We have had a day off.
It was not an intentional day off, actually it started off exactly the way it was supposed to. We did our school runs this morning and after that we yawned and nodded until halfway through breakfast we gave up and went back to bed.
Mark was not at all pleased when some Jehovah’s Witnesses helpfully dropped by an hour later to see if we had had a think about where we might want to spend eternity. He explained that he was more interested in where he was spending the morning, which was in bed, so if they didn’t mind…
We couldn’t go back to sleep after that, so we got up, and couldn’t resist just going for another quick look at the allotment. Then we went home for a pen and paper and a spirit level and a tape measure and went back to measure it up and think about how we would structure the beds.
Of course you can’t have a new allotment and not be full of plans. Especially if you are Mark, who had all sorts of interesting ideas for a water hole and a pump and solar powered batteries and a windmill and hot beds and a paved area.
I thought we could perhaps get rid of the stones.
After a bit of consideration he agreed that that would be a good starting point, so we went off home to get ourselves organised so that we could start doing allotmenty things later. I made mayonnaise and he and Oliver washed up, and we hung washing out and tidied up and went shopping, and then Oliver wanted to see the allotment, so we all just popped back again: but he was bored with it after five minutes and thought that it was dull.
We didn’t think that it was at all dull, and pulled up a few weeds and cast critical eyes over all the other inferior allotments and talked about mulch and compost and soil type with the patronising competence of people who have been self-sufficient and have already made all their embarrassing mistakes in another garden a long way away which nobody knows about and so can be lofty know it alls without fear of discovery.
We thought about the best ways of making the whole natural allotment cycle work, which obviously involves eating vegetables at one point or another, but we tend to find we don’t organise ourselves enough for eating vegetables very often, mostly because I am too idle to wash up afterwards, sandwiches are easier. In the past when we have grown vegetables we have fed them to cows or pigs and things and then eaten them.
We contemplated having a couple of chickens because of the extreme usefulness of chicken poo on sweetcorn, and within five minutes we were thinking we might just have a few sheep up at the farm before reality set in and we recalled that really we don’t much like farming things. That is, I like eating rabbits but not cleaning the pen out, which is a whole different sort of activity.
We had long and absorbing discussions about the things that we would grow, the details of which I will not inflict on you here, as if the novelty of having an allotment does not wear off I have got no doubt I will go into tedious raptures about it all on many future dates
We noticed then that it was long after lunch time and we were not at work, so we thought that we would do the afternoon school run and go to work then, until the taxi office called and told us that it was cancelled, so instead of going to work then we went swimming.
This was ace although not particularly good exercise. Wrestling a football out of Oliver’s hands and splashing and pretending to be a shark is ace fun but does not leave me with that pumped-iron feeling that one is supposed to have after having a cardio vascular intensive experience.
We had thought we would go back to the allotment and have some exercise shifting stones about after swimming but somehow everything got confused and we went across to the bistro for a pizza and a glass of wine instead. We completely forgot we were supposed to be at work.
We have had too much to drink to go either to work or back to the allotment now, also it is dark and Oliver is asleep in his tent in the garden. This is just as well because we haven’t actually had the paperwork for the allotment yet and so it isn’t even technically ours.
We are going to go and sit in bed and talk about it instead.
