I was an allotment child From a city of cabbages and paint peeled doors Son to the lime and the compost heap With an eye for a top grade manure.
My Father was a big veg hunter I watched as he ate his asparagus raw Dragging the carcasses of Calabrese and Kale Through the streets to divide between the old and the poor
With the silent way of the water butt With the mystery of a tight locked hut Like a creosote loo with a concrete floor With the medicated paper out of reach on the door
No, this was not a place of play A place of dusty hard won days Where flat capped feudal barons still held sway And snapped up plots from half baked fools who played
Like Wolf spiders watching With a jack Russell bite With the Brassaca’s tang and the coming of the night
Yes I was an allotment child When it was still a very, very serious business
