Everything is ready. I have the special outfit, the festive apparatus, a spring in my step and a song in my heart. It’s what cold winter mornings were made for: the joyous invention of those fun-filled Victorians, the favourite tradition of every woman, man and child. It is Manure Day, and I am raring to go.
This is my fourth Manure Day since my allotment and I were match-made, after our 16-year courtship, and I am becoming more confident. But would it be strange to admit that I miss our first time? It was terrifying: so impossible to imagine, so important to get right. R, our allotment site’s union organiser and logistical genius, had worked out everything: all I had to do was transport my allocated cubic ton of well-rotted horse manure from the top gate to my plot. I had a big rusty rescue-spade and my gargantuan millionth-hand cement-lined wheelbarrow, which would undoubtedly save time. I also had the moral high ground as, unlike some of my allotment peers, I’d gone for a gaping builder’s bag, not lots of separate sacks. So what that I was barely awake, already cold, ungloved: essentially acoustic? I’m very strong, surprisingly so for a novelist. In a couple of hours the manure would be collected, spread, beginning its process of feeding my soil, and I could go for a lovely nourishing breakfast.
Forty-three geological eons later, as I crouched shivering beside my barrow, shovelling clods of steaming dung into a borrowed compost sack with my bare hands, a kindly allotmenteer passed by, laughed and bought me a cheese baguette. Who could have known that transporting unbagged manure in an unwieldy three-wheeled juggernaut around tight metal-reinforced path corners towards my distant plot,, at the bottom of a sharp slope, in the rain, might not offer optimum results? My memories of the remaining bags and the two miles home are hazy. I recall only lying in the bath, in darkness, waiting for my body to uncurl. I’d been too stunned with exhaustion to turn on the light
Nothing – no novel, no child – has been more gruelling, or better to boast about. ONE! CUBIC! TON!
Nothing – no novel, no child – has been more gruelling, or better to boast about. ONE! CUBIC! TON! Yes! All by myself! Single-handed! Alone! I am the Rock of myopic novelists, the Mr T of minor intelligentsia.
But since then, the thrill is – well, let’s not say gone, but waning. Each year, Manure Day has been physically less catastrophic, yet more full of dread. Please don’t say that the first time was the best. The process is still utterly knackering, even with a lighter wheelbarrow and pre-bagged individual sacks, but now I have to factor in shame and guilt (all that plastic; I’m a climate-breakdown collaborator); indecision (is fine manure better than heavy? Mushroom compost best of all?); and, disastrously, less boasting. I’m not convinced that 15 x 50 litres weighs the same amount as one huge heavy bag, but every time I attempt maths I come no closer. How many tons of litres… no. How many volumes in a… hmm. Whatever the answer, litres are less dramatic. Also, now that it’s in bags, not a vast rain-sodden pile of dung,it’s harder to ignore the fact that one cubic whatever doesn’t go very far. I’ve emptied most of the bags already; we’re talking handfuls, not a delicious worm-fattening smorgasbord. Next year I could add a couple more to my order, but who am I kidding? It’s not enough.
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There must be alternatives to this annual shit-show. I’ve tried a constant light sprinkling of rabbit droppings, but neither of my two suppliers of rattling takeaway boxes proved reliable. London Zoo no longer sells lion poo; obviously I’ve asked. I’d love chickens, for their gastric contributions as much as the eggs, but these days my neighbourhood is mainly foxes, strolling around in broad daylight, smoking fags, and driving cars, and the chickens would barely last long enough for a single digestive cycle. Pigs? It’s not the Blitz, whatever family members may claim and, sadly, inner city porker-clubs are frowned upon. I live on a busy bus route, down which elaborate funeral processions frequently pass: chrysanthemum floral tributes, highly polished lacquer and brass and, yes, prancing steeds. But have you tried scraping up squashed droppings from under the wheels of a stream of black Mercedeses? We’re talking a teaspoonsful. The local city farm does offer it, raw and uncut, but who has the space to rot a pile of Shetland stool? How I miss our guinea pigs: their anguished squeaks, their terrified bodies, the ammonia-sodden newspaper armfuls I collected from their cages. Their little soya-mince poo-pellets were as very nectar.
I’m running out of faecal options. Everyone seems to have a tortoise. I’ve looked it up and the hot news is that their poos can be cigar-shaped. The worry is frequency: some only do it once a week. I’d love a cow, even a simple goat, on my roof terrace; others may not. This leaves only one source. I once read an article on “humanure”; sadly, after days of laughing, I failed to keep it. What could the process require? Probably a disgusting festival-style compost toilet, but if I didn’t have to wear feathers or Uggs, I could, well, stoop to that.