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Cotswolds

The Weekend of Prodigious Eating

Posted on December 1, 2008

The weekend of prodigious eating started, fittingly enough, with Thanksgiving. I cooked for husband and the neighbors, and the evening went off without a hitch other than the disappearance of twenty gourmet marshmallows that dissolved into my sweet potato casserole because I left it in the oven too long. (It took visits and enquiries to no fewer than five London shops, including Selfridges, to find those marshmallows. When a specialist American candy shop in Covent Garden couldn’t help, I conceded to the artisan fluff on offer at Whole Foods at a cost of approximately 35 cents per marshmallow, only to find a jumbo bag of the things at a gas station about 2 miles from our cottage in the Cotswolds.) There were some minor concessions to this being a British Thanksgiving, including substituting brussel sprouts and roasted potatoes for peas and mash, adding a cheese course, and the fact that there were pheasants alongside the turkeys on my printed novelty napkins. I enjoyed being the cultural authority for the evening—there are not many occasions for this as an American in Britain—and made everyone go around the table and say what they were thankful for.

Then there was the mulled wine. The first was with a bratwurst at the German Christmas market in Cheltenham to celebrate passing my driving test on the first try, much to the surprise of husband and in spite of the fact that my driving instructor was fired by the automobile association the day before, as it turns out for threatening to “thump” another instructor, not his teaching skills. The second was consumed with a slice of panettone following the Advent carol service in G.P.

In between there was a lamb roast at doppelganger couple’s house, during which they confided they’ve also gained weight since moving to the country. It seems our metabolisms, starved of urban stress and toil, go into hibernation. Folds of flesh now reveal themselves at the slightest bend, and when I sit, accordion pleats materialise around my torso. I’ve taken to grasping my sides and kneading them as I attempt to locate ribs, kind of like that piano song where you roll your knuckles back and forth across the black keys. It’s as if I am still convincing myself that, yes, I am quite fat.

The apex of the weekend’s feasting took place on a fine evening, sitting in the marigold velvet arm chairs in front of the fire at our local inn. My menu selection was carnivorous, worthy of a place at Henry VIII’s table. I started with a dish of gherkins, then ham hock and parsley terrine followed by a beef and Guinness pie topped with an oyster on the half shell, washed down with three tumblers of red wine, and informed by the pink remains of the FT Weekend. Duly fortified for battle, I settled into the couch for a Louis Theroux documentary on the American phenomenon of the demolition derby, which made me a little homesick.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the recycling centre to dump the wine bottles from Thanksgiving. As I peered into the shipping container-sized receptacle for green glass I saw inside a thousand empty wine bottles, the detritus of Gloucestershire’s great and good. Gluttony lives on in these slim times.

Cotswolds

A Place to Sleep

Posted on November 30, 2008

This afternoon I curled up on the couch under a blanket and read a book. It is cold in this stone house so beneath the blanket I also wore wooly tights and slippers and fingerless gloves. And yet husband sat upstairs with the window open while he tapped away at his laptop, analyzing Google ad words. The taps turned into thumps as they streamed down the stairwell and reverberated over my head. Twice the sound of a music box or carousel or ice cream truck—surely it’s too cold for ice cream?— almost lured me to the window to investigate its source. Each time the twinkly song faded before I was motivated from my cocoon.The electric heaters in each room seem to be placed for aesthetics more than utility. All are next to doors or windows so most of the expensive heat they do produce is instantly leeched away. If there was a fire this afternoon, which there was not, the flames would have beat against the glass door of the stove making a sound loud enough that I once got out of bed to look thinking there was some kind of ruckus going on in the narrow pedestrian lane behind our cottage where the local teenagers like to march up and down and strew with candy wrappers and Red Bull cans. Today there was only the pleasant cacophony of keyboard thumps and the clicking refrigerator, the latter of which I suspect is a war wound from its tenure in the floods. The absence of noise in the countryside amplifies what sound there is. There’s the predictable stuff like birds and church bells, but also the whistle of wind blowing through hollow metal gate posts on an afternoon walk, a sort of homemade woodwind, and the booming noises on our morning run, like base heavy gunshots or little explosions from a quarry. We used to hear the same noise each weekend morning from our little rental cottage in G.P., but I still don’t know what makes it.I ran into my two favourite shepherds the other night at the wine bar. As usual I started quizzing them about sheep farming, and for some reason felt the need to enquire if sheep are brought inside at night in this cold weather. The answer is no, but in the process of telling me this D. also explained the origin of the word Cotswold, which I was surprised I don’t know after almost a year of being here. Wold means rolling hills and cot refers to an old stone sheep shelter. It literally means a place to sleep in the hills, which reminded me of one of the reasons we were motivated to buy a cottage here to start: to escape from the noise of our London flat.

