Thursday 24th September, 2015.

Allotment Map - sketch, 13/9/15.

From somewhere inside his H.A.T

I was lost inside a ‘Hawkwood Allotment Triangle’ (HAT) – a lesser known area of mysterious horticultural goings on and spurious tales accordingly. First and foremost among the explanations for my loss of the plot is my misperception of that triangle as a rectangle. Oh dear! My mistake is such a rudimentary misunderstanding of the shape of the allotment site and does not bode well for the value of my psycho-geo-topo-carto-graphical field studies of that place, and their submission to the Journal of Field Study International, Field Report 2015. 

Allotment Map - field sketches, 13/9/15.

I thought I knew a rectangle when I saw one, gardened in one, walked around one, ate (from) one and drew one. I was actually in a triangle or a shape very close to a triangle*. How could I have been so confused and woefully out of tune with a triangular shaped garden so as to ‘see’ it as a rectangular one? I have been visiting and gardening that site for 12 years and yet, up until a few days ago, I did not realise I had cultivated a relatively warped and wonky vision of it as a whole.

Sight Line - from point 6 to polytunnel and bottom corner of Plot A

How did I unearth this discovery? On my first visit to the allotment in 2003 I arrived with a pair of eyeballs not yet goggled as much by home computer use and especially the Internet. Even if ‘Google Earth’ had existed in 2003 I would have had very little contact with it and thus my sense of place was less virtually affected. Google acquired ‘Earth Viewer 3D’ in 2004 and re-released it as ‘Google Earth’ in 2005. I don’t recall when I first launched myself into the geospatial wonders of the ‘Googlesphere’ however it was just a few days ago that I virtually visited the allotment for the first time via ‘Google Earth’ and discovered or realised the relatively blunt instruments of my more down to earth surveyance. The blank white shapes used to represent allotment sites on various maps and A-Zs are surpassed by Google’s multi-media surveillance.

Google Earth - screen grab

When virtually hovering and googling above the patchwork of plots, getting as low and close as I could, it was clear the variously trodden garden paths and ways expressed a very different culture to the one I was recreating on paper. I felt a warm flush of embarrassment at my ineptitude, stupidity and ignorance. I found myself virtually crashing head first into the crude, erroneous shapes and alignments of (my) numerous efforts to make a map of our allotment plots.

scrap book image

I tried to console myself with an excuse that I had been immersed in a different sort of perspective; one more grounded, utilitarian and task oriented and thus some of the finer points of the sites’ topography were more subconsciously embedded in me on a 1:1 scale. To begin translating that scale into another, with a very different set of tools and materials, would inevitably entail some discombobulation and learning. 

scrap book image

The process of making a garden map and plan might involve a multitude of newly discovered details that can, potentially, stimulate awareness of the subtleties and broader nature of the place. But what of the mysterious distortion I so feebly excused? Could it be that my shape challenged brain had divided and each hemisphere migrated to each of my big toes – leaving a prattling mind to rattle like a dried and shrivelled pea in the near empty pod of my spacious cranium? With the plot out there, like a 'Beeremuda Triangle',  and my cognitive disjuncture closer to home there is a new triangular awareness to retune and rehone. Triangulating a field of obtuse, oblique and acute observations and encounters might be challenging and potentially worthy of a (rectangular?) page in the Journal of Field Study International, Field Report 2015.  

* or is it (Plot A) a convex quadrilateral or trapezium?