A View From (Just By) The Greenhouse; Diversity? It’s Our Strength…Innit?

I arrived at the greenhouse on Saturday to find that Burt had returned from his winter sojourn in a bit of a sorry state. He’d been visiting distant relatives somewhere in central Europe (either Albania, Romania or Kazakhstan) and it turned out that getting back to blighty was a bit more testing than it should have been, given that he’d “lost” his passport at his cousins house. They’re (apparently) a close knit family though and a cousin of his cousin offered him safe passage to Calais and a seat on the first available dinghy in return for six weeks work, tending to and mucking out his herd of semi-wild pigs. Used to agricultural work, Burt jumped at the opportunity, before he realised that he’d be living with said pigs as well as looking after them! Any road up, he put his time in and after a month or so he was driven as far as Kortrijk in Belgium (close to the French border and a mere 75 miles or so from Calais) in the back of a truck along with several pig carcasses. There he met another distant cousin who gave him a tube of lamp black makeup (to be applied to face and hands before landing in England), a rudimentary map of the back roads to Calais, 50 Euros, a bottle of water and a note for a chap called Dritan (a second cousin, twice removed), who he was to ask for when he arrived in “The Jungle”. Three other men, a Somali, an Egyptian and an Iraqi were to accompany him on the journey, which he says passed without any real incident, although the grunting from under the hedge during their overnight stops was a little disconcerting. Everything in Calais was very organised, he said, there was free food to be had and (if you were so inclined) some of the “ladies” dishing out the food were also quite free with their attentions, but Burt declined the offer (he says). Dritan got Burt on a dinghy, but not before rather forcefully eliciting his promise to work a season in one of the farms Dritan ran in England in final payment for all the “help” he’d received.

Burt duly “blacked up” on the dinghy journey (apparently this helps the authorities to accept you as a paperless “refugee” escaping from a war zone) and, after being picked up in mid channel by UK Border Force, he was bussed to a run down hotel in a place called Rainham. That same evening as Burt was resting in his room (having been fed and passed fit and free of obvious infectious diseases by a doctor) there was a knock on the door. A burly security guard, with a strong Eastern European accent (Burt’s good at accents) told him to come down to the lobby as someone wanted to see him. Burt was escorted outside the hotel by the guard and taken to a van in the car park where, much to his surprise, he found Dritan! “You come with me now, I have work for you,” Burt was told as he was ushered into the back of the van which was already occupied by three Oriental chaps and the Somali he’d crossed from France with. After travelling for what must have been several hours the van pulled into an alleyway and the passengers, including Burt, were led up a couple of flights of stairs to a large room with several beds separated by makeshift screens, some mismatched chairs and a large television, there was a sink and a chemical toilet in the corner, also behind a screen. “This is your home now, you take it in turns to look after the plants on the next floor, food will be brought to you, you mustn’t leave the building unless I or Ahmet, who runs the shop downstairs are with you. If you do you will be punished. When the plants have grown I will take you to another job. You owe your freedom to me, don’t forget it”. Nobody had bothered to ask Burt where he had been living or how he’d ended up on a dinghy and, being a stoical and taciturn fellow, he hadn’t been forthcoming with the information, but he had a feeling he wasn’t too far from what he considered to be his home and he made up his mind to try to get away at the first opportunity. Ahmet brought up breakfast for the group of men the next morning and spent a couple of hours explaining the work that was expected of them. Burt, putting on an accent as best he could, asked where they were. “It’s a city called Carlisle, in the north of England” Ahmet told him and Burt knew that all he had to do was find a way to get outside, change his remaining 30 Euros for pounds, buy a train ticket to Penrith and return to his rightful place in the world, where he knew (or at least hoped) that we’d look after him.

We knew nowt of all this, obviously, in fact, truth be told, we hadn’t even noticed that Burt wasn’t on site, much less that he’d taken a holiday. We were having bigger things to deal with, not least the very persistent rabbit and its single minded obsession with breaking into the greenhouse, by any means possibly (but mostly by digging under the foundations) and building its burrow in the middle of the tomato patch. Any road up, following a little bit of investigation, several potential weak spots have been identified and barriers (mostly slate), which even this rabbit shouldn’t be able to gnaw through have been put in place. Rabbit activity of the undermining type, although the population is clearly growing exponentially, seems to be at a standstill, at least for now.

Although conditions for potato planting are (still) far from perfect I decided to take the plunge anyway and put three stitches of earlies in. I think these are Rocket, but if they’re not, they’re a variety that begins with “N”, one row of these and two of Charlotte to start. If the dry weather holds up I’ll put another couple of stitches in at the end of this week. All I can do, for now, is hope!

The process of planting seed potatoes has been made much easier (as I probably mentioned last year) by the use of this little contraption (not dissimilar to a post hole digger) which was originally yawked up to a size and depth that would make a hole in the greenhouse to accommodate a tomato plant and it’s growing medium from a four inch pot. It certainly still gets used for that, but it does mean a lot less digging for me, which I’m not that disappointed about to be honest. It’s a shame not to have got a couple of stitches in earlier, being where we are it’ll mean the chance of planting a viable second crop is in the lap of the Gods, so to speak.

The third raised bed is now exposed to the elements and prepared to take the climbing beans (should any of the many seeds I’ve planted decide to germinate. Bed two, (more of which in future issues) has been planted directly with beetroot, turnip, swede and chard, with the swede already making an appearance. I’m pretty confident that it won’t be long before the other plants begin to show themselves. The carrots in bed one are mostly through and will soon need a weeding, the onions (a picture next time) also seem to be doing well and the leeks are almost strong enough to be transplanted. Bed four will have a fine mesh cage over it and will contain (again hopefully) cabbages, sprouts and cavalo nero.

Now obviously, the story about Burt and his continental adventures is a load of old fanny. Burt’s a scarecrow and, although he was in dire need of a makeover, having spent the winter laying on a makeshift bed of pallets and broken glass and being used as a convenient hidey-hole for hibernating mice, his knowledge of more worldly matters is somewhat limited. As I started the job of making him slightly more presentable I originally gave him a black head. There was no forethought to it and it didn’t cross my mind that it might not be quite the done thing, I have no animus towards any scarecrow of colour. If a scarecrow from overseas is here legally and he’s happy to work for a living, then, so long as he follows the law and pays his way (and isn’t a part time Jihadi) I’m all for live and let live (but I wouldn’t say no to far tighter border controls, either).

However, thousands of (mostly undocumented) men, men just like Burts’ fictional travelling companions and men just like the three Brighton rapists, two Egyptians and an Iranian (none 0f whom were “fleeing war and persecution, BTW) are still arriving in this country. They arrive, having been aided (not exclusively) by Eastern European gangsters and a whole swathe of charitable, often government funded “Refugees Welcome” organisations and are quietly bussed to towns and cities around Britain without so much as a by your leave. You’d think what happened to Rhiannon White in Walsall, Wayne Broadhurst in Uxbridge, the poor woman in Brighton and so many more victims would ensure something would be done, yet nothing changes. The dinghies still flood across The Channel, the “We’ll Stop The Boats” rhetoric continues apace, but you can bet your bottom dollar that more people who shouldn’t be here will go on to commit violent crimes that wouldn’t have been committed if they weren’t here. Politicians of all stripes, the media that supports them, the “diversity is our strength” outfits and every placard waving idiot should hang their heads in shame, but they won’t. It’s almost as if they don’t care. Either that, or they’re making money from it.
 

© Colin Cross 2026