I recently caught up with Scarlett, our contact at Branch Hill allotments, for a quick one-to-one about what the place means to her. It’d be lovely to say that no stone was left unturned, but I fear I would be overselling the rough-and-ready charms of what you are about to hear. So here -- complete with me inadvertently planting my size 11s on the new-dug earth, and January winds howling into the condenser mic of my dictaphone -- is The Allotment Interview.

From the moment it was first mooted, I knew I wanted the London poet’s residency to take place on an allotment. I liked the idea of allotments, but their reality carried a certain amount of baggage for me. I wanted to reconcile the idea and the reality. This is the the story of what allotments, up until that point, had meant to me.

So I finally made it to Branch Hill. I’d travelled straight from Great Yarmouth, where I’d been performing the previous night (I know what you’re thinking: “Street theatre? In November? In Great Yarmouth?“) and the wheel had fallen off my wheelie suitcase. Again. Hampstead’s cobbles hadn’t helped. 

At first, I walked straight past the allotments, though I don’t know how – they couldn’t have been more obvious. Scarlett the Heavenly Healer, alerted by my disorientated phonecall, stood at the gates to greet me – a vision in pink against the sombre colours of the November afternoon. Our allotment-contact was evidently not of the old-school variety.

Jay, our poet, was running late. Another enagement on the far side of town, and Sunday engineering on most tube-lines. Whilst we awaited her, Scarlett gave me a quick tour of the allotment – the plots, the communal area, the water-tanks, the beehive, the one big shed where all plot-holders keep their tools. I made a quick sketch, which resembled a rejected draft for a Tolkien endpaper. Scarlett unrooted remains of vegetables whilst I sat and mended my wheel (paperclip, plastic bottle-top, good as new – which in this case, was never particularly good). Why, I asked her, do I get dizzy when I stand up too quickly? She said that, being a healer, it wasn’t really her department. Probably just age, I suspect.

Jay arrived, brandishing a film-camera (glad I’m not the only one left) and whizzed around, making the most of what remained of the daylight. Three was evidently going to be a crowd. But I’d be back. And next time I’d be taking my watercolours.

“Wooden chairs. Manure.” My, the words were really flowing that day.