Let the wild rumpus start…

Posted by Tiggy Salt on May 13th, 2007

It is amazing, sleep has eluded us all this week, but to finally go on site this morning banished all grumbles of exhaustion. It was so exciting to be walking down Main Avenue, which is lined with the major Show Gardens. The bowels of the earth have been ripped up again as a sort of Promethean annual ritual, and to think that in 10 days, all cranes, diggers, fork lifts etc will be spirited away and an artificial cloak of calm will descend, as if these theatrical sets have been growing here happily for decades. There are geriatric olives, 200 year old, avenues of hornbeam, mature palms weighing 3 or 4 tonnes which have had to be craned into position and row upon row of Dutch trolleys stacked with carefully grown wildflowers and weeds all to give the false impression of a naturalised habitat in the heart of London.

Although none of our garden has actually arrived on site, that all happens first thing tomorrow, it gave me the lift I needed to imagine how its all going to be. There were lots of familiar faces from the Spirit of Chelseas Past and an irrepressible sense of fun, like you get at the start of the Circus; incongrous scenes of fantastical sculpture wobbling along the avenues on trucks, lots of bossy officials with megaphones, plenty of disgusting but quite nice really bacon rolls… Everyone is on their knees with lack of sleep and worry, but pulling out all the stops for the sake of the show, and secretly enjoying the drama! Lots of smoking of fags, shaking of heads, quite a lot of flirting and borrowing of tools….

I can’t wait for this week, after all this time, but there is a small furry dictator missing who would have loved it all, need I say more?

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