I have shed envy

I have shed envy. They seem to be springing up everywhere I look - lovingly handcrafted with an odd assortment of wood and badly fitting doors and windows. Some so large and elaborate I fully expect they boast running hot and cold …. and maybe even a jacuzzi or two. Others are open sided tumbledown sheds where allotmenteers rest in the shade surveying the fruits of their labour. To my eye, all these homemade constructions have a real charm: they may lean a little, have gaps between the windows but they are as quaint and individual as any French country cottage. Just the other day two musclebound men having made short work of erecting  a very respectable shed struggled, sweated and cursed to string a dainty net curtain across the window – that’s what I call attention to detail

 

 I begin to peer shamelessly inside these sheds  intrigued by their dark, musty interiors : Tony, one of the Italians, keeps his antiquated tools inside his including a fearsome scythe – the kind that’s usually sported by the grim reaper. He tells me his father brought this over from Italy with the rest of his belongings in the 1930s. I imagine slinging that casually over my shoulder and sauntering through the boarding gates at Stansted…what are the chances?! Other sheds contain pottys, old bags of compost, spiders webs and the usual unidentified rusty things. So why the obsessive interest on my part? Well I hanker after one … especially now with the long evenings upon us I daydream about sitting inside the threshold soaking up the last of the evening sun with a satisfied smile on my face after a long hard day. The problem is I have no practical skills and my spouse, although adept at deconstructing the modern novel (he’s an English teacher), is unskilled with hammer and nails. There is nothing left to do  but search for a brand new one in a garden centre. We set off, but somehow none of the ones I see match the one in my mind’s eye. Several hours and garden centres later my other half ventures to suggest that we are looking for a shed not a second home! ….He so doesn’t get it! That is exactly what it is. It’ll be a place for relaxation and reflection, a place for pondering and perusing seed catalogues. Who can forget the episode of Eastenders where Albert, husband of Pauline, passed away in his allotment shed. I can imagine no finer way to go … with a  just finished mug of tea and a fully completed crossword by my side! Ah well the search continues.