Bob’s Allotment
It was always my job on a Sunday morning, to take the wooden trug that stood on the peg box in the scullery, and go to the allotment to collect the vegetables from Bob for Sunday lunch. Except then it was called Sunday dinner.
Bob was actually my Great Uncle, but he was called Bob by everyone. Not like Mr Fiddaman who worked the allotment next to Bob. I would never have dared to call him anything but Mr Fiddaman. He and Bob worked on the allotments every day, throughout the 1950s, along with Charlie who had lost an arm during World War One, but was a dab hand at carefully manoeuvring a hoe around his young plants.
Trug in hand, usually with my socks slipping down my skinny legs revealing battered and bruised knees; for there were no trousers for girls in those days, I walked up the street until between the last two houses I turned into the path that led to the allotments. To the right was the railway line, and beside it a bomb site where the Germans had demolished an engine shed whilst trying to disable the line. I was absolutely forbidden to go there, as Mother was worried about the still jagged pieces of corrugated iron which lay about rusting, but I thought the area lovely with, in season, butterflies surrounding the now quite sturdy buddleia bushes hanging with long purple flowers, on which settled red admirals and peacock butterflies in their dozens. There was rose bay willow herb as tall as I was, and ragwort with cinnabar moth caterpillars that we called footballers because of their black and yellow stripes.
Bob would be waiting for me, no work was actually done on his allotment on a Sunday because he was dressed to join us for dinner, but he and Mr Fiddaman and Charlie, put the world to rights, as they checked the level of the water in the butt, beside the dilapidated old shed, and tied in any stray runner bean stalks. Sweet peas too were tied up, and the curling tendrils removed, Bob said the plant wasted energy making those. His sweet peas were wonderful, and in summer when I collected peas, beetroot and baby carrots, there was always a bunch cut ready for me to take back home. The perfume was heady and if people I met on my way back commented on their beauty, I would proudly say. “Bob grew these”.
Winter was harder work on the journey back, the cabbages, as big as my head, were heavy and awkward as they rolled about, and in spring the rhubarb stalks were up to a yard long and as thick as my wrist. Bob forced it under a big old tin drum until the leaves pushed off the lid and allowed in the light.
War was waged on slugs with half an orange after the flesh had been sucked out, laid on the soil to trap them; along with beer in a condensed milk tin luring them to a tipsy end.
Mice were also enticed into jam jars of water from which they could not escape, if they as much as thought of feasting on the newly planted pea seeds. These were always sown on Good Friday whether Easter was early or late, I do not recollect whether the juicy baby peas I popped from their pods on the walk home, were earlier or later, I just worried whether Mother would notice that Bob had sent a meagre supply, or realise I had eaten too many as I dawdled back. Soot was carefully saved after the sweep had been to make soot water which was sprayed on the growing peas to prevent maggots. To moles Bob showed no mercy, and nasty looking traps hung ready along the side of the shed in case they dared to show their presence on his immaculate rows of young vegetables. Soapy water Bob carried down in a galvanised pail to spray onto any black fly that had the audacity to settle on his broad beans.
Dahlias were Bob’s love
Dahlias were Bob’s absolute love, and he grew them not for their beauty, or colour and shape but simply for their size. He would stretch out his blackened, cracked hands, fingers and thumb spread wide, and turning to Charlie say “near enough a foot across that one” His hand would go up and push his cap back on his bald head so that I could see the contrasting whiteness where the sun never darkened the skin, and declare “better than last years I’ll warrant.” Charlie would solemnly nod and they would peer at this great cerise sunburst for many minutes. Earwigs were fed a mix of treacle, water and something in a jar I was not allowed to touch, all around the dahlias.
Charlie only grew a few nasturtiums along one edge of his allotment, for almost all of his was taken up with growing potatoes, which were wheeled home by his son in a wooden wheelbarrow, as pushing a barrow with one hand was more than even Charlie could manage. Runner beans he grew on great wigwams of poles, in which I hid, to eat the raspberries I stole from other allotments.
Once my basket was packed I would scrabble onto the fence to wait for the train to go through on its way to the coast, and wave at the Sunday trippers. Then Bob would chivvy me along “your mother will be waiting for those, tell her I’ll be there in an hour”, and then he and Mr Fidderman and Charlie would adjourn to the Fleur de Lys for a pre dinner drink.
Bob lived alone, his wife Edie had died just after the war, Mum said from a broken heart as Bert their only son had been killed in the Far East. So Sunday dinner with us, was really the only proper meal he had. Supper for him in his grubby terraced house up by the Station was bread, cheese and an onion from the allotment cut in half and crunched with much enjoyment. He seldom ate the vegetables he grew, giving them to Mum, and the Church at Harvest Festival where after the service, they went to the Cottage Hospital. But he loved red currants and would boil up a basin full for himself and slurp them down with obvious enjoyment.
Mother was very particular about table manners and I had to eat quietly and neatly, but when after Sunday dinner Bob licked his knife to savour the very last of the gravy and tipped back his chair, oddly Mum was not cross, but would look at Dad and smile. “A good dinner that Barbara” Bob would say “lovely veg”.