Barney the Arsonist

In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to delegate the task of writing the allotment blog to someone who is there a bit more often. Having been rather busy with other commitments recently I haven’t been able to get down as often as I would like and thus these posts have been rather less frequent than ideal.

Not only does not getting down to allotment hinder one’s ability to write a useful blog about it, moreover, but it also means that you miss out on all the excitement. I returned from a trip to Scotland on Sunday to be informed by Sam that, in my absence, Barney had burned the shed down. Now, I know that the shed was in a bit of a bad state, and that we were considering replacing it, but even so this seemed a bit drastic. Moreover, given the lack of insurance on it there wasn’t any obvious material gain to be realized from this course of action. Further discussion, however, revealed that the shed burning had, in fact, been an accident caused by a spark from a brazier being used to burn prunings and other non-compostable waste material (and that the shed was not so much burned down as rather badly singed). At least that’s Barney’s story and in the absence of witnesses to the contrary he’s sticking to it.

Under normal circumstances the week’s other story – deer eats bark of Gooseberry bush – would have been front page news, but sometimes it’s just a fast news week. Large patches of trampled grass and a carefully nibbled collar of bark around the stem of one plant evidenced the presence of something having been at work and Linda caught a glimpse of the likely culprit heading off over the fields to confirm it. This is a new one on us, perhaps because the psychotic Llama that used to inhabit the field next to the allotment deterred the deer – as well as hissing and spitting at allotmenteers and eating everything it could reach. You know what they say, you never know what you’re going to miss until it’s gone.

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