Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
The Seed Order I Did Not Place
An allotment secretary finds a seed order in her own abbreviations and prices, listing varieties the parish store has not stocked in living memory.
- dated: "the ordering weeks"
- narrator: "Edith Wanless, allotment secretary"
9th January.
Allotment order goes in this week and I am glad of it, for everything in an ordering week can be proved. Meeting in the pavilion Tuesday, slips into the biscuit tin, and I sat after with the store's price book and totalled the lots. Seed potatoes first, Duke of York and a maincrop behind them, then onion sets, then broad beans for the cold corner. Twelve plots paid and a thirteenth newly taken by the young couple from the yard-end, so thirteen slips if their ink washes properly, which is a hope and not a habit. I am secretary because my writing is level and because I say no when the fund is asked for things that are not the fund's business. The book balances to the penny as of tonight. Long may that last.
13th January.
Between the minute sheets for two summers back there is a carbon this evening that the minute book itself does not answer for. It is an order for seed, written with my abbreviations — the oz with the flourish I was taught, the totals struck singly, the pence column carried at the right — and the coppers in my threes sit open exactly as mine do. The varieties are all old sorts and every one of them gone from the parish: asparagus kale, Champion of England peas, bath cos lettuce, and a celery the slip calls Giant Pink. The prices are shillings. Not new pence miswritten. Shillings, with the little stroke between, 1/9 a packet and 6d an ounce, added up clean at the foot to a figure I covered with my thumb and then did look at, twice.
16th January.
At the store this afternoon with the carbon, folded small like a receipt. Mrs. Hepworth turned her price book back for me herself, page by page to the inside covers, and bothered to be kind about it. The book stops in the old coin and those sorts stop earlier; she said the parish had not stocked that kale since before the decimal went in, and asked where I had got the list, and I said off the members' slips, and there are no slips for it in the tin. I looked twice. Once before I left the pavilion and once more when I got home, in case the tin keeps better company than I give it credit for. The fund book has a ruled line where the seed account goes. The line is empty and has been ruled since the book was new, and a ruled empty line is a thing I have never budgeted for.
31st January.
The order went into the pillar box this morning before the frost was off it. I copied it out fair from the carbon in my own hand, because the carbon said what was wanted and the price book was against it all down the column, and a secretary copies before she argues. The subscription column for next season is ruled ahead in my hand, name over name, and the names run four deeper than our roll. The first twelve are ours and I can put a face to every one. The rest are in a hand like mine, coppers sitting open, and I have not ruled them out. The rule of the pavilion is that the book is first and the members keep up. I would like somebody to tell me which of those I am looking at. I have the pen here and the line ruled for this year's date, and I have not put the date in it.