Paul Merrett - The Allotment Chef - Home-grown Recipes and Seasonal Stories

As far as encouragement goes I realise we will also need help and advice in the coming months on what to plant, where, and when. MJ suggests that she rings her mum and I ring my dad, both of whom are keen gardeners. I also promise to ring Chris Williams, an old friend who is a gardener by profession. My relationship with Chris is primarily based around drunken afternoons at Lord’s watching England lose cricket matches so, when I speak to him, he is a bit surprised by my horticultural awakening, but he promises to come over to Blondin to give his considered opinion on the best plan of attack.

Just as we are saying goodbye he casually mentions that I should write up my vegetable-growing experience in the form of a cookery book. When I put the phone down I am struck by the simple brilliance of this suggestion. I have always been the sort of bloke who likes to immerse himself fully in a project. I can envisage sunny days spent toiling on the land and evenings spent writing up recipes cunningly concocted from an array of fruit and vegetables. The more I consider this idea the bigger the project gets. My proposal of avoiding supermarkets, for instance, becomes less about avoidance and more about a total ban: WE WILL LIVE BY THE SEASON AND WE WILL NEVER GO TO THE SUPERMARKET AGAIN.

Later in the day I explain to MJ that it has occurred to me that I could write a book (no need to mention it wasn’t my idea) on our experiences, including a selection of recipes, and that there should be a total ban on supermarkets. She immediately rounds on me saying that the whole allotment idea was a family decision and not one that I can hijack and turn into one of my doomed projects.

She is referring, of course, to my previous mission in life, which was to sell our house and move to Zanzibar (a small island in the Indian Ocean). I had researched the whole thing over a couple of weeks on the Internet and realised that, with the proceeds of the house in London, we could afford a crash course in Swahili, standard class flights and still have enough left over to buy a restaurant with some guest rooms once we were there. MJ could educate the children at home, as well as give English lessons to the island’s adults. My big mistake on that occasion was to say nothing to MJ during the planning stage and then get caught at home with an estate agent valuing the house. I had even costed up the shipping of our furniture before I had said a word about my idea to her.

This time, though, I promise things will be different. MJ may feel right now that she wants an allotment ‘just like everyone else’ but, when we get started, she will soon come round.

Despite our differing opinions on the allotment project we are both itching to get started. MJ gives Dilly and Doug a call and the plan to divide the plot in two is agreed.

A few days after accepting the plot we are sent the keys that open the main gates. I presume the gates are needed to keep the local youths from ducking in, when no one is looking, to steal shovels and trowels; it could, of course, be to keep the allotment folk in lest they start sowing broad beans and Swiss chard in the local park.

The very next morning, at 7am, I am at the allotment to meet Chris Williams. As a gardener, Chris knows lots about plants and, to prove this, he, like Keith, has a beard. As he pulls up in his truck, I walk over and swing open the gates for my first visit as an official paid-up allotmenteer. As we walk down the path towards my patch, Chris points out various plants, to which he knows not only the English names, but also the Latin. We pass plots full of cabbages and sprouts and kale and I can see that Chris is already impressed with the efforts of my fellow amateur gardeners.

Eventually we reach my plot and, almost immediately, Chris’s jaw drops. I ask him if he has spotted an obvious problem and he replies that, in 30 years of gardening, he has never taken on such an overgrown patch of land with a view to doing anything more than turning it into a slightly less overgrown patch of land.

Positive thinking is crucial on such an occasion so I explain that, when we came to look at the site, I saw a man clearing an old vegetable bed with a large bionic lawnmower-like machine. This strikes me as a fairly fast way of digging the ground once we have cleared the brambles and assorted weeds so surely we could use one of these things to ‘plough’ our plot.

Chris has bad news on this front. The rotivator – the name of the machine – is not a good idea where cooch grass is concerned; it chops it up and spreads it out, which means that it effectively re-sows it. It turns out that Chris has driven all the way over just to tell me to buy a spade and dig it by hand.

On the subject of self-sufficiency, Chris is scarcely more help, pointing out that it is doubtful if we will be able to survive; I have freely admitted to him that the first and last thing I have ever grown was cannabis when I was a teenager – and that died before it ever saw a Rizla!

It is almost 8am and it’s cold, so cold that I am beginning to understand why so many gardeners have beards. As Chris and I walk back to the gate, he stresses again that, in his view, the best way to remove all our cooch grass is by hand, and then, as he climbs into his truck, he winds down the window to deliver one final bit of encouragement, ‘If you keep removing every bit of cooch grass that springs up, you will find that, within three years, you will have got rid of the lot.’ With this cheery advice in mind, I walk back up Boston Road in the freezing cold.

Back home I sit down for breakfast with MJ and explain that Chris is a little pessimistic about our chances of survival. She immediately takes the line that, if we just grow as much as we can, that, in itself, will be an achievement. I explain that this would be fine for most people, but that this is now a ‘project’ and the rules of it are clear – we have an allotment and we have to survive independently, with no backup from food shops.

Sensing my despair, MJ suggests that we drive up to Homebase to see what sheds they have on display. Up to this point I haven’t even considered that we will need a shed, but, on reflection, it is obvious. I also wonder if we should look into buying a caravan so that we can spend entire weekends on the plot, but MJ convinces me that we should just stick with a shed for now.

A couple of days later Chris calls to see how we are getting on and I sheepishly admit that we haven’t been down to the allotment since I met him there. I do let on, though, that I am up for his book idea and that I have put a proposal in the post to a couple of publishers.

Before he rings off, Chris tells me that his wife, Stella, googled the word Blondin, as she believed it was actually a person’s name. It turns out she is right and he suggests we take a look. Mr Blondin was a famous tightrope walker who notoriously crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1859. He didn’t stop there, though; he crossed it again and again, each time using a different theatrical variation: he carried a man across on his back; he pushed a wheelbarrow across; he did it blindfold; and he even did it on stilts.

Blondin performed at Crystal Palace in 1862 where Charles Dickens declared, ‘half of London is here eager for some dreadful accident’. Nice. Blondin did not grant Mr Dickens his ghoulish wish; instead he pushed his five-year-old daughter across a 55-metre high rope in a wheelbarrow. It took an intervention by the Home Secretary to stop him repeating this particular version.

All of this is very interesting but seems to have little to do with cabbages. Stella, however, had discovered that he eventually moved to England and ended his days on Northfield Avenue, which is the main road just off which are … you guessed it, Blondin Allotments. With a list of achievements like his, the very least I would expect is a large bronze statue. Instead there are 112 amateur vegetable gardeners working on an allotment named in his honour. And now, I am one of them.