So I lied.

I have another poem which I wrote straight in to Word and haven’t touched it since. When I was at the Garden there was a brief conversation about how potatoes condition the soil so that it’s not too crumbly and not too sticky. Two things entered my mind. First, a reading by Julia Copus at this year’s Stanza Festival in Scotland. She talked about how ‘falling in love’ was an inaccurate phrase, since it implies that love is outside of us. Better to think of love as something involuntary that rises up through you. Second, I thought of some graffiti on the toilet wall in the English Faculty: ‘LOVE IS NOT A POTATO’ is written in sprawling letters and beneath it there’s some wise-crack response that I can’t remember. I was taken by the idea of conditioning – of love being something that makes you fertile ground for all the growths that accompany it – purpose, jealousy, satisfaction, self-worth, libido.

Last week I met Annie who is one of the trustees at Barracks Lane, and her husband John. They live right beside the site and were involved in the process of turning the place from a derelict concrete patch in to a community garden. Alan, who helped me move from London to Oxford, took me for a mini tour that was impeded by a brief thunderstorm.