g
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.

Cotswolds England

Maid of Ale

Posted on November 6, 2008

I was reading a New Yorker today, a profile of Gary Snyder, Zen poet and environmentalist. This passage made me feel validated and a little bit proud about our new life in the Cotswolds:

“Using Kitkitdizze [Snyder’s hand built house] as a prototype, he encourages others to inhabit more fully the places they live—settle down, get to know the neighbors (including in his conception, the plants and animals), join the school board and the watershed council, and defend the local resources and way of life. Place, he writes, should be defined by natural indicators, like rivers and the flora and fauna they support.”

Our Cotswold town is defined, literally named, for it’s place along one of Gloucestershire’s rivers. But it’s not the first time since moving to England that I’ve lived in a place named for its natural indicators. In London we live in Maida Hill, right next to it’s more glamorous cousin, Maida Vale. At one time hill and vale must have been obvious, but covered as they are now in pavement and plaster, it’s hard to make them out. That’s the excuse I’ll use for how I thought you spelled Maida Vale when I first moved here: Maid of Ale, a neighborhood I assumed was named for a long departed, much loved busty lady slinging tankards of beer.

Random

The People Have Spoken

Posted on November 5, 2008

The people (especially the younger one’s) have spoken and we defer to them and the need for “change.” Congratulations! We will see you back for the next congressional elections in two years. May this new President be blessed with wisdom and strength (and economic knowledge——–there is no free lunch). Hold on to your wallets! DAD and MOM

I got this email from my staunch Republican father today. I found it remarkably gracious compared to our previous discussions on the subject. Husband and I had worried he would still be sulking at Christmas when we visit. Looks like all that can now be channeled into his displeasure at not having been made a grandfather yet. Oh, the anticipation…

Cotswolds

Morning Shift on the Coal-Face

Posted on November 2, 2008

Saturday morning I paid for the bottle of red wine consumed during the previous evening’s tutelage. Husband was in the same boat and so we spent much of the day sprawled in front of the wood burning stove watching television, with only the occasional outing to the market square for supplies.

On my first of these I bought an FT along with some chocolate biscuits and Coca-Cola. The former contained advice from a newly published volume by Kingsley Amis on coping with a hangover, my favourite of which was, “Go down the mine on the early-morning shift at the coal-face.” Having no such resources at my disposal, Chinese takeout and episodes from the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm would have to do.

Despite my hangover, I was cheered by the outcome of another stop on my morning errands. Having realized my cash card had gone missing, I dropped into the post office where I had used it the day before. From behind her perch at the cash register, dreary postmistress greeted me with, “Cold out there.”

“And it’s started to rain,” I said, figuring I might as well join in.

“Well, it is Saturday,” she said, summarizing her defeatist life view by way of the weather. How exceptionally British.

Thankfully, my cash card was there, tucked safely in a drawer behind the counter and demonstrating a more redeeming feature of rural British life.

Cotswolds

My Own Private Royal Agricultural College

Posted on November 1, 2008

My rural education in country drinking establishments continues. Last night J. showed up at the wine bar still in his gear from the day’s shoot. I made the mistake of asking him if he had been out hunting, to which he responded that no, he hadn’t been anywhere near a horse nor a fox. The immediate coterie of men around me then chided, almost in unison, “You hunt foxes, you shoot birds, and you stalk deer.”

Well, excuse me. In south Florida where I grew up it’s all just got called huntin’, unless of course you’re fishin’ (which the British have to tart up to angling) or, at a stretch, lobster trapping. It would be rather amusing to send this contingent out for a day’s hunting with my cousin Jason or, even better, Berta (short for Robert), the older brother of one of my best childhood friends. Such an outing would include copious amounts of camo, ammo, Busch beer (in cans of course), and possibly an airboat. They would probably all get on like a house on fire.

Just to further annoy J., I told him I liked his knickers, which happens to be Brit speak for panties. I was referring to his knickerbockers or plus 2s as they’re known — pants that fall just below the knee that Americans associate with old fashioned golfers but are also worn for shooting here.

Following my brush up on country sporting verbs, J. introduced me to the wife of our local celebrity, also American. She’s apparently a keen hunter (of the fox variety), but we spent most our time talking about the election. At least now I can say I’ve met her since, inexplicably, people always ask me if I know her when they realize I am American too.

The evening returned to theme when I was introduced to two modern day shepherds. D. manages the estate that borders our town, M. an estate in a neighboring village. They were forthcoming with sheep trivia, including that they raise a Welsh variety and that a ewe has about five years of lambing in her. When I asked what happens to the ewes after that, they both laughed and said “Asia.” By which they apparently meant Birmingham. By which I have no idea what they meant but presume it’s to supply a vast network of Brummie curry houses or to export it.

