When Good Allotments Go Bad
Last Updated (Sunday, 17 January 2010 09:32) Written by SuenMike Sunday, 17 January 2010 00:00
Allotments have a wonderful reputation in the UK. If you look at Kitchen Garden magazine or most of the press that allotments get, it’s like going back in time with the perfect picture of the nuclear family with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence around the house. All very perfect.
Most of it is well-deserved. Allotments usually are wonderful, and people work very hard to be neighbourly and good-natured. But let’s not forget that allotments are places where human dramas may unfold and things can get pretty nasty.
Allotments are small communities and communities are filled with human beings. Humans can be difficult at times. It doesn’t take a lot of people to start a gang and, in a small community, even a small gang can be very disruptive. People go to their allotments to plant a potato in the ground and naturally avoid getting involved in anything political. Allotments are supposed to be relaxing, a family, even. It’s hard to get involved even when there is obvious conflict.
Denial is also common. Not to see pain and suffering of other people is a strategy intended to maintain one’s innocence. The usual path is for the allotmenteer not to get involved with any conflict until it gets personal. Until one’s self is the victim.
And so one waits until the problem gets so big that there are enough people to be concerned. This may take a couple of years, and by this time, quite a bit of damage has been done to the good nature of the allotment or to the financial status of the organisation and a host of other problems. When people start hiring lawyers – that’s a sure sign that an allotment is going tits up.
Private allotments are particularly vulnerable to this, obviously. With a council-owned allotment, one can start ringing councillors, but with a private allotment, you have to rely on your wits. Hopefully one of your allotmenteers is a lawyer, or pretty comfortable with the law. Perhaps you can persuade a friend to give you free legal advice. Because there is no one to call; not even Ghostbusters.
By the time an extraordinary general meeting is called, everyone is foaming at the mouth and going loony-tunes. Many, many hoops have been leapt through by this time and people are sick about talking about the problem and yet, the final bell has not been heard. The problem is still there, like a noose hanging from a tree. It would be much easier to put the noose around one’s neck and leave the place, and yet one stays. Because you can’t just leave your plot, because you’ve come this far, because giving up would mean giving in. Because allotments are just one more place in the human scheme of things where one learns bravery, tenacity, the will to fight, the ability to carry on, despite it all.