A SHORTCUT THROUGH THE ALLOTMENTS

Back home then. I didn't have any milk so I had to walk up to the shop.

Just to be different, I decided I'd try cutting through the allotments. My aunty's neighbour told me that she'd been going that way for twenty five years and nobody had complained despite the big 'No Right of Way' signs bolted to the gate. I squealed it open.

It's a wonderland. Vegetables poke their leafy heads from finely tilled soil, hoops and canes bend over patches where beans seem to be climbing out of the ground, and tall spindly trees rattle happily in the breeze. There were sheds, ramshackle greenhouses, boxes and crates and corrugated shelters, rotavators and beehives, all ordered neatly between a grid of grassy paths and walkways.

I found myself picking my way through the plots. There wasn't anyone in sight but I wanted to make sure I didn't fall into a row of turnips or a column of cabbages or anything. Rucksack bouncing on my back, boots squelching on the damp grass, it didn't take me long before I was quite lost.

The wind blew tiny drops of rain at me and the clouds looked grim. Tarpaulins flapped and a squeaky windmill creaked.

I think I'd like an allotment one day. I do have a fascination about how things grow, how you know when it's time, and how you work out how to prepare the ground until the harvest. Also, I'll bet there's quite a community of gardeners up there, tending the earth and chatting over hot flasks and packets of biscuits. I reckon I could learn a lot about people.

It's a bit like church too, I guess. A place where people grow, brilliantly different and unique, springing out of the earth and changing the world when the time is right. Growing things must teach you patience and discipline, a sort of natural understanding that you can't apply your own timescale to creation - it sets the rhythm, not you. I could learn a lot from an allotment.

I pulled my hood up and tried navigating my way towards the potholed path that leads to the village. The rain was falling steadily now and I could hear it on my raincoat. It felt like it matched my mood after Cornwall. All my flip-flopping between introversion and extroversion had confused me and left me sad and tired. I still wish I wasn't alone, but I have yet to understand why it is like this. Still, in the middle of an allotment there isn't really a why, there's just things growing and maturing and following the rhythm of the seasons.

And today there was a (relatively) young man with a rucksack and walking boots, trying to do exactly the same.