Cotswolds

Wrong Turn

Posted on November 24, 2008

The Ritalin vacation is officially over. Ten months ago husband started the Ritalin-free weekend experiment. It’s been patchy all along but the last three weekends have brought nightmarish mood swings, and we both agree it’s time to reevaluate with the help of a medical professional. My own patience collapsed over a trivial incident, as is always the way, on Sunday morning. While driving to church I nearly missed a turn despite having driven this route a hundred times before.

“Where did you think you were going?” husband asked twice for good measure.

“Fuck off. It was a mistake, I make them,” I replied at volume.

We exchanged no other words until after the Prayers of Penitence. Husband nudged me. Softened by prayers admitting what asses we all are, I assumed he was too and expected an apology or at least a smile that implied as much. Instead I was told off in hushed tones for wearing my gloves in church. Never mind that my fuzzy, black, fingerless gloves are my favourite utility purchase since my snap on waterproof bicycle basket, perfect for staying warm while engaging in tasks that require dexterity like opening hymnals. It’s cold in this old stone church. And, it’s not exactly formal. A black lab snoozed at the feet of the elderly occupants of the pew in front of us. The gloves stayed on.

Then Godfrey the vicar opened his sermon with a prayer from Mother Teresa:

Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: “Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.”

The irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable. Interesting. I always associated Mother Teresa with lepers, but she also seems to have spent time with husband.

My fuming continued unabated during the Prayers of Intercession that followed. I prayed shamelessly for ME ME ME, not Iraq or Afghanistan or the bloody queen.

Next up was communion, which I usually sit out for a variety of reasons, the main one being that it’s all about the crucifixion, the very heart of what separates Christianity from other religions. And that separation, that thing that makes people feel special or different or better than, is the very thing I despise in religion. Whether it’s the three precepts or the five pillars or the ten commandments, the major world religions have more in common than not, and I’d prefer to focus on that. Then there’s the hygiene issue. Call me anal retentive but all those people drinking out of the same glass grosses me out. And finally there’s the technically correct and less controversial reason I gave the vicar when he asked me last month why I abstained. I’m not confirmed in the C of E, so I assumed it wasn’t kosher, so to speak. He assured me it wasn’t an issue.

As my half of the tiny congregation filed up to the altar, Dorothy, the eighty-year old shopkeeper sitting opposite, looked me in the eye and said, “He said you should come.”

“What?” I replied despite having heard exactly what she said.

“He said you should come,” she repeated, leaning in and clasping my arm.

Dorothy had clearly overheard my previous conversation with the vicar. But for a brief moment in my vulnerable state I thought the “he” in her mandate was God on some kind of direct line to her with advice for the pouting woman across the aisle.

And so I did what I had been told to do and filed up to the railing where I kneeled and waited. Godfrey deposited a wafer into my open palm — it had seemed right to remove my gloves for this. Jean the lay minister followed offering a sip of port from the silver chalice, enough to dislodge the styrafoam disc now stuck to the roof of my mouth. Both spoke softly and directly to each participant: the body of Christ, the blood of Christ. This wasn’t the self-service communion of my Presbyterian childhood, where large gold trays holding plastic shot glasses of grape juice and stale torn bread are passed around. This was different. It felt like being ministered to, which I suppose is exactly what I needed.

Cotswolds

Urban Legend

Posted on November 21, 2008

There’s an urban legend that keeps rearing its head in our Cotswold town. Which brings me to the first problem of this post: can a rural village have an urban legend? I shall assume for the moment it can.

The legend, like all good legends, involves eccentric aristocrats and chow mein. One night years ago a member of the local landed gentry shuffled into the wine bar. He was wearing velvet slippers, as you do when you are landed gentry. The wine bar is chock full of toff-y types who do deference very well so nobody mentioned the slippers. Indeed they made sure their lord’s glass never went empty.

After a while the aristocrat got hungry and decided he fancied a Chinese takeaway. He shuffled off across the square to order his food, and this is where it all went south. The Chinese restaurant is strictly cash only, but naturally our lord doesn’t deign to carry the paper stuff on his person. He’s never had a need for it. He has “people” who transact on his behalf. Still, the owners of the Chinese takeaway are immune to class distinctions and make no exceptions.

