Minding My Peas and Cucumbers Quirky Tales of Allotment Life Synopsis
When Kay Sexton becomes the proud holder of an allotment, she hopes it will be her first foray towards self-sufficiency for her family. Instead, she finds herself in a strange and hostile world of arcane rules and regulations, and hosepipe standoffs. She finds her mud-caked Wellingtoned feet and successfully navigates her way through allotment-keeping: battling Biblical-scale pest invasions; learning the dark arts of the competitive vegetable grower; and, practising ninja-like disappearing acts to avoid yet another free cucumber from a neighbouring gardener.
Kay Sexton left school with no discernable qualifications and has had a plethora of jobs ranging from glamour model, mortician’s assistant, dental receptionist, chambermaid and nudist camp agony aunt. But eventually she had to enter the real world and chose to become a charity administrator. This worthy path was entirely derailed in 2003 when she was invited to write a short story about trees for a charity anthology, the story was never used but she needed to produce some return for the two days leave that her trustees had given her to write it, so she sent it to a magazine. It was accepted. Somewhat sceptical, she wrote another (in her lunch break) and emailed it to a different magazine. It too, was accepted. Three weeks later she handed in her notice, telling the charity’s trustees that she was off to become a writer. Since that fateful day Kay has been a prolific writer and a finalist for several awards including the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2010.