| Product: |
Gardeners World Magazine |
| Date: |
30/06/01 (101 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Informative, Well written
Disadvantages: There's only so many ways you can say something smells nice
Friday nights, 8.30, three years ago, a curious thing happened.
I found myself saying down at The Vine In Manchester, "No, sorry, I better not have another pint, I've got to get home for Gardener's World..."
(No, I'm sorry, I'm lying, it was 7.30, I'd got to get home from the pub, remember.)
Hoots of derision followed, but I was in actual fact deadly, deadly serious....
Middle age had apparently crept up on me completely unnoticed and gripped me where it hurt - the tell tale signs were all there - couldn't stop peeing half the time, liked going to B&Q and fell in love with our old pal Alan Tichmarsh - a Friday night just wasn't worth living without my weekly dose of Alan.
Well, I've got over it now to a certain extent but for a period of about two years there I was definitely starting to go on the turn and was developing some extremely peculiar habits.
I'd even started remembering the Latin names of a lot of the plants and flowers - when you talk about narcissus, lilium and hederix rather than "that red one that smells nice", you know you've got it really bad, and the bug had bitten me.
It all started when we decided to move to a new house in Lancashire, one of those with just soil at the back instead of a garden. There was a mammoth job to do out there, especially as the back was virtually full of clay and discarded rubbish the builders had left behind. Like a mad impetuous fool I decided to go and sort it all out myself - well, let me tell you it took me a good six months to get things how me and Mrs dave27 wanted them and that's how I found myself making a special date with Big Al every Friday night at 8.30.
Gardeners World, let me tell you, is very addictive stuff, and you can find out all manner of interesting stuff on there. Titchers is the best on there and there are some absolutely awful middle class types on there,
people like Stephen Lacey and Pippa Greenwood and they mean that I can find a way of switching it off, but even then the stuff they do is VERY INTERESTING.
I was able to con most of my mates that it was actually BBC2's Comedy Zone which followed straight after GW that I was really after, but we know the truth don't we gentle readers - how a grown man was seduced by that immortal phrase "Whatever the weather this weekend, enjoy your garden."
My infatuation stretched in the end as far as getting the monthly companion magazine to the series, but I managed to beat my withdrawal pangs early enough in the end to avoid getting the binders to keep them in, but I couldn't prevent myself getting a cheapo composting bin to put our potato peelings in. Dedication, eh?
Anyway, Gardeners World - The Magazine is in actual fact a bloody good read for gardeners everywhere and always packed out with useful stuff - I cancelled my subscription some time ago, because in the end it felt like I was reading the same stuff over and over again because the material tends to go in cycles, but it's also mainly because I'm a fickle git who gets a craze then gets out of it - Dooyoo doesn't leave time for Titchers now.
There are always about 200 pages of full colur articles each month and the staff of excellent writers always have something interesting to say - GW is the best mag of its kind - but just don't tell the blokes down The Vine I said so!
Summary:
|
|
