The 96th in this occasional series of reprints from Quote Unquote the magazine is from the January/February
1994 issue. The seven-page feature “I Get a Kick Out of This” was a collection
of brief pieces by Brian Turner, Jacqueline Fahey, Owen Marshall, Barbara Else,
Colin Hogg, Iain Sharp, Nigel Cox, Mary-Louise Browne and others – booksellers,
painters, publishers, journalists, art curators – writing about more cheerful
stuff than most books magazines did at the time: motorbikes, daughters, dogs,
poker, haircuts, guitars, ice cream, shoes and more. The intro read:
There’s more to life than books. . . For a start, there’s chocolate. Here are another 20 of life’s extraordinary pleasures.
ROSES
They are the sexiest things that grow. Always have been. In
spite of the many prudish suburban gardens they adorn, the blatant sensuality
of roses is still earthy enough to turn a shiver or two. They are a pleasure
you can’t deny.
Red ones are hottest, especially when they have that
radiating fragrance that makes the air resonate with their passionate colour.
Fires deeper than you could imagine controlling, scorching away the mundane
detail of gardening as soon as the buds spill their colours out. A great
come-on to your eyeballs, heady visions laced with perfume.
Sweet pink seduces with subtlety; roses named for nymphs’
thighs, which capture the curve and texture of flowers with body. A graceful
turn and flicker, blushed with promise, shaped exquisitely, they are an age away
from fertiliser and fungal spray, flower shows and other public displays. This
is intimate stuff, between a man and his rose in some secret, sunny corner of
the mind.
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