A short story, told as minutes. Made up, like the others.

Hollin Lane Allotment Society: committee meeting, Tuesday 13 October 2026, in the shed.

Present: Dorothy (chair), Pradeep (treasurer), Alun, Marguerite (minutes), Kit. Apologies: Bronwen.

1. Minutes of the last meeting. Agreed as a true record. Alun asked that it be noted the kettle was not his fault.

2. Matters arising. The water butt on plot 9 has been mended. The bonfire notice has been re-laminated.

3. Treasurer’s report. Balance £214.60. Pradeep reminded members that the rent to the council is due in November and that two plots are still unpaid. Agreed to chase them gently.

4. Plot 12. Dorothy said she had had a complaint about a torch on plot 12 after dark, more than once, since September. Alun said the plot had been dug over and he had assumed the family had got someone in. Kit said it was Bronwen. She came straight from work, which since September meant after dark, and that was why nobody had seen who it was. Discussion followed. It was agreed that this was not a breach of the rules, which say plots must be kept in cultivation, not kept in cultivation in daylight.

5. Plot 12, continued. Marguerite reported that she had looked over the fence. Garlic is in, in rows, with canes at the ends. She said the rows were very straight. Pradeep asked who the plot was let to. Dorothy checked the register. The tenant is Mr T. Verrall, who died in February. His daughter has been paying the rent. Alun said those were Mr Verrall’s kind of rows: he had used a string line for thirty years, and once made Alun lift and relay a whole bed because it was half an inch out. He added that Mr Verrall had still come down in January, when he could not dig, to stand at the end of the beds and point with his stick at where things would go.

6. There was a pause of some length. Marguerite asked whether this item should be minuted as a pause. Dorothy said yes.

7. Alun proposed that the committee write to Bronwen and ask her to regularise matters. Kit said Bronwen had not been asked to do anything and nothing needed regularising. Pradeep said that technically the plot was let to a dead man and a daughter who had never once visited. Kit said that technically the garlic was in.

8. The society’s constitution was consulted. It does not say what happens when a plot is being looked after by someone who has no right to it and is doing it well. Dorothy said she did not think the people who wrote it had imagined that. Alun said they had imagined nearly everything else, including goats.

9. Proposed by Dorothy, seconded by Kit: that the register be left as it is until the rent is next due, and that no one raise the matter with Bronwen until after the garlic is up. Carried, with one abstention (Pradeep, who asked for it to be recorded that he abstained because he was the treasurer and not because he disagreed).

10. Any other business. Marguerite asked whether anyone had a spare cane. Several people said they would look.

11. Date of next meeting. First Tuesday in December, in the shed, if the roof is mended. Dorothy to bring the kettle.

Meeting closed 8.52 pm.

Signed as a true record, Dorothy

[In the margin, in pencil, in a different hand:] Bronwen, they know. It’s fine. Don’t stop.