“Everything’s had a good thorough soaking in it!” his grandad said with his usual gap-toothed grin.

After he’d spread the gray pukey mixture everywhere, he would then bottle up what was left, swearing it was the best soil tonic in the world.

The city center itself had once been rich: the size of the houses and banks in the middle of town told you that, but now it seemed to be shriveling. Factories had shut down and the big houses chopped and changed into tiny flats. Shops were closing on the main street, and the only big houses left were the three-story-high ones that ran in a ridge along the side of the allotments.

Grandad’s allotment was around thirty feet by ten feet. Not very big, but Marty was always astounded by how much food Grandad could grow. He would sow potatoes and runner beans and zucchini and squashes. He’d always have peas and carrots, of course, and onions and beets. He’d swap vegetable seeds with John Trinidad, his Caribbean neighbor on the allotments, and have salads and root vegetables that he didn’t even know the names of. Sadiq three allotments down would give him seeds of herbs and greens so leafy they looked tropical, and for chilies so hot they’d blow your head off. Colin, whose day job was being a milkman, would putter around growing the most beautiful dahlias you’ve ever seen. It was like a little town on the edge of the city really, where you could put your name down for a little patch of land the county council didn’t know what to do with, and even though everyone spoke different languages and looked different and grew different things, they all had two things in common: (a) They were all broke and happy to grow some extra food, and (b) None of them had lost that joy of watching something they planted grow. Marty would also laugh at the way they all helped one another but also kept back secret tricks and methods that they would NEVER share with one another. There seemed to be what Grandad would call a “healthy competition” about the whole thing.