A WRITER has penned a book in tribute to her late father.

Mandy Sutter's Ted the Shed takes a bittersweet look at her dad's decade-long tenure on an allotment plot.

The book is being launched in an event at Keighley Local Studies Library on Saturday, May 18, at 2pm.

Ted reached the top of an Ilkley Parish Council allotment waiting list in 2010, when he was 87 and recently widowed, and took on a plot at the town's Leeds Road site.

Mandy says: "He roped in his reluctant middle-aged daughter and son-in-law to help, but none of us had any experience of allotments!

"Dad was a loner and I knew he would be difficult to work with. He was also an incredibly resourceful man and erected a shed on the plot single-handedly, when he was 87. He refused our well-meaning but no doubt irritating offers of help and all we could do was stand around helplessly looking on!"

Mandy wrote about the allotment 'adventures' in a blog, which became hugely popular.

The idea for a book followed Ted's death in 2019.

His funeral was held in November of that year, but a planned family memorial service at Cheltenham – where Ted was born – never materialised due to the pandemic.

Mandy decided that a book would be an alternative memorial, and she began work on it with Leeds cartoonist and printmaker Janis Goodman.

"During lockdown I sent an episode to Janis every week and she illustrated it," says Mandy. "She captured perfectly the comic yet poignant tone. It was a joy to receive her drawings and the project got us both through those difficult months. It also helped me deal with my grief following dad’s death."

The book is published by Bradford-based Ings Poetry, and Mandy says everything about it is local.

"Whilst none of the places in the book are mentioned by name – I’ve purposely kept them anonymous – quite a few of the scenes take place in Keighley," she says. "An attentive reader who knows the area will guess where they are.

"Dad really liked Keighley. He used to do all his shopping there before he eventually stopped driving, and he visited various builders' yards in the town to buy posts and chicken wire to fence the allotment."

Admission to the book launch is free, but places should be booked at ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/keighley or by calling 01535 618211.