Crinklybee

A Thing of Rare Beauty

Joella was right in the comments box there about how allotting (or whatever the verb is- I think we will make an executive decision to go for now with allotmenteering) at the very least gives you something new to obsess about.  In my case I've spent the best part of two weeks nurturing an almost morbid fixation with wooden pallets, of the sort that my neighbour in Plot 23 (an allotmenteering veteran, of fully six weeks standing) has nailed together to fashion a rudimentary but capacious compost bin.  

Now a compost bin is a particular priority over here on Plot 23, given that two of its four sides are covered in a riot of dead wood and unwanted foliage, and that we are not quite ready yet to take the advice of the old Irishman who, on taking one look at my pathetic efforts to belabour a particularly prickly corner with a rusty pair of rose-shears, counselled that I would be better off 'getting a big bloody bonfire out of that lot', adding, with obvious relish, that what he would do is 'get a great big fucking fifty-litre tin drum, drill a load of holes in it, and set the bastard alight- that would soon sort it out'. 

While this graphic image held a certain attraction, it had to compete with an alternative vision, in which my hamfisted efforts at controlled incineration led to the inadvertent destruction in a ball of flames of the shed and all its contents, closely followed by the arrival of the Fire Brigade, and a possible charge of arson.  Now this is the sort of thing I imagine Site Secretary Ivy (not to mention the bloke in Plot 22 who the shed is shared with, and who I have already upset very slightly by mistakenly chopping to pieces his blackberry bush, believing it to be 'some brambles') would take a dim view of.  So I decided that discretion was the better part of valour- and determined to revert to Plan 'A'.

The first part of this plan- finding three good-sized pallets- turned out to be the easy part.  Within three days and without really looking too hard I had located a dozen or so of the blighters, discarded in skips, up alleyways, or leaning against walls in the sidestreets of M19.  The hard part was getting them back to the plot without the aid of a vehicle, given that they are a lot heavier than they look, as I discovered while spending the best part of a sweltering Saturday afternoon hauling the nearest likely-looking one I could find two hundrend yards through the backlanes, in constant fear of either sustaining a slipped disc or attracting the attentions of the constabulary.  

This experience left me in no doubt that some help was going to be needed getting pallets two and three (kindly donated by the management of Madina International Superstore, Stockport Road) half a mile up to the plot from their temporary home in our backyard.  This is where Skipsey and his car were going to come in again last Sunday afternoon- but twenty minutes of manouvering, cajoling, and swearing (mostly of swearing) were enough to convince us that mid-size saloon cars are not really built to accommodate seven-foot squares of solid wooden planks hammered together with rusty nails, and especially not on their day off.

It was starting to rain now.  Quite hard, in fact.  And my suggested alternative course of action- that one of us could distract the driver of a 192 bus with a complicated fare enquiry, while the other one smuggled the pallets upstairs inside sixteen hastily-sown together Tesco Bags For Life- had been briefly countenanced, before being dismissed as unworkable.  A third course of action- that of retiring to the Fiddlers Green for three pints of Guinness and a front-row seat for Liverpool versus Tottenham Hotspur- was being given serious consideration, at least by me.  

And then I remembered that the bloke next door- who is a tradesman of some sort- has a van.  Ten minutes later we were unloading the pallets effortlessly from the back of it, and an hour after that (including only light amounts of swearing this time) Skipsey was declaring our completed handiwork- a rudimentary but capacious compost bin, no less- to be 'a thing of rare beauty'.

The manual work completed, we proceeded to the last official business of the day, which was to adjudicate on the results of the Madina International Superstore/ Fiddlers Green Public House/Al The Tradesman Of Some Sort From Next Door Fastest Seedling Spring Sweepstakes.  Which are as follows:

1st: Radish

2nd: Rocket

3rd: Parsley

(Non-Runner: Spring Onion)

Which I think means Abby and Craig the Eggplant/Aubergine/Owbrrgine Man from Australia are the joint winners, but that as Abby is disqualified from receiving prize money on account of being closely related to the management of Crinklybee The Honest Bookmakers Ltd, Craig is duly declared the winner and has 48 hours from the time at the bottom of this post to collect his winnings, which he can do by calling in person here at Crinklybee Towers, with suitable identification, such as an ocean liner boarding pass.  Well done Craig, and thank you to everyone for taking part.  Until next time- Good-night.   

Plot 23

In a moment of weakness approximately two years ago I put my name down for an allotment, and promptly forgot all about it.  Until a couple of weeks ago, when out of the blue I received a telephone message from someone calling themselves 'Ivy', summoning me to a Sunday morning rendezvous in a shed somewhere near Stockport Road.  

