My Life on a Hillside Allotment

by Terry Walton

  The day of the first show duly came round. It was 4 July, Independence Day. Jeremy was hosting an hour-long special that Friday, with a gardening expert in the studio and me on the allotment on the end of my mobile. I felt rather nervous, naturally. Their usual practice is to ring about a quarter of an hour before the programme, and then you’re stuck with the mobile to your ear, checking the sound is getting through all right and waiting for your cue.

  At that point it really sank in that I had no script and no idea whatsoever of what was going to happen, what Jeremy would talk about or whether I would dry up. I knew there’d be this gardening expert in the studio for an hour with Jeremy, which presumably meant they would be sharing the entire hour with me based on the plot. And I thought, how on earth is this going to work?

  Then I was cued in, and Jeremy started with ‘We’re going over to this allotment in the Rhondda now. What do you grow on this allotment then, Terry?’

  I said, ‘Well, I’ll walk you through. I’m in the greenhouse at the moment, but I’ll walk down the plot and explain to you what’s growing here. In the greenhouse I’ve got tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Now we’ve come out into the open air and I’m walking round the corner, and the first thing I come to is a gooseberry bush. Then there’s my courgettes, along the edge here are my strawberries, there’s my parsnips, there are my carrots, there’s my onions, and then I come to my Brussels sprouts. And now I’m coming to my cabbage …’

  At that point he broke in and said, ‘Just how big is this thing?’

  ‘It’s ten perch,’ I said.

  There was a stunned silence. Then the gardening expert asked, ‘How big is ten perch?’

  I added, ‘That’s ten perch in old money.’

  ‘Yes, but how big is ten perch?’

  Remember those maths tables we all used to chant at school? All about ‘30¼ square yards are 1 rod, pole or perch; 160 rods, poles or perches are 1 acre’, and so on?

  I said, ‘Well, one perch is thirty and a quarter square yards (25 sq m), so that’s 300 to 325 square yards (250 sq m) altogether. If you want to visualize it in the studio, it’s about the size of an outdoor tennis court, just to give you a rough idea.’

  ‘So how much more stuff have you got out there?’

  I said, ‘Well, I’ve got peas, I’ve got broad beans, I’ve got runner beans, I’ve got French beans, I’ve got shallots, I’ve got garlic, and I’ve got cauliflowers, broccoli …’

  And they broke in again: ‘Just how much do you grow?’

  So I said, ‘Well, everything that you’d go to buy fresh from the supermarket shelf, I tend to grow myself.’

  That seemed to cut the ice and certainly settled me down, because once I’d started talking about my plot I was on familiar territory, and when that happens any nervousness tends to disappear.

  It all seemed to be going well. There was a light-hearted humorous atmosphere, and later lots of listeners rang in with questions for us to answer. Somebody wanted to know about ideas for scaring off birds, and Jeremy asked me what I’d recommend.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I find the best thing to do, and it’s very elementary, is to scrounge some old CDs and hang them up around the place. The noise and the glint of them tends to keep the birds off the crops. But it only works for a while.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘any particular CDs?’

  I said, ‘Personally I find Des O’Connor works best!’

  I was on for the full hour, and in some ways it felt a long time to spend on my mobile, always with the fear that it was going to let me down. I’d charged it up five times earlier that morning, just to be safe.

  It worked a treat, though, and at the end of the show I had a text message from Jeremy, saying, ‘Thanks very much, that seemed to go well, and we’ll be in touch.’ I thought maybe it was my comparative naivety about broadcasting that helped create the right atmosphere of spontaneity. I certainly never expected that programme to lead to a regular Friday afternoon appearance live on Radio 2.

  Everybody I knew was tuned in to the programme. My friend Albie on the next plot had a battery radio in the greenhouse we all call his ‘café’, and many of the lads on the allotments were packed in there listening. Whenever I looked up across the path they would be there waving, and afterwards I had to take a lot of ribbing from friends when I went into my local pub. But it was fun, and I learned that in broadcasting the initial nervousness is something you really need to get you psyched up and the adrenalin flowing.

  And before long I found that I was looking forward to doing the show live from Jeremy Vine’s ‘adopted allotment’ on the side of our Welsh mountain, sharing with his five million or more listeners something I’ve always loved doing, ever since I started gardening there over fifty years ago.

  * * *

  Allotment becomes radio star

  AN ALLOTMENT IN THE south Wales valleys is becoming one of the most famous plots in the UK after it was ‘adopted’ by the BBC’s Jeremy Vine Show.

  Terry Walton, 57, who has the allotment in Tonypandy in the Rhondda valley, has become a regular on the lunchtime programme talking about his garden. Every couple of weeks, Mr Walton is featured walking around the allotment and describing how things are growing.

  Green-fingered Mr Walton offered up his gardening patch after hearing an appeal from Jeremy Vine to ‘adopt an allotment’.

