Dead or Alive

 I was down the allotment the other day helping to show groups of young primary school children around the site. I wasn’t in the best condition to do so, suffering as I was with a rare and raging hangover (rare, because I rarely drink to excess these days, not because I’m some hard-nut immune to the effects of alcohol). Lynda, the allotment manager had just chirpily informed me that we’d be showing round no less than three large groups of kids, with each tour lasting a good hour. I gazed longingly down the track that led to the road that led to my empty and quiet house, where  radio 4 and the kettle were waiting patiently to soothe me. But they’d have to wait. For three, long, noisy, childreny hours.

 I slunk off to a nearby café to consume strong tea and plot escape strategies. But my guilty conscious got the better of me- I couldn’t leave Lynda alone with endless gangs of whippersnapper Penge tearaways, so I downed the brackish dregs of my tea, and slunk back again to be greeted by a  multitude of grubby-faced urchins in even grubbier blue uniforms accompanied by their care-worn teachers in fluorescent yellow tabards.  The plan was to begin by taking them around Lynda’s extensive plot, and I’d decided that I would just hover vaguely in the background, perhaps concealing myself a bit amongst various clumps of towering foliage in the hope I wouldn’t be bothered too much. But it wasn’t to be: Lynda introduced me to everyone and told them that I was an allotment expert who would be overjoyed to tell them all about  the different things growing. All the urchins stared up at me with such eager little expressions that I felt my second twang of guilt of the day, mingled with a vague feeling of dread: how on earth was I going to make rows of assorted vegetable plants exciting and inspirational to the youth of today? With small nails pressing spitefully on the backs of my eyes and my stomach churning gently like a pale of curdling milk? 

I stared at some potato plants. The children gazed at me, expectantly.  I glared at some beetroots, desperate  for inspiration. Still the children gazed at me, fidgeting a little.  So I did the only sensible thing that you can do when showing 15-odd 5-year-olds around a vegetable plot, and I started tearing off smelly leaves and passing them round for them to sniff. Tomato leaves, lavender, lemon balm: the kids loved them all. They loved the fact they reminded them of familiar things: lemon sweets, ice cream, mum’s cooking. I handed out poppy seed heads and demonstrated how, if burst open, a billion tiny black seeds flew everywhere. They couldn’t get enough of exploding poppies, and soon all of them had little black dots speckling their blue sweaters. I pulled off the large, white bell-shaped flowers of bindweed and showed them how to make them pop up in the air and drift to the ground like little elfish parachutes. I lifted damp logs to reveal thriving communities of bugs. The kids especially loved this- I think they could relate to the random, rapid movements of multitudinous insects, like so many excitable children in a playground. I pointed out the woodlice and solemnly informed them that they are officially known as ‘chiggy pigs’, a term peculiar to my childhood home of North Devon, but now hopefully part of the youth lexicon of south-east London. I created howls of delighted disgust when they noticed an old bathtub full of foetid brown water and I explained that I would be taking a bath in it myself later. And, all the while, I experienced a strange sensation. I found myself, bizarrely, against all expectations, actually enjoying myself. The kids made me laugh. They were sweet. They asked peculiar, random, yet often insightful questions. And the more I enjoyed it all, the more the fuggy shroud of hangover lifted. I actually began looking forward to the next two groups.

But then something happened that brought me crashing down to earth again. I had just escorted the group back to the gate, ready to bid them farewell and welcome the next group. We were loitering there, half the kids and a couple of the day-glo teachers, waiting for the rest to catch up. One of the kids, a sweet, smiling little girl who had been one of the keenest on the tour, pointed to some tomato plants and asked me, ‘If you pull them out of the ground, will they die?”: a perfectly sensible, indeed intelligent question for one of such a tender age. To which one of the teachers, replied, slightly condescendingly, “Well, how can it die if it wasn’t even alive in the first place?”, before addressing all the group with the question, “Are plants alive?”, in a tone of voice designed to elicit only a negative response. “No”, all the children responded dutifully. And the little girl stopped smiling, and looked just a little bit crestfallen.