The Reluctant Allotmenteer

The Reluctant

Allotmenteer

Dave Proctor

Austin Macauley Publishers

The Reluctant Allotmenteer

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

About the Author

Following cancer treatment, Dave was left with depression and was unable to carry on working. He semi-retired to Spain and to help with his depression, started writing comedy to cheer himself up. Dave has had a chequered career history, accountancy, policeman, photographer and now writer. He is married with a grown-up son and three dogs. He is now working on the Costa Blanca as a freelance journalist and features as a writer with an English language newspaper.

Dedication

To Karen,

Without you, I would not be alive.

I love you.

Copyright Information ©

Dave Proctor (2021)

The right of Dave Proctor to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528988094 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528988100 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Chapter 1

Reginald Proctor was known to everyone as Percy.

The origins of his nickname were that during the Second World War, there was a small single-engine radio training aeroplane called a Percival Proctor. Now the main claim to fame of this little plane was that it was cited as the main plane in the Biggles Stories of the Air police.

It was a Mister Strickland, a Maths teacher at Reggie’s high school who made the connection and who was responsible for first calling Reggie, Percy.

This sobriquet would probably have died a natural death, but at the time, in the seventies, there was a corny British adult comedy film about a transplanted penis nicknamed Percy. This film detailed, in full technicolour, the womanising antics of its ‘proud’ new owner. As a result, the nickname stuck like glue.

It soon got to the stage that the only people to call him Reggie or Reginald were his parents. Even his teachers knew him as Percy. School certificates recorded him as Percy, and school reports likewise. Throughout his life, even when he had moved house, school or job and had properly announced his name as Reggie, there would be someone from his past who would blow back into his life and remind the world that his ‘real’ name was Percy.

Surprisingly, it was a nickname Reggie secretly enjoyed, because it raised him from obscurity, so that wherever he went, people knew he was Percy and who else was known as Percy.

For the avoidance of confusion, in these stories, we shall, therefore, call Reggie, Percy.

Birchford, where Percy lived, was a pleasant enough home counties town. But to be honest, it was one of those characterless towns that revelled in its obscurity. It was not the birthplace of any famous statesman, nor the site of any grand battle. There was no castle, nor stately home. No novels were based on the lives of its inhabitants, and it certainly was not notorious for any promiscuity, heaven forbid!

The high street accommodated a few of the main chain stores found in every rural British town. A library, two banks, a post office, six estate agencies and numerous charity shops, each staffed by eager people, who volunteered to make a difference to the world.

There was a park which was regularly vandalised and was only really visited by the football team who played there on a Sunday morning. There were a few remaining public houses, which mainly earnt their way on loud and lively Friday and Saturday nights. The rest of the week, they remained resolutely devoid of customers despite any number of special offers.

And of course, there was the Allotment. A large field of subdivided plots tended to by almost thirty leaseholders. Each individual had their own ideas of what they wanted to grow and reap from their plots. With such individuality, the overall scene was one of chaos and unruliness. There were a number of sheds ranging from ones that looked as if there were cobbled collections of wood collected from a local tip, to swanky pine ones with angled glass sides for the nurturing of seeds and cuttings.

The plots were interspersed by thin paths leading off from the central path.

On one of these plots, Percy was sat in a very old and very faded traditional striped deckchair, a fraying and misshapen Panama hat pulled down low at the front to shield his eyes from the sun.

The deckchair was perched on a concrete slab in front of his shed. The shed stood guard over Percy’s Allotment. He sat there dozing in the early evening spring sunshine. A glass of pale straw-coloured fruit wine precariously dangling in his hand.

Now an Allotment to most people conjures up a scene of regimented rows of flourishing cabbages, runner beans, giant squash, peas and perhaps some giant brightly coloured flowers such as delphiniums. Many vegetables were grown to supplement the lease holder’s virtuous attempts at self-sufficiency. Others grew their vegetables and flowers to either win prizes at local shows or to appease a lonely wife, who inevitably, regarded herself as an Allotment Widow.

Percy’s Allotment was different, however. It was a tangled mess of plants and brambles that usually one would refer to as weeds. The Allotment patch that was meant to be ‘tended’ by Percy, but had not been cultivated in the proper sense since Percy had taken it over some years previously. The other curious thing about Percy’s Allotment was the shed. Not the usual tumbledown piecemeal structure, nor a swanky professional potting shed. No, Percy’s shed was virtually new, made of solid wood, windowless and lockable. For within that shed revealed his secret passion. Percy was a winemaker and within the dark windowless shed, you could find tubes, bottles, demijohns and all the paraphernalia associated with this hobby, together with rack after rack after rack of bottles containing fruit and hedgerow wines.

The fact was, that Percy hated gardening. He hated it with a vengeance. He admitted that he could not think of a worse hobby and the thought of all that digging, sieving and weeding repulsed him.

Percy did, however, like the tranquillity of the Allotment.

To him, his Allotment was a world far away from his home life. A home occupied by a wife and their two teenage daughters. Percy’s wife made sure Percy should never sit idle. She was a wife who took the opinion that as long as she was busy (which she invariably was), then her spouse should be as well.

Then there were the kids. Two girls aged thirteen and fifteen, who, like many their age, followed the latest music and fashion trends. They invariably played their own music at a competitive volume, with each girl trying to outdo her sibling.

The house was, therefore, a cacophony of competing music interspersed with his wife’s incessant shouting of what jobs she wanted Percy to do next.

