Vinegar and a golden key .

It has been over a month since I applied for an allotment .
 The town clerk dealing with same is legendary for her vinegar at best and her venom at worst . She has not just moved the goal posts she has chopped them up and set light to them .

I am no good at being patient when I have an idea I want to come to fruition . I knew that a response of any warmth would give her the reason to put me off till after Christmas .

As far as she knew I had lost interest and walked off .
This did the trick .
Today at the breakfast table there was a fat envelope next to my place . When I opened it there was a sheath of papers and from these fell a small brown sealed " pay packet "envelope . I left the paperwork and gingerly opened the envelope  .

Out fell a fat gold key and yes , it did glint in the sunlight .

In the cool of the early evening we slowly walked the long green corridor between the two gates roofed with beach leaves and the squawk of starlings .
I put the key in the lock of the second huge gate . I turned it very slowly ,  savouring the moment .
The gate gave a satisfying clank .


 Serenity seems to seep out of the soil . It felt like another country . Along the little paths , here sweetcorn , there two hives and their buzzing bees , here fat pods of peas and there a coop with two clucking chickens  .

And here's the plot . Rhubarb , raspberries , strawberries and blackberry bushes . A table and chairs all wrought with bind weed .

There's so much to do . Rough grass , bind weed  and thistles too . I am half in love with it already .

Then , unbidden a man emerges from the plot next door . I tell him bout my plan to smother the weeds and he offers a tarpaulin and an old carpet from home .

Another toy figure is across the site . He approaches and turns into another ( full sized ) plot holder . We stand in the sun and chat .

I go back to my plot . The first man is going home . As he goes he calls over " don't worry , it will be fine , mine looked like that to start with  ."

In this short visit I have made two more human connections . I have walked land I can call my own .
I have stood tall in all the burgeoning green rows smiling at the saxophonist . It is sunny and I am now the proud inheritor of two wheel barrows and a shed .

I know that this is going to be a summer of bramble thorns tattooing my body  .
 I know that my legs will be like lead from the digging  .

But there are times when you just know you are in the right place - and I am .

Plot and plan .

We painted and my cousin put together a cold frame in our garden on Sunday evening .  And then we went to the pub  obviously .

Yesterday we went to London . Lunch in China Town . Portrait of a lady by Alesso Baldovinetti ( room 59 ) at the national gallery .A bit of girlie shopping . Longchamp in the sales and then flowing trousers and cropped stripped tee shirts to wear round the house .

So today was the day to site the frame . A slow ponderous rain came down in disconcerting isolated plops . We were mid way through and then it bucketed . The saxophonist knows I will see things through and we were wet anyway .

We dug out bricks from here and collected them from there . Dug out the space and I laid a brick floor .The saxophonist tipped the puddles off the frame and impressively lifted it high and in . ( The top is a heavy old Victorian glazed window ) .

It looks very professional and it will enable me to grow from seed and plant out at the allotment .

We admired it and then each other . The saxophonist had mud smears wrist to shoulder . I had thick mud splashes ankle to thigh .We looked like half hearted mud wrestlers or incompetent body artists .

I anticipate that there will be a lot more satisfying foolishness to come .

A hot bath  and now  umbrella's akimbo to the pub to discuss more senseless satisfaction I think  .

Rain and promise .

A rainy Friday and I put on my raincoat and cap and head out for a three o clock rendezvous . I arrive early and realise there are school gates nearby .

Various older men walk up and four times I am convinced that a man is the one I'm after . I smile and step  forward . Each man smiles back and goes on toward the school gates to pick up their child .
I resolve to stop smiling at random men , feeling sure that a teacher will come out and have a word with me if I do not desist .

My phone goes off . It is Alan . He has been waiting at the another gate . He tells me to stop put and that he will come to me .

Alan arrives and unlocks  tall ornate iron gates and in we go .

The place is so green and tranquil .He leads me along little green paths and there we are .

I am shocked . I expected the plot to be overgrown after eighteen months left to itself . I did not expect this . Buried and half buried things form mounds under grass and trailing weeds .
I trip over what turns out to be a raised bed . Alan trips over a handle and pulls out a scythe .

There is a strawberry bed in addition to however many raised beds . There is sturdy seating and a shed .Pull back the weeds and there are two wheel barrows , two watering cans , a potting bench and various tools .
The shed  is for the moment locked so who knows what's in there .

The previous incumbent has officially quit the site and has until a certain date to remove any of his property he still wants . After that date anything on the allotment becomes legally mine .

The tools and so forth do not motivate me though . There are ripe strawberries , a raspberry cane and a blackberry hedge .The plot has promise and the summer is coming on . We will see .