Nice and Tidy. Tidy and Nice.

You might think that how an allotment holder maintained their plot was, provided they did nothing to effect the neighbours, pretty much their own business. You might think that, but you would be very wrong. Every allotment site committee has at least some members who hold strong views on what an allotment should look like and are more than happy, given half a chance, to enforce their standards on all and sundry. Not that the Taliban, as the hard line elements of our own committee are known, ever have need to give me a hard time. My plot is the epitome of bourgeois, crypto-facist order. Perfectly straight rows of crops, hardly a weed in sight and the whole thing surrounded by path edges as sharp as the creases on the smartest of smart casual's Sta-Prest strides.

 I tend to be a pretty tidy person and although I put this down to my nautical background others are equally convinced that I'm just anal-retentive and probably in need of long term treatment. Whatever. I do know that I have not the slightest interest in inflicting my own way of doing things on others. On the contrary, I find the existence of the untidy world of squats, traveller's camps, dreads, dogs on string and half completed permaculture projects a source of great pleasure. I don't want it, but it is something to celebrate none the less.