May 11th 2006
I don’t know in which book I first came across the term ‘pottering about in the garden’, but it was probably in one of the Just William books or maybe The Famous Five series that I read when I became interested in reading when I was aged about twelve. I was attracted to the phrase at once; it sounded such a cosy, English, way in which to occupy oneself, and I couldn’t wait until I was grown up and I would be able to potter about in a garden myself (I assumed that children couldn’t potter about in the garden because whenever I came across the expression it was always being done by an adult, and usually an older adult; also it sounded like something that was done by grown-ups rather than children).
In those days I couldn’t even pretend, as children do, to potter about in the garden,
as we lived in a mean terrace house which didn’t have a garden in which to potter, just paving stones at the front of the house and at the back a backyard not big enough to swing a landlord in. So when I married The Trouble and we eventually got a house of our own, with a small garden, I was naturally eager to get some pottering time in.
It never happened.
Since I first ventured into a garden all those years ago with a virgin spade and uncalloused hands I have never once pottered. I have dug, double-dug, forked, raked, hoed, chopped, sawed and hammered, all of which are far too strenuous activities to be classed as ‘to busy oneself in a mild way with trifling tasks’, which is the dictionary definition of ‘pottering’. I have mowed lawns, trimmed hedges, turned over flower beds, laid paving stones, humped bags of compost and fertilizers, and in the course of this have been bitten by ants and stung by wasps, bees and hornets, and on one occasion savaged by a stray dog; none of which are mild or trifling.
It eventually dawned on me that there was no such thing as pottering about in the garden, except in books, and that I never would potter, I would go through life as a non-potterer. Until yesterday.
I’d been giving the garden a general spring tidying up, uprooting triffids and other monster-like weeds that had sprung up in the borders over the winter, preparatory to planting something more colourful and less intrusive. One of the weeds was particularly hard to dislodge. I took a firm hold of it, braced myself, gave an almighty heave…and it shot out of the ground much more easily than I had anticipated and sent me staggering back a couple of steps. The second of the steps caused me to put my foot onto the business end of a garden rake I’d carelessly left on the ground and the other end of it shot up and cracked me a nasty blow on the side of the head, gashing my temple. When I’d stopped hollering and seeing stars I went into the kitchen to attend to it. The Trouble was one the phone. “Your dad?†she said, to whoever was on the other end of the phone, either my son or one of my daughters. “Oh he’s pottering about in the garden.â€
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Razzamatazz
Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.)
This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000….
My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas.
A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road.
I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.
Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.)
This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000….
My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas.
A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road.
I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.
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Frequently accused of pottering myself. Heard the management say as much to her mother after a loud crash in the garden was questioned. “Oh that’s just him pottering in the garden”. The loud crash was my ladders collapsing leaving me dangling from an upstairs window cill. Pottering is dangerous
You can also “potter about” in a shed. Indeed, potting sheds are designed for this very purpose. Some of the more sophisticated models have sensors on the door which detect whether or not you’re still pottering when you attempt to exit. If you are, they remain sealed until the urge passes. This helps ensure against pottering proliferation.
Joe.