"I don't wanna go to Chelsea" a "Post-It From London" - by Kate Ayres (London, UK)

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From the Web 1.0 days I bring you The Forum. To preserve them for posterity as Geocities can no longer be found but also it's fun to re-read some of them.

22nd May, 2001

Well hello from what is a beautiful, sunny London in May and sorry for the delay in my post-its. Its been a brilliant sporting weekend for the UK - long may that continue, but you know summer is just around the corner when…. The Chelsea Flower Show starts…. 

To those uninitiated in this, this is an annual event, held near Chelsea barracks, in the grounds of the Chelsea Pensioners hospital, in SW London and run by an organisation called the Royal Horticultural Society… (Sounds posh but we do this thing very well in the UK!). They organise a spectacular week of floral displays, gardens, ornamental gardens and also a huge presence of garden supplies companies, herbalists, and other organisations, such as candle makers, who sell their wares to you at trade discount.

I was lucky enough to go last year (I had a pair of tickets given to me) and, even though I am not into gardening I have to say the beautiful flowers, roses, herb gardens certainly made a wonderful display.

There is a huge TV presence, both Channel 4 and the BBC do wonderful clips of “Today at Chelsea” in the evening and I must admit I wish I was going this year. So far they haven’t announced the winners of the gardens. People literally design a garden on a theme, take for example, “garden on a budget” and from a completely flat, barren plot on the site, a beautiful garden, usually with a pond, waterfall or other such attraction is formed… These teams work 24 hours a day to get these gardens up in time for judging, which has just taken place. It is truly inspirational to anyone, no matter what size of garden or roof terrace they have and I would thoroughly recommend it.

The Queen, I believe, always goes on the first day, which is today and gives the rosettes to the winners of the gardens or “Best rose bush” or whatever. It sounds naff but I have to say… there is nothing finer than sitting having a quiet cup of tea and salmon sandwiches surrounded by sweet smelling flowers and admiring the view…… 

On another note, you cannot escape the fact that very shortly, June 7th to be exact, we have another General Election in the UK. Yes, it’s the “lets kiss all the babies and tell the pensioners how much better off they will be if they vote for me” time! 

There is, of course, one great thing… our current Deputy Prime Minister punched a member of the Welsh crowd from Rhyl last week because he got an egg thrown at him! We have a very strong tradition of pelting those we dislike in the UK with eggs or tomatoes and frankly I would have thrown worse! The poor Welsh farmers, quite rightly, were up in arms over our government’s incompetence and lack of help in the Foot & Mouth crisis and personally I think that if a politician cannot take the flak they shouldn’t be in politics in the first place! I very much hope this isn’t a precedent with our politicians just lashing out because they don’t like to hear some home truths... But anyway… its was an absolute scream to see it happen on the News at 10 on BBC and I must say livened up an otherwise boring election campaign.! 

I am buying my eggs right now… they could be in my area very soon and I think I need to practice my spin bowling!

Have a great May and I will follow up very soon….. Love Kate XX

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