Honestly, I’m trying to relax. But first I must say how moved I was by Sunday’s Eucharist and by all the messages of goodwill and the presents I received. First there was the wonderful portrait by Rosalie Watkins, which is reproduced here for the first time, then there was the generous cheque given to Annette ‘for a greenhouse’, and the choir’s rendition of ‘Miss Otis regrets’, Alan’s speech, the Chancellor’s speech and the churchwardens’ generous remarks.

Three days earlier the clergy staff took me to lunch in the Ashmolean rooftop restaurant and in true Old Testament fashion gave me a fig tree, a bottle of wine and a poem dedicated to me, by Penny Boxall, which is published here.

I was also touched that Alan had taken the trouble to collect together a small compilation of letters from friends and acquaintances published alongside the order of service under the title, ‘Thoughts and 'Thankyous.’

So I send my love and thanks to you all. And now I got to contact BT for the phone connection, order a skip, sow my beans, nip down to St Hilda’s, get a greenhouse online…


Allotments
for BM

Mapped out in string as churches were,
the plots contain themselves. Little acts
of real estate, we borrow them

from nature and the council for
peppercorn rents. Notional borders drift
with the season, with the clearing

and regrouping of weeds; but there’s no
slicing up the weather – it lands
with constancy on indiscriminate leaves.

Here crops grow like the blazes,
matter spinning out from the closed fists
of brambles; rhubarb grows its own

housing on a single stilt. We cannot
keep it down, this green opulence.
The dark jewels of currants gleam.

The yield’s a sort of currency:
marrows, berries, things which leave
a mark. Small birds eye opportunities,

make use of our work – go over
minutely, looking for something
in raw soil. And our thoughts turn

like raked earth – our lots rich
with the things we know will flourish.