When I was a lad, the Pink ‘Un was the late Saturday edition of the local paper which had the football results, so critical in the days of the ‘pools’ when a £1 million could be won on the correct forecasting of 8 or 9 score draws. Nowadays the Lottery is the big deal and the results are on the telly a micro-second after the balls fall.

But, of course, there is another Pink ‘Un. The august Financial Times, beloved of bankers and financial whizz-kids in their 1st Class carriages up to The City – how do they do it nowadays with ‘working from home’ I wonder?.

I’d always assumed that the FT was just that, a work-based fount of the necessary knowledge, but it appears that the weekend edition is full of all sorts of interesting and diverse sections – House & Home, Life & Arts, Collecting and two colour supplements! How have I managed to miss all this?

Anyway, to get to the point, this weekend’s (1st October) House & Home section contains a full page article about the importance of real face to face (or F2F as it is now known!) training in areas such as horticulture. Sight and sound – e.g. via video learning – is all very well, but it is touch and smell and the opportunity to perform specific tasks which are so important in gardens.

Written by Hannah Gardner (oh, I do like an appropriate name) who has attended one of Sue’s Wild Gardening workshops here at Nant-y-Bedd and featuring other friends of ours in Alison Jenkins and Jimi Blake, the article makes a strong case for the huge importance of the physical senses.

Sue’s contribution to the article runs to about two whole columns – and a lovely picture of a frog in daughter Geraldine’s hands! In true public school style each comment begins “Mabberley says….” rather than “Sue says …” , but I suppose that’s the FT readership style. She also doesn’t appear in the pictures herself. I reckon it’s because she doesn’t have any pics wearing dungarees (Alison J) or a Hawaiian shirt (Jimi B); she says it’s because she’s not photogenic. Anyway, it is what one says that is more important and the article has already generated interest in our 2023 courses! (Full info on these will be published in our November Newsletter.)

The article doesn’t seem to be on the FT website as yet, but hopefully you can get a ‘feel’ for it in the pics below.

Here’s most of the piece contributed by Sue (or mabberley, if you prefer!)

..and finally …