Reporter Ian Hamilton visits Andy McClintock and his wife Anne. Andy explains why his main passion in life is digging....
Reporter Ian Hamilton |
The most important thing for digging out in the rain is having the appropriate head gear. Andy points out that there's no way he'd be out there digging in the rain if he didn't have a good hat. "There's no way I'd be out there if the water was running down the back of my neck, particularly as I'm bald".
Andy is currently completing a large 'terracing project'. It was a slope which Andy has transformed into three terraces. "I love the idea of digging to produce a sort of structure in the garden, something sculptural - and a grassy slope is an ideal starting point for creating anything I want to create". He's moved probably 30 or 40 tons of soil this year, using only a spade.
Andy's wife Anne : "He's out there in all weathers, a floodlight shining down on the mud, because invariably it is mud because it's raining and he's digging. The other disconcerting thing is it looks lovely once you've got it all done, and it's all flowered-up and everything and you're sitting there and it's absolutely gorgeous, but it's abit disorienting because the next time you go out it will have shifted and the flower patch will be somewhere else".
Anne just assumes now that when she gets up in the morning Andy will be out there digging. She'd be more worried, indeed, if he wasn't. Their friends and family also assume that that is what Andy will be doing. "My cousin was very worried the first time she saw him digging in the rain and kept saying 'Andy, come in you'll have pneumonia'. But now when I'm on the phone to her and I say Andy's out digging she says 'Oh, is it raining with you as well'".
Andy says he works in the rain because he can see where the drains need to go. He'll even sit with his waterproofs on smoking a cigar in the rain. "People think that's mad, but this is what fishermen love doing and nobody thinks they're mad because they're catching fish. Well, I'm out enjoying the garden.
Andy regularly lifts the lawn to dig under it. The garden was originally all lawn, marvellous for carving a garden out of. Andy might take some soil out, put the turfs back down, see what it looks like, and then a few weeks later lift them up again and take some more soil out or put some back again. "You're working over the whole canvas all the time. It's very much analogous to painting. It's a combination of painting and sculpture, that's what I see it as". Andy rejects totally the idea that it's just mindless digging, which would be no fun as far as he's concerned. He doesn't do it for exercise, but because he's interested in the result.
Anne recalls that when they originally looked at the house it was the expanse of diggable soil that really captured Andy's imagination. Andy's imported something like ten tons of stone. He heard that the local hotel were knocking down some 300-year-old barns, releasing some wonderful local stone. Having got the stone he had to think up something to do with it, having not really had any particular plan in mind. That's how the idea of the terracing evolved.
Anne admits that Andy's not a man for half measures. "If he was a spiritualist he would not be a happy medium!". Anne's not entirely persuaded by Andy's artistic arguments "I think he just likes digging frankly". Andy disagrees and maintains that he "enjoys the aesthetic experience of digging leading to what I produce - which may be nothing". Andy hopes he has another 20 years of digging ahead of him.
