Narrative Self

I thought I’d already met the allotment ‘character’, a smiley, slim built man with close cut hair and beard, in his 40s I’d guess. He lives in a large van that looks like a converted small bus, with his young lurcher Lightly. The first time I met him I thought he was away with the fairies, his enthusiasm for his new allotment plot was palpable and his lack of experience was even greater than mine.  There were only he and I at the allotments that day and he told me this was about as sociable as he gets, that he doesn’t meet many people and he’s a “very quiet person”.  You could tell he hadn’t been sociable for a while, he didn’t stop talking.  Even when he was back on his own patch of earth two plots away I could still hear him clear as a bell.  I thought he was talking to himself, but I soon realised he was having full on conversations with Lightly and she was answering back with a wag of her windmill tail.  So much for the ‘very quiet’ neighbour, I thought! It turns out though that Mr Van Man is a gentle man, modest and a rather resourceful allotmenteer.

Then along came Land Rover Man. His plot is next to mine and over the past few months it’s gradually been changing.  First, a substantial looking fence appeared, then the soil was being turned over a at steady pace and the triffid-like weeds disappeared. All this hard work was going on but I’d never seen anyone doing it. Until recently. I turned up one afternoon and a battered old Land Rover was pulled up outside the plot. A not so tall, rotund man in his 50s was leaning against it, tea in one hand and fag in the other, his t-shirt read ‘and on the eighth day God created Land Rover’. I think I knew where this man’s heart really lay. It turns out he’s a Northerner (I love a northern accent!). And, driving, especially Land Rovers, is his raison d’être. I thought he was probably married to his vehicle, but then I met his neighbour (a man in the next decade up). The two of them are like an old married couple; they make me laugh so much. You can see how fond of each other they are, yet neither of them wants the other to know it!  They nicknamed my circular herb bed The Barrow and wondered who I’d buried under it. Until now it’s been an empty grave, but I’m seriously considering it as a final resting place for the person that in my book deserves the ‘accolade’ of Allotment Character.Well, that’s one way of putting it. Allotment Stalker might be another.

I’ve been going over to the plot as much as I can recently. April is the planting window and I’ve been on a mission to mark out beds and paths.  I’d decided raised beds would be a good thing as the soil warms up quicker and you don’t have to dig them over every year, but it’s a big plot and the only way I was going to get enough soil was to dig out the paths a couple of inches down and add the soil to the top of the beds. So I hired a cultivator and turned the soil in a back-breaking day’s work and started on the ground plan, trying to race against the re-emergence of weeds. Creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) is enemy number one. Pretty as it looks when it’s in flower, it can come up from deep under the earth (so just burying it is no good) and it can spread 4 square meters in a year. With the amount I’ve got the whole plot could be covered in a year. So as I’ve been digging and cultivating I’ve been diligently taking out as much as I can.

“Your man did that for e did e?” I looked up, surprised that the question was directed at me. It was a new neighbour, leaning on my fence.  I’d met him the day before when he bumped into me and Van Man. He was carrying a toddler, thrown over his shoulder like a rag doll.  She was obviously in a deep sleep, but I made a joke about her looking dead (was he going to bury her in my barrow?!  I didn’t ask him that, but the thought crossed my mind…) and then got the full story of how she was born with a hole in her heart and he’d spent two years going backwards and forwards to hospital in Bristol with her.  She was three now and he’d split up with his wife last year after just four years. He gave up his work when his child, who you could see he dotes on, was sick. He was from the badlands of Caharrak, a village near one of Cornwall’s major tin mining towns.

“The digging”, he said, with a nod in the direction of my plot. He’d decided my quizzical look to his question needed some clarification. “Oh”, I said “no, I haven’t got one of those”. “We’ll have to go out for a drink sometime”, he responded immediately. I was taken aback.  Did he really just say that?  I looked at him smiling broadly at me. He had said that. No we bloody won’t I thought to myself and gave him a fleeting half smile back. “Go out much do you?”.  I shrugged and replied “Not a lot”. His smile became a grin. “Oh, why’s that?”, I just shrugged and laughed and made to get back to hoeing buttercups. He stood up and moved towards my gate, leaning on the post. I was trapped. And had just realised that no-one else was around. Now, I didn’t fear for my life, but I could see him standing there giving me the third degree about my private life until a. I relented and agreed to go out with him, which is never, ever, ever going to happen, or b. the sun went down.

At this point, if you’re still wondering why I hadn’t crumbled at his charms, I should give you a low down on his appearance. I know looks aren’t meant to be everything, but combined with a personality like his, trust me, they’d have to be everything. He’s overweight, not particularly tall, not much taller than me; he has a round face, thinning dark hair and dark eyes.  And a beard.  I hate beards.  Really I do. He was wearing a navy and white striped t-shirt with ill fitting jeans.  The t-shirt looked too big, but it was obviously chosen to try and disguise his beer belly.  I hate beer bellies. There’s nothing attractive about a beer belly. Especially when you know it’s made of beer.

“Got children av e?”.  I could see where this was going: I don’t go out much because I’m shackled to a clutch of young-uns. “One,” I smiled “he’s 13″.  He asked me where he goes to school and I told him. I regretted it immediately: could he be after my son too?  “Oh, I went there! Not, the new one, the old one.”  “The new one’s only been there about three years,” I replied dryly.  I think I could’ve worked that one out for myself. He laughed and said  something unintelligible, but there wasn’t an ounce of embarrassment on his face.  “Go on, come out with me, I’ll look after you!”  I laughed and told him I didn’t need looking after. The scritch of the hoe continued and he wandered off smiling and laughing to his own plot opposite mine.  Finally, I thought and turned my back.  Deliberately.

Five minutes later he was back on the earth path, the no-mans land dividing our plots. “Vegetarian are e?”.  Random.  Very Random. I nodded “Yes”.  “Bet your boy finds that hard”.  What?  Pardon? “At school”. “No, why should he?” He looked at me as though I must be living in cloud cuckoo land not realising that a boy that doesn’t eat meat would be ridiculed.  I wondered what decade he thought we were in. “I’m a butcher.  Don’t know how I’m gonna get work doing that again though.  Trouble is I can’t do nothing else.  It’s all I know”.  Well that explains his appearance I thought, just swap his striped t-shirt for a stripy apron and he’d fit perfectly behind a butchery counter with a cleaver in his hand. I made a sympathetic face and wondered if he secretly blamed vegetarians for his lack of prospects. He nodded to himself and said “Come for a drink with me, go on. I’ll look after e”. His persistence was impressive.  Shame nothing else about him was.”Go on, why not?”.  I should have thought that was obvious to most women.  Not his ex-wife obviously, but to most women, yes. “Don’t you drink?”,  “Sometimes!”, “Go on then, why not? Don’t e want to?!”, he looked at me and laughed as if I was passing up the opportunity of a lifetime.  I just shook my head and carried on toiling.  He wandered off again, shouting random things about rhubarb from across the way.  Eventually he dawdled off back to his car and I sighed one massive sigh of relief.

The relief didn’t last long. Two days later I drove up to the car park and saw his car parked there.  And no others.  Oh god, I thought, should I just turn around now and go home?  I decided I wouldn’t be kept away from my bit of heaven by what I can only term an idiot.  After all the hellos and pleasantries about the weather and some make believe digging on his part he was back leaning on my fence again, he watched me for sometime and I tried to pretend he wasn’t there. “So do e want to come out for a drink with me or no?”. I looked him straight in the eye and said no thank you.  He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, smiled and wandered off.  Is this how he managed to procure a wife; did he just wear the poor woman down?!

For the last few days he’s been bothering me with inane (and frankly stupid) questions like ‘has he planted his rhubarb upside down’ or ‘why does my soil look so dry and yours is wet’.  I’m just waiting for the moment when he asks me out again.  With dread.

I’m considering a hedge at the front of my plot now.  A tall, fast growing one. But I think I prefer Julie Shackson’s suggestion of an electric one. With watch towers. And there’s still space in The Barrow.

love Stephie x