemplating the pointlessness of everything…) Sadly, I spent most of my time in Japan feeling like this, and it completely ruined what should have been an epic adventure.

It’s funny as hell because I recognise myself, right down to the slump and the dirty hoodie and the facial expression.

It made me sad reading it, especially the bits about not wanting to live any more. But it reminded me that her experience is just exactly what mine was – like some kind of uncanny process by which a thought travels like a virus, with the exact same qualities in infection. And it made me laugh when she told other people because they ended up upset and she ended up comforting them.

It also made me laugh because when you decide to get treatment, you do feel like it’s kind of pointless as well.

I also laughed the hardest at this face (below) because that was my EXACT face…

And it’s also good to know that sometimes, it feels like this:

It’s hard to tell people that suffer from depression that what they’re feeling is practically an identikit model of thinking, that millions of other people feel the exact same thing. And, if they do, doesn’t that make it all the more pointless and dumb? But it’s good when people share. If everyone shared their experiences like this, well, just maybe it wouldn’t be such a powerful, isolating and crippling experience and we could all laugh each other out of it.

I could tell you whatever you want to hear about antedotes and what helps manage it. I could tell you it’s changing the stresses in your life, or that it’s drugs, or that it’s talking therapies. I could tell you it’s diet or exercise or sleep.

I’m pretty sure, though, that a lot of it is laughter. Especially if you can laugh at the pointlessness of stuff and you find someone else who will help you laugh at it too. It is true that it becomes impossible to look sympathetic people in the eye and the only thing that makes it any better is having a friend to laugh it off with. Lucky for me, I had my sister for that bit. She is very good at not letting me wallow in my hoodie and very good at pulling faces and making me smile. Laughter is not the cure for depression, but it sure makes all the other stuff more bearable.

And if there is to be another part of it that makes it liveable, well, that’s reading about someone else’s experiences and how they are just like your own. That way, you kind of see that it’s not just you against the world, or against this condition, but that it is just a cloud that rains on people in exactly the same ways. It makes it less personal so you don’t have to beat yourself up about it along the way.

If I had one wish, it’s that everyone in the whole world would read Hyperbole and a Half. If you haven’t suffered from depression, it’s very likely you know someone who has – and this is just about the best description I ever read about what it’s really like.

Plus, it’s funny. That’s a bonus.

Kay Redfield Jamison, author, psychiatrist and bipolar to boot, says that you have to make a beast beautiful in order to conquer it. I’m not sure how you make depression beautiful, since it is so very, very ugly, but you sure can laugh about it with a little help.

Catching pests

I have several fruit trees which I love very dearly: two old, old cherries; two apples; two walnuts; hundreds of plum trees; a crab-apple; a fig; four peach trees; a pear tree, and a quince. And probably some more I’ve forgotten.

However, with this year’s bumper blossom and potential fruit, the ants are out in force and it’s been driving me wild watching their little ant armies race up and down the tree trunks. I mean, what are they even doing??! Apparently, they’re potentially bringing all kinds of nasty infestations to my dear trees.

So, I decided it had to stop.

I’m not a fan of killing things with pesticides and I didn’t really fancy giving the tree a hose down with something to stop all the anty festivities, so I thought I would buy some sticky tape. Apparently, this works in a similar fashion to flypaper, that odious but useful stuff that enables me to live in a buzz-free zone without zapping the bastards with Raid every so often.

Anyway, I bought myself an organic, environmentally-friendly tree tape to stop the ant processions. I should have known it would be a disaster. Anything involving me and glue is a disaster. It was inevitable.

Imagine, if you will, a cross Mancunian with strips of tree tape hanging from each of her limbs. It got stuck to my hands, stuck to my hair, stuck to my face.

It gets worse.

The glue is kind of waterproof, so I was left, once I’d pulled off the sticky tape, with a clingy, gluey residue that soap and water and even white spirit find nigh-on impossible to remove.

Not only that, I soon worked out the problem with the tape. The bark isn’t flat, so there are bumps and channels underneath it, which any crafty ant will be able to figure out. You kind of secure it with elastic, but it loosens as you are tying the knot in it and so you are left with something that may or may not make the blindest bit of difference.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who uses this and whether or not you think it makes a difference.

