And this afternoon I was in the place I was writing about. In the early hours I believed I was generating a brilliant idea for a series of poems. This afternoon I was only interested in fixing the bench, putting away netting, picking tomatoes, the last of the raspberries and blackberries, planting onion sets and transplanting some parsley.
A good friend, who's a much better known writer, reminded me the other day that we met when we were 30, so we've followed each other's progress for more than three decades. Both of us have reached a point when we are questioning if we can carry on writing poems. It's not that she doesn't want to. Or me. But there's a doubt in both our minds.
Mine is where my place is. It's good to ask that question. My allotment is a small patch of poor land on the Downs. It delivers flint tools, good conversations and a feeling of making a difference. At the moment it's more satisfying than writing because I belong there. It's easy to belong there - all I have to do is plant, harvest, weed, tend. Perhaps I have just written my manifesto for poems and that was the real point of the early hours list.
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