Since it’s Good Friday I decided to dig my summer hat out of the box and wear it to the allotment for the ceremonial planting of the potatoes. The winter hat is only a couple of years old and so soaked in waterproofing oil it’s shiny (but very waterproof). My summer hat is getting on for twenty years old and shows it. In fact it looks as if it’s been through at least two autopsies and was always stitched up afterwards by somebody on work experience. It’s been with me on 200 miles of the Camino, countless walks and field trips and on the allotment ever since, and consequently it’s so knackered people sometimes stare. But I’m avoiding getting a new one because they’re so prodigiously expensive and because they look pretentious until they’ve been through a few adventures and misadventures. The manufacturers say it’s got a lifetime guarantee but that’s only for manufacturing faults – not sweat or collisions whilst ducking under barbed wire. It’s even got a secret pocket in which I once carried a couple of emergency tea bags over the Aubrac Hills in France.
Anyway, hat firmly pulled over head, we set out to plant the spuds on the allotment and apart from broken backs and painful knees we got them in after only one brief altercation with Madame; covered them up and celebrated with a couple of lagers when we got home. Our dispute -as always – was over the amount of measuring required to plant a potato. I’m a full data man who prefers to measure and calculate to get the holes in precisely the correct spacing whilst she is of the chuck it anywhere persuasion. On this occasion precision won – which is rare enough to warrant a mention.
Anyway, here are some photos of the allotment today.