Anticipating this conundrum, R. the barman was dispatched across the square to pay the bill. But if the person telling you the story has had a lot of wine, there’s a different ending where R. doesn’t figure at all. In this version the proprietors of the Chinese brandish a cleaver and chase the lord out the door while the wine bar attendees gape in horror. A lesson in Chinese democracy, nevermind the current owners are Malaysian.

Cotswolds England

London Conspires

Posted on November 18, 2008

London is continuing its efforts to get me to leave. Oh yeah, I’ve made that decision already. Note to London: You can stop now.

I awoke this morning to find my rear passenger window had been smashed for the smelly spoils of husband’s gym bag. At least the thieves got what they deserved. The consensus of my neighbor and the police was that it was crackheads. I’d like to slag off our neighborhood at this point but the truth is when our house was burgled in Santa Monica the police chalked it up to people looking for drug money, heroin to be specific. At best I can argue it was a slightly higher class of drug criminal in L.A.

Shockingly the police did come out—two sets of them, including a forensic specialist. I even seem to have found a window repair service that’s scheduled to be here in the next two hours. As far as crimes go, it’s been fairly untraumatic. Still, it’s hard to imagine this kind of thing ever happening in the Cotswolds, although the area does have its own notorious crime family. The Johnsons have been wreaking havoc in Gloucestershire for the past twenty years. In August, seven of them were sent to jail which ought to put a dent in their activities. They target stately homes rather than 2003 Volvos, but just in case I won’t leave any Georgian silver candlesticks hanging around on the backseat.

Cotswolds

The Court Leet

Posted on November 17, 2008

After some cajoling, town elder G. came through with the promised ticket to the Court Leet for husband. It was held on Thursday night and, being female, I was banished to dinner at the Inn across the street with several wives/partners of the attendees. Joining me was one half of the doppelgänger couple who considered the proceedings next door rather sexist. I, on the other hand, have been married long enough to be grateful for a little time off. I suspect other wives feeling just like me have played a vital role in keeping this tradition going for the last 700-odd years.

When the menfolk arrived at the Inn just after midnight, they were weary from the speeches which by all accounts were a bit average this year in everything except duration. I was pleased to hear our neighbor, D., had been elected the new High Bailiff. I like him because he is nice and often wears a coral coloured Benetton sweatshirt with a cravat and without irony. M., the sometimes barman who is known for his lack of self-censorship, is less readily charmed by a cravat. He thinks D. the most boring man in town, which doesn’t bode well for next year’s speeches.

Earlier in the week in London, husband and I had dinner with B. and R. who were down from Boylestone as guests of the Lord Mayor of the City of London at his annual show. B. regaled me with tales of sausages flung from swords, a Roman army, and a cat still resident in the Mayor’s office, an unbroken tradition from the time of Dick Whittington. Normally I would have chalked up this account to the potent combination of B.’s creativity and my gullibility, but after a look at some of the pictures of the show online I was convinced he was telling the truth, mostly. He didn’t even mention the various livery companies who marched in the procession, including The Worshipful Company of Paviors (professionals involved with roads and pavements) who presumably rode on a float where they stood around drinking cups of tea while traffic backed up.

The thirteenth century was a busy time for charter granting in England. London got one in 1215 that allowed it to elect a mayor, with a caveat that he had to travel to Westminster each year to pledge allegiance to the Sovereign. It is this procession which begat the annual show that B. and R. attended. Twelve years later our Cotswold town got its charter for a market, thus necessitating the tradition of the Court Leet to elect a High Bailiff to oversee it. As much as I enjoy the opportunity to tout the Cotswolds and disparage London, it seems the Lord Mayor’s show came up trumps over the Court Leet this year. Tradition, I begrudgingly admit, is not the sole provenance of the countryside.

Cotswolds

Remembrance Day

Posted on November 10, 2008

Our Remembrance Day service started with the blessing of a new standard for the village Brownie troop, done with an abundance of pomp and circumstance by Godfrey the vicar. After church, the entire congregation of thirty or so filed down the lane to the war memorial on the green for the act of remembrance. Around the British isles many others gathered at village greens just like this to speak the names of the war dead and observe two minutes of silence.

A retired local serviceman read aloud the names of those who died from this village and its sister village up the road, then placed a wreath of poppies on the memorial, followed by another from the Brownies. There were no more than twenty or so war dead, but these are tiny villages and the sense of loss must have been overwhelming. Ninety years later, there were still tears. “The Last Post” (the British version of “Taps” and equally as moving) played from a portable CD player propped on a chair outside the house at the top of the green. Even the white terrier accompanying his master looked solemn and sat quietly throughout.

