Will Dig Life

I am not, and never have been, a gardener. There's some real trauma in my teens, when after moving from my parents' apartment where I grew up and into my aunt's house which had a garden, I found myself having to weed and cut grass for the first time - and I hated it! I never tried again. The garden of our house (as well as the houseplants!) have been firmly Mr's responsibility. On a whim, years ago, I put our name on the waiting list for the allotments near our house. I knew the wait was long, and to be honest I forgot about it, until a few weeks ago an email came in saying there was now a plot and would I like to come view it. I thought, well, viewing it won't do any harm... and the timing was impeccable, because only a few weeks prior to this email, Mr and I finally settled in our hearts and minds that we would not be moving house (which had been vaguely on the cards for years, culminating in almost buying a house in 2022, which fell through). We are in Bristol, a...

N(10) has written and illustrated her own books for years ( here's an early example) - she's really quite prolific, her approach being to do lots and lots of them quickly: they're generally not coloured, and mostly just outlines of the action. D(8) is very different in his approach, he's meticulous and methodical and very much a perfectionist: he's worked on the same book for almost a year now. Mystery of the Magical Werecats is that book, which the kids started together last Easter when they met a new friend, Caleb. N quickly lost interest and moved on to the next project, but D stayed with it and refined the story, adding to it and illustrating more. He wouldn't write anything, though, because his approach to writing is still that he won't do it unless he knows exactly how to spell things. So unless he's got one of us parents to ask how to spell every word, he doesn't bother to write. This is where their collaboration as a team worked so beautiful...