Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes Read Free Page A

was the only one with such a ticket and, after travelling over the New Jersey Turnpike to Indiana late one night,
     bundled together on the back seat of an overcrowded bus, I was easily persuaded to ditch all ideas of the Greyhound bus network
     in favour of sticking out my thumb. A mutual friend flew out to join us and Charlie and I found ourselves hitchhiking together,
     crossing the vast plains of the Midwest in an old green Chevrolet with a group of dope dealers, being marooned on a rattlesnake-infested
     mountain outside Salt Lake City by a gun-toting cowboy, and meeting up with a Harvard student who, weeks later, would be joining
     Charlie at Cambridge.
    My late teenage years were promiscuous in the extreme, but those weeks with Charlie were special because they were wholly
     platonic: ours was a deep friendship which had been well tested by frustrating hours on lonely roadsides and moments of real
     danger. We developed the easy-going camaraderie that results from days spent in someone's company: neither of us can recall
     having a single argument in all those weeks. But when we came home, Charlie returned to Cambridge and I went off to Kent University,
     to begin a course in pure mathematics. In my second term I dropped out, fled to London, found a job on an underground newspaper
     and, a little over a year later, founded Spare Rib magazine. Our lives diverged: he married, had Franky and Alex, and divorced. I married, gave birth to Daisy and divorced.
     Twenty-seven years later, chance - this time in the form of a nudge from George Carman - brought us together again.
    My father was delighted. He didn't like growing old and seeing his youngest daughter as a single mum, and, though by the time
     of our wedding Alzheimer's was steadily claiming his sanity, he made it through the day, cheering hugely as George stood up
     to make a speech. Charlie's son Alex was our best man, his daughter Francesca and my daughter Daisy were bridesmaids. Luke,
     my stepson from my first marriage, was an usher, as was Charlie, the husband of my stepdaughter Miranda. Robin, who had introduced
     us all those years ago, was also an usher. Bingo followed us up the aisle with a huge yellow bow pinned to her collar.
    Now, almost five years later, those two teenagers who had once thumbed lifts on interstate slipways were setting out on another
     adventure. Charlie had discovered both his love of plants and his skill in nurturing them; my own interest in the politics
     of the countryside was growing. The more I discovered about the stranglehold of the supermarkets, the insanity of 'food miles'
     (the distance that food travels from where it is grown to where it is bought), the lazy greed of our consumer society which
     demands strawberries and green beans in January without thinking of the environmental consequences, let alone the taste, the
     more I felt a sense of anger and sadness. It seems to me that we live in increasingly schizophrenic times: wanting our countryside
     to remain for ever like the pictures Constable lovingly painted so long ago, yet standing by while agri-business, responding
     to our demands for ever cheaper and more available food, rips up hedges and chemically destroys our wildlife. Every year,
     twenty-one square miles of countryside, an area the size of Southampton, is lost to developers. Investing in a nursery seemed
     a good way to start to redress the balance.
    David is a proud and conscientious single parent, and lives with his nine-year-old son, Josh, for whom he is the primary carer.
     They live in a sprawling village called South Petherton, which is about four miles from Dillington and boasts a fish shop
     and a deli. He did have his eyes on a floundering nursery there, but it quickly became apparent that buying an already existing
     nursery made little economic sense. Over 50 percent of the £90,000 asking price was for the plant stock, which would have
     been hard to turn a profit on. The idea lapsed, but not for