One moment in time: Chelsea 2023

‘There exists in our lives a grand, beguiling, but subtle myth that works its way into the centre of our brains, leading us to judge ourselves calamitous failures and driving us into years of anxious, unrewarding effort and struggle. The myth is constructed around an innocent-sounding, even exciting idea: the notion that there is a ‘centre’, a special place on the planet - the right city or district - and there, and only there, is a real and full life possible. By being exiled from the centre we are condemned to pinched, mediocre existences, cut off from everything important and interesting. We are, we gloomily reflect, mere ‘provincials’.

It's a long-standing and surprisingly widespread concept. A thousand years ago, Japanese intellectuals regretted their distance from China - it was only there, they believed, that scholarship, art, poetry and refined manners could flourish. At home, they could only ever be second rate. In the late 19th century, American artists from Massachusetts to Mississippi were tormented by the conviction that their creative life was stunted because they weren’t at the centre of cultural life, in Paris. But by the mid-20th century, the people who actually were in Paris felt that only in New York could they live a proper existence and fully participate in the excitements of the modern world. They lamented the tree-lined boulevards and the stately Place des Vosges and dreamed of the East Village and Broadway. In turn, the residents of New York were starting to think they should really move to California…

We believe we cannot be content living just anywhere; we gird ourselves to make a bid for life at the ‘centre’, in one of the worlds current hotspots… Soon we come to think that it’s not simply living in the right city that counts; we have to be in the right part, be invited to certain parties, attend particular events, and know certain key people.’

I wasn’t one of the cool kids at school. I wasn’t even one of the beautiful people at university. I plough my own furrow and I try to be kind to the people that I meet, but you couldn’t ever say that a party only got started when I had arrived. When people ask me where I live, I have to stop myself saying ‘Somerset - the unfashionable end’.

But this week, just for a moment, I was the centre of the universe. I was standing in a place that felt like all my dreams come true, where there was absolutely nowhere else that I would rather be, and I didn’t even try and play it cool.

I stood in the middle of Sarah Price’s garden, in amongst the most exquisite planting imaginable, surrounded by crowds with cameras, on the first day of Chelsea Flower Show.

I am not even going to let the fact that Polly Nicholson tried to get me in on the Benton iris craze two years ago and I totally missed the boat ruin this for me. I am still floating on a cloud of Rosa mutabilis.