7th March - First Visit to the Plot

The Preoccupied Husband disappears to meet some coppers and prepare for a big trial starting on Monday. I bundle the boys into the car and collect the Allotment Guru and her very sweet daughter who is a schoolfriend of Son Number 1. We arrive at the site (approx 7 minutes drive from home) and meet the Co-Holder who, on first impressions, seems fine - biker boots, quiet, and already digging on a square patch of weedy earth.

I think the plot looks AWFUL. It's smaller than I expected - scrappy, very overgrown and with random bits of polythene, planks of wood and bricks lying around. Thank God for the Allotment Guru who says that, all things considered, it is actually in excellent condition - slightly south sloping, unshaded, and has two "raised beds" (the first in a possibly endless series of new terms which I am learning) as well as a SHED.

The boys are very excited about it all and they run around shouting and dancing with the Guru's Daughter while I stride through the plot and poke in the shed trying to look purposeful. There are lovely views over rolling Kentish woods and fields and it is hard to believe that we are on the edge of a large town. Actually, it is just what I imagined, despite the shabby state of the plot itself.

The Co-Holder has already decided how to divide the site which, needless to say, is not how I would have done it but is OK. We are both to start with a big square plot of earth and one raised bed each.

We leave and visit one of the Guru's plots on a different site (which is massive, slightly intimidating and clearly much more professional than mine - covered in beautiful plots, greenhouses, sheds, polytunnels, loads of "raised beds"). I can feel myself getting really into the swing of this.

Later, while Son Number 1 is at his second party of the day (six years olds have extraordinary social lives in this part of the world), I take Son Number 2 to an extremely smart garden shop on the old High Street. While he rolls round the floor in the strange ecstacy of a four-year-old I buy a beautiful blank notebook in which to keep a record of allotment activity, write lists, and make plans (it is clearly essential to have appropriate stationary for all aspects of life).

I also buy a packet of sunflower seeds for the boys to plant next time we go to the site but manage to resist the most stunning pair of slim-fitting "Ladies Gardening Gloves". At £22.95 they would certainly not fit into my earnest promise to the Preoccupied Husband that this allotment is going to be the most brilliant money-saving venture.....