Allotment
A memory of being small, crouched down between blackcurrant bushes heavy with winking dark beads of fruit. The leaves over my head, a green cave. This space became my private playhouse on Saturday mornings when I visited the allotment with my dad, each gap between the bushes serving as a different room. I am alone in this memory, happy and secure, a contented small child’s certainty that this is the way of the world. Although of course, my father was in reality only feet away, digging, raking or considering his compost heap. During the week he would cycle ten miles each way to central London, where he worked as an antiquarian bookseller, spending his days with illuminated manuscripts on vellum, and incunabula, the earliest of printed books. The contrast between his weekday and weekend selves was acute. Other memories surface, exploring a neglected plot, overgrown with grass, or chasing my younger brother up and down the sunbaked mud path in the middle of the site. Care had to be taken ...