At the appointed hour the three of us arrived at the site to be greeted by an old fellow who had also been summoned for a viewing and who, despite the unseasonably sweltering conditions, had turned out for the occasion in a club tie and blazer.  While we were wondering if we had contravened some unwritten dresscode among the allotment fraternity by turning out for the showing in gardening attire, Ivy- a stern-faced and formidable-looking individual, straight out of a 1960s episode of Coronation Street, with a packet of seed potatoes under each arm and a lit Embassy Regal suspended from the lips- emerged from the shed, facilitated cursory introductions, and set off at pace down one of several blackberry-bush-lined avenues, beckoning us to follow.

Twenty minutes later we had been shown round six plots in quick succession, ranging in condition from 'maybe a slight bit of work needed here' to 'two and a half-hectares of six-foot high weeds partially obscuring the shed, which on closer inspection turns out to be a collection of old front doors loosely attached together with rusty old nails'.  After a very small amount of consideration, we chose one somewhere in between these two extremes- a long, thin, not-too-disastrously-abandoned-looking half-plot which Ivy reckoned had been tended 'in the last couple of years'- although she couldn't be sure, on account of 'just having taken over the lettings'.  Putting this slight vagueness to one side, we duly signed up, largely (at least as far as I was concerned) on account of the serviceable- and sturdy-looking shed planted at the far end.  

Thos was all a couple of weeks ago.  Since then, over the course of a half-dozen visits, I've found out that:

1- 'tended' is perhaps an overly generous term to describe how Plot 23 has been looked after for the last five years.  According to the old Irish bloke in the plot opposite (there are only two types of allotment gardener, at least in Levenshulme; old Irish blokes who plant exclusively potatoes, and people like me, incomers from the chattering classes who potter along with their young children and raise the suspicions of the old Irish blokes by planting herbs and other non-potatoes, and by spending undue amounts of time styling intricate curvy fences out of old twigs) the plot was last properly looked after by 'old Jimmy, and he's been dead for a good, ooh, six years now'.  

2- whoever has been looking after the plot since old Jimmy's demise seems to have dedicated their occasional visits not so much to planting as to filling the space with all manner of man-made detritus.  A close inspection of the undergrowth revealed its composition to be maybe 45% assorted weeds, 20% old housebricks, 15% wooden planks with jagged nails protruding at angles, 10% an old wooden staircase banister broken up into many pieces, 5% rusty old tincans, and 5% the rear windscreen of an Audi estate, in pristine condition and hidden among four foot of brambles (a search for the remainder of the vehicle has so far proved fruitless, but I've not given up). 

3- the shed doesn't belong to me, at least not exclusively.  By an obscure historical arrangement, possibly enshrined within the will of 'Old Jimmy' (May the Lord Bless His Soul) it is shared with the fellow in Plot 22, who turns out to be a reasonable fellow, at least if we are to judge by his unperturbed reaction to me and Frankie having 'tidied' (ie stuffed 75% of the contents into sacks, ready for taking down the tip) prior to our discovery of this small detail re ownership.

All of which, you might think, could have put us off our excursion into the world of allotment gardening.  I certainly thought so at first, but as it turns out I'm enjoying every minute down there, and a lot more since my mate Skipsey turned up in his car and transported most of the detritus down to the tip.  We've been down there about six times now, and in between finding old cars in the bushes we've been getting on with actual gardening-type stuff.  You know, digging. Raking. Hoeing (I'm especially enjoying hoeing, for reasons I don't claim to understand). Hacking away for three hours solid at a ferocious tangly triffid-esque weedmonster that had taken over the top third of the plot and which we later found out (from another old Irishman who has taken to handing out unsolicited advice while passing by), was actually a blackberry bush.

Oh, and planting.  We've actually planted some edible stuff in the bit that was covered by tarpaulin- and as I am sure you have already guessed, you will be the first to know when anything remotely resembling a seedling emerges from our virgin turf.  In fact, I'm opening a book on the summer yield for Plot 23, and the antepost odds for first crop to see the light of day are as follows:

Radishes, Spring Onions.. 9/2 Joint Favourite

Parsley ..14/1

Climbing and Running Beans (various) ..22/1 

Carrots (protected from rootfly by makeshift cloche assembled from salvaged wooden planks)..  40/1

Further Audi carparts, Domestic Fixtures and Fittings, Unexploded Second World War Bomb .. all 50/1

66/1 Bar.

Usual Crinklybee Turf Accountant rules and conditions apply.  Your wagers (also your gardening advice, the more useless, contradictory and downright impractical the better) in the comment box please.  Let the gardening commence.