But both D. and M. wanted to talk about sheep dog trials more than sheep. Apparently the Americans are crazy for the sport, and D. and M. just had a group over for a week to teach them the finer points. The closest I could come to contributing to this conversation was anecdotes about my childhood pet, Greta, an old English sheep dog known for her prowess at running through sliding glass doors. It turns out sheep dog trials are run with border collies.

Cotswolds

Food Porn

Posted on October 27, 2008

Marks and Spencer’s close-up television ads of oozing chocolate pudding put the term “food porn” on the British map. Surely though the grandaddy of all food porn is in the Cotswolds at Daylesford Organic.

At Daylesford barns have been transformed into a pristine retail mecca in a hamlet not far from Stow-in-the-Wold. Visitors come from near and far to pay homage to the spiritual home of organically reared, locally produced, seasonal food porn. It makes Chez Panisse look like a shack.

The first building in the complex houses the café cum deli/bakery cum grocery store, and as you approach it there is an outdoor display of seasonal produce arrayed on stacked antique cartons or a donkey cart or some other suitably rustic stage set. Vegetables are the stars here, and I am sure they have their own stylists.

Behind the food store there is a butcher, stocked by the in-house abattoir, and a kitchenware shop, a curated selection of gardening porn, a clothing store, and a spa called the haybarn. If you were very rich you could furnish your entire Cotswold estate in a single shopping trip to Daylesford without having to scour car boot sales and reclamation yards like me.

Yesterday we went for a late lunch at Daylesford. The café is good value if you throw in the occasional star sighting (Gary Barlow from Take That last time, the actor Charles Dance this time). I had a welsh rarebit tarted up with some artisanal cheese and portobello mushrooms. Husband started with some bread and olive oil, fresh from the presses of Daylesford’s sister estate in France, before moving on to braised red cabbage and ham.

Afterwards I selected a small chunk of parmesan and a courgette from the shop to use in our evening meal. Apparently nobody’s told the checkout girl, young and stylish in the shop’s trademark tasteful brown, where she works. “This is a courgette, right?” she asked me, holding up the plump green vegetable for examination before plopping it on the scale.

Cotswolds

A Collector Is Born

Posted on October 26, 2008

The Cotswold palette is still predominantly green, but the big bingo dabber in the sky has added great orbs of lemon rust and green gold. Leaves are falling and for the last few weeks I’ve wondered if the autumn colours have peaked. The scenery has changed less dramatically week by week than it seemed to in the spring and summer, but I suspect I’ll show up one weekend soon to find the desolation of bare branches and darkness (the clocks went back today). Just before dusk, rays of sunlight broke through the canopy of gray turning the blobs of fall colour into glimmering, quaking masses.

It looked just like a picture husband bought last fall, a watercolour scene of a lone huntsman, and husband’s first foray into art collecting. I suspect his purchase from a local gallery was as motivated by a desire to be accepted within his new community as it was by the object itself. I was condescending about his selection to start. It’s a stereotypical scene: huntsman, lone fox, and a dry stone wall.

Other than scratching their noses and feeding them apples, husband and I are about as far away from horse people as you can get. Buying this picture struck me at best as disingenuous, at worst embarrassingly obvious—something Tony Soprano might pick if he uprooted his family from New Jersey to Gloucestershire. Husband prevailed in the face of my self-consciousness. Not only did he buy the hunt scene, a few weeks later he bought a Cecil Aldin etching, the exterior of a rural pub framed on the left by a gnarled old oak, at another local gallery. At this rate of spend, I no longer needed to feel sheepish about the amount of free wine we were quaffing at these monthly openings. And the huntsman, now standing watch over our bed, has grown on me over the months too. I thought about transplanting the Gilbert and George print from our London flat for this spot, but thought better of it. Irony just doesn’t go with ticking stripe and gingham.

Cotswolds

Bingo!

Posted on October 26, 2008

Last night we attended a bingo fundraiser for the cricket club in the G.P. village hall. It was a brilliant evening, but British restraint disappointed. Instead of yelling “bingo!” when they got a line, these polite people simply raised an arm, signalling the monitor to come check their card. I vowed to husband to uphold the American oral tradition of bingo should my numbers come in. But when, in game six, they did, so did self-consciousness and up went my right arm. Despite my cultural betrayal, I was rewarded with a bottle of Croft Original Pale Cream Sherry, the label of which husband decorated with polka dots using his bingo dabber pen.

I am making up for an adult lifetime of shattered California Lotto dreams with the excellent odds of village life. Last weekend husband won a bottle of champagne in the raffle at the wine tasting fund raiser. Between this and the sherry, we’re practically stocked for Christmas.

Cotswolds

All the Interesting People Live in the Country

