Ashley Smith loses the plot #1
Ashley Smith is an English and Creative writing student and has no interest in gardening. You are probably wondering why someone like him would want to get involved in something like this. If you asked him this question the answer would consist of two words. The first being “Extra”. The second being “Credit”.
Like the start of every module, this is an introduction to what is going to happen over the course of the year. This is about my experience of volunteering with NTSU at the allotment on Clifton campus, and will include mainly piffle, a bit of whimsy and, if you are lucky, at least one sentence of information.
But first a quick definition of what an allotment is…
For people who don’t know what an allotment is, it is a place where all sorts of people work their fingers to the bone for months on end. They do this through every single type of weather condition known to man including rain, sleet, snow, spit, sand storms, cloud, fog, mist, blizzards, avalanches, hurricanes, drought, sun rays, crepuscular rays, cosmic rays, X rays and gamma rays. They then take whatever it was they have been watching grow into a beautiful masterpiece of nature and pull it out of the ground, only to find that their aubergine has been lived in by two beetles and an over enthusiastic slug for two months who are now claiming squatters rights!
Carrying that information with me, I am only too happy to help out. So, I got up in the morning, put on some inappropriate clothes for gardening and caught the bus in (luckily for me this particular bus was old and slow whereas I am young and quick and had a big net). Once I got onto Clifton campus, (a task which alone took me over an hour because the swell guys and dolls that run the public transport love and cherish me as a customer), I was quite surprised to find that I didn’t have a clue where the allotment was. Unfortunately for me my first year curiosity had only taken me so far as the student services reception desk to find out what the WIFI password was. So, I walked aimlessly for about two minutes until I stumbled across this multi-habited paradise of vegetation and optimism. Now if you, like me, have never seen the allotment before and want to look for it I will give you this advice. Finding the allotment is a lot like a fungal infection - you will know it when you see it. Not in a bad way but that was the only simile I could think of that was plant related.
For two hours the brave volunteers worked tirelessly in this greenhouse gazebo tent looking thing that I think is designed to show the effects of global warming. Tomatoes, however, love it - about three shopping bags were filled with the stuff.
I will make a point of saying that all the food is split out between everybody at the end of the session, this is something I couldn’t handle very well. It was the first time I have ever been peer pressured into taking home half a melon. This came to a head when I was asked if I wanted to take anything else home, to which I replied “If I ate that I wouldn’t look this”.
At the end of the session I asked the very nice lady in charge what had happened today whilst I had been pulling up grass. This is what happened this week… Harvest! Everybody has been picking things and this is the list of what has been picked in a new segment I like to call…
Ooh look at the size of them!
- Melons.
- Tomatoes.
- Aubergines.
- Potatoes.
- Wild Garlic (apparently the tame Garlic wasn’t available).
So that’s the end of this week’s allotment escapade but I will leave you this. Coming up next week there will be another Ooh look at the size of them and a riveting story about a newt! I know a real animal!
Ashley Smith.
