Allotted task

Into every life, a little dung must fall.

At least, if you’re the husband of a committed allotteer. That may not be a word, but it’s the title I use for the keeper of an allotment. In turn, that’s a plot of land, generally rented out by a town council, usually to make a vegetable plot.

A vegetable plot, by the way, isn’t a bunch of cabbages in a conspiracy.

I have a high respect for manual work on the land. I admire it intensely, but preferably from afar. I have gone to great lengths to ensure that I would never find myself dependent on working with my hands, least of all in backbreaking agriculture.

The trouble is I benefit from the excellent broccoli, carrots, onions, broad beans, artichokes even, to say nothing of the soft fruit – the strawberries and raspberries – Danielle’s allotment produces. Even I have to admit that it’s hardly unfair to expect me to make some minor contribution to the endeavour. Especially if it’s just once a year, as is the case of the task of shoving a few hundred kilos of horse dung in wheelbarrow loads from one end of the allotment to the plots Danielle manages.

Or is it twice? I can’t remember. You know how oblivion draws a merciful veil over traumatic shock? I’m afraid dung-doling is that kind of experience for me – I agree that it’s reasonable to expect me to move the bags, I may even do the work willingly, but I can’t pretend I find it anything other tha a soul-shaking, morale-shivering and character-undermining challenge to me.

In my defence, the work started badly. While driving to the allotment, I found my way blocked by a colossal lorry coming the other way. I was forced to reverse several hundred metres just to let him by. At which point I saw that the flat bed at the back was loaded with huge bags marked “CompostDirect.com”.

Colossal bags.

The lorry that delivered my torment

My heart sank. That had to be the lorry that had delivered to our site. So I knew what I was in for.

Our colossal bag had been dumped at the bottom of the allotment area. From there, the individual 50kg bags had to be manhandled into the wheelbarrow and then man-shoved, two at a time, up to the plots. 

Sheer delight. And repeated eight times.

It’s an activity like banging your head against a brick wall, which only feels good when you stop. Shoving a wheelbarrow uphill provides no sense of satisfaction, I find, just a relief that it’s over, qualified by the consciousness that it has to be done all over again with the next two bags.

Danielle is quite clear, too. It’s not enough merely to do the job. I have to like the work too. Or at least look as though I’m happy doing it. Or if even that it’s too much to ask, it must be possible for me to smile while wheeling the barrow.

Genuine rictus of joy
at the sheer pleasure of dung-carrying

So I did. At least at the rictus level, much to Danielle’s amusement. Smile and the whole world smiles with you, the song assures us. Well, maybe the rest of the world. Not the bit inside me, though.

Until, at least, the work was done. The 750 kilos moved. At which point, I could plant my feet on the ghastly bags, with a small sense of achievement at having resisted their effort to break my spirit and wreck my knees. I’d come out on top.

At last! True joy. The dung job's done!

For once, the smile was real.

It was then I noticed that the bags were marked “Bord na Móna”, which is Irish for “Peat Board”. Suddenly it all fell into place. It was the Irish that had been giving me grief, and nothing could be more appropriate.

At the end of the last rugby season, the Irish team inflicted the first defeat on England that it had experienced in 21 matches. By doing so, they denied England back-to-back grand slams. For those not aware of the workings of the noble Six Nations Championship, a grand slam is when one team beats all the other five. England was denied, on the line, by Ireland. And not for the first time.

So it’s merely in keeping with the laws of the universe that an Englishman finds himself having to take a load of horseshit from the Irish…