SPUDS, SWEDES AND SABOTAGE

Perhaps like me, you thought that allotment owners were gentle sorts. Thermos flask, ham sandwiches and The Archers in a derelict shed. But no. Allotment Wars, apparently, are raging across the U.K. As we speak, elderly women and men are devising spiteful and underhand plans to sabotage the work of their green-fingered neighbours. Decapitated tomato plants, poisoned parsnips, waterlogged onions. These are just the preliminary skirmishes. More sophisticated (deranged) attacks feature: digging up a competitor's entire potato crop then planting weeds in its place; firing dirt bombs at competitors as they haul loaded wheelbarrows up a rocky path; informing local press that cannabis plants are rampant on 80% of the plots. Attacks and counter-attacks gather momentum; the old folk break social, moral and statutory laws with audaciously bad attitude. We can't be far off a spate of torched allotment sheds and the mugshots of random grandparents in the national press.
I used to work damn hard on my allotment. I gave it up after my fourteenth disastrous year. Sometimes you have to let go.