Ivy Lane: Spring: by Cathy Bramley

her back, of course, and apologized with a promise to visit before Easter.
    That was the latest I could go; after that I would be busy planting. The thought made my shoulders wiggle with delight.
    I couldn’t wait.
    I had spent an entertaining hour earlier this morning with Alfred (the man who looked after his tools), Peter the committee chairman and Dougie, with a cup of tea and a seed catalogue in the pavilion. It had been impossible not to share their enthusiasm for growing things and we had settled on sweetcorn, broad beans, shallots and a miniature variety of carrots for my first crops. Peter had suggested sowing seeds for green manure in the bit I wasn’t going to be using for now. You simply sowed seeds and hoed them into the ground once they had sprouted, no green animal poo involved at all, I had been relieved to learn.
    I was only halfway along the bench seat with my paintbrush when I heard the rumble and hiss of a lorry on the road.
    ‘Delivery for Parker?’ yelled the driver through his open cab window. A second man, chewing gum, stared gormlessly at me from the passenger seat.
    I waved, replaced the lid on my paint tin and hurried over to where the driver was holding out a clipboard and pen for my signature. The assistant was already at the back of the lorry.
    ‘Where do you want it?’ shouted Gormless.
    I joined him at the rear of the flatbed. I’d cleared the slabs in readiness; it would simply be a matter of lifting it into place.
    ‘At the end, next to the . . . Oh!’
    Drat, they’d messed up the delivery. There was only a pile of wood in the back. What a let-down.
    ‘I think there’s been a mistake,’ I said, ‘I ordered a shed.’
    ‘’Tis a shed. Comes flat-packed,’ said the driver.
    ‘Very clear on the website,’ said his mate.
    Buggeration. I watched them struggle with the huge timber panels towards my end of plot sixteen, dreams of sitting in my shed by lunchtime fluttering away like blossom on the breeze.
    I stared mournfully at the departing truck, my brain scrabbling to form a new plan, when Shazza emerged, like a mirage from the cloud of dust kicked up by the truck’s tyres, thundering in my direction. She had a drill in one hand, a lump hammer in the other.
    I was a bit scared of Shazza.
    She came to a halt in front of me, raised the drill above her head and pulled the trigger.
    ‘Fancy learning how to use one of these?’ she said with a beaming smile.
    Fear clutched at my heart, but the impact of her words was immediately dissipated as Gemma’s shed door opened and a young man of about twenty in a navy cagoule backed out of the shed looking very pleased with himself. He cupped his balls –
his balls!
– and I distinctly heard him say, ‘These will be sore for the rest of the day.’
    Fear clutched at my heart, but the impact of her words was immediately dissipated as Gemma’s shed door opened and a young man of about twenty in a navy cagoule backed out of the shed looking very pleased with himself. He cupped his balls –
his balls!
– and I distinctly heard him say, ‘These will be sore for the rest of the day.’
    I watched the young lothario as he hobbled, bandy-legged, down the road and stopped at the plot next to Charlie’s.
    I recognized him now: he shared a plot with an older woman. A mother-and-son combo I’d assumed, but maybe not. Maybe he was a cub to her cougar. Whatever rings your bell.
    Gemma had appeared and was daintily pulling up leeks and arranging them in a wicker basket. She looked over and waved.
    ‘New shed? Lovely!’ she called.
    I smiled but I couldn’t think of a word to say. I turned my back on her to hide my confusion and tuned into Shazza’s monologue about suffragettes and battery-operated power tools.
    An hour later, the shed floor was in position and all the panels were laid out in situ. Shazza was still cracking on, and I was dying for a drink but didn’t dare say anything.
    ‘Right,’ she said, revving up her drill again,