The team
Ruth Harrison
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny- Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor- Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray- Friday Next
- Jacky Percival
Other teams
Two blokes and a shed Find!
On a walk this morning my companions and I stopped to look across at the local allotments - pick out the best, see who wasn't working on theirs, and check out who had covered their leeks.While discussing the various advantages of having an allotment and the memories it would give to their children in future years (I'm sure none of them will forget the snail races) I said 'Has anyone read Robin Shelton's book Allotted Time?' It was only when I came home and looked through the upstairs books that I remembered that this book was written about the allottments in Twyford - a village about three miles south of Winchester, most famous for the cut made in Twyford Down to extend the M3 motorway and the protests that accompanied it's construction.
Allotted Time, subtitled Two Blokes, One Shed, No Idea, is set at a completely different pace that the motorway that runs by it.
The blurb reads 'Robin Shelton was at a crisis point in his life - divorced, broke and suffering from depression - when he and his trusty mate Steve decided to take on a project, a chance to achieve something solid. They decided to rent an allotment.'
The book chronicles a year in Robin and Steve's lives and each chapter carries a date as Robin kept a diary throughout their year of growing vegetables as any good gardener would in order to record planting times and so on. But the book is so much more than a gardening diary. It is a book of philosphy about life, the relationship between fathers and sons, the nurturing nature of the earth, dogs and the value of friendship.
I would highly recommend this book to an all male reading group and maybe even a Dads & Lads group, and it should definitely be required reading for anyone about to take on an allotment.
28 September 2009 from Madelaine - the book thief
Finds
- A Daughter of Winchester
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Postscrpt to a previous find
- The uses of a detective
- Reading Detectives film
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
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