Monday, 22 June 2015

In An English City Allotment

( with apologies to Percy Grainger ) 

If you stand on tiptoe and squint , you can see John Lewis . The 14 bus rattles past one side and the 34 past the other . Scrawny cats chase magpies who scold back , safely  perched on shed roofs .






 
 You trip over shards of pottery everywhere





 
The bread shop over the road does chunky cheese rolls to eat in the sun or you can pick up a baked potato from the butcher's   ...   or there's a Chinese takeaway a step further .
Bees hover over a banana skin . A little boy brandishes a pink butterfly net .
There's an old swing and a slide the commitee's put up to entertain the growing number of ever younger allotmenteers' children  . 
You flail at nettles and are mesmerised by hoverflies .
Lug water from the standpipe to rescue the pansies .
And take home radishes , beans and glowing , exhausted children .