Of course, a part of me thinks ants are clever and will crawl underneath it in tunnels. Or eat into the bark or something. Another part of me watched them avoid running on to it this evening and come to a dead-end. They run on to the paper a little and then decide not to bother and run off.

So far, though, the only thing to get stuck to the paper is me.

Hopefully, it won’t stop all the other healthy things that come and feast on the bugs that the ants are herding. I just saw a photograph of an ant biting a ladybird’s legs and it was nasty. Those ants are not nice creatures. They remind me of the Morlocks in The Time Machine. 

I do wish I’d watched this guy first.

I’m going to be fascinated to see if the ants make little bridges. If my tape doesn’t work, I’ll be trying this guy’s method with the elastic tape and the paste. Tomorrow, I’ll be looking for little anty bridges. Those little beggars better have found something else to feast on, and it better not be my seeds or seedling.

Grrr.

Gardening is a constant battle against creatures. But trying to pick something that encourages the good beasts and discourages the bad beasts is hard work. Mostly, I don’t mind a bit of damage, and companion planting and rotation seems to be working so far, but there’s little I can plant to stop the ant march.

All I need to do now is wait for all this glue to come off me. Maybe I should just go and roll about in the garden and see what I can attract?

And then the rains came…

Or, at least I hope they do. It’s been dry around here and we are much in need of a few showers for the garden.

It’s beginning to look like a proper potager again – it always amazes me how it can go from weeds or bare soil to great big plants in such a short period of time. It’s really quite wonderful.  It’s amazing that it can look so empty and then be so full just a few short weeks later.

Things are beginning to move on into the garden. The kale, Brussels sprouts, leeks broccoli and cauliflower have all gone outside in the last week, waiting for a right good soaking I hope. The potatoes are beginning to appear, so I’ll be earthing them up soon, and my latest sowings of broad beans and peas are showing. Some lettuces have gone out already and I built a new bed for the clematis I picked up a few weeks ago. It’s going to be a really simple bed, and as the bottom is shady and the top is sunny (which I believe just might work for the clematis) I’m going to see if I can’t find some hostas.

I had both a variegated and a simple hosta back in the UK, and they did really well considering they are possibly a slug’s favourite meal. I’m hoping it will be okay here for them too, tucked up against the wall. There are lots of maidenhair spleenwort ferns that have taken up residence in the wall – actually a very handsome wall, if I do say so myself. On the top, there are some sempervivum that have practically taken over an old oil can and a couple of dishes.

So I dug about 50 cm down and put in a border, planted up the clematis and put in some lilies a friend gave me. I’d put in some pansies as well, but the chickens came and had a real scrape around with them before I could run back with the netting. I’ve also planted some Asclepias tuberosa, or butterfly milkweed. I might move that though, because it doesn’t really go with what I had in mind.

I’d figured I’d have a couple of hostas and some ox-eye daisies. I was quite looking forward to some subtlety, especially after yesterday’s post. And what have I gone and done? I’ve planted orange flowers. Not exactly subtle, now, is it?

Maybe it’ll end up a little show-off corner.

As to what else is in and what else is up…

• Gardener’s Delight tomatoes
• Super Marmande tomatoes
• Alicante tomatoes
• Super Roma tomatoes
• cauliflower ‘merveille de quatre saisons’
• musselburgh leeks
• Autumn Giant leeks
• kale
• sweet banana pepper
• Rachel’s cauliflower seeds that I can’t remember the name of
• cheap aubergines
• expensive aubergines
• savoy cabbage
• oak-leaf lettuce
• red lettuce
• brussels sprouts
• basil
• red cabbage
• Webbs lettuce
• tabasco pepper
• poppies
• broccoli
• cucumber
• more lettuce
• pumpkins
• courgettes
• Reine Marguerite
• sunflowers
• soucis
• cornichons
• prairie fire pepper
• more Gardeners World tomatoes
• runner beans
• normal courgettes
• round courgettes
• coriander
• cosmos
• scabiosa
• broccoli Romanesco

I am very glad I didn’t plant out my tomatoes though – there was a frost this morning. That’s almost the end of April and there’s been a frost. It’s a good two weeks later than last year. All my ratatouille vegetables are still inside, keeping warm in the lean-to.

