Down the Bath Road

All the fun of the fair is to be had this weekend in our Bath Road. There’s nowadays a regular weekend market on the Robert Young site, where I had a useful photographic chat with one of the stallholders. We then visited the Cheltenham Connect Christmas fair at the Exmouth Arms, and I met another photographer, seasonally decorated. A jolly musical accompaniment was provided by Ukaholics. I felt I'd come a very long way from Leicester here!

Since its inception nearly three years ago now Cheltenham Connect seems to have become rather well established on various fronts. You always wonder how long the enthusiasm of volunteers for any given cause will maintain itself. The best thing you can hope to be able to say is that if it didn't exist you'd have to invent it. Might that not now just be the case with Cheltenham Connect?

Robert Young, R.I.P.

Our local greengrocer, Robert Young closed its doors yesterday for the last time. As my photograph - taken a couple of years ago - shows, it featured a garden centre, and indeed the shop grew out of a nursery business that started many decades ago: someone will be able to tell me when.

Robert Young was a landmark, an institution and a way of life. At one extreme, it was always worth a look "under the tree" to see if something was going cheap. At the other, there were Sue Artus' fabulous flower arrangements, as for that Winter wedding I wrote about last year.

Now what, for this key site at the end of our Bath Road? Not another Tesco Express or Metro surely!

Matthewman's - not this year

In Matthewman's sweet pea catalogue, you will find a bewilderingly long list of getting on for fifty varieties. Since seeing their stall at the Chelsea Flower Show, I have bought Matthewman's seeds and planted them in late Autumn as instructed; but last year's purchase - for some reason - remains in its wrapper. So in April, realising I had missed the boat, I bought some plants from our local florist/greengrocer, Robert Young: they have done brilliantly! The most delicate colours, and the longest, straightest stalks - some more than 18" - you could wish for.

Sweet peas are such a gift. You provide a simple structures (as for runner beans) and wind some string round it, then hey presto! They do the rest themselves. On the row, so long as you keep cutting - which you can do for ages - they look ethereal: in the hand in a bunch, they make a great bouquet: in a vase on the kitchen table, they are best of all, giving out their delicious scent. Their short life makes them all the more special. Whom the Gods love die young.