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She seldom scores.
Six weeks of throwing rocks, stones, smallish pebbles, mis-shapen eggs of concrete, broken shingles, buttons, fragments of tile, and snapped, worn-smooth bottlenecks into a small black bucket have told me that I am never going to win the carnival game.
I don't need to throw a flimsy, plastic dart at an under-inflated balloon to miss the shot. Or launch an over-inflated basketball towards a too-small hoop to familiarise myself with failure.
Sometimes the bucket is close by, occasionally it's far away but the result seldom changes; I nearly always miss. Strangely, this doesn't bother me and I smile either way. It's good to know that if i absolutely had to bet, my money would probably be on the other guy.
I
I stand dazed, in an untouched, overgrown allotment bed, as weeds, swaying grasses and nettles brush my knees. They've shot up, thick and fast, and the prospect of weeding them out, which seemed manageable before, is now daunting. The last stretch of gooseberries and currants that hug the tumble-down -fence are choked with brambles, comfrey, and tall grass, the wanted and the unwanted knotted together. A harsh twist of dark spiked leaves grows out of a gap in the thicket, the stems trailing behind, like lines of abandoned bunting snagged in briars.
I shake myself out of my reverie and remember that the allotment shop opens on Monday afternoons. I go there, (it's a large green portacabin in the nearby car park) and have a long chat with John the shopkeeper about gooseberry mildew, (which my plot has) and which size of bamboo canes to use for what peas. He also introduces me to an implement known as the Chillington hoe, a viciously efficient agricultural weapon, which I duly buy and use all afternoon to rid one whole bed of knotted weeds.
It's exhausting but satisfying and I feel like a cherry-red Grim Reaper in my bright poppy windcheater as I swipe the hoe across the ground, watching the vegetation fall. My compost pile is growing higher every day, looking more and more like a scruffy Jeff Koon's puppy.
At the end of the day I fall asleep whilst reading up on how to build compost bins. I dream of mice, eating the peas I've yet to sow, in the ground I've yet to clear.
A cold and blowy morning gave way to spring sunshine, and by noon I was digging out weeds and old potatoes from the ground in just my shirt sleeves, welcoming the cooling breeze. I stopped for lunch at one and lay down by the little pool in front of the fruit bushes, head resting on my elbow, peering into the water. The reeds and emerging Lilly pads were clearly defined, illuminated by the mid day sun. Dead reeds, dried blond in summer covered the pond floor like abandoned pick-up-sticks, their shafts unusually bright and golden. Suddenly, I saw a tiny hand grip one of the reeds, as if using a hand-rail for support. It was a young newt, holding on to the reed like a child clinging to the rim of a municipal swimming pool, nudging its head over the top to see what was happening on the other side.
I sat there, counting four newts, as I listened to a programme on Radio 4 about how the recent brutal winters in Scotland have made it difficult for native birds and wild life to find food and survive. A Scottish lord told of how he'd found a nesting box on his estate containing eighteen comatose wrens huddling together for warmth. He took them home to his kitchen, and revived them in the warm Aga, feeding them grated Parmesan cheese until they were strong enough to be released.
As I listened, I felt a strong desire to take a newt out of the water and examine him in detail: the beautiful markings on his back, the tiny eyes, toes... Instead, I finished up my lunch and went back to digging out the beds. It all seems to be about digging at the moment...
