More vandalism

I haven't been down the allotment much these last two months. It's been too wet and too cold.

When I did go down a couple of weeks ago, however, this is what I found. The allotment shop, which is run by volunteers, old men, had been broken into by vandals. The till had been taken out and burned, and papers scattered everywhere.

I wouldn't have liked to have been those old men when I discovered the break-in. I should think it must have been heartbreaking. They run the shop out of pure enthusiasm for gardening, just as the Allotment Society they belong to has been run for years out of enthusiasm and goodwill. Now, just like that, for a bit of "fun" on a Saturday night, years of work have been destroyed. I dread to think what state the inside of the shop was in - probably it, too, was burned out - i.e. all that stock destroyed. Stock that had no value to anyone but the old men and the gardeners. I would be very surprised to see the shop open up again next season. There comes a point where you just feel like going back to your house and sitting in front of your telly for the rest of your life - at least it's safe, and there is no chance of heart-sinking disappointment.

Up my end of the allotments, I seem to be out of it. It is too close to the houses for kids to risk being seen. But what with having to start on what is now an unforgiving piece of couch-ridden, waterlogged clay, I too feel that it might be better just to sit in front of the telly all summer, or bugger off to France. Only I can't afford to. I need the vegetables I grow. On £60.50 a week, you can't pass up any chance of supplementing your diet virtually for free. I expect my enthusiam will return. After all, there are green shoots of recovery down my allotment, if nowhere else - the runner beans have come up. And I managed, before I came down with flu, to put in a row of shallots, saved from last year. So I'm going to stick with it. After all, why let them win?

More arson

More evidence of the sheer imbecility of certain people in Pinehurst. If they'd had any brains at all they would at least have removed the tools before they burnt down these sheds, so that they could sell them at a car boot sale and make more money to spend on booze or drugs. I hadn't been down the allotments for a week because of the weather, and this was what I found when I did.

What annoys me - one of the things that annoy me - is that these sheds usually belong to old men whose greatest pleasure in life is their garden. They haven't enough money to buy a new set of tools, and after this, would they have the heart?

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.

Joe #3, Plot 354

This is the man whom I referred to in my earlier blogs as "the miserable git" because he was always complaining about something or other (e.g. Hazel's partner asking for the gate to be left unlocked). Well, I misjudged him. He seems to be okay. I had a long conversation with him about a fortnight ago about just about everything, though I can't remember what now. His name is Joe (yes, another Joe, the third), and his real name is Giuseppe.

This is a photograph I took of him rotovating his plot in autumn of 2007, before I knew any of the Italians, and just wanted to document their Italianness and their gardening methods (both of which remain important aims for me).

I love the colour of this photo, which is entirely accidental, and results from scanning black and white film with a colour scanner.

Magdalena (?), plots 66 & 67

This is a photo of the lady whose family owns plots 66 and 67. I think her name is Magdalena. I photographed her with black and white film in the summer of 2007. She is married to an English man, whose name escapes me at the moment, but who, last time I asked him, didn't want me to photograph him (he's the bloke who told me I was making it hard for myself trying to dig the whole of the Cat allotment over at first instead of clearing a small part of it).

Magdalena seems very sweet, and is ill at the moment. John tells me that she insisted on getting the allotment in order before going into hospital. She works like a trooper on the allotment, hoeing with the best of them. At the end of this season, the whole family came down one day and cleared almost everything off the two allotments, and then it was down to the English man to dig them over. I can understand his reluctance to be photographed when he was sweating in the sun fit for a heart attack. When he's with them, he speaks English - I wonder if he can speak Italian?

Giovanni planting chicons

This is Italian John (Giovanni), plot 82, planting his chicons. He puts in a lot more than I did, and he doesn't bother to set them upright. Also, he puts them in quite a deep trench (about a foot deep).

Strawberry plants

John gave me some strawberry plants today. He is digging up part of his patch, because it's getting far too big, so he offered me some plants. I was going to take the ones off the Salvation Army allotment, as they are clearly not appreciated by any of them, but he said, leave them there, and have some of these for the Cat allotment. I was only just thinking as I walked down there today that I ought to get some strawberries established down there as soon as possible, because the sooner I plant them, the sooner I'll have fruit, regardless of how clean the soil is. I can take the weeds out later. And like John said, I like cooking and I particularly like home made strawberry jam!