Salads and Saving the World

Every working day I make my wife a salad for her to take to work. She works too hard and couldn't be relied on always to nip out of the office to buy something, and it saves us a fortune - her salad made with carrot, yellow pepper, ginger, and skinned satsuma segments today cost I reckon about 50p. Add a yogurt and a banana and it is £1 in total. From her university canteen it would be at least £3, from M&S maybe £4 for that lot.

The tongue-in-cheek title 'salads and saving the world' refers to the ridiculous amount of packaging a shop-bought salad would entail, some double wrapped with a disposable plastic carton inside a plastic bag. Her click-seal salad box has lasted two years, and shows no signs of wear.

Growing Resentment

We heard yesterday that what was rather grandly called the shop on our allotment site has burned to the ground, the initial thought it may have been arson. Over the last two years our shed on the plot has been broken into three times, and we are far from being the only ones. Nothing was stolen, but the lock was broken and the door badly damaged. We no longer bother locking it. Worse still in a way are thefts of produce. People work hard to grow stuff, then some bastard comes along and nicks it - one woman had all the fruit from inside her fruit cage stolen, so it wasn't birds or squirrels. We suspect that the overnight complete stripping of two of our fruit bushes was not feathered thieves either. A friend had a giant pumpkin stolen - it would have taken two men to lift it. Perhaps most hurtful of all was an old chap whose potato plants were just wantonly kicked over, several rows devastated.

You begin to wonder about the mentality of those perpetrating these petty but nasty crimes. Do they see us as 'haves' to be attacked? Is it desperation for food - though nobody except a party-giver is desperate for a giant pumpkin. I could understand someone who was unable to feed kids or themselves taking enough for that immediate purpose, but when it is grabbing several pounds of raspberries? I even wonder if those doing these things see what we do as perverse - digging in the ground for our vegetables when real food comes in packets; devoting time to self-help when it is more natural for many to rely on others. It is sadly sometimes in all probability - in one case certainly - plot holders who nick stuff, a terribly anti-social act. As we hit ever darker economic times it is unlikely that the thefts in particular will stop.