Hold the headlines

As the days lengthen and the mornings become lighter

I seem to be getting up earlier and earlier

only to wonder how best to fill this new found time.

Which is why I was to be spotted yesterday

down on the marshes just after sparrow fart

digging away on Plot 6.

Not mad March hares - mad marsh horses instead

 

 It was a beautiful early spring morning;

Yarmouth way on the horizon was still shrouded

in sea mist; the birds were all singing;

you could see the horses' breath as they grazed

the hillocky grass and I was as near to being

at peace with the world as I will ever be.

 

That is until I spotted the very unnerving and rather

unkempt figure of a man climbing the fence into

the allotment gardens.  It was at that moment when the

phrase being at "one" with the world took on a new

and slightly sinister meaning.

Sort of like this but not tooled up.  At least not from where I was standing.

 

 I was "just one", all alone in the middle of nowhere,

feeling slightly rattled by this unnown man

behaving oddly to say the least.  What's more,

he appeared to be coming my way.

Flight would have been futile so I prepared for fight

instead and grasped the handle of my lovely new

fork with both hands until my knuckles turned

white and gleamed in the sun.

 

Nearer and nearer he came, stumbling occasionally

on the uneven terrain, the tails of his shabby tweed coat

flapping in the breeze.  Cue music from Jaws -

dah dah, dah dah, etc ......

 

He was, by now, no more than a few feet from me when

his face suddenly lit up with a cheery grin and in a very

posh voice he said: "Morning m'dear, Friday the

thirteenth you know.  Never take the car out on that day

so I'm taking this shortcut to the garage on the

roundabout as the wife's run out of bread again."

I must see what the committee think about putting up a sign.

 

 And then he lurched on by still following his diagonal route

across the allotments until he came to the boundary fence

which he also climbed but with less alacrity than the first.

 

Breathing a huge sigh of relief and having reprimanded

myself for being so jumpy I continued on with my deep

digging.  I also mentally deleted the headline I had imagined

adorning the front page of tomorrow's edition of the

Eastern Daily Press:

 

WOMAN F***S MAN ON ALLOTMENT

 

You can fill in the blanks.  I think the asterisks made

it just a tad more sensational.  With a lurid imagination

life can never, ever be dull!

I wonder if Colonel Sanders knows anything about this?

 

 Tomorrow "Genetically modified chicken attacks tourist

on Gorleston seafront."