A peaceful lull

The children have finished school for the Easter holidays and I have handed in my last assignment for my course. I have the promise of a job with the district nursing team I have been working with, once I get my results and my registration comes through. It seemed as though I might be embarking on a peaceful lull in proceedings. Ha! Well, we can’t have that now, can we? Goodness, a lull? I might start to get complacent that I had this whole ‘life’ thing all wrapped up. I had better get myself locked in at the allotment just to shake things up a bit.

So that is what I did. I had walked over to the allotment precariously ladened with plants. There are high metal fences, topped with barbed wire all around the allotment site. It sounds awful but it really isn’t. It’s such a big site that once you’re inside you barely notice it. It’s a real shame that some people see an allotment site as an opportunity for vandalism and theft but there we are. Don’t talk to my dad about it or he’ll splutter about amputation serving as a useful deterrent. Anyway, back to the story…

I put my plants down and realised the allotment key wasn’t attached to the rest of my bundle. Big Dreamer had forgotten to put it back when he had dropped off a load of manure (of course it wouldn’t be me who had forgotten). Fortunately, someone was coming out of the gate and they let me in. There were plenty of people about and it was a lovely spring evening. I thought I would easily be able to find someone to let me out again when the time came. I went merrily on my way and got engrossed in what I was doing. When I looked up, the evening had darkened and the air had grown chilly. I suddenly realised that there wasn’t another soul on the site. Everyone had gone and I was the last one left!

Well, you can imagine my panic. My phone was on the charger at home and as I walked the perimeter I realised how high those fences really were. Just at that moment a couple of teenage girls, dolled up to the nines with false nails and eyelashes, walked past. Did either of them have their phone on them and could I use it? They looked at me with absolute incomprehension. I could tell that my predicament hadn’t registered with them at all because they were still so gobsmacked at the idea of someone wanting to grow things in. the. ground (OMG!). They had no credit it turned out, but, if truth be told, they didn’t want to get too close in case this gardening thing turned out to be an infectious condition.

I began wondering what it would be like to bed down in the shed, and what time of the night Big Dreamer might notice I hadn’t returned when a saving angel jogged past. The angel was in fact a lycra-clad, middle-aged lady called Lou, who also happened to have a very dry sense of humour. She held up the phone to the fence so I could speak to Big Dreamer and said she would be running back that way in twenty minutes. If I hadn’t got out by then, she would get me out somehow, or else feed me morsels through the wire so I didn’t starve! Thankfully, Big Dreamer turned up not long after. The wonderful Lou text later on to make sure I was alright and hadn’t been eaten by wolves. Big Dreamer reassured her that I was fine, and they proceeded to text back and forth, imagining with great hilarity, all the ways I could have potentially saved myself, including bribing the resident allotment rabbit to dig me out. How glad I was to be such a source of entertainment (I hope you can hear the sarcasm).

Here are tulip photos from my mum’s birthday outing. The displays were gorgeous and looking at them is helping me get over my allotment key trauma.