IT WAS so artfully and beguilingly planned last autumn, the new front garden. The lawn had been turned into virgin beds, ripe for a glorious display of late winter and spring flowering bulbs.
Clusters of crocus were planted in elegant little colonies. Dense masses of daffodils and tulips of different kidney, stripe and hue were to cause passers by to stand bolt upright, awestruck, silent upon a street in Phibsboro. For the sudden explosion of colour in a spring, garden is the assurance that winter is over; ahead of us lies the infinity of summer, swallows and swifts gambolling and, swooping in the clear blue skies, roses clambering up walls, and vast expanses of wildflowers blossoming in the upland meadows of Wicklow.
And the precursor of all this festival joy is the spring flowerbed, the banks of daffodils, the fat heads of tulips, the myriad little army of blue and gold crocus.
The plants were bought in plenty and laid in density lasts autumn, a cross between woodland design and cottage garden, and then we gazed at the expanse of wintry mud, waiting for the shoots to come through. Snow fell, ice formed. Frost lay deep upon the ground, digging through the soil and freezing it solid.
But finally the worst extremes of winter departed, and the first of the daffodils in the old beds began to show through. But in the new beds, nothing. Frozen mud gave way to melted frozen mud, and now, two days into spring, it is quite clear that nothing is going to grow in those new beds.
Paid the Price
The hosts of daffodils have instead become the ghosts of daffodils. This winter, there has been a vast subterranean massacre of shallow laid bulbs. That massacre was conducted by a companion which, we were assured, was gone from our lives - deep frost. In other words, I listened to the experts and have paid the price.
The experts, Remember the experts? The bright lads who promised us global warming, the abolition of winter, the assurance of a meteorological continuum which would make seasons the same - remember them? It was their cheerful promise that cold winters were a thing of the past which accorded with my own natural indolence and caused me to plant my bulbs close to the surface - that they might not have far to grow was my justification.
Now I have flowerbeds that look like the Dogger Bank at low tide. I am almost tempted to prospect for lugworm on them. And what lies ahead for the summer, who can say? What festering, frostbitten, bulbous corpses lie below the soil's surface, ready to spread decay to all new plant forms taking root in this contaminated earth?
Thank you, experts. Thank you. When international horticultural competitions assess gardens according to their similarity to Sandymount Strand, I'm in business.
It was experts of various kinds who assured the beef business that it was a perfectly sound practice to mangle sheep brain and sheep spinal column into pellets to feed to beef cattle, which has had such interesting effects, on the beef industry in recent times.
However, nothing will induce me to cease eating beef, regard less of whatever the experts say. My butchers - Herron's, near Doyle's Corner, Phibsboro - sell such beef as Mahatma Gandhi would willingly have slaughtered the Indian National Congress for.
Alcohol advice
And it has been experts of a different kidney who have been saying for the past decade that we should only drink so much alcohol, to be measured in something called a unit. I have never attempted to discover what a unit is, but I do hear one is supposed to drink about five glasses of wine a week; less if you are a woman. Let us pause for a moment here. A moment's silence, if you please, for women.
Now we hear that what these grim, Roundhead, mirthless doctors have been saying about alcohol is nonsense. Alcohol is actually good for you. Teetotal men are Jive times as likely to suffer heart attacks as men who drink three to four drinks a day. One survey in Copenhagen, which examined nearly 3,000 men showed conclusively that the higher cholesterol level in your blood, the more you needed alcohol.
There might seem no reason to listen to one set of experts rather than another, but there is of course. When expert advice reinforces good sound common sense, what else should one do but follow it? I look forward to a summer of Herron's steaks washed down by lots of good red wine.
This is a time when we must not panic, when we should double our orders of Irish beef and make sure the cellar is well stocked with wines and beers.
No doubt it is not advisable that we should all live to 100 or so. How we should deal with at impending crisis I shall let you know when I am 90.
If, that is, litigitis has not throttled the life out of all of us by then. We can get a shrewd idea of what is about 10 years down the road for us by attending to what is happening in America.
The latest law stories to reach us here include one where an employee at a Wall Street investment firm is suing another for slicing his shot during a works golf outing and hitting the plaintiff as he sipped a drink beside the course. Damages being sought total $3 million.
An even more elegant case involves Polly Atwood, a schoolteacher who told her class of teenagers she was lesbian. She didn't slip the hand under anyone's elastic, just said she was lesbian - and one pupil is now suing her for, $300,000 because of the "emotional stress which resulted from the admission.
Equity Partner
The most delightful prospect is something called the "equity partner", who will evaluate a damages claim, cover its cost, and pay you immediate cash pending the outcome, in which the equity partner has now purchased an interest. And if you don't like the large slice your "equity partner" takes from your final damages, you can of course sue him for emotional distress.
On the other hand, you might choose the more sensible course and stick to barbecued steaks and red wines and be a happy 90 year old who plants his spring bulbs deep.