A long-simmering feud at the Skelfleet South Allotment Association reached a climax on Monday evening when police were summoned to separate two veteran plot-holders over a green hosepipe.
According to witnesses, Mr Ron Grantham, who has cultivated Plot 4B since 1979, observed neighbour Mr William Gedge attaching a reinforced nozzle to a fifty-yard hose connected directly to the communal water butt.
Mr Grantham immediately declared the apparatus “an act of hydraulic piracy,” asserting that the rapid extraction of water would starve his prize runner beans of essential moisture during peak growing hours.
“A watering can is the traditional and honourable instrument of North Lincolnshire horticulture,” Mr Grantham stated outside the gates. “To introduce a pressurized hosepipe into a parish allotment is to invite anarchy, moss, and moral decline, he’s a right soft scrob, that fella.”
Mr Gedge defended his actions, explaining that his gout made carrying metal cans unfeasible and that the hose had been purchased legally at the Brigg Farmers’ Market.