Once the rain has given my seedlings a good watering, I am going to plant out the rest of the cabbages and broccoli, and put in a line of turnips. Then, finally, I’ll be able to plant up the big patch. It feels like most things are in, or in a position to go in when the weather is right.

At the weekend, I went looking for two kiwi plants for my friend Rachel. It was her birthday. She is a keen gardener as I am, and she has very good taste. We tend to like the same kind of plants I think. I found a nursery in Montbron that is possibly just as good as some of the nurseries I went to back home. I used to drive out to Lady Green garden centre between Southport and Liverpool – I picked up a lot of great plants there, as I did at Crocus. I wish I knew if there was an equivalent of Crocus here. They do lots of specimin plants and perennials that are harder to find in your average garden centre (which is why I loved Lady Green) although the queen of garden centres was Bents, out off the East Lancs road.

I did kind of wonder if the pepinière in Montbron would have a website, and they do! I love this place. It’s small, but they have things I’ve never seen anywhere else in France, like witch hazel. Not only do they have a great website, especially for France, they also have a great English version too! Bonus. That is so infrequent. I write things sometimes that require research, and you wouldn’t believe the number of French websites aimed at tourists that have the worst Franglish. Including, I must add, some of the top-rated places in the region. If they don’t have Franglish, they have nothing at all. That made me even more impressed by the pepinière in Montbron. Not only did they have the best plants I’ve seen, but they have a great website that doesn’t make sounds when you press things and doesn’t rely on flash and has an excellent translation – not that they need to, or, indeed, should.

It also has little show gardens, a bit like Chelsea. I like the fact that the owner is obviously a real plant lover. It makes a change because most of the nurseries round here are chains and they really don’t seem to care much about their plants. It shows when a nursery really loves their plants. You can see it in everything they do.

Rainclouds… Oh they used to chase me…

Today, I am continuing with my Manchester love and I bring you a Monday sponsored by the Stone Roses, my favourite Manchester band.

I was sixteen when their eponymous first album came out, and The Stone Roses was constantly on my newly-acquired CD player. It was the second CD I ever bought. The first was a kind of post-Hanoi Rocks glam metal marriage with The Faces via Dogs D’Amour with A Graveyard Of Empty Bottles. It’s funny because I think of myself as a vinyl child, but I’d already started acquiring CDs by then.

I used to hang out at this little second-hand record stall on Bury’s flea market. The guy there used to let me browse through his vinyl for hours on a Saturday afternoon, even though I’d usually go home with one or two singles. The first I ever bought was David Bowie’s Life on Mars. I loved that place. I’m sure he thought it strange that a pre-teen girl was hanging around buying music, but he indulged me. In fact, he recommended a whole load of great stuff, like Buddy Holly, that I never would have listened to otherwise. By the time I was sixteen, I’d already worked my way through the Stones and the Who, the Beatles and lots of other 60s stuff right the way up to Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. I always think of myself as a bookish teenager, but in reality, it was music that ruled my life.

I consumed it compulsively and I could never get enough.

By the time I got to 16, I had something of a taste, but the Stone Roses were so far removed from the other stuff I was listening to that it felt a little uncool to like them. However, their music was SO cool, with Ian Brown’s dreamy voice and John Squires’ jangly guitar that it was just impossible not to fall in love with it all.

Not only that, they paved the way for that kind-of Mancunian braggadoccio that came to epitomise everything that was Manchester in the 90s. They were so effortlessly cool. They characterised the Manc swagger in ways that would become world-famous because of Oasis. They weren’t just crazy lads like the Happy Mondays were – they were serious musicians, but they were musicians who knew just how good they were. They were better than anybody else. So what if they only released two albums? So what if they never achieved global domination? The whole point of the Manc attitude is in believing that you could be better than everybody else, if only you could be bothered.

By the time it got to Oasis, it just all got a bit laddish and boorish and boring. But there was something kind of cool about a band who sing that they are the resurrection and the light and they just can’t bring themselves to hate you as they’d like.

