A Handful of Broken Biscuits: in the garden.

This chapter of my father's book begins with a reflection on life in 1930s Britain. Again, he remembers the foods of this time -- of blackberrying, of scrambling along the hills and along the lake to find whortleberries, of the 'fire toast' which his father made upon a home-wrought toasting fork if he was having a bonfire. And there is this. Writing this in the summer of 2009, settling in for a long recession perhaps, we ought to take stock. Although this is about the growing of food for necessity, it is also about how, for a country man like my father or grandfather, it was consolation. So you see why the 'Father's garden' part of my overall title is so significant for me.

The years of depression lay hard on the land. The big cities rumbled with the discontent and the sadness of the legions of the unemployed. And a king to be came, saw and said "something must be done."

With a lesser severity, the hand of harsh necessity ruled, too, in the valleys ans fields of the West Country. Thirty five shillings was a common enough wage, and so the cottage garden had an all important part to play in family economy. It was not simply a charming adjunct to the home --though it was that too-- but a place to grow food for the table. Space had to be provided for a washing line, for a baby's pram in good weather, for a bonfire area to clear burn the rubbish and for a compost and manure heap. But pre-eminent was the growing. Potatoes, white, pink flecked or dull yellow to lift with a fork and pull from under a haulm. Savoy cabbage were tight leaved balls of crinkly dark green, that could stand fresh and firm against the hardest weather. Parsnips that were never touched till a hard frost had sweetened them. And carrots, received as an orange delight when new, were but a commonplace vegetable when old. Broad bean pods clustered and burgeoned in the late Spring and the peas were always a favourite with tomtits and jays: they would strip a row in a couple of days if not prevented.

A strong streak of puritanism was always present. It was somehow immoral to buy, if you had space to grow your own. Extravagance in any form was frowned on for working people, but paradoxically it was admired in the gentry.

Outside now in the warm early evenings of May, before bedtime, John stood on the newly turned ground, with soil crumbs in his socks and the scent of fresh moist earth and the new grass in his nostrils.