Moan, Moan, Moan - 2011

[mark smyth]

Aren't they Hydra?  You already mentioned them - I must read before posting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hydras_(.JPG

[emma T]

Nope not hydra , been there, killed those    these dont move round the tank (yet ?) they are all interconected into a mat of polyps . Hydras swim around , walk about , and are bigger than these Things.

[emma T]

These have loads more tentcles than hydra. Hydra only have five

[Martin Baxendale]

Well that's the last time I'll write anything for the Daily Mail Weekend Magazine! 

Sent my snowdrops feature in only to have some hack of an 'assistant editor' add on a rewritten (and factually incorrect) intro and ending to make it more in keeping with the Daily Mail style. I've since been told by someone else who's written for the Daily Mail that this is what they tend to do - take your copy and turn it into a flowery hack job.

My intro was this:

The current craze in horticultural circles for snowdrops, or galanthus to give them their botanical name, is sometimes compared to the madness of Tulip Mania in seventeenth century Holland, due to the incredibly high prices that bulbs of the newest and rarest varieties can sell for at auction.

I then went on to write, very topically, about the incredibly high prices snowdrops sell for at auction before writing generally about snowdrops, which to buy to start a collection, where to buy them, where to see them, how to grow them, etc. The bulk of my feature has been left as I wrote it and is I feel reasonably well written (since I've been writing for over 30 years, including for various gardening mags and half a dozen gardening books) apart from the stupid intro and ending tagged on. I re-wrote these to correct the inaccuracies and try to make it less rubbish, but god knows if they'll take any notice! Bear in mind this feature is to appear on 5th Feb when the snowdrop season is well underway, so the timing mistake was the first thing I corrected. Anyway, here is the intro they wanted to tag onto the top of the article:


  By Martin Baxendale

         With a little bit of luck, and if our gardens don't get buried under another thick layer of snow,  we should soon be getting a glimpse of what some people call milk flowers. By that I mean snowdrops, nature's own white carpet, celebrated as a very early and - given the harsh weather -  optimistic sign of spring. One minute the ground is hard and unyielding,  or so it seems;  the next, Galanthus (to give them their botanical name)  are peeping through all over the place, later to be outshone by the equally ubiquitous yellow daffodil.
          But we shouldn't take snowdrops for granted, as there is a current craze in horticultural circles for some of the newest and rarest varieties, and big money is being paid for single flowers.    It is being compared to the madness of Tulip Mania in 17th century Holland, when  just one bulb would sell for ten times a craftsman's yearly wage.

And this is the ending they wanted to tag on:

So when you see the first snowdrops of spring poking through this month, welcome them as something more than nature's first stirrings of the gardening year. Because for some people they are, after all, an investment in the future - in more ways than one.

Remember, this is to be published 5th Feb, and I told them when the snowdrop season starts, peaks and ends. The sound you can hear is me tearing my hair out.

[Martin Baxendale]

It's not my kind of newspaper at all, and with hindsight I should probably have said no when they asked.

[Lesley Cox]

THEIR intro is rubbish Martin. If I'd submitted that (aged 12 or 13) to my English teacher it would have come back with red pencil lines and a terse comment to "think again."

[Martin Baxendale]

That's pretty  much what I thought when I first read it Lesley. And milk flowers?!! Where'd they get that from? Nature's own white carpet? That would be yer actual snow, wouldn't it?! etc, bloody etc.

[ThomasB]

To call snowdrops "milk flower" isn't actually wrong and doesn't require much imagination as that is what Galanthus (greek: gala = milk, anthos = flower) means.

[Martin Baxendale]

Yes, that's the literal meaning of the botanical name galanthus, which I did know of course, but to say that some people call them milk flowers is just wrong - I've never heard a single gardener (or non-gardener) here in Britain refer to snowdrops as milk flowers, and no snowdrop collector in the UK would use that name. The way they wrote it makes it sound like people commonly refer to them as milk flowers, which is just not true - I think they got it from the Wikipedia entry for galanthus, which gives the literal meaning of the name in the first line.

[mark smyth]

why dont you retract it?

[Martin Baxendale]

I did consider that, Mark, but I put a lot of work into it and hoped that if I rewrote the crap bits they tacked on and tried to get it back on the right tracks then it could still be okay - and maybe it will. Fingers crossed. Also they only sent me their stupid revisions at the very last minute, as the copy and pictures were already being sub-edited and planned into the magazine edition, which is due to come out in just a few days. So I was pretty much screwed - the friend who writes for them said, when I mentioned that, that they would probably just use the copy and photos I'd sent and ignore any attempts to withdraw my approval to publish.

[chasw]

Well Martin you know what to say next time if you are asked again,had a similar experience with a mini magazine years ago,and now refuse if asked

[Lesley Cox]

Really looking forward to a whole day in Queenstown yesterday, watching NZ play Pakistan, a one day game against a stunning high mountain backdrop and was planning to buy apricots, cherries on the way through Central and gather some wild plants of Thymus vulgaris which cover the hills in the Cromwell Gorge. I need more in my herb garden.

Leaving home around 7am I heard the first 3 or 4 overs on the radio (Pakistan no wickets down for about 35 runs!) then the rain came down and the game was eventually abandoned. Mooched around for a while, got my fruit and thyme and very wet, then home to sniggers from the other half.

I suppose Maggi would say it serves me right for wasting time on such a silly game. Weather in Q'town today is expected to be very fine, warm and sunny.

[David Nicholson]

I might be considered to be ageist but: newspapers these days appear to have a mass of probably very well qualified 20/something journalists with not a scrap of common sense or world experience. They, well the London based ones anyone, appear to think that the whole world revolves around London/Covent Garden/Chelsea/ and the whole world is 20-30.

Ah well. Wish I was 20-30 again

[Maggi Young]

You are  full of wishful thinking David..... you should be more positive, like me... I have the body of a twenty year old and regret nothing.... of course, that might change when I have to let him go.........