Somewhere Else

It's beautiful sunny days like these that I wonder how on earth I came to be in a job where I'm shoving paperwork from one side of my desk to another. I'm 36 and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

But I do know that today, I don't want to be here. I want to be outside, digging my allotment and planting my spuds and other veggies. Moreso because the forecast for the weekend is heavy rain.

It would be lovely just to book the afternoon off and head down there and lose myself for a few hours. I can do that when I'm there. It's a lovely place to be. You can hear the birds singing and although the main road is not far off, you can't hear the cars zooming by. It's lovely to hear the distant whirr of rotovators and strimmers and the trundle of wheelbarrows up and down the path to the skip.

It's lovely to talk to Sid the farmer on the corner and the man opposite who gives you his leftover onion sets because he's bought too many. It's great to see that for Bob's 90th birthday the allotment holders all clubbed together and cleared the rubbish from his plot so he could plant his much loved runners and give him a new lease of life. He's marvellous. It's wonderful to see him stop every five minutes for a sit down and chat with Tony next door.

The lovely Tony who when I joked that his raspberries encroached my plot last year, said I could have the ones that had grown outside his fruit cage and promptly dug up five of them to add to my plot, so now my four have expanded to nine. The same Tony who taught Joshua how to safely use a sithe and every so often glady sharped it for him and supervised him while the rest of us dug away.

The comradeship there is warming. The friendliness overwhelming. I don't mind coming back from there looking like Worzel Gummidge and aching from head to foot because it's worth every back breaking minute. Although my friend Michaela will confess that it has been noted that I do spend an inordinate amount of time down there socialising, but that's part of it.

It's much better than being stuck in an office where the windows are locked, the air conditioning units are condemned and the accounts are rolling in. Oh well.....