  ‘Everyone up here gathers around the radio and listens when I’m on air and we have a great laugh and joke about it all,’ said Mr Walton. ‘I have had a lot of people taking the mickey out of me when I go down the pub, but it’s all in good humour. I definitely recommend gardening to anyone – it is great and although it takes a bit of patience you will soon see the results of your work. I’m retired now, but when I was working I often used to come up here at the end of a hard day, and after an hour of digging I’d be relaxed again. I know that EastEnders’ Arthur Fowler had quite a famous allotment in the soap, but I think that mine is becoming almost as famous,’ he laughed.

  Jeremy Vine explained how the allotment feature started: ‘It all came about after we did a one-hour special on allotments and we got more responses from that than any other subject including Iraq. We realized that there were a whole lot of people who were totally engrossed in their allotments. As we do a lot of serious issues on the show, we realized we needed to have something more stress-busting, and we decided to adopt an allotment. We had about 150 offers from people and we had to go through them very carefully, but Terry’s allotment is absolutely perfect and he is a real character himself.’

  Source: BBC NEWS:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/wales/south_east/3107971.stm

  Published: 2003/07/30 15:04:58 GMT © BBC MMVI

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Closely Knit Community

  I WAS BORN in the Rhondda valley, just five miles away from my present house in the Ely valley, so I’ve lived and gardened in the Welsh valleys all my life. What we in these parts know as ‘the valleys’ are a collection of south Wales communities that sprang up along a number of almost parallel rivers, all flowing in deep gashes down the hillside and draining the enormous quantities of rainfall off the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons away southwards down to the sea.

  The valley of the river Rhondda is perhaps the best known of all. ‘The Rhondda’, as it is generally called, actually consists of two parallel valleys, which meet at a town called Porth (Welsh for ‘gateway’) and are fondly known as the Rhondda Fach (from the word bach, meaning ‘small’) and the Rhondda Fawr (from mawr, or ‘big’). Both valleys are steep-sided, with the rivers running through right at the bottom.

  The coal mines that were the life blood of the communities tended to be at the base of the valleys, while houses for the people who worked in them were built on the slopes. These houses were laid out in neat terraces, row upon row of them lining the hillsides and often flanking very narrow streets. At least the mine owners had the forethought to provide each o
f these closely packed houses with a large back garden. This allowed miners to enjoy valuable and reviving leisure time outdoors at the end of a working day spent in dark, dusty conditions below ground. The garden was a place to relax and recover after a hard shift at the coalface, to see the sun and sky, and to enjoy the fresh air while growing their own wholesome vegetables to feed the family.

  Every mine built its own rows of houses, each group forming a little township servicing the pit. Although a stranger to the area might not recognize any clearly defined boundaries as one community merges imperceptibly into the next, these townships were all separately named and had their own strong identities. People were proud to state where they lived, and you can still hear this loyalty to a particular community today when local football or rugby teams play each other, or one choir competes against another.

  Working conditions down the mines were dangerous, and several major tragedies blackened the history of the area when explosions and roof falls killed sometimes hundreds of men and boys. The men worked in appalling conditions for long periods and therefore spent most of their lives together.

  Far below the surface, with just candles for illumination, they depended totally on one another for their safety, often for their lives, and this bred strong bonds of friendship and a well-developed, utterly local sense of humour that enabled them to endure the harsh conditions. This distinctive sense of fun remains today in the people who live in the close-knit communities of the valleys, long after all the pits closed and the hillsides turned green once more.

  Inevitably the people who grew up and lived together in the valleys also had a great tradition of cooperation outside work. All the people who lived around us when I was a child had very little money, but they were always willing to help anybody in difficulties in any way they could. When everyone experienced the same working conditions and lifestyle, sharing was bred into you from an early age.

  You find this on the allotments, which are almost a miniature version of the local community. If anyone is struggling with an overgrown plot or has a crop failure or cannot tend the plot because of illness, others rally round to help out. They might provide physical assistance, offer to share produce or plants, or simply water and ventilate the greenhouse until the plotholder is fit and well. It’s the same today as it has been throughout my lifetime.

  The valleys built up a reputation for exporting high-quality coal, a vital trade that sustained the area, making landowners wealthy and guaranteeing the workers a living, and eventually shot it to prominence in the 1920s during the years of industrial unrest. The miners’ strike of 1926 demonstrated the loyalty and solidarity of the valley people, who remained steadfast through those dreadful times. For more than a week Britain was virtually paralysed when many workers came out to support the miners in their dispute with the government over proposals for change in the coal industry. After nine days the Trades Union Congress accepted better terms and recommended a return to work.

  The miners, however, rejected the deal and were duly locked out of the pits, but after a long and acrimonious dispute they were forced to choose between starving or returning to work under much less favourable conditions. Many survived only thanks to the produce everyone grew in gardens and allotments. It was the suffering and injustice of those bitter times that welded together a community of people who cared for and helped each other in a period of extreme hardship, forging a solidarity that still exists today.

  The area had already achieved notoriety in 1910 when Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, sent in troops to quell disturbances. Striking miners at the Cambrian group of pits were picketing the power house at Glamorgan Colliery, just down the road in Llwynypia. This engine house was vital for keeping the colliery open because it provided the power for pumps that kept the pit from flooding. When things turned ugly, the police baton-charged the crowd, splitting them into two groups, one of which rampaged through Tonypandy, smashing and looting the shops in the main street. Fearing they were losing control, local officials appealed to Churchill to send troops to help stabilize the volatile situation.

