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Fun, Sun & Tum
Before you say it, yes I am watching the footy while I write.
I mean, it’s on. ‘Watching’ might be a stretch. But I decided, after catching up on the superb podcast The England Pod (co-hosted by none other than my own little brother), to immerse myself in the zeitgeist of summer 2026 and Get Into The Footy.
I used to say that I was raised male. I was always outnumbered, even before Mum died, but after she died it was just me, Dad and my two brothers (the best brothers a girl could ask for, but brothers nonetheless).
Our Dad was a huge sports fan. Depending on the season, the weekends were narrated by constant coverage on TV (for those not alive in the 90s, then the size and dimensions of a large cardboard box) and radio of rugby, cricket, or football. Interspersed were major events such as the Grand National and Wimbledon. The Boat Race (an event for which our father ‘did the PR’ for 15 years) was an annual fixture. But football - in the Maxwell court of sports - was king. Playing it, watching it, discussing it.
My early and consistent exposure to English men watching sports left me
with several, lasting theories on the subject:
For English men, sports is a permissible outlet for emotions they would not otherwise outwardly express
The more purely a system is man-made (by which I mean made by men specifically) the more complex and hierarchical it is likely to be. For examples, see: armed forces, sports leagues, and (the most compelling example of all) freemasonry
Sports team monogamy is more easily upheld than is romantic monogamy
Talking through issues in such committed sporting relationships is not only accepted but expected - for what is a play-by-play dissection of one’s team over a pint with friends but group therapy of a kind - where such analysis of the joys and struggles in romantic relationships is not done
(And just as I write this, during the first ridiculous hydration break, they played ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ which was our song - mine and my Dad’s)
As a result of this indoctrination I understand and even enjoy watching sports of all kinds, and my natural (and carefully nurtured) competitive spirit means I can commit my whole heart to a team’s performance for the length of a single game and feel that the result is life or death.
All of this knowledge would surely help me get guys, I thought, when the time comes.
It did not.
Because here’s another thing I have learnt about English men:
Their egos are as fragile as the little baby eggs of a mineral deficient mama bird.
Anyway, I am watching the footy.
Why am I telling you this? Well, as much as anything else it has been a strange few days with very little gardening.
Of course, the heat wave.
Thank goodness for my panicked procurement of a cheap A/C unit during the May heatwave. I do not think I would have survived this week without it. Not only because of the excessive heat, but because I picked up some kind of stomach bug or food poisoning and spent three days sub-duvet (metaphorically speaking).
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the combo of 35 degrees C and tummy trouble is not to be recommended.
The upside to this sort of illness vs a head cold or sinus issue is that my mind was clear enough to read and I have sprinted through ‘Of Generals and Gardens’ the autobiography of Peter Coats.
Peter Coats was Chips Channon’s partner for decades. He was also Aide-de-Camp to General Wavell during World War II, and - more importantly, for our purposes - went on to be the Garden Editor of House and Garden magazine, a notable garden writer and photographer.
Reading about Coats in Channon’s diaries sent me down a rabbit hole and I have bought (for pennies in some cases) as many of his long-out-of-print books as I can find. At times like these I love the internet.
The first of the books I have read is his first volume of memoirs, ‘Of Generals and Gardens’ published in 1976. Coats lived to be 80, dying in 1990, and thus had time to publish a second volume of memoirs ‘Of Kings and Cabbages’, published in 1984, which I can’t find anywhere online. If anyone happens to have a copy of this long-forgotten book - please may I borrow it?
Coats and Channon had a long, complex, sensual, vibrant, dangerous, tender love story, which one can only start to uncover by reading between the lines of Channon’s diaries, the three, uncensored volumes of which were published between 2021 and 2022. Even in this most intimate place, Channon only felt safe to write about his relationship with Coats (or ‘Bunny’ as Chips affectionately called him) in veiled terms. In Coats’ own autobiography, there is little mention of Chips and nothing that betrays their true, romantic love for one another.
Having listened to 130+ hours of Channon’s diaries, followed by reading Coats’ memoir, I wonder whether someone ought to write a biography of Coats, reviving this overlooked garden writer, chronicling his thirty-year tenure as Garden Editor of House and Garden (which is only given a few pages in the memoir), but also telling the rich love story of Chips and Bunny which - only now - can be safely told.
I look away for one second and we score. Finally.
This is all I really have to report to you from these hot, strange days. I made up a bed in my study (which is the room with the air con unit, for a number of dull, practical, impractical reasons) which amounted to little more than a pile of blankets on a hurriedly-bought, little bed base, and yet I had a surprisingly happy time in the cool, reading my book.
Ooh! A second goal!! Lovely Harry Kane. GO ON LADS.
Happily, I am much better and hope I can send you a proper garden update asap. Mean time, COME ON ENGLAND.
Peter Coats turns up as Petticoats all over Nancy Mitford's letters, as does Channon ('vile and spiteful and silly,' also something about having a pitch-black soul. Many hilarious references to his top-tier social climbing). I think you'd LOVE them if you haven't read.
I think you could expand on the theory around man-made hierarchical systems. It starts at public school with complex terminology and slang, stretches through Oxbridge and the clubs there and peaks with these mad secret societies. My dad was a member of a few, it felt like he was either in morning dress (complete with antique top hat) or evening dress, normally including some ridiculous medallion or badge representing whatever society he was off to. My mother thought it was all tedious nonsense but did get access to some wonderful country houses and classic gardens which was good.