Soilman

Had a quick binfire yesterday, and only just in time. It’s pouring again, and for the foreseeable.

I’ve been nervous about fires ever since a moment of inattention almost turned into a catastrophe. I decided to have a fire on the allotment in July… during that drought heatwave of 3 or 4 years ago. On a roastingly hot, windy day.

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me: I turned my back for a few seconds to do something, only to find that the little fire I’d started had been blown into a raging inferno.

And when I say inferno, I mean it: this was a huge, dangerous conflagration that took hold of some brambles and went nuclear. The flames were 4m high, and getting higher. And the noise – crackling, whooshing, hissing, roaring. Terrifying.

My pathetic efforts to douse it were utterly useless. I managed only to singe off half an eyebrow and set my trouser leg on fire.

By the grace of God, an allotment neighbour happened to be watering with a hose and came to my rescue. But it still took us 20 mins to put the fire out. I was pathetically, weepingly grateful. For a few minutes, I’d been the man responsible for burning down everyone’s allotments and several neighbouring houses.

I could see the headlines spinning in my fevered imagination: “Soilman Fucks Up Utterly”.

So I’m now cautious to the point of paranoia. Fires only happen in bins, and I stare at them so hard I barely blink. Where fires are concerned, dear Reader, I recommend Serious Care and Attention.

Here endeth the lesson.

Sign on allotment site gate informs us we’re no longer allowed bonfires. At all. Anywhere.

Which raises a few questions. The first to jump to mind are:

• WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THE STUFF WE CAN’T COMPOST?

and…

• WHICH MORON THOUGHT THIS ONE UP?

No doubt more will occur to me.

In the meantime, anyone got any thoughts on how to run a large allotment without ever burning anything? For instance, what to do with blighted potato and tomato matter, couch/bindweed/brassica roots etc?

Obviously I could haul it all home in a large sack and make it the council’s problem to dispose of. Or – the obvious route – stuff it up my arse.

Anything I’ve not thought of here?

Here’s the fire I made of the bramble roots from just 4 sq m of my new allotment empire.

Burn, you bastards, burn!

Progress on digging it has been snail-like. Not to mention expensive; I got a bit ambitious with one particularly stubborn bramble root and broke my wretched fork.

My feelings are best expressed by the slogan a Norfolk grass turf company used to have written on its lorries:

“If you can’t seed it, sod it.”