Artwork
Several years ago, plotholders would be treated to a once-in-a-while issue of Life on Billesley Lane Allotments - a booklet of sketches by plotholder Robert Geoghegan showing aspects of the Billesley Lane Allotments and its community.
Reproduced here with Robert's kind permission is some of his artwork. Please bear in mind that these images are scans of photocopies of the sketches and some detail may have been lost in the process.
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Issue 2 - Dec. 1998 - Jan. 2000
Front cover - Full size | Smaller
Page 1 - Full size | Smaller
Page 2 - Full size | Smaller
Page 3 - Full size | Smaller
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Poetry
The following two poems were written when Moseley Golf Club, owners of the Billesley Lane allotments, dating back to the First World War, sought to evict the allotment holders in order to develop the land as a 'practice area'. The fight to save the allotments resulted in a 'compromise' between Birmingham City Council and the Golf Club in 2003 in which we lost nearly three quarters of the site.
Yellow Flags, Well-tended Greens
(by Rod Ling, December 2001 - published in
Birmingham 13 and the magazine for the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners)
This autumn as our lease expires, they want our land
their land, to do with as they please they say
but while we still breathe we’ll make a stand
and have no thought to yield and quietly walk away.
For we already have bright yellow flags
above well tended greens
amid tents and tipis that soon will fold, hung now
with lengthening stalactites of beans.
In spring, we sought for blind asparagus;
stems stirred, then broke through soil to poke
anaemic heads; brief succulence was ours
before their disappearance in green smoke.
Then stiffening pods, broad beans, arose
priapic in their pleasure
now fat spuds wait for eager hands
to loot the soil of buried treasure.
Above soft fruit we spread our nets
to gather in our catch
with blackredcurrants to navigate
blackrasp, gooseberried drupes to haul
and envious avian mouths to match.
Our carrots leaf like froth, proud turnips swell
and onions sit fat-bottomed on the earth
tall teasels topped with finials for flowers
look down on pregnant gourds’ distended girth.
Regimental maize, parade-ground grown
troops plumed in full-dress uniform
disdain the slovenly civvy veg
that sprouts and sprawls, impervious to their scorn.
And yes we have some wireworm, scab and rust
grey mould, whiteblackgreen aphid, derris dust
and black bubonic plague, a spreading stain that spoils
and choking writhing bindweed
that pale elusive tapeworm of our soils.
It’s also true that on our couch
no-one has yet reclined
and on our beds no-one has slept
though we are sometimes so inclined.
Yet their ‘green sward’ supports we say
far fewer ‘birdies’ than our plots
and insects too and flowers and frogs
and foxes glimpsed beside the streams
so we aim to stay and harvest crops
and see no need for more plastic flags
above mono-herb, organophosphate greens.
Disappearing Allotments
(by Naomi Phillips, November/December 2001 - published in
Birmingham 13)
The Brook murmurs
its soft,
everlasting song,
while the pigeons coo softly
from the branches of the old oak tree
which the children love to climb,
while men and women
come to tend to their plots,
to provide vegetables for their families.
People work hard,
digging up weeds
to make room for new plants to grow,
while on the golf course beyond,
men, women and children,
come to knock their balls into little holes,
filling the air with loud shouts of ‘fore,’
only to move on,
heaving their brightly coloured golf caddies
behind them.
Occasionally,
plot-holders find frogs amongst their plants,
or frogspawn in the stream,
but all this may be about to change forever.
Soon, the allotments may be gone,
and a vast, open space of grass,
cut short,
and red and yellow flags
will be put in its place,
no use for wildlife at all,
and the allotments will live no longer.