I’ve been introducing the Americans to all things English and French, trying to make it count in equal measures. We’ve eaten sausage baguettes at the foot of the castle in Rochechouart. We’ve been to proper markets. We went to a vide grenier yesterday because I think this is the best – nay, the only – way to really experience French life. Marcus said he had never seen so many French people all together. It’s the ritual of Sunday life in the countryside. I have Much Love for old dolls, knackered shoes, broken tools, dusty books, tapestries, stuck-down jigsaws, coffee grinders and ashtrays. Shannon loved it. She thought that it was just vintage-tastic and loved all the old postcards and letters that may go on to have a new life as some treasure in some new owner’s hands.

We’ve also been trying to take in the greats of French cinema. I had to take a detour to Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources simply because it would be rude not to. For the first time, the accents really struck me in ways I’d never noticed before. I went to the Cornerhouse cinema to see these films right around the time I was listening to the Stone Roses. Ironically, we’re watching Pan’s Labyrinth (I know, not French, but rude not to following on from all our war talk) and I watched that at the Cornerhouse too.

As a teenager, the Cornerhouse was home to all that I loved. It was cool to discover things that were mostly not watched by a too-cool-for-school teenager, mostly the reserve of the Guardianistas and fashionable media types. I watched lots of French stuff here, and lots of very cool foreign films. It’s where I fell in love with Maurice and Merchant Ivory and EM Forster. It was kind of a guilty pleasure, because it wasn’t something my other friends did. I  think they would have considered me crazy.

Anyway, to up the English, we have been watching Bill Bailey, Peep Show, The League of Gentlemen, Gary – Tank Commander and Frank Spencer. It would be wrong if I didn’t share a little Frank, possibly the strangest English comedy show ever. We’ve also indulged in a little Cadbury’s Fudge and a Curly Wurly.

In response to what is Britain like, I would like to quote Bill Bailey.

“We’ve got Nectar Points… they’re quite handy. As a nation, we’re prone to mild eccentricities, binge drinking and casual violence. And, on the up side, we’ve got Little Chef.”

Oradour-sur-Glane

Here, on June 10th, 1944, 642 villagers were killed by Waffen SS troops. 205 children died in the attack. I think the worst bit for me is the fact that the Nazi officers rounded up the men, sending the women and children to the church, then shot the men. To have been a woman in the church on that day, to know what was inevitable, to have to wait for certain death, to be with your children. There can be nothing worse.

Incendiary devices were set off in the church, and when the women and children tried to escape, they were shot by machine gunners. You can trace the bullet holes in the church stone with your fingers.

In truth, it is a very peaceful place, and it reminded me more of ancient ruins, like those at Volubilis, than it did a town that had been home to such a massacre. Had it not been for the signs, you would have no idea what happened here on that day in June 1944.

Sometimes it’s hard to recall exactly why you should get involved in someone else’s battle. This is why.

 

Sunshine and hot days

These are some photos from Wednesday morning; it wasn’t so hot today, which I am glad about as I had about two hundred errands to run. Oradour was mighty hot, and I’ll post some photos tomorrow. We also went to Piégut market – I was very impressed, though it seemed to be mostly inhabited by English and Dutch people.

The walk up the road was almost blinding, it was so light.

 

Heston loves to gallop up this part of the hill. There seems to be a lot of wheat this year. Last year, these fields were rapeseed.

 

Heston does a lot of posing. He likes to stand on the ridge and survey the fields. He has recently discovered swallows and he will gladly spend a good ten minutes chasing them.

Everything is still very damp. Not only that, but I’ve still got water in my puits – it’s usually long since disappeared by now.

You might be wondering where the little one is. She likes to ferret about. I know there are lots of rabbit holes and she likes to stick her head down every single one of them.

The blackthorn bushes are in flower, and it seems like everything is desperate to make up for last year’s losses. I guess everything is well rested and well watered.

 

 

 

 

 

What we’ve been up to…

The sun has finally come out for Spring. Thank God.

It’s been 25° over the weekend and things have been picking up.

The huge and ancient cherry tree in the garden has finally blossomed, as have the plums – the last things to blossom will be the pears and the quince. The weather has been perfect for the blossom, being so wet and then warm. Let’s hope the last frosts are gone, though I suspect not. This year has been more than strange. The best thing has been the “second best” cherry, which is the same variety as the big one above, but has never produced the same amount of fruit. This year, it is covered in blossom. It obviously needed a really, really good soak.

