The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

The long wait is over. Now we’ve entered a slightly more relaxed stage of lockdown, I’m allowed on the bus back to Louth. I’m still not sure whether I could have claimed it was an essential journey last week but no worries, what’s done is done. I can’t wait to see my trees. And my family, obviously. Ahem.

As ever, my journey starts with a game of Russian Roulette bus numbers. According to my test results, my eyesight has slightly improved since my last trip but discriminating between a 6, a 3 and a 0 on a rapidly approaching vehicle still demands an elaborate ritual in which I cover one eye with my hand and squint wildly with my other (eye, not hand). No-one goes so far as to point and laugh, but no-one turns away either. Get it wrong at this point and I’ll be morally obliged to pay for a ticket on board the wrong bus. Fortunately, the number 56 to Wragby passes me on the way to the bus stop so that reduces the odds of disaster to 50:50. Things would be easier if the bus stop had a timetable but all it’s got is a list of journey times.

The outline of a bus appears in the distance but panic looms when I realise it’s two in a row with barely enough space for a Nissan Micra between them. Both begin with 5. That’s not a shock. Every bus heading this way does that. I wish I’d got up a few minutes earlier and walked to the bus station where I could take my time to pick the right platform but it’s too late for that now. Besides the cat had gone to sleep on me and that’s the closest I get to experiencing affection these days.

I start to wave but then realise the first bus is the number 53 to Grimsby. Sod that for a game of soldiers. I’m not going there. I leap backwards and make sheepish hand gestures to the presumably furious driver. Directly behind it comes the number 50, heading to Louth. Winner.

As I get on, the driver says something that’s probably abusive, but I can’t hear enough through his mask to respond appropriately. I smile (which he can’t see) and head for my seat, worrying that he hates me. At the next stop, he waits patiently for the elderly boarder to reach her seat, foregoing the joy of speeding off while new passengers pinball their way down the aisle, so I’m probably doing him a disservice.

As we hurtle along Wragby Road towards the bypass roundabout, I have to transfer my note taking from writing pad to mobile phone. Stagecoach buses have improved greatly but they’re not quite smooth enough to allow legible handwriting to be done en route. Even using the tappy phone keypad, I manage to add the words tyhe and awpls to my sim card’s confused dictionary before I’m done.

I notice that a second clock has appeared on my phone informing me of the time and weather conditions both where I am and where I came from. I suppose it’s a handy feature, but I suspect it’s designed for a more global traveller than me.

There’s roadworks between Wragby and Louth so the bus takes a detour past Wispington, Minting and Gautby. I’d be tempted to investigate but the next bus isn’t for two hours and there’s only so much time I can spend wandering round a village Post Office. The new route looks pretty much the same as the old one. Lots of flat green fields, lots of daffodils, lots of signs telling you to slow down. Very occasionally there’s another car.

At one point we pass a tractor being pursued across a field by hordes of clamouring gulls. It’s peak Lincolnshire. Hereditary farmers grafting alone, hundreds of miles from anywhere. Well, four miles from Benniworth. Four miles from Benniworth will be the name of my first rap album.

Detour notwithstanding, we eventually arrive in Louth where my phone informs me that the time, date and weather are the same as in Lincoln. I’m as shocked as you are. I arrange to meet my dad at the bottom of the street where we used to live. I have a reminiscent gawp at our old family home, smiling at the memories of locking my sisters in the attic to stop them perving at my friend Neil’s new perm. I was a good brother. They just didn’t realise it at the time. Sometimes I think they’re still not entirely convinced.

Fraying the acceptable limits of social distancing, my dad and I make our way to the field and I am reunited with my leafy progeny. I’m underwhelmed by their welcome. It’s possible they don’t know or care who I am.

The orchard now boasts thirteen trees arranged in rows of three with a straggler colonising the adjacent horse paddock. They all look vaguely healthy and I’m very grateful to the Louth wing of the family for watering them through lockdown. I wonder whether we’ll get any apples this year and my dad points at some hopeful looking buds on Dr Clifford. He’s a year older than the others and looks the part. Come on, lad!

Next March I’m going to need to do some strategic pruning of stray branches. I’ve read something about ensuring there’s only one per compass point. Ideally, I’d have done it this year as well, but the lockdown lurched on for just a few too many weeks. I don’t really know enough about pruning fruit trees to worry appropriately so I’ll just assume it won’t matter in the long run. I could do with weeding the grass around their trunks and clearing out the plastic anti-rabbit covers as well. That can wait though. It’s way too cold to do any real work today and I want to go and have a look at two new community orchards that have been planted in the town.

Reunions concluded we head off in search of Louth’s new tourist attractions. First up, Spring Side which is a sort of grassy path past a car park where youngsters sit on the wrong bits of benches and smoke scrounged fags, or at least they did in my day. Five disturbingly young and exposed apple trees are arranged near the path. I fear for their safety. I can imagine a cider-fuelled teenager destroying them to impress their chosen mate. Maybe the planters are similarly pessimistic, hence the low number of trees. Mind you, if they do manage to avoid being vandalised it’ll be a lovely place for the locals to help themselves to fruit in years to come.

The second orchard is over in Westgate Fields but before we get there, we are hailed by a mysterious old man who turns out to be my Sunday School teacher from way back in the seventies when, he alleges, it was still possible to govern children without them re-enacting the Lord of the Flies. I think he might be pleased to see at least one of his old pupils has resisted the lure of drugs and vice, but I suspect he can’t really remember me. He’s more interested in sharing anecdotes with my dad about their respective careers in local government. I’m always in the shade of some glamorous rellie or other.

Anyway, the Westgate Fields orchard is a far more impressive affair, numbering twenty trees in regimented rows. There’s a mix of apples, pears and gages and almost all of them have smartly etched labels. Some fruit boffin has also laid a sort of carpet underlay material to protect the space around the infant trunks from predatory grass plants. It’s a good idea that I’ll probably nick.

Time is short and after a brief sandwich stop, I’m back on the bus home. I make a list of outstanding jobs: find out where the community orchard people got their labels, rip up some carpets and nick the underlay and then weed the orchard space thoroughly. Well, maybe not thoroughly. It wouldn’t do to get carried away.