“Lord, it’s heavy!” Grandad panted. Marty went around beside him and added his weight to the shovel, and CRRRRRREAK, it came away, a giant circle of pumpkin the size of a round table. Then several pairs of hands appeared from below in order to slide it safely onto the raised bed on the other side. Another cheer. Grandad wiped his brow, and Marty and he looked inside the beast for the first time. Marty gasped. It was incredible. Absolutely full to the brim with seeds. Giant pumpkin seeds, the size of mangoes, stringy membranes, and bright orange flesh. It cast a golden glow up onto their faces. Marty could see the wonder on his grandad’s face, and in that moment he loved him for it. Grandad looked up at him …

“Let’s get these seeds out…”

Grandad asked everyone to leave while they set about emptying the pumpkin, but he invited them to come back the next morning and promised them a magnificent sight. Some of them grumbled, but most were cheery, telling Grandad and Marty to call if they needed any help. When the crowds were gone, and after Grandad and Marty had had a cup of tea, they started the job in earnest. With a shovel each, they stood on top of the pumpkin, digging out the seeds and dropping them by the kilo into the plastic buckets. When they ran out of those, they filled the wheelbarrow and then the rainwater barrels and then anything and everything else they could find. They worked until the sun was high in the sky before the lady from allotment 7 brought them some lunch. After that, they started again. It was miraculous that something this big could produce what seemed like an infinite number of new seeds. New beginnings. Grandad wanted them to be stored carefully so they could be kept.

By early evening, they had managed to scrape all the seeds out. By this time you couldn’t even see them working, as they were in the depths of the pumpkin. As they got deeper and deeper in, their voices boomed around the pumpkin and Grandad’s laughter was amplified all around Marty. Later on, they cut a circle out of the side of the pumpkin for the outboard engine where Grandad had calculated the water line would be once they were afloat. They had estimated the mass and volume of the pumpkin and worked out a likely position for it. Then they sealed the hole around the engine with the expanding foam, which seemed to work well. In the evening, Sadiq brought over some stew—it was delicious—and he helped them clear up a bit so the place was presentable for the morning.