2005-08-10 - 7:40 p.m.

Fed on a diet of shows where a shabby garden is transformed into a zen Eden in eight seconds, you will doubtless be unimpressed by the following. But the thing about those garden shows is that it's all cosmetic. A week after the cameras have left, the decking collapses, the koi carp are poisoned by Japanese schlongweed and the plants die off because the homeowner can't be arsed to maintain them, which is of course why they had a shit garden in the first place. So. Here is a proper garden makeover. One that took about 28 years. Outside the bedroom that was mine as a child is a balcony. And from that balcony I took this picture, in, I am guessing, about 1978.

I took four photographs from there that year, one in each season. I wanted to see how the passage of time affected the garden. In retrospect, that was quite gay. But I'd prefer to think of it as poetic. No, maybe scientific. No, poetic. No, gay. I now appear to be having a three-way argument with myself.The upside is that I'll get more hits on the diary as people Google 'three-way'. What? Oh yeah.

There is something incredibly 70's about the light in this picture. It probably has something to do with film processing techniques, but I maintain that that's how light looked in the 1970's. That's how I remember it. It's a dry, dusty, austere light. You can see it in the still-frame closing credits of Minder, as Dennis Waterman and George Cole pretend to prop up a lamppost and walk away down a deserted London street.

I took another picture from the same place a couple of weeks ago. This was difficult, as the house is now owned by nuns. Not really. Give yourself a point for each difference you spot.

Yes, the middle lawn no longer being paved and punctuated by roses would be the main one. Also the swings on the bottom lawn have gone, probably for the best as nowadays they would surely contravene all kinds of suffocating nanny-state regulations about not allowing children on splintering wooden seats suspended on frayed ropes from a rusting sharp metal frame. The little trapezoid bush just beyond the pear tree�s shadow on the bottom lawn has now grown into the dark green behemoth you see to the right of the purple-leaved tree in the new picture.

But for me, the most significant and melancholy change is the growth of the trees at the far end. When I was a child, there was the large tree in the right hand corner, behind the shed (gone). It was in this tree we had our treehouse. When I say treehouse, I mean two planks of wood wedged between branches. You might expect me to bemoan the cutting down of a favourite tree. But the tree, as you see, is still there. What I bemoan is the growth of the trees next to it. Listen to me, bemoan, bemoan, bemoan. You see, from my bed, during the summer - and it's strange to be able to recall a time when I went to bed when it was still light - I could see the cows that wandered and grazed on the moor, which is what you see on the far side of the garden fence on the earlier picture. I liked to drift off to sleep looking at the cows. I think in those moments I was as content as I have ever been. And now, even though you can actually see the cows on the new picture, the majority of that vista has been blocked off...now, evil nature and her selfish phenomenon of cellular growth has robbed me off that indescribable pleasure. Of course, no longer living at home or going to bed when it's light have also robbed me of that indescribable pleasure, but nevertheless. The garden now seems, more fecund and barely contained. Bushes bush, trees fight for light. But it's not a process I'd ever noticed. Only when I saw the comparitively sparse 1970's garden again did I realise how the garden had evolved.

Perhaps I�ll take another picture in 2033. The lawns will be silver, a jet-pod landing pad will have been built on the bottom lawn, and I will still be poetic.

No, gay.

No -

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude