Green fingers
“Unfortunately his much-loved Disco is living on borrowed time, thanks to the next proposed ULEZ expansion project”
ALTHOUGH my global gallivanting has long held keeping an allotment a distant dream, it is about to become a reality. Lockdowns in England forced me to try to find gainful activities with which to occupy myself, one of which was to turn the Fella’s compact garden into a vegetable patch. Before I started working so much abroad, I had always grown seasonal easies, but a whole garden, albeit a small one, was a new challenge.
On account of largely being without work, I bought a great book entitled How to Grow Food for Free and got the Fella (a key-worker) to source abandoned pallets, from which we constructed several raised beds. Once these were planted up, with all remaining space filled with grow-bags and pots, the garden’s capacity was exhausted and, as a rental, we thought that eliminating any remaining lawn with further raised beds might be poorlyreceived by the landlord.
Thanks to all those lockdown walks, we discovered all the local allotments, including a lovely verdant one on the edge of a community green space. I looked it up, made a phone call to the local council and had my name added to a phenomenally long waiting list, refusing to be put off by the prospect of an interminable wait.
Two years later and back into growing season, after those still-standing raised beds had been quickly filled again, I started chasing up the allotment. Eventually the phone was answered. As luck would have it, lockdown-inspired gardening enthusiasm had waned and a plot had just come up. “Are you free to view the plot on Tuesday at 10.00am?” asked Jonathan. I was actually planning on flying out to Iraq the preceding Monday, but the prospect of securing an allotment was too tempting, and I hadn’t yet booked my flights. My answer was a resounding “Yes!”
On Monday night, I am imagining the loveliest plot. “It might have fruit trees,” I say to the Fella, who is trying to sleep. “It might even have a greenhouse.” Lifting a pillow from his head, he tries to curb my excitement, saying it’s highly likely we will be viewing the smallest, saddest nettle patch in an overcast corner scorned by all other allotment holders.
The next day, waiting on the street outside, a white van scoots past and turns into the allotment entrance. It is followed by an old Disco in great condition, which seems like a good omen. We follow the vehicles on foot.
“That’s a nice old Land Rover,” I say to the man putting on his work boots beside an open rear door. “Are you Jonathan?”
Indeed he is, and his 1996 Discovery is a much-loved and well-kept vehicle. Unfortunately, he says, it is now living on borrowed time, thanks to all the talk of the next proposed ULEZ [Ultra-low Emissions Zone] expansion project. “Oh, but that hasn’t been decided,” I say. “They might not do it.” Jonathan seems unconvinced, but says it’s a particular shame as he was looking forward to retiring to Devon – he’s an Exmoor enthusiast – and says his Discovery would be the perfect vehicle for that.
We head down into the allotments, discussing our three respective Land Rovers and slating the ULEZ project, the current expansion of which has already impacted thousands of drivers including many Land Rover owners.
As we walk towards the end of the allotments, I see a sweeping patch covered in tall grass, in which nestles what looks like two rather sad and greenish homemade plastic greenhouses, constructed around wooden frames. To me it looks, well, utterly perfect.
“Is this my plot?” I ask, incredulous. Jonathan affirms it is and we march the length and breadth of it, swishing through the long wet grasses. Although the previous tenant threw the towel in after a week reckoning it to be “too much work”, I coo and purr, admiring all the plot’s fine features: the greenhouses (“it has infrastructure”), the humble fruit trees (“an orchard”), the cascading vine and its weed- and grass-filled former vegetable beds.
“So you want it?” asks Jonathan, laughing. “I want it,” I say. He hands me a key and simply says: “It’s yours.” It’s huge. It’s wonderful. It has exceeded all expectations.
The Fella tells Jonathan I’m off to Baghdad the next day but I hastily play down the whole ‘war journalist’ thing, explaining I’m mainly based in England these days, to ensure he doesn’t doubt my commitment to the allotment. The Fella (also now apparently my publicist) grabs the theme to explain I’m mostly now writing about Land Rovers. “Oh really?” Jonathan asks. “Which magazine?”
It turns out he takes LRM periodically, although complaining it’s no longer as readily available in newsagents as it once was, the second time I have heard that complaint in the last few weeks.
“What do you think of these modern Land Rovers then?” Jonathan enquires. I say I’m not keen at all and remain thoroughly committed to the older fleet. He looks thoughtful, as though something is dawning on him. “Hang on,” he says. “There’s a female writer for the magazine who owns a Lightweight and writes about not liking modern Land Rovers. That’s you, isn’t it?” I confess it probably is.
Jonathan has to press on with the day’s work, so we part company agreeing to future Land Rover discussions when there’s more time. But, what a very lovely, serendipitous way to acquire an allotment plot, via a fellow Land Rover enthusiast.
That afternoon, the Fella and I return to our new allotment, to make a start on what is clearly going to be an epic clearance job, as I am determined to make a start, laying some physical claim to the plot before taking my flight out tomorrow.