In memory of Angelo

Angelo died during the winter. He was a lovely bloke, who never stopped telling me how to do things. Joe was very unforthcoming about it. Domenico told me when I met him in town one day, but if he hadn't, Joe would probably have said nothing. Now, Joe is working all three allotments, his two (plots 56 and 58) and Angelo's (plot 57). He says he will give up the one next to my old allotment, but it looks as if he won't give it up until October at the earliest, when the rent falls due. Even though Angelo couldn't do any work by last October, and Joe had kept his allotment more or less tended and planted, Angelo still told him he wanted to keep it on. For these old Italians, growing food is in the blood and they will carry on until they drop.

I loved Angelo. I have the grapevine he gave me to remind me of him. He gave me it when it was only two or three feet high; now it's a monster and has spread all over the front of my house, and last year I got about twelve bunches of small, purple grapes off it. One day I'll make wine from it in memory of Angelo.

Joe

This is Joe just about to go home. He works mornings, and I get there just after lunch when he's just about to go. Then, when he arrives back after his siesta at 4 pm, I go home for my dinner. He has no hard feelings about this.

He'd just spent the morning pruning his tomatoes for the nth time (he said the next time will be the last), and was complaining that he had to look after Angelo's allotment as well as his two.

Domenico

This is Domenico, Joe's son. He comes down almost daily in this dry weather to carry water from the trough on my allotment to the barrels on Joe's.

Joe's straw hat

A lot of the Italian men have lovely straw hats which they wear in hot weather. This is Joe's.

Blackcurrant jam

Today I made some blackcurrant jam. It took me an hour (at least) last night and two hours (at least) this morning to top and tail a pound and a half of blackcurrants. I put these with a pound and a half of sugar and steeped them overnight/over the afternoon. Then I added three-quarters of a pint of water and brought it all to the boil in my new preserving pan. I then added a further pound of sugar (warmed in the oven), and boiled it until it reached setting point (220 degrees). The jam is gorgeous, though not as gorgeous as my strawberry jam, which tastes ineffable (I'm not sure what that means, but it appears in hymns when talking about God, so it seems about right).

I got the blackcurrants off Hazel's allotment, and this is the sad part. Hazel (plots 54 and 55) is so ill she can no longer do her garden, and her husband is looking after it for her. But he's not obsessed like she is, and it is going downhill. Joe (plots 56 and 58) offered to do some hoeing and watering for her, though he's got his work cut out on his own two plots, and is also looking after Angelo's plot while he's on holiday in Italy. Yesterday, when I arrived, Domenico (Joe's son) was there, and he asked me, in his slightly goofy way how to pick blackcurrants. He said Hazel's husband had told Joe to help himself, as they were going to waste. Well, I got a bucket and followed him over to Hazel's plot. He lost interest a bit when I told him you have to top and tail them if you want to stew them or anything, and after a phone call he left me to it. But not before I'd noticed her raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes, the latter laden with ripe fruit. I said to Dom, do you think she'd mind if I took some of those too? He said he didn't think she would, so I got enough raspberries for a snackette at supper time, and enough gorgeous ripe gooseberries to make a gooseberry crumble for my brother, Greg, who's coming up tomorrow (I am trying to persuade him to help me mend the shed). So I returned home in seventh heaven, while poor Hazel is probably heartbroken that she can't make any jam this year. I felt guilty about picking from her fruit bushes after Dom was gone, but I guess she intended the stuff to go to a good home, and I can't imagine Domenico doing anything much with the blackcurrants. (He didn't even know what elderberries were - he thought they were poisonous. Unless he's confusing them with ivy berries, in which case, I told him you could make an excellent wine out of them).

Portrait of Joe

This is my best photo of Joe, my next-door neighbour. I took it in 2007 with my film camera. Joe insisted on paying me for a print, which he sent to his granddaughter in London.