Afterwards we went for a walk where, despite being intermittently pelted with freezing rain, we were offered two signs of hope and renewal. First was Hawling Lodge, which we’ve watched emerge from little more than a ruin over the last year. It has been beautifully restored, including a length of drystone wall where new, honeyed pieces sit alongside sections dark and chalky with age. A hill serves as one border in the back garden, and there is a door built into it that I would dearly like to open to discover what secret grotto lies within. Later, walking back by Roel Farm, a double rainbow appeared: two perfect arches over ochre fields.

Postscript: For anyone who fears political correctness has run amok, there was evidence to the contrary in the Cotswolds yesterday. A neighboring village was holding an evening Remembrance service honouring “especially those who died in the Indian Mutiny.”

I’ll stick with the Brownies.

Cotswolds

Cappucino Comes to the Cotswolds. Almost.

Posted on November 9, 2008

The changes to the wine bar promised back in August are starting to come to fruition. A handsome new bar made from varnished wine crates has been installed up front, and last week an impressive piece of machinery materialised on its far left corner. Said machine looks capable of dispensing serious caffeinated beverages. I am very excited. The other offerings in town are, well, no Starbucks.

Saturday morning I stopped by for an inaugural cappuccino. R. the barman was manning the shop.

“I see you have a new toy,” I said, gesturing to the chrome beauty.

“Hrmphh,” he grunted, rolling his eyes in the direction of the beast. “I don’t agree with that AT ALL,” he went on as if we were discussing stem cell research or new taxes.

My heart sank a little bit. I could see where this was going.

“Do you know how to use it?” I asked cheerily.

“I am leaving that to the girls,” he responded, referring to T. and the two Es, none of whom were on duty. “Can I get you something else?” he asked earnestly, as if I might consider a glass of Gamay at 10:00AM.

I got the impression he wanted me to stay for a chat, although obviously not enough to learn how to use the coffee machine. In its new configuration the bar does remind me just a little bit of Bar Le Louis IX , where we used to go for café crème and croissants after a jog around the Île Saint- Louis. Despite the croissants we always felt like conspicuous health freaks compared to the jumpsuited municipal workers capping their breakfast with a marc. I’ll skip the drink but stay for a chat. We have a whole presidential election to dissect.

Cotswolds

Duck Plucking and Sheep Shagging

Posted on November 8, 2008

Friday night the wine-maid (do wine bars have barmaids?), E., asked husband if he shoots. The sum total of his firearms experience is a morning downing clay pigeons on a North Yorkshire estate. I can better this having once conducted target practice with a pyramid of beer cans in a swampy Florida field. After a moment’s pause to consider if any of this qualified, he answered no.

E. doesn’t shoot either. She was asking because she just bought a bird plucker and is trying to drum up business. She went on to describe how her new piece of culinary apparatus works like an Epilady for poultry.

I rather admire E. and her entrepreneurial streak. She is recently split from her partner, whom it has been indicated to me in hushed tones is someone of note in the horsey set, but seems to have wasted no time getting on with it. In addition to her wine bar duties she has launched a home cooked meal service that supplied a Thai red curry for a dinner party we hosted a few weeks ago. Now the mechanical duck plucker. She is the embodiment of the plucky (no pun intended), pull yourself up by the bootstraps, country gal archetype. I may have to take up shooting just so I can see the bird Epilady in action.

My education in how food makes it to the table didn’t stop with E. This week I also learned, courtesy of an episode of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, that the coloured markings on a sheep’s behind indicate whether or not she’s been shagged. A device harnessed to the ram’s chest supplies the dye.

Out for a walk today, a ewe looked me straight in the eye and began to stamp her front hooves like a demanding child. She had a freckled face and excellent posture. She stamped some more before turning away to reveal that her entire back half was covered in orange. Apparently the ram in this field likes sassy types.

A second look around proved the ram in this field isn’t picky. The pasture was a walk of shame on a grand scale, a virtual promenade of harlots with orange bottoms everywhere. I felt a bit sorry for those few gals that hadn’t seen any action, their still-white coats a prudish badge.

Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall also provided an explanation for the sudden appearance of all these orange backsides: if you want a lamb for Easter, the rams need to make a visit by Guy Fawkes (the fifth of November). The technical term for the mating season is the rut, a word which has several definitions including “a recurrent period of sexual excitement in certain male ruminants” and “a fixed, usually boring routine.” Guess it depends if you ask the ram or the ewe.