Springing back to life (IP)

The allotment field was made of leeks and cabbages, of abundant verdant spinach, of broad beans not yet in flower. Of brambles and tufts of grass. Shoots poking through the earth, young rhubarb plants spaced about the lumpy dark soil. Of birdsong and of fragrances, celery, coriander, lavender. Of a pond shining with yellow celandine and water crowfoot. Of compost heaps, communal taps, blue plastic water butts, hoses tidy on reels or snaking on the ground.

It was made of sheds. Homely wooden sheds cobbled together, dangerous sheds, leaning, asbestos, incongruous sheds with leaded lights, a smart clinker-built shed painted orange like a joyous shout.

It was made of narrow paths, up and down, side to side, more paths than you realised. Secret paths round the back, between uneven plank fences, railings, greenhouses. Fortified by tea, I strolled, gently, lapping up the late March sunshine, not knowing whether this would constitute our summer. Not knowing whether I would come here again.

To reach the allotments we had walked through the suburbs. Here, at the rear, I found the outskirts of town. Factory buildings, pre-War, speckled red brick, brooding, neglected. Metal-framed windows with broken and missing panes. Pigeons roosted in the gaps and fluttered above the gable.

Now I was out of earshot of my erstwhile companions. A blackbird sang. Here an apple-tree burgeoned, the old season's tawny and green fruit scattered, rotting, underneath. Near to it, between the water butts and the hose reels, someone had set out a table and four chairs ready for summer. Maybe last summer, maybe summer five years ago. A forsythia bloomed in exultant gold. Soon the pale incipient apple blossom would be as snow.

An allotment field is not beautiful in the way that a single rose or a spectacular sunset or a galloping white horse is beautiful. The beauty is patchy, interspersed with things that are ugly, failed or just plain. No doubt it is often a place of tiredness, sweat and frustration. But to the stressed and the disturbed it can bring hope. To me, that March day, it brought peace and joy.