Back in the spring, I was given two tiny tomato plants. Unpromising as they looked, I felt I had to be a good father to them. They grew very slowly at first but, thrillingly, a scratch of a leaf yielded a tomatoey smell. I went away for a week or two and they were bigger and better and now the leaves barely needed scratching to yield that scent. Summer had come, on paper at least, so I decided it was time for these babies of mine to strike out on their own. Their safe windowsill perch was, I sensed, breeding complacency. Outside they went, together, looking lost and vulnerable planted in a big plastic bucket. They looked in at me sadly, drooping in reproach. I feared the worst. Glancing at them as I packed to go away again, I felt sure their end was nigh.
Imagine my delight when I returned to find they’d gone completely nuts. We’ll show that cruel man what we’re really made of, they seemed to have decided. This ain’t over. And the growing wouldn’t stop. Two plants seemed to have turned into countless plants, which had then morphed into a kind of mega-bush. I bunged in some bamboo canes but they lost the battle with the plant, which was now sprawling everywhere. I went and bought some sturdy supporting thingies from the garden centre but they soon disappeared into it too, swallowed up by the billowing green mass, which had developed a decidedly threatening aura. What it hadn’t developed was much in the way of tomatoes, just lots of tiny green ball bearings amid the flowers.
I called a friend. “The fruit won’t ripen unless you bring it indoors now,” he said. So back in it came. Far too big for any sill, the only place for it was the front room. And still it grows. And now it dominates. The whole place smells like a greenhouse. It’s heavy with stern fruit – hundreds of rock-hard green marbles showing no sign of either softening or reddening. Fried green tomatoes? Forget it. It would take a furnace to break these blighters down.
And here we sit night after night, menaced by our tomato triffid. The dog cowers beneath it, growling warily. I fear it will take him soon. And I will probably follow. What a way to perish. And not an edible tomato to show for it.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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