Allotment Stories
On with the story. I don’t suppose anybody would mind me repeating this. It was Jim again.
I told you he was courting Lil at the time. And there was a young lad up the street, up Harcourt Road actually – Bertie Teagle. Jim was courting Lil, and Bert was courting Nell. That was two sisters. Lived just across the road.
Well, I suppose one Friday evening it was, I suppose they used to get into the house there, playing Snap or something with the old chap. Old Mr Townsend turned round to them all of a sudden,
“Hey you two boys, you wouldn’t like to give me a hand in the morning would you? Got a bit of a job on for you”
“Ah, what’s on then?”
“Well, got a bit of a job. It won’t take long, down the allotment”
“Ah, what’s that, alright Bert?”
“Yeah, I’ll be alright, Jim. Right-o”
Next morning, up he turned about nine o clock. All three of them, trudges off down the allotments. Gets down the allotments, about 20 minute walk I suppose. I don’t know whether they had any lunch in their pockets or no. Gets down the allotment.
“Well, where’s the spades then, mate?”
“Look underneath that Rhubarb”
“Underneath that Rhubarb?”
“Ah, always keep them underneath the rhubarb. Don’t trust hay sheds, too easy to break in to see” Anyhow, dives underneath the rhubarb, finds a couple of spades. Bert has one, Jim has one. “What do you want us to do then?”
“One get up one end, one get t’other end. Back to back if you get what I mean. And work towards each other. Get the job done a lot quicker like that”
Course, the old chap thought there would be no nattering or fiddling about see? Anyhow, Jim goes up one end, Bert the other. Weeds, thistles, dock leaves, cooch. It was in a proper state. Anyhow,
“Well where’s your spade gone?”
“Ah, I’ve got to go and see if I can go and borrow one, off old Charlie across the way there”
So off the old chap goes, Jim and Bert gets stuck in, tearing into it all the morning, trying to please him I suppose. Come dinner time, Walt turns up,
“Come here, lads!”
Course, they’d done a damned good morning’s work.
“Well, I reckon we’ve done well” he says, grabbing hold of the spade and sticking him in the ground, “We’ve done damned well this morning. Anyway, I couldn’t get a spade anywhere” he said, “Sorry about that. Never mind, we’ve done a damned good day’s work, and I reckon that’ll do for the day. Put the tools away, Jim”
Jim puts the tools away. Pops off on the way back,
“Hope Mother got something nice for dinner now, after sweating all the morning we could do with something good couldn’t we kids?”
Did I ask you where all the characters has gone?
We used to spend some time down that allotment, good Lord, yes. Forced labour sort of, you know. Hoeing and weeding and one thing and the other. Ah, we didn’t mind. Dad was always find sixpences or threpn’y bits under the turf. Us kids could never find them, Dad did always managed to find them. We’d scrabble and scratch about bit no, we never had such luck.
Seems to me looking back now, well that was all his life comprised of. He used to spend hours down that allotment. He’d go down there every night and if it wasn’t that, there was a labour party meeting, or a union meeting.
And another job he did have us on, I remember me and Fatty used to go down there. Dad used to have a damned great wheelbarrow, he weighed half a ton. He used to, from the sewer beds, come and dump this manure, or sludge they called it, he used to dump it down on the allotment, give the old boy a tenner, and he’d give him a cart load.
Somehow or other, Dad always wanted to go up the allotment. Course, between us, I suppose Jim did as well, him and Fred before my time, I expect we shifted a soil bed in our time – must’ve done.
