Writing for Fun
October 2015
The Secret Garden - Joan Bond
I have always loved a garden, so much so that I hooked a trip with Saga for a garden holiday. It was to the Channel Islands. We went over in a hovercraft ferry, quite large, from Weymouth.
The holiday involved a visit to two gardens a day, some private and some well known. I had travelled on my own, but with Saga they gather you all together and one is introduced to another, thereby ensuring that even a lone traveller is not left out.
We had a very nice hotel and I was seated with three other ladies for meals and they adopted me more or less. l palled up with a rather diminutive lady, had a walking stick and looked 103 but was in fact only 80 but had led a full life – nudge, nudge.
I took to her straight away as she was quirky and owned this dreadfully old sun hat which never left her side. We travelled all the islands, except the one the Barclay brothers lived and which the boys had to themselves. Self made gents, involved in big business and rich as Croesus.
There were no cars on Sark and we went around on a wagon on straw bales and Germaine never once asked for help, just swung her stick around and climbed or strode under any inconveniences.
She lived in a wonderful, or so she told me, cottage in Chelmsford and her roses were acclaimed in Gardeners world. She also spoke seven languages including Swahili apparently . . . she even now gave language classes at the school near her home and had several private customers to boot.
We had a really wonderful holiday; all the gardens specialising in something different. They were all good company too. If you travel with Saga they involve you all night in quizzes of all kinds after dinner, thus causing laughter at the nonsense answers and logistics that one eventually enjoyed the company of it seemed, friends. Course, there is always one awkward one, but we conquered him, and even he enjoyed it in the end.
On the way home Germaine asked me to come to Chelmsford and see her – as I said she had become quite a good friend by this time. 'Come and see my secret garden,' she said.
Consequently, one Saturday morning I set off. She met me at the station in a car of indeterminate age with an open top and doors that looked ready to shoot open at even bend. Thank goodness for seat belts. We had a lovely lunch at the pub, then off to her garden. It was filled with rose bushes and climbers in every hue; magnificent blooms and I was envious as my dad's favourite flower was a rose, he could just snip off a stalk, stick it in the ground and, like the song said, it always came up smelling of course like roses.
I did a terrible thing there, I sat on her straw hat, albeit by mistake, but I saw her eyes burn and quickly straightened it out, and thank goodness there was no serious damage.
It came almost time to return for my train and I said, 'Thank you, it certainly is a wonderful garden but she said, 'You haven't seen my secret garden yet, come with me.' She took me down the garden to a huge brick building, opened the door and there, really thriving away, were 200 plants or Marijuana . . . Hmm!