The art of saying Goodbye
My allotment. This funny little patch of land that was never mine and yet that I had hefted myself to as shepherds heft their sheep to their land. My hobby, my obsession, my escape.
We are planning to move house. This summer, in the precious moments of the heatwave when I could bear to move, I spent hours sorting books and paperwork, corners and cupboards, wardrobes and drawers. In short, the accumulated detritus of two lives sharing the same space.
"Why are we keeping this collection of old envelopes?"
"Scrap paper! Why are we keeping three copies of Wind in the Willows?"
"One is mine, one is yours and one is C's! What are you keeping: cds or cassettes?"
"Can C not have his copy at his flat? Both!"
And so on.
Having now hit on an area we both want to live in (you have no idea of the weeks, months, of negotiation that has taken), the cold reality of estate agents and solicitors and viewings, will hit before the end of the year. We are not moving far, in truth, but far enough to mean that some things will have to change, to be left behind us. Rather than wait for the moment of moving, when all is chaos and boxes and removal men in need of tea, I am ripping the band aid off now. I am saying goodbye to something very dear to me, now.
My allotment.
This funny little patch of land that was never mine and yet that I had hefted myself to as shepherds heft their sheep to their land. My hobby, my obsession, my escape.
In 2019, a full two years after putting my name down, I was told I could have this plot. It had been abandoned for two years prior to that and, when I came to see it, was a rippling green sea of grass and bindweed. Hidden under all of the growth were three rotting raised beds and six steel pole holders for a long-gone poly-tunnel. Set in concrete, they were utterly unmoveable and short enough to still, seven years later, catch me unawares and trip me up.
So far, so ordinary. Woman wants allotment, woman gets allotment, allotment is shitshow of weeds, woman tries to fit allotment in with full-time job and existing life.
And then the pandemic came. With everything shut down, all I could do was work and go to the allotment. What had become something I was crowbarring in around the edges of my life suddenly became my escape, my only space that wasn't full of other people. When work demands kept coming, the allotment was the place where they could not reach me: behind the padlocked gates and high fences, I was strangely free. To potter, to ponder, to play at some nonsensical idea of self-sufficiency (to be truly self-sufficient, you'd need about four full sized allotments and a willingness to never drink coffee again). To not think about what was raging outside; to not think about the fact I hadn't seen my son - then working in care - for months.
When restrictions lifted, it was where we celebrated my husband's birthday. It is the penultimate place I saw my Dad. It was the year of the runner beans when we had got carried away, planted too many, ended up with a super-glut. Note: people will pretend to be pleased by runner bean chutney but they actually Are Not.
When Dad died suddenly in 2021, followed swiftly by a close friend, then a family friend and then my son moving three hundred miles away, it was where I - quietly and tidily, in the solitude I craved like water - broke down. There is something about lying in the grass, watching the crickets leap past you while you weep and the smell of soft earth reaches you, that will help you navigate the raw-edged gaps in your heart that nothing else will.
In 2022, this is where I grew the one hundred sunflowers for our wedding, moved my Dad's old shed here. In 2023, it's where I put in new raised beds, planted a climbing rose to scramble over the shed. In 2024, the dahlias bloomed for months, I shook unexpected snow off the brassica nets. In 2025, I grew so many squash, we were still eating them into the new year. In 2026, the rhubarb took over while everything else wilted in the heat.
Because of the allotment, I have seen the sun rise over the trees and set behind the houses. I have recorded eleven different types of birdsong, watched the buzzards make their return, chatted to the robin perching just a few yards away watching my movements with a beady eye. I have seen the otter, the slow worm, the kingfisher, the fox. Five different types of bumblebee. Seven magpies watched me from the tall sway of the larch. I have felt the sun, the wind, the rain, the hail and the snow on my face. The grass under my feet. The earth under my hands.
I have grown parsley and chives, courgettes and squash, chard and kale, beans both runner and French. Beetroot in all their glorious colours. Tomatoes yellow and red. Raspberries and wineberries. Onions and potatoes by the bucketful. Garlic. Purple sprouting broccoli. Foxgloves and dahlias. Hundreds of sweet peas. A round hundred of sunflowers. Nasturtiums and marigolds and daisies. Picked damsons by the bagful, elderberries, blackberries. I have grown, seen grow, harvested such an abundance! I have been rich. Rich in ways I never knew it was possible to be.
And now, to say goodbye. Do it early, before the sun is properly risen and you are the only person there. Walk slowly down the path, looking all around so that you may say a silent goodbye to every person you have known there. Walk your plot for the last time, touching the rosemary, the lavender, the cosmos. Stroke the elder trees, now crooked and broken and half dead. Harvest the last rhubarb of the year. Pick up the round, almost cobbled, stone and slip it into your pocket. Rest your hand on the shed - left, for the next tenants, to make their start easier than your own was - for a long, long moment. Step up and away. Walk away now. Faster than your approach. Do not look back.