The apple is almost ready to blossom.

Yesterday was a day of preparing beds and getting the pruning done. There are so many root vegetables that I am quite desperate to get outside. The next few days will see some heavy-duty sowing going on. Things going in will include turnips (of which I seem to have about twenty packets…) carrots (likewise, though most are donations) radish, lettuce, onions and beetroot. As you know, the beetroot is my one love. Carrots are fine. Turnips are great. But beetroot is my love. Pickled, roasted, chutneyfied… it’s my favourite. The sweeter, the richer, the better.

 

This bed still looks really, really bad, but it is getting there. We worked on it most of today. The soil is in great condition. I found myself giving mini classes (yes, lectures) on soil and compacting. I do think that a spade or fork should go into soil and if it is good for digging, it should come out like a skewer in a cake that is perfectly cooked. It shouldn’t be sticky and if it is exactly perfect, there will be no remnant of it left on the metal. It was a little damp still this morning, but is probably a day away from perfect. This is the longest bed and it had nothing in it last year, so it is well rested and very weedy.

On the sills, the courgettes and cucumbers have poked their heads out and there are a lot of things waiting for every last sign of frost to have disappeared. The tomatoes still seem very small in these pots, but they are Gardeners Delight cherry tomatoes, which don’t get so big as usual tomato plants.

So, what is up and what is in?

• Gardener’s Delight tomatoes
• Super Marmande tomatoes
• Alicante tomatoes
• Super Roma tomatoes
• cauliflower ‘merveille de quatre saisons’
• musselburgh leeks
• Autumn Giant leeks
• kale
• sweet banana pepper
• Rachel’s cauliflower seeds that I can’t remember the name of
• cheap aubergines
• expensive aubergines
• savoy cabbage
• oak-leaf lettuce
• red lettuce
• brussels sprouts
• basil
• red cabbage
• Webbs lettuce
• tabasco pepper
• poppies
• broccoli
• cucumber
• more lettuce
• pumpkins
• courgettes
• Reine Marguerite
• sunflowers

That’s a pretty long list of stuff, though it doesn’t feel like there’s much waiting to go out really. I guess there is. That is going to be one hell of a plant-out operation. I can tell there is actually a lot of stuff because I have no tags left (and have resorted to using kind of flamboyant cocktail umbrellas instead) and there are no plant pots free. The impatiens in the propagator are just putting out leaves, as are the peppers I put in a couple of weeks ago. There might be a couple more things to run through the propagator, but it is generally warm enough now that everything else can go out in the soil. I’m just too excited for my own good, and it’s obviously something I get off my mother.

The people at my Mum’s allotment have realised what a force of nature she is. She had already put her potatoes and onions in, which alarmed me because I hadn’t and we’re drier and warmer than Manchester. She says she thinks she attracted a crowd of naysayers, saying ‘ooh, it’s too early yet’. They’ll see.

This is why I’m competitive.

I should have the advantage, weather and position-wise.

I won’t.

She’ll get way more than me out of a way smaller plot.

I felt like I needed to go and get some more soil and to be able to get more stuff in, but then I realised I had no more plant pots. That’s something, isn’t it? I never ran out of plant pots before.

So today, we will continue with the veg plot – the big, hairy, ugly one that is full of weeds. It looked as bad when I moved in though, so I am not worried. It will return to its former self.

I’m so obsessed that I’m becoming a bore

Much Love this Monday for Manchester. I thought long and hard about this track and so I will have to do three over the next few Mondays. Today, Much Love Monday is brought to you by James with Laid.

There is nothing like a little Booth to put a spring in your Monday step. Even if he is from the bad side of the Pennines.

This track reminds me of 1995 when I travelled up through France on the old SNCF trains through a warm Nantes and a wet Rennes. I got the ferry back from a few weeks with Phil, my boyfriend, and it was pretty much the end of our relationship. We’d been together for four years, but as I came up to the beginning of my teaching life, Phil hadn’t yet decided where he was going with everything. I grew out of him and I’m sad about that. I never had such a love again. I had grown-up loves and they were never as intense as that teen love where you feel like the world will end if your love dies.

