CATCHING THE SUN

It’s the kind of day when you could accidentally catch the sun.

I’m sitting on a bench in the allotments, dedicated to ‘Mervyn’ who had, apparently, ‘60 happy years of plotholding’. I expect Mervyn accidentally caught the sun here a number of times. I’m in good company.

It’s breezy, but warm. There are giant cumulus clouds over the trees but they’re shuffling along beneath the bright blue sky. The sun is hot, especially when the wind drops, but otherwise there’s a chill on the back of my neck. Wood pigeons coo, blackbirds chirrup, a man in jeans and a checkered shirt crunches the soil with a metal spade.

It might be my new spot this, especially for lunches: south-facing, a decent view of greenery and sky, and relatively quiet. I like it. I guess Mervyn liked it.

I wonder what Mervyn did. I wonder what he grew out here on these allotments all those decades. I wonder what set of circumstances led to him being remembered by a wooden bench with his name on it... Was he a jolly old fellow who simply knew everyone on the plots? Perhaps there was a kind and gentle whip-round for him when he passed on? Was he perhaps, the council’s record-holding plotholder? Is that how he got a bench? 60 years is a long time. It’s a lot of vegetables and trees and digging. Did he have the same plot that whole time? And could he have seen it from here?

And what would he have made of me, chomping away in the sunshine, enjoying his allotments?

I don’t know if I’ll get to leave a bench behind, and certainly I don’t know where! “In memory of Matt, who once got chased through this park by a Scottie dog.” Or... “Dedicated to Matt, whose car rolled down this very hill with his keys inside while he raced alongside it shouting ‘no, no, no...’ into the distance.”

Perhaps I should leave an outdoor piano somewhere. That would be sweet. It’d probably wreck the ambiance of the allotments though. I doubt Mervyn would have liked that.

Anyway, all this conjecture and speculation, sitting here. Turns out I’ve caught the sun.