The girls’ main interest in their father was as the provider of the money to buy the latest fashion clothing, music and accessories. Items which they regarded as essentials, which had to be bought ahead of everyone else and were invariably overpriced and were out of vogue and discarded within hours of their purchase. Percy would invariably be loudly harangued by each of the girls, in turn, whining as to why he had not bought them the latest trending item and how terrible a father he was.

For these reasons, Percy preferred to spend his free time at his Allotment.

And there was nothing Percy liked more than to enjoy the fruits of his endeavours. Sitting in his deckchair in quiet meditation, sipping a nice fruit wine and taking in the warmth of the evening sunshine, as he was that evening.

Percy was happy.

Percy was sat in his deckchair enjoying his wine when he was joined by Michael, an old school Allotmenteer, who liked nothing better than boasting about the size of his onions. Having heated discussions on what manure he was using, and giving odds for the favourites at the local country shows that year.

Michael was also known as the man in grey. His clothes tended to be colourless and grey, his shoes were grey, his hair was grey and his conversation, well, grey.

Michael would only talk about things he knew. If the conversation veered off plants and vegetables, he would soon manage to bring it back to what he knew and then would drone on and on and on. It was said by those that knew him, that the only time he got excited was when he could get his hands on some fresh manure for his Allotment.

Michael busily and eagerly described how he had won a silver medal for his bunch of spring onions at some local show but was convinced that he should have got gold, as the woman who had won had a blemish on one of her onions, and that she should have had points deducted for that.

Percy was grateful for the company but exasperated at the nature of the conversation. He interrupted Michael’s discourse:

Michael, how old are you?

Fifty-eight, Why?

Percy pondered. Did you know that you’re 14 years younger than Mick Jagger…so at what age did you give up denim for crimplene?

Michael did not reply but looked bemused at the question, and why had Percy changed the subject.

It’s just, well, there’s Jagger still rocking and rolling, still wearing denim, still apparently living the high life, then there’s us.

What do you mean, then there’s us?

Just look at us, dressed as old men, the highpoint of our life, being a crafty one at the Allotment and discussing bleeding spring onions.

But I like onions, whined Michael.

Percy was not on the committee of the Birchford Allotment Society, nor had he any desire to be.

He was therefore grateful when Dodds and the rest of the committee traipsed off to the local scout hall for their monthly meeting and left him to look after Carole’s two children and two of their young friends, who Carole was meant to be looking after.

Who’s the best runner here? asked Percy.

I am, I am, the four children all thrust their hands in the air.

Well, I’ve got a great game for you all to play. Percy disappeared into his shed and came out with four plastic shopping bags. He handed each a bag.

Right, here’s the game, see those trees over there, the ones with white flowers on them?

Percy pointed at the trees on the far side of the Allotments. The children nodded.

Now I want you to run over to the trees to fill your bags with flowers, then run back to me with the flowers. I will keep the flowers and then you go off again. Whenever you fill the bag, you will get a point, but be careful, if you fill the bag with stems or the bags are not full, no points. The winner will be the person with the most points, okay, oh and no climbing up the trees.

Again the children nodded.

On your marks, get set, go!

The children raced off, laughing as they did so.

For the next forty minutes, the children ran backwards and forwards across the Allotment field, eagerly filling their bags with the flowers.

These flowers were elderflowers and Percy needed them to make his elderflower wine.

The committee of the society was made up of Dodds, who was the chairman, his wife Clementine, who acted as secretary, with the rest of the committee being made up of Michael, Reverend (retired) Edwin, Carole, a substantially sized Jamaican woman and two other Allotmenteers.

Clementine was pouring the obligatory cups of tea from a giant metal teapot. She was joined by Carole, who began ferrying the mugs of steaming liquid to the table.

I joined that new Slim Line Dancers club a couple of weeks ago, said Clementine, "you should try it. It’s fantastic. They have special diet sheets, you can buy these lovely meals, all you have to do is ping them for a couple of minutes, oh, and at the meetings they have a weigh in and group chat about the week and then after that we have an hour and a half of line dancing to keep us fit. It’s all yahoos and yehaas.

I even bought a cowboy hat for it. We didn’t half get the giggles the first time we went.

Don’t know about the line dancing bit, I’m more reggae and what have you kind of girl. Me doing that would be, well weird, laughed Carole.

Come on, don’t be a spoilsport, you’ll love it and we could both do with dropping a bit, think of your beach body.

How much you lost then?

Well, actually I’ve put on a couple of pounds, don’t know why, I think it’s my metabolism, I just don’t burn fat like other people, but it’s great fun. You going to come?

I’ll think about.

The rest of the committee began coming in and as they did so, Clementine produced an enormous, gooey chocolate cake.

Now that’s for me, exclaimed Clementine, cutting herself a slice of the cake.

I made the cake this afternoon while you lot were enjoying yourselves down the Allotment. I want it all eaten up. I don’t want to take it home, I’m on a diet.

The meeting, chaired by Dodds rapidly dealt with the business on the agenda. Clementine was busy writing in between taking bites of her cake.

No apologies for absence. Minutes of the last meeting.

Everyone stuck their hands up.

Approved.

Accounts.

All hands went up again.

"Approved. Before we go on to discuss this fete, there are a couple of items for Any Other Business. Firstly, I am not happy that Percy Proctor is not keeping his plot neat and tidy. Indeed, I don’t think he’s lifted a finger to pull out a weed since he’s had the plot, and