Q. Friends of mine have parents who moved to this neck of the woods three years ago. The parents bought a property with a tiny garden and consequently very much wanted to find an allotment. An elderly lady living in a stately home nearby was dividing up her walled kitchen garden and gave them a plot within this. The allotment has been a great success but my friends’ parents are now faced with a dilemma. The elderly lady is moving to a dower house and would like the couple to leave their existing allotment and start another one in her new garden. Meanwhile, the son and daughter-in-law who have moved into the big house are also very keen on the couple and want them to stay on in the walled garden. On the one hand, as any gardener will understand, the couple have an emotional attachment to the existing allotment. On the other, they also feel a loyalty towards the elderly lady. More to the point, they secretly fear that as the years roll on ‘presenteeism’ may result in their doing more caring than gardening. What should they do, Mary?
Name and address withheld
A. A secret snobbery can be detected over the matter of whether the allotment is attached to a stately home or a dower house. Equally, there is a worry about performing small acts of kindness in the future which might bear the faint whiff of domestic service. Were the couple not English, these problems would not arise. Snobbery is the reason why English students lose out on the opportunities offered by the magnificent charity Homeshare. Homeshare finds young able-bodied people to live free of charge in the central London houses of elderly people in exchange for only ten hours help per week, but has to fill the often sumptuous dwellings with travellers and students from Slovakia, South Africa, Australia and the like.
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