That’s true of all my loves though. They all leave me different.

Anyway, I had an old tape player with eight tapes. It was all I could manage to carry with all my other stuff. I had Depeche Mode, Arrested Development, James and a few others, but as I fell asleep on the ferry out of St Malo, I was listening to Laid and it will forever evoke memories of that last trip as I left my teen years behind for good. I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag, listening to One of the Three and it just seemed to capture the moment in ways that none of the others did.

Of course, something about being confronted with people from another country always makes me go all Manchester. So much so, in fact, that it makes them wonder why I ever left the gritty city. It’s been 20° here today and the cherry tree is in bloom, and that is mainly why.

I think I am mainly filled with the need to put people right about how Manchester is really the home of all that is magnificent about England, be it sport or be it music. Let’s face it, Manchester has had more than its fair share of musical talents. If you count the huge and massive bands I don’t even like in there, like Simply Red and M People, Manchester must have more gold discs than any other city in the world. Maybe even more than LA.

And, if it doesn’t, it should.

We watched 24 Hour Party People over the weekend – a film about Tony Wilson and Factory Records. Of course, nothing says Manchester like “mad fer it!” and I was trying to put into some kind of loose order the Manchester bands that I liked. I thought I’d put the Stone Roses at the top, but then I’m open to suggestion. Then there would have to be Joy Division. The Buzzcocks would be in there somewhere. New Order would be as well.

Then where?

The Happy Mondays, of course, the sound of my summer as a 16 year old.

The Smiths. They’d have to be in my top 5.

The Fall. The Inspiral Carpets. Oasis. It’d be rude not to.

I couldn’t even leave out Take That.

Let’s face it: Manchester music is, by and large, the best music on the planet. We even do boy bands that turn into likeable man bands. Who else can claim that?

And the Bee Gees might have ended up in Australia, all healthy and suntanned, but they were straight out of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Who could say what they would have become had there been no Manchester?

And as Tony Wilson, a tragic hero if there ever was one, says in 24 Hour Party People…

“ Most of all, I love Manchester. The crumbling warehouses, the railway arches, the cheap abundant drugs. That’s what did it in the end. Not the money, not the music, not even the guns. That is my heroic flaw: my excess of civic pride.”

I know how he feels.

Now I think of it, perhaps Tim Booth is referencing my relationship with Manchester when he sings that Manchester is like a disease without any cure.

Doesn’t everyone feel like that about their home town?

So, here’s to the Irish Centre, the Polish Centre, the Arndale Centre, the Stretford End, Cheetham Hill, Curry Mile, Wilmslow, Chorlton, Stalyvegas, Chinatown, Spring Gardens, Deansgate, the Trafford Centre, Old Trafford, LCC, The Kippax, Affleck’s Palace, Eastern Bloc, Castlefield, Canal St, Oxford Road, the Coop building, Victoria Station, Piccadilly Gardens, Ardwick, Ancoats and Albert Square.

Upon reflection, I have come to realise something. Like Thatcher, Manchester is such a part of me that it might as well be my other parent. So, here I am… profligate offspring of Maggie and Manchester. A woman who was more manly than most men and a town named after a boob-shaped hill.

It’s no wonder I’m mixed up.

Vyvyan, The Bad Shepherds and the Iron Lady

I wouldn’t be a) English or b) me if I didn’t say something about Mrs Thatcher. Unfortunately, whatever I say will piss off one half of my friends. I think the only thing I can say is that she is a Marmite person. Love her or hate her. There is no meh with Thatcher.

I think, too, that being born in 1972, three years before she took over as leader of the Conservative Party, and growing up knowing NOTHING other than Mrs Thatcher, she can’t NOT have had an impact on me. I was 19 before she left power. That’s all my childhood. I am a Thatcher child. I grew up between the Hattons of Liverpool and the Scargills of Yorkshire. I grew up in the homeland of socialism and the Labour Party. I grew up in the town that inspired (?) Marx to write The Communist Manifesto. And yet, I grew up in a household which fostered all of those entrepreneurial aspirations that Thatcher seemed to epitomise the most.

So, what does it mean to me?