  This is a chapter of Rhondda history that has become enshrined in valley folklore. It’s often said that the men were the strong participants in this drama, but stories I’ve been told show it was the women who maintained the solidarity during those testing times. They met in groups and organized the soup kitchens which kept youngsters fed and prevented the men from starving, often while going without themselves. Throughout the bitter dispute they supported their menfolk, who at times must have been desperate and frustrated that no end to the long confrontation was in sight. Even now men think they are the strength in the valleys, but don’t you believe it: it’s the women who keep the community alive, along with many of the traditional family values.

  Even today there’s a strange sense of belonging in valley life which remains with you wherever you go in the world. You can recognize a valley person anywhere: someone marked out by a strong sense of fun, willing to share their last penny with you, dependable in a crisis and loyal to the end. (The fact that I have no sense of humour whatsoever and must be the tightest-fisted Welshman around doesn’t prevent me from being a true valley boy!)

  Surrounded by these traditional values, I grew up in a typical Rhondda mining house. Most homes built by the mine owners for their workers were made of locally quarried stone. Due to the size of mining families, which usually consisted of two, often three generations all living under the same roof, most houses had three or four bedrooms (ours had four).

  In many houses family life centred on the kitchen and living room; the front room was the ‘best’ room, reserved for special occasions. We were only allowed in this hallowed place after bath night and dressed in our Sunday best. When great-aunts came visiting they were shown into the front room and then we were ushered in to greet them like royalty, very politely although not quite with a bow. The upside was that cake would always be served, which made up for the pomp and ceremony we had to endure.

  As was usual in those days we had no bathroom. Bath night involved setting out an old tin bath in front of the coal fire and filling it with hot water that had been boiled on the fire – there was no hot running water then, and certainly no central heating. Once the ritual filling of the bath was completed the whole family would use it in a set order: children usually went first so they could go off to bed afterwards, with father next and finally mother. Then followed the long and laborious task of emptying this bath of water, which had to be baled out with an old bucket until it was light enough to carry out to the back yard, where the rest could be poured away. When it wasn’t in use, the bath hung on the wall in the back garden, and my childhood memories are punctuated by the sound of the family bath banging noisily in the wind.

  There were two kinds of bath then: the bungalow bath, which was long with a smooth bottom, and the more basic round or oval bath embossed with uncomfortable circular ribs for strength. Even less comfortable were the repairs that came with age. Eventually the bath would begin to leak, and when this happened you would buy from the ironmonger’s a couple of big steel washers. These were arranged inside and outside the hole with two rubber pads in between and a big bolt going through from one side to the other. Then you’d tighten it all down until the rubber sealed the hole in the bath. The trouble was that when you sat in the bath this bolt would be sticking through, and to sit down safely meant packing a flannel round the end of the bolt. That was all right until you had four or five bolts poking through the bottom, and then you’d have to change the bath. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the bolt heads were on the inside, but that never happened: you always had to sit on the sharp ends.

  All the same, I fondly remember the cosy glow of bathing in front of a roaring coal fire in the winter months, although there was also a certain amount of danger involved. The side of the bath closest to the fire would heat up as time went on, and if you were not careful you could easily burn your bum on the hot metal. You had to beware o
f flying hot cinders, too!

  Like everybody else, we had no indoor toilet. Ours was next to the coal shed, and we had to cross the yard and go down the garden to reach it. Our back yard was a dark, dingy place because the garden was dug into the mountainside, which was held back by a wall fifteen feet (4½ m) high, with numerous steps to get to it. Not surprisingly, the back yard, with its strange shadows, seemed a frightening place at night and not much better by day, thanks to this high wall: only plants with a taste for gloom could survive there.

  There was no light in the toilet, only the candle you took with you, hoping all the time it didn’t blow out before you could get back indoors. Nor was there any soft, quilted toilet tissue in those days. We used old newspapers torn into squares and made into a pad that was hung behind the toilet door on a wire threaded through a hole in the corner. As a youngster I always found it frustrating when I’d rip off a piece of this newspaper and start to read the story on it, only to find the exciting bit was on another piece that had already been used.

  The house was a little crowded at times, with my mother, father, brother and eventually me as well as my aunt, uncle and cousin. Relatives living together in the same house was quite usual, especially since the last child to marry normally stayed at home to look after the parents and raise a family there. But we were sharing for a slightly different reason: my parents and brother had come to the Rhondda after a wartime bomb wiped out their home in Coventry and forced them to move in with the only relatives who could accommodate them quickly.

  We might have been cramped, but living together did have its pleasures, especially around Christmas time because my brother’s birthday was on Christmas Day, my aunt’s on Boxing Day, my cousin’s on New Year’s Day and my own three days later. With four of the seven people living in our household celebrating birthdays so close together at that special time of year, the festive season was always enormous fun.