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I was down at mum's house last Sunday, It was a lovely warm sunny day and so we were out in the garden enjoying the fine weather. Wandering around the garden, looking at the flowers and unkempt plant beds, I found myself at the bottom garden staring into the dilapidated greenhouse that hides in an overgrown and inaccessible corner. Now rotten and slowly falling in on itself, this was once a proud and substantial structure made of wood, reinforced concrete, and heavy plate glass panels. It had originally been erected at about the time the house was built in the mid 1930s. My father had used it to grow plants in, from when he and my mother first moved into the property in 1954, up until the mid ‘70s when he got tired of repairing it, later superseding it with a modern aluminium affair.

It was strange because as I stood there, I could still see in my mind's eye the neat lines of large terracotta plant pots stood on the earthen floor, and me standing inside as a child looking up at the tall thin upright bamboo canes bending under the weight of loaded tomato vines. At times, the greenhouse was bursting with tomatoes - oh, the pungent smell of tomato plants filling the air and the stifling heat under its glass roof. In the summer months I used to take my toys out of the house and play with them down the bottom of the garden; I’d be playing down there for hours-on-end. During sudden summer rainstorms, I’d sometimes shelter inside the old greenhouse; as a child it was a thrilling adventure being out in an electric storm, the rain beating down on the glass roof, accompanied by the occasional clap of thunder. Mind you, the greenhouse leaked in quite badly during heavy downpours, but I knew where to stand to avoid the majority of incoming water, and of course the plants didn’t mind getting soaked. I knew that there were some big spiders in its darkened corners, and I used to try and put the thought of them out of my mind, or else I would have bolted out of there into the rain.

Because of the fallen branches, leaves and debris, much of what remains in the greenhouse is now buried, but I bet dad’s old paraffin heater is still at the back underneath it all. As the dark nights closed in, dad would get the paraffin heater ready for the colder months ahead. Carrying the empty tin can, I sometimes used to go with him to buy paraffin from the local petrol station. There used to be a really old fashioned pump at the side of the garage from where paraffin was dispensed. A middle-aged man with dark, greased-down hair, and wearing one of those brown coat overalls often used to serve us, always polite and referring to dad as ‘sir’; you’d never get service like that today. Once back in the greenhouse, dad would fill the heater’s tank with paraffin, but lighting it always seemed such a complicated affair; taking off the tall funnel, adjusting the wick, sliding something or other around, and then reassembling it lit. It used to have an acetate type window in the side of the funnel, through which you could see the flame flickering inside, something that seemed quite magical in the fading daylight. Dad would carefully close the greenhouse door, and we'd walk back up the garden path to the house…

Then I can hear mum calling me, and my concentration is lost. As I walk back up the garden, I think what wonderful and poignant memories had been stirred, but how sad that the decrepit remains of the old greenhouse also mark the passing of so many years, and of the time that has passed since my dear dad passed away, I wonder what he would think if he could see it now?

14th June 2009.

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