Well, yesterday, I was trying to explain about Ade Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds. Ade Edmondson, as you may know, is married to Jennifer Saunders, and started his career in comedy in The Young Ones. The Young Ones, it is safe to say, would not have existed without Thatcher. Where would punk be without a system to be anarchic against? Who would Rik Mayall’s character have been rebelling against? Not unlike the boys in the Young Ones house, my whole education was influenced by Conservative politics. I might not have known it, but it did. Under Thatcher, GCSEs were born, and I was lucky to be one of the tail-end of University students who actually got a free education. It is a fact that the university population in England boomed under Thatcher. I don’t even know if that kind of aspirational spirit she fostered is the reason I went to the school that I did. Ironically, it was under a Labour government that tuition fees came into play.

Not that I disagree with tuition fees.

But I know I wouldn’t have gone to University had there been.

I just wouldn’t.

I was so afraid of debt that I would not have willingly got myself involved in something I didn’t know how I would pay for.

Thatcher’s government is responsible for the qualifications I have. From 16 to 22, every piece of paper I possess is as a direct consequence of that.

In a way, as well, with such a strong character, it invites polarised views. Back in the 80s, I loved Saturday Night Live, but would there be a Loadsamoney or a Harry Enfield without Thatcher, or a Ben Elton? Could there have been an Adrian Mole?

Without these things, there would be none of the things I believed in as a teenager, and I believe in now. Because of the whole Capitalist smorgasbord from Reagan and Thatcher, because I grew up in a time where mankind worshipped at Wall St and the yuppie was born, it showed me what I did not want to be. There was never a time in the last 100 years in England where materialism was so rampant and so evident. There was never a time that it was so acceptable to want more. Out of the Winter of Discontent, Thatcher rode a tide of cash right through the 80s until her eventual downfall.

Then there is her gender. Many will say she used bully-boy tactics and that she was as feminine as Stalin. I know this. But it is indisputable that it has been important to me to see that women can govern countries. I often talk about how important it is to have good female role models and how lucky I was to have them. Not that I think Thatcher was a good female role model… but she was female and she made it to the very top. Only later in her career did she become the kind of hard-arse bitch that had adopted very masculine traits to rule her cabinet. You only have to look at her cabinet to see how male-dominated a world it was. It’s not like that now. Maybe the feminism movement caused that. Maybe it was a reaction to Thatcher’s style and women wanted to show how to do it properly, but she marked the first time that a woman had reached such a position. That IS important.

Not only that, she showed what she had lost through her role. She emasculated her husband, neglected her children. There’s this view that women can do it all, but we can’t. Not really. Not without support. Not without sacrifice. A man can’t either. You can try, but it just doesn’t work that way. Ironically, the pay gap got worse under Thatcher. You’d think that having a woman in charge would bring equality to the fore. Not so.

It’s impossible for me to extrapolate the effect Mrs Thatcher had on my life. I cannot take one side or another, say she was the destroyer of England and the Nation, or say she was the country’s saviour either. She did things I agree with, and things I disagree with. Like I’m a fairly committed feminist, and yet she is clearly not a role model for me. Who’d want to emulate her style? But I agree we needed a national curriculum and a system of monitoring education that stopped such a lacksadaisical and haphazard approach to learning and put an end to sink schools and a divisive two-tier system. Where the hell do I stand on the Falklands, for instance?! I don’t even know where to begin.

I think it will be a long time before most people find the middle ground as she causes such a reaction in so many. She was undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with. How she did it, why she did it, what she did… you will never find a way to get people to agree. But one thing is for sure, much of my life would cease to exist had she not been ruling over her cabinet. I can’t think of one single person outside my family who had the same influence on who I am now.

And it’s a totally weird thing, since I’m completely sure there will never be another politician who will have such an influence on my life as it is.

It’s at this moment when all I can do is give a rather Japanese ‘hmmmmmm’ to end this, for it is all far too thought-provoking and also controversial to discuss. I suspect it will be so for many, many years to come. Probably, my inability to pick a side will infuriate ALL my friends.

So, Mrs Thatcher. Love her. Loathe her. The England of my formative years was shaped by her hand and I wonder who I would be without her.

Hmmmmmmm.