Today is grey. Today is grey, cold and there is frost on the ground and fog encircling me as I leave the tame landscape of the manicured garden. The communal garden has a beauty that transcends day and night, sun or frost, summer and winter. Well formed and planned ever more meticulously. I enjoy the garden and have spent a lot of time in it throughout the seasons, from picnics to late evening walks, but something is always longing… to dig… to plant… to fiddle.
Work is dull. Work is dull, monotonous with the same ebb of conversation that is only interrupted by the sound of broken English spent with an ever-surprising amount of tourism.
Time creeps at this petty pace… But something is wrong. I check my voicemail and listen nervously. The sound is muffled and distant but distinctive: “We have an allotment”.
An overwhelming feeling of happiness, a childish excitement and a longing to learn fill my head. I instantly start to sketch on remnants of customer surveys, on booking forms, gift aid submissions, almost on the desk…. I search through podcasts and download the latest edition of GQT to listen to on the walk home.
Thoughts wander across to a novelty gift that has slept on the bookcase, waiting for it’s time to shine. Now is that time.
‘C.H.Middleton: Dig on for Victory. All-Year-Round Gardening Guide 1945’
My mind dances through images of crop rotations, seed catalogues and muddy wellies though never forgetting the never ending, hard, back breaking work to come… But it remains exciting to once again be able to have nothing and build a kingdom. The immense feelings of pleasure and pride the will inevitably arrive when tasting my first self-grown lunches. The thoughts of these feelings will drive me through those cold, tiring days of strenuous digging.
Turning to Middleton once more, the quote on the cover burns onto my memory…
“Won’t it be grand when we can sit on the old garden seat, and listen to the birds instead of the sirens!”
The sirens may no longer be the threat of German invasion, but the sound of roaring traffic, telephone bells and the drone of millions of people still have that same effect for me. This is the age of a new war. A war of necessity and now to have that haven of an allotment to escape central city living will indeed be ‘grand’.
Dean
Dean
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