Born to Dig

L Haigh David

Description

From the age of eight, David L Haigh was enthralled by the growth of plants and the magical powers of the soil in which they grew. He knew he was born to dig.Presenting his memoirs, Born to Dig: A Gardener's Chronicle takes the reader from a small northern village to college in Essex and practical training in the plantlover's haven of Kew Gardens. Prior to early retirement David was a senior lecturer in horticulture at a rural university campus. In semi-retirement he hosted gardenholidays, wrote weekly gardening articles and tended his two allotments.An easy journey, with plenty of humorous episodes sown in, such as an alcohol-fuelled sighting of a UFO, and heartwarming moments galore, Born to Dig is a mustread for those who enjoy the quiet pleasure of reading a book in a well-tended garden.

Sujets

• Memoir
• Gardening

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 16 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800468795
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 David L Haigh

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1800468 795

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Peggle
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements

One
How and Where it All Began for Me
Two
Family and a Religious Upbringing
Three
Village Life in 1950s Westmorland
Four
Leather Balls and Rattles
Five
Five Rollercoaster Years End on a High
Six
From Apprenticeship to College
Seven
A Giant Step for a Country Boy
Eight
A Capital Twelve Months at Kew Gardens
Nine
Back in Essex for an Extended Stay
Ten
A Time of Life-Changing Events
Eleven
Living the Expatriate Life
Twelve
Return to England
Thirteen
Tough Times and Transformations
Fourteen
On the Move Again
Fifteen
Back to the Fells
Sixteen
Allotments and Other Good Things
Seventeen
Significant Events of the Last Decade
Foreword
David is a determined man. He refers to this trait as his “stubborn streak”, but whatever we call this kind of temperament, I think it probably serves a gardener well. You need to be persistent if you’re going to grow things, not to be defeated by the lack of control that is a gardener’s lot. Pests, weather, disease; your crop may be ravaged by all or none, with dizzying unpredictability.
There is something of the same quality in David’s writing: his style is solid and down-to-earth. As you read, you trust him. He is the kind of man, appropriately enough, to call a spade a spade.
David was a member of my writing workshop for two years. What I particularly appreciated about him was his willingness to have a go at whatever arcane text or writing exercise I suggested. He read poetry and postmodernist prose, researched poetic rhythm, and considered the ethics of biography; whatever I requested of the group, David would always do the work. He was often bemused by what he found, but always kept an open mind, and was refreshingly honest about his reactions.
This is a marvellously readable, informative and entertaining account of a life. From his early success growing cabbages as a young lad in the garden of his parents’ first home of their own, it is clear that he loves growing things. We follow him as he embarks on a bold journey, leaving his Cumbrian village to drive six hours to agricultural college in Essex, then Kew Gardens in London, and eventually to Africa!
I loved reading about his rural childhood: playing football with an inflated rubber bladder and cumbersome boots; piling into one of the few village houses that had a TV; collecting rosehips for 4d a pound; selling fresh-picked mushrooms to Geordies on their way to Blackpool; turning up his nose at the local delicacy, “potted meat”, which he describes temptingly as small bits of bone held together in a greasy wobbly mass . I like to imagine Grandad Longstaff taking his bar of carbolic soap to the river for his annual bath. David has affectionate memories of the many people with whom he studied and worked, and he includes some good anecdotes. I love his account of turning on the irrigation in Kew’s Palm House at the end of a long shift, when one desultory family refuses to depart promptly at closing time! The sheer scale of the gardens becomes apparent on reading that he and another student spent five solid weeks raking leaves.
David’s time in Lesotho, employed by the Overseas Development Agency, is fascinating to read about. It is bizarre to imagine him in his Vauxhall Cavalier, teaching tractor-driving in an arid, mountainous landscape ill-suited to either vehicle! I am grateful to him for introducing me to the charity Solar Aid, which provides solar lamps to the locals, thus helping them avoid the pollution and eye disorders caused by kerosene.
In keeping with his personality, the emphasis throughout is on practicality. Yet David’s emotional honesty is moving. He describes his discomfort as a young man, feeling trapped by his mother’s religious expectations. Many years later, upon the birth of his first child, he asks naively, ‘Why has she got a pointed head?’ This willingness to laugh at himself is coupled with an even more impressive willingness to look back on his own behaviour and wish he had acted differently; for example, when he refers to my own hard-done-by sorrow at the end of his first marriage. It seems fitting, then, that the book ends with his conversion to the no-dig method of vegetable growing; after a lifetime of digging, David is still curious and open enough to try a radically different method – and share its success with us too.

Dr Vicki Bertram
Preface
The seeds of my life story were sown in the early part of this century. It all began one winter’s evening whilst the red wine was flowing freely. As was often the case, I was relating a story from my childhood to Barbara, my partner. My enthralled (maybe just tolerant) listener persuaded me to commit to paper the saga of our fearless neighbour. Mr Proctor had killed a large rat as it raced around our living room on a hot summer’s evening. Over the next few years, a few other tales were added to that of Claude and the Rat. They stayed in a filing cabinet until 2016.
Writing my life story wasn’t considered an option. A few short stories don’t make a book was my take on it. Besides, I was quite happy with my part-time jobs of writing gardening articles, running practical gardening courses and hosting garden holidays.
After finally retiring in 2015, I soon felt the need for a new challenge and some mental stimulation. Barbara suggested I write my memoir. I didn’t feel confident enough to embark on such a daunting undertaking.
I felt I needed a jolt of inspiration – something to kick-start my brain into new ways of thinking – something to improve my writing and take it down fresh avenues.
It was by pure chance that I came across a flyer for a writing course in the Kirkby Stephen Bookshop. The venue for the course was 50 miles from our home in Carlisle. The final 2 miles were down a narrow farm track to an isolated farmhouse, high in the fells above Kirkby Stephen, close to the Settle to Carlisle railway line. The journey was a step back to the future. Revisiting the land of my early years reignited many of the experiences from my first two decades.
My reminiscences would have to be written in a way which, to the reader, would come over as more vibrant and engaging than anything I had produced to date. Any success I have achieved in this endeavour owes a great deal to the skills and tutoring abilities of Vicki Bertram, the course leader. She taught me aspects of writing I didn’t know existed and even got me writing poetry on at least three occasions. Her workshops put heavy demands on the brain cells, but were always most enjoyable. All course members were supportive of each others’ work and always gave constructive criticism. Most importantly, the workshops were fun.
During the time we attended Vicki’s course, my memoirs went from the age of twenty to seventy. Three score years and ten seemed a good point at which to stop. And so it would have been were it not for an unexpected development in the spring of 2019. The itch to move house to a different area had been scratched on a few previous occasions. For varying reasons, we had stayed put in Cumbria. But the itch kept erupting, until in March 2019, we knew we had found the cure in Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire. The period of moving, all that it entailed and the creation of a new garden with my conversion to no-dig gardening just had to be recorded in this my gardener’s chronicle.
Acknowledgements
The fact that these memoirs have been written is down to my wife, Barbara. She first suggested the idea and has chivvied me along to get the job done. During this time, she has patiently read and reread sections of the manuscript whilst correcting my spelling, grammar and punctuation. The artworks on the cover and inside the book are examples of her taste and drawing skills.
H