This time I’ve completely lost the plot

8:23am Tuesday 6th May 2008

When I was very young I used to love going to my nan and grandad's house for several reasons, including the fact that they always had Garibaldi biscuits in a tin; bought sterilised milk in the tall glass bottles, which I thought was unbearably exotic; lived right next door to a locomotive sheds, which would send soothing sounds of chugging and distant shouts floating on the air in the dead of night; and had a red lightbulb in the spare room.

Chief among the attractions, though, was the fact that at the bottom of the yard was a huge allotment which my grandad rented (along with the whole house, in fact).

I used to love watching him in his wellies, digging up potatoes and tending to his cabbage and carrot crops in this square of cultivated land, and I would help out by zapping the greenfly on his greenhouse tomatoes with a potent blend of highly-toxic chemicals.

They left the house due to their age and both have passed away since. I didn't think about the gardening at all, and have never had what you might call green fingers. But in recent weeks I've been hankering after an allotment of my very own.

I'm not sure what it is - rising food prices, the anticipated satisfaction of growing your own food, the potential to have your own food source should the much-threatened apocalypse finally arrive - but I've got a burning desire to stroll back from my allotment on a hot summer's day with a barrowful of lush green veg.

People in the know will spot several mistakes in the above statement. If you don't know me personally you might be inclined to say: "Ah, but you're unlikely to actually be harvesting your crops in the middle of summer" (although I have no idea whether that is actually true or not). If you do know me well, you might be tempted to comment: "Given that you spend all day at work, come home just in time to help to put the kids to bed, invariably fall asleep while kneeling on the floor reading one of your children a story, eat your tea, fall asleep again on the sofa, get up and start the whole process again, while your weekends are usually taken up with thinking of frankly unbelievable excuses why you haven't yet fixed the vacuum cleaner, shored up the fence, taken all that rubbish to the dump, and generally done anything actually useful recently, what on earth makes you think you've got the time to actually spend on an allotment?"

I suppose I've spent too long listening to the Archers on the journey home during the drab, dark, winter months, hankering for a bit of sunshine and some fresh air. Although, granted, that answer doesn't actually address any of the real points above.

I got in touch with the chappie who runs our local allotments, and the whole idea might be a moot point anyway. There are 25 allotments and 18 people on the waiting list. Unless I'm about to start some Midsomer Murders-style pastoral killing spree with my grandad's old greenfly zapper, the chances of me actually getting hold of an allotment before I'm ready for the compost heap myself are probably negligible.

Besides, as my dear wife commented with her usual candour: "What makes you think you can manage an allotment when you've never so much as watered the *&%$£ houseplants in all the years I've know you?"

Fair point. Sainsbury's here we come.

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