A sad realisation.

Having a break from weeding the other day, my allotment neighbour Bob and I were discussing the quality of the manure he'd just had delivered, when our conversation was interrupted by another nearby plot holder sounding a bit irate.

It was Joan, who was brandishing her mobile phone and ranting something indecipherable, as she came briskly through my plot gate towards us. All I could make out was, “Bloody Farmers”!!!  She was reading what turned out to be a text from her daughter.

To put a bit flesh on the bones of this, fields of commercially grown potatoes surround our allotment site at the moment, and the Farmer has been spraying them regularly with a chemical against blight.

Joan it transpired, had found out what it was and after inhaling a lung full one day, which she swears has taken a decade off her life, had asked her daughter to look the substance up on the internet.

When she reached us, she read out a long list of ailments that you could expect to get if you came into contact with it, which was quite alarming. To a rising crescendo she finally told us in all seriousness that, “ it can also affect your fertility, you know “!

Now, at one stage in my life I would have been concerned about that, but seeing as all of us present were well past our sell by dates, with a combined age of about 190, it just seemed funny.

Bob sniggered, “Well that won’t bother any of us old buggers then, will it”. I sniggered along with him and Joan followed eventually as the penny dropped.

But as our laughter subsided, there was a bit of a silence for a while.

Then Joan replied sadly, “No, I don’t suppose it will anymore", and we all just sighed and went back to our weeding again.