All over instagram

The tall climbing peas have been eaten by mice, the blue banana squash has just about survived but I left it too late for aztec broccoli. The best result so far, which Giya and I ate last night with her home-made pizza, is a French lettuce, Reine des Glaces - Queen of the Ice. The seed's traceable back to 1883, but I chose it for the name.

I've become an allotment bore but in lockdown it's more than early cucumbers and constant rocket. I put my hands in the soil, cut bamboo poles in half, pinch out tomatoes, shrug my shoulders at the peas and plant another row of something else. The heads of other allotment holders sit on hedges. When I open the gate with the fierce black cat who stalks (and attacks) any dog in the street, I enter hours without words.

I've found it impossible to read during lockdown, other than for work. I used to get through three or more books a week. Now the radio show for Reverb, workshops, looking at friends' collections and skimming The Guardian online in the mornings is the sum of it. Sometimes I find a Public Domain Review essay or a long read but I can't concentrate. Spiralling into doom I'll never write again, my books have sunk without trace, no-one wants to read anything by an old woman. I argue with myself, give way, none of it matters, but it does, stand up...and so it goes. The old doubt, never being good enough, the old Catholic legacy, the scholarship girl......

Then at 7am I empty the freezer of last year's fruit, turn it to jam, making space for the next crop. I walk with Giya and Beth on the Downs where the Long Man of Wilmington is etched into chalk.

I'm slowly getting over Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I no longer take a photo thinking I'll post it. I no longer think in post length bites. I realise I've been feeding those doom feelings for far too long on social media and competitive rankings I've felt forced into. I want to delight at amazing metaphors, a new way of seeing, a new voice.

And so the allotment feeds me literally and emotionally more than ever. It is like magic in the way it keeps the dread at bay. The plum tree is laden, each branch is heavy and drooping. The tomatoes are staked. The cucumbers are clinging onto netting. The queens of ice are filling out among October's main crop potatoes. The first yellow courgettes are a couple of inches long and the chard is showing its rainbow colours. The allotment is the great leveller, waving its sea-green ribbons, rioting about enclosure, my semi-rural rebellion within this city by the sea.