Maddie’s World
In her weekly column, Maddie Grigg shares tales from her life in rural Dorset . . .
MR GRIGG has just had a call from Billy Bass, a friend in the village who has the most wonderful garden. It’s all down to Mrs Bass that the garden is so glorious, but that’s another story.
“I could bore you for hours with my love of flowers and plants,” she tells me when I compliment her on a rather lovely planting scheme.
The serene Mrs Bass would not look out of place in a Jane Austen-style dress, carrying a trug under her left arm. She was made for gardening.
I doubt very much that she’d bore me, as I love a good garden almost as much as she does.
However, mine is a postage stamp compared with her oversized, double-a1 envelope. Just looking at her flower-beds and lawns gives me chronic garden envy, so I’ll stop right there.
Mr Bass needs my husband’s help in putting up a trampoline. It’s a surprise for their grandchildren, who are due to visit next week.
So Mr Grigg duly sets off at just after nine o’clock and tells me he’ll be back in about an hour. Mrs Bass has promised there will be a bacon butty in it and my husband will do anything for free food.
“I mean, it shouldn’t take that long to put up a trampoline, should it?” he says, giving me a cheery wave as he walks down the road. We have a lunch date so he mustn’t be late.
Three hours later I discover that Mrs Bass has left me a telephone message.
“Mr Grigg’s asked me to give you a call to let you know that he and Mr Bass have just about finished. It seems it was much more difficult than they thought.”
To save Mr Grigg’s tired old bones, I take the car down to the Basses’ house to pick him up.
I ring the doorbell but find no-one at home. Then I hear laughter coming from beyond Mrs Bass’s herbaceous border.
I stroll down through the grounds, admiring the twists and turns and attention to detail everywhere I look.
There’s not a weed in sight, but plenty of colour, interest and sweeping informality in this garden, which makes the most of its lovely setting with its pastoral backdrop of old Dorset.
Down at the trampoline site, I discover the source of the noise. There is fun and high-jinks going on, with Mr and Mrs Bass and Mr Grigg taking it in turns to have a go on the newly assembled piece of kit.
“What took you so long?” I shout down to Mr Grigg, who responds by muttering something about there being more holes than springs and that the whole thing was really heavy and so hard to put together.
This, coming from a man who takes a matter of minutes to work out how to assemble furniture from a certain Swedish superstore.
“It wouldn’t be that you had to put the trampoline through its paces before letting the children loose on it, would it?” I say.
“Well, it was really hard work,” Mr Grigg says.
Mr Bass nods in agreement.
“Then we had to make sure it was safe.”
“And the more we went on it, the more we liked it,” says the disembodied voice of a bouncing Mrs Bass, whom I can see on the other side of the safety netting doing a star jump.
“It’s my turn next!” Mr Grigg yells. “Lunch can wait.” n