Photo credit: Hari Berrow
Hello friends! Before we get started, the next set of writing courses I’m running with Cardiff University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning are now available for enrollment. Fee waivers are available. Here’s what I’ll be offering:
Creative Nonfiction (starting 29th September) - http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/.../cou.../view/creative-nonfiction
Writing Horror (starting 3rd October) - https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/par.../courses/view/writing-horror
Writing for Stage (starting 23rd January) - https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/.../writing-for-the-stage-i...
Writing Cardiff (starting 6th May) - https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/.../writing-cardiff-inspiration...
Have a look, see if you fancy any of them, and we’ll get on with the Substack!
Orite lads? We’re in a bit of a mess over in the UK, if you hadn’t noticed. The government keeps trying to save money on things (because austerity worked really well last time they tried it), but then, when they try to save money on things, people keep saying they don’t like it, so they keep having to backpaddle on it. We’re sort of playing chicken with money-saving tactics, and it’s making our Chancellor of the Exchequer cry. Oh, and we’re also developing a really interesting definition of the term terrorism, but that’s a different story for a different time.
Money, however, still needs to be saved, and all of this money saving, unfortunately, has to come from somewhere, so it seems that Angela Raynor has personally given permission for 8 allotments to be sold off by councils in the South of England. Now, look, I’m Welsh. We’re the colonised branch of colonial Britain. This means I do find English misfortune a little bit funny. (That is a JOKE, by the way, for professional reasons it is a JOKE, please don’t report me to the Daily Mail as another leftist academic who hates England I won’t be able to cope). Good-humoured contempt aside, however, this does mark something of a serious issue – at least, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m going to do the very wonky structural thing here of putting the counterargument to my perspective first. The allotment in Kent that is probably going to be sold off for affordable housing, because ‘the vast majority of it is outside green belt’ land, has not been well-kept or used appropriately since 2003 – according to the reports to and from the local authority. I know there will be those who think ‘use it or lose it’; I understand this perspective, because it is a wasted resource if not being used. There are some wider social issues to consider, though, before we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Did you know that roughly half of the UK’s food intake is ultra-processed? Did you know that eating ultra-processed foods is not only linked with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, but also with anxiety and other common aspects of mental ill-health? That’s what this 2024 report from UK Parliament says, anyway. Do you know what prohibits people from buying healthy, unprocessed food? Cost. Do you know what’s really cheap? Packets of seeds.
Allotments are the backbone of my community. Well, that probably isn’t particularly surprising, given my mother is the Secretary of our current allotment site and was the Chair of the allotment site we used to be on. The allotment is so much more than just a place to grow veg to us, though it does provide us with them (that is, if my mother lets us pick them – she is notorious for not letting us because she likes the look of them in nice even rows). It provides a social circle, it provides us with a space to support and appreciate nature, it provides us with SO MUCH DRAMA.
Actually, let me alter my previous statement: drama is the backbone of any working-class community. Without it, we are nothing. We have no purpose, no drive, nothing getting us out of bed of a morning. We are, in our hearts, all silly old curtain-twitching washer women who sit outside on the front step to do our work so we can nose at what’s going on. You’d best believe EVERYONE in my street comes out once an ambulance or police car has left, because we were all peaking at it out the window while it was there. Social media has been a real game-changer for us because we can now message each other on facebook about who was shouting in number 34.
Allotment drama is essential to one’s mental health and well-being. I am convinced of this. In between the idyllic hours spent looking out at the flowers you’ve planted, and other people’s well-ordered bean sticks, you have the joy of ‘Whose Hissyfit is it Anyway?’, a game where you don’t even have to try to work out who’s pissed off today because they’ve already told you and everyone else they’ve passed. Recent dramas include: someone not maintaining their fence, someone building a fence, someone complaining about a fence, someone not closing the gate in the fence and many more fence-related classics. These dramas provide hours of glee to people who, without the benefit of gossip and schadenfreude, may otherwise be lonely and depressed. You can’t feel inadequate when you know everyone else is a useless arsehole!
I will return to this allotment that has been misused since 2003: why didn’t the council invest the money and resources into preventing it from getting into that state? Why, when they knew the health benefits, the social benefits, the ability to support communities, did they do nothing when they saw it was failing? Why are the government not supporting councils to revive them now? We’re worried about the increasing cost of healthcare as people age – you know what old people are getting out and doing physical activity every day, what old people are socialising and staving off loneliness every day, what old people are battling societal ageism by making their opinions everyone else’s problem every day? The old people at my allotment. One of the old fellas on the plot recently had to give it up because health problems finally caught up with him: he was in his 90s.
Spending exclusively to solve immediate problems only causes more need for spending in the long term. We need to invest in things that keep us healthy, happy and connected. We shouldn’t be selling allotments; we should be creating more. In October 2023, there were over 150,000 applications to alloment sites in England. That tells you that people know what they want, and they want what is good for them. I will be clear: I don’t think this is going to affect us here in Wales. Allotments are a devolved matter (given the vast list of things that aren’t, the fact we must have requested powers over them is so iconic to me). We’ll be alright. The sun will still shine as Mavis from down the road complains because Terry thinks his onion beds are best thing since sliced bread. The UK, though, is in a mess. It’s going to be in an even bigger one if we sell off all the things that make us feel human.
That was a piece of joy. Thank you. I have veggie-gardened most of my life in the UK and now in Quebec ... I am a part of a community group that mega-allotmentises to grow food for food banks and all your comments about social interaction and gossip are spot on.