We've got an allotment! Nyah, na na na nyah na!!

A couple of years ago - or was it in a previous lifetime? - a book on allotment keeping flung itself at Denise whilst she was perusing the shelves in her local bookshop. 'That's funny,' she thought. 'I hate gardening.' But she purchased it, nonetheless and took it home to show Andy. 'That's funny,' he said. 'You hate gardening.' 'I already said that,' said Denise. 'Sorry,' said Andy.

Not one to spend good money on a book (and a hardback at that) and not read it, Denise settled to improve her learning curve of allotments. And as she read, she felt herself thinking, 'Hmmm, maybe this isn't such a silly purchase after all. And one can purchase very nice floral wellies these days.' What Denise didn't realise was that she had caught the zeitgeist. She had heard the word, of course - Andy said it all the time - but she'd never bothered looking it up and just nodded like she knew what it meant every time Andy used it. Anyway, the upshot was that Denise and Andy acquired an allotment and have been ploughing their furrows ever since (furrows are the things underneath the weeds. They're where you grow veg and stuff.)

And now, of course, everyone wants an allotment. There are waiting lists as long as bindweed. People are beating each other to death in the streets with shovels in order to get closer to the front of the allotment queue. Denise and Andy feel smug at having got there first.



'Isn't it satisfying looking at your dinner plate in the evening and saying 'We grew that,' says Denise. 'Not the sausages of course, although we did make them ourselves with our new sausage machine. It's a pity you hate vegetables, isn't it darling?' ' Well yes, they are PARTICULARLY POISONOUS to us Northerners,' Andy agrees. 'But as long as you disguise them in the form of, say, curry or chilli or pies, then I'll eat them.' Andy parks his whippet in the bike rack outside and hangs his flat cap on the coat rack then sits down for tea - courgette curry. And sausages.



And what is the biggest lesson Andy and Denise have learned in their last two years of heroic allotmenteering? Well, there are two actually -1) Don't ever grow more than two courgette plants. The fruit they produce is inflatable and they will haunt you the whole year by supplying you with unnaturally monstrous amounts of courgettes and you'll end up making courgette wine (still waiting for the explosion from the attic), courgette fritters, courgette jam, courgette brickettes, courgette insulating material and courgette socks and 2) weeds will always grow faster than anything you plant deliberately. And very few of them are edible. Denise knows. She's tried.