THE PLOT THICKENS

I have an allotment, known affectionately as "The Plot".

I live on a very busy main road and the noise from the traffic is horrendous, as it pounds past my house from morning until night. The Plot is just across this busy road, and then a hundred yards along a track, it's a different world. There is just a faint hum of the traffic, the rippling of the beck at the side of the allotment and the singing of birds.I spend hours there every day, whether digging, weeding, planting or just pottering about, not really doing anything, but it's so relaxing, the fresh air, the sun on your face, your mind cleared of every worry, your only thought is the next sod to turn over or the next branch to prune.

There is always something to do, even when the major digging work is done, but there is always time to relax. I take my newspaper and crossword, and always(don't tell my wife) have some cans of beer floating in the water butt to keep cool.

My plot is at the end of the track, its a journey I make four times or more a day. It's a journey that lets me size up the oppositions efforts. Though you don't do it intentionally, you do tend to say to yourself, "Basil's rhubarb looks a bit weary.", "Rosemary's strawberries are way in front of mine."

Whosh!! There he goes again. The Flasher!! Artie Choke has the plot next to mine. A youngish guy who has a large garden at his house and only uses his allotment for growing vegetables. He has obviously read many gardening books. His plot is immaculate. Everything how an allotment should be. He flashes in, flashes around, then flashes away. Within the space of ten minutes from there being a bare patch of ground there is now a fully grown vegetable plot. Whilst I have only just planted my peas, his are two feet tall, my cabbage seedlings in the greenhouse are three inches tall, his are nearly ready for eating. But which one of us enjoys his plot the most?

There they are again, two pairs of eyes watching my every movement, they are like vultures waiting for death, waiting to swoop down and devour anything and everything as soon as I leave the site, a pair of pigeons."Coo" bloody "coo" all day long, the most boring sound in the animal kingdom.

The largest alloment on the site belongs to old Tom Hato, he's had it for many years and it's a mess. It's all overgrown, the buildings are falling down, it's a wasteland. Tom is in his eighties, has had two heart by-passes, but still he comes to his plot, not often, but just often enough to dig a small piece of land about 2m square, and every year he will produce three of the finest onions on the site.

Looked over the fence yesterday, and the foreign guy who has the next door plot had obviously been down. He sounds Scandinavian, think he's a Swede. He had been planting out his Brussels Sprouts and around them there were literally thousands of bright blue slug pellets. This left me totally amazed for I just sprinkle a handful around. Then, one early evening when it was just going dark, I went to The Plot to lock up, and as I approached I saw the faint glow of a torch in the Swede's plot, and there he was with a large box of slug pellets throwing handfuls of them at the slugs, trying to stone them to death.

Here's a secret, I pee behind the small shrub next to the Forsythia. Spending many hours at The Plot and drinking a beer or two leaves me wanting to pee, so I can just position myself behind the bush to make sure no one can see me.

Angelica appears now and then, a small busty lady who obviously enjoys sunbathing, but doesn't enjoy gardening. She has the poshest plot on the site. Half her plot is covered by an horrendous array of decking, which takes up enough room to grow vegetables on to keep half the town in vegetables for a year. The other half is covered in weeds, until her husband, who is a gardener by trade and it's the last thing in the world he wants to do with his free time, comes and digs it over for her. And she has a dog! A bloody great big Alsation. I hate dogs, I'm frightened to death of them, they crap all over the place and worst of all they bark. All I want from The Plot is a bit of peace and quiet, but I have nightmares about this coming summer, of this quite large lady in a bikini, or even worse topless, and a bloody barking dog.

Then there's Fred The Shed. What a man. He escapes from his wife to his shed. He doesn't grow much for his wife won't let him take anything home. He just has a shed full of onions. He has the allotment at the end of the track. It takes him twenty minutes to walk the hundred yards along the track, for he stops and peers, with a critical look on his face, at every allotment. Fred tells me of times in the past when he used to bring his home brewed beer to the allotment and kept it cold in the beck, until one hot summers day he drank too much and staggered through his onion patch and ruined them all. There are always "smells" in an allotment, but there is a strange one comes from Fred's shed, it's a sort of alcoholly, parsnippy smell. One day I'll ask him.

We are in the middle of a drought, it hasn't rained for weeks and all the crops are looking very limp. The other day I saw the Jewish guy from plot seven, Kohl Rabbi, think he works in a synagogue, down on his knees with his hands outstretched to Heaven shouting, "Lettuce pray to The Lord for salvation and rain".

But my favourite people of all at the allotments are Dan Delion and his wife. They appeared from nowhere and took over a piece of land that could have been used as a backcloth for a film about the trenches in World War 1. They grafted from morning till night until slowly, but surely, out of a scene of desolation there appeared a model plot, complete with greenhouse, sunken pool, raised beds, but best of all a BBQ. They don't grow many vegetables but their BigDan Burgers are to die for.