Everybody knows that the whole point of the month of May is to act as host for the Chelsea Flower Show. Unlikely members of the Royal Horticultural Society, Debbie and I will be making our annual pilgrimage to Chelsea on 19th May. All gardeners are aware that one Alan Titchmarsh has been hosting Chelsea for the BBC for over a quarter of a century. Among the many achievements of this mild-mannered but extremely prolific and ambitious man is the voiceover for Gordon The Garden Gnome on the C-Beebies channel. It’s a moniker that seems to fit this insider of all insiders. Now, I’m one for outsiders, but Alan Titchmarsh has always fascinated me, not least for winning a Bad Sex in Fiction Award. And he gets a namecheck here because it’s his 60th birthday tomorrow. Nobody does bland middle-of-the-road conformity to such perfection as Alan Titchmarsh. Barely a year goes by without him getting an award for it. Yet he’s been at the centre of the love of all things green and growing that Debbie and I have developed as our passion in common over these last fifteen years. Gardening. My Damascene conversion. My third university. My relief, release and antidote. My ephemeral and eternal delight. My perennial ‘this must be it, longed-for bliss’ moment. As I look up from my computer onto our 80-metre garden of green evanescence, there is something important about life that I just know.
Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk
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Alan T bland? I'm gonna learn how to blog in May and put across my views! Alan is one of my gardening heroes(and good beach holiday reads). He's not flash, admittedly. But thank goodness for that. He's warm,approachable and always POSITIVE. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing his (albeit gurning) smile. Debs
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