OF CABBAGES AND ANGELS

Tales from topographic allotments: Gabriel’s vegetable patch revealed, by a man who witnessed it in all its glory.

One of the paragraphs in Peter Gabriel’s leaving letter that gained the most attention was: “even the hidden delights of vegetable growing and community living are beginning to reveal their secrets. i could not expect the band to tie in their schedules with my bondage to cabbages.”

Gabriel remained proud of this period in his life. he was to say as late as 2012 that he took “two years off, growing cabbages and children”.

richard Macphail says: “yes, Peter had a vegetable garden. his mother, irene, had always had one, so it wasn’t completely out of the blue. he loved growing his veg and feeding his family. he had part of the garden turned over to veg. it wasn’t a big area by any means, but it’s surprising, if you’re good at it, how much you can grow in quite a small plot. someone worked out around the time of the first World War that you could feed a family of four from an allotment of 50 foot by 30 foot – this became a standard plot. Peter’s was half that, more 30 foot by 30 foot.

“Peter was a vegetarian by then. i’d been through my vegetarian phase and had gone back to being a carnivore because i couldn’t live without bacon. their real favourite meal was the macrobiotic thing of brown rice and vegetables. that was the Woolley Mill standard diet, and i used to go and hang out at Woolley Mill a lot.”