Gardens Rock: the chelsea flower show

Chelsea flower show is a British institution.  I mean, most of the upper class has a relative with the same name don't they?  So the chance to go was not to be passed up, even if it meant standing on a square of ground trying desperately not to squash a plant, and giving out leaflets to unsuspecting members of the public like my life depended on it.

As a famous flower girl with a cockney accent once said, 'the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated'.  So treat 'em all I did, and did a lo' of luvely talking in the process.

Ok, I'm no cockney, but it was a surprise to see just how many Karen Millen Linen dresses. straw trilbies, and very thin old women with immaculate hairdos I could spot.  They were a nice bunch though. And all  totally, totally absorbed by species of agapanthus, violas and how you pleach a plane tree to grow flat.

Soon I was into my stride, talking about heurchaneums and violas like I was born to it.  I admired the plane trees (platanus hispanica),  told middle aged gay couples and old judges about living walls, and peppered my sentences with latin like I'd stepped off a Shakespearean play.

Of course they weren't all priveleged.  It was kind of nice to see bankers on corporate hospitality sitting on patches of cardboard in a corner eating fish and chips alongside pensioners from Stockton on a day trip.  The British may be a class divided society, but it all swirls in the compost mix when it comes to  hobbies like plants.

The postscript? The woman who looked at me like I'd landed from mars when I quipped about taking her clematis spiral home on the tube.  'Well not quite on the tube...but it'll be good to get it home' .