LIFE IN MY NORTHERN TOWN

YOU know, it is always a pleasure walking around town and seeing the various hanging baskets and plant tub thingies overflowing with flowers and it is a credit to the shops and businesses who have made the time and effort to put these together.

The annual Rochdale in Bloom festival competition always leaves me green with envy – pun intended.

I have a grudging admiration for people who have green fingers, as mine are more like instruments of death.

I am basically the Grim Reaper of the plant world.

I only have to touch a plant in the gardening section of the superstores sometimes, certain in the knowledge that if I return within the hour it will already show signs of wilting.

I currently own a house which has a garden on three different levels, which equates to three levels of misery.

I hate gardening, mainly because I don’t understand it.

I have flowers and things that, if I leave them for more than a few minutes without water, will wilt and shrivel up into brown, crinkly dust.

Yet also weeds grow faster than I can pull them out.

How does that work? The only part of my garden I can understand and enjoy is the patio.

Give me a nice piece of concrete anyday.

I have never been good working the earth - I remember once having a go a growing vegetables. Utter disaster. I once planted 48 potatoes and dug up 45 a few weeks later. How did that happen? My plant-friendly friends who come round and help me – mostly out of sympathy – are often driven to distraction regarding my inability to grow anything except a beard.

I am constantly berated for not watering the flowers that they have planted for me – isn’t that God’s job?

I am afraid that I subscribe to the theory that if God wants something to grow, he will let it, and if a flower dies then it is because it is meant to.

A weird theory, but one that seems to work for most of the plants and trees around the world.

So once again, congratulations to all those who have taken part in the Rochdale in Bloom competition.

I will forever bask in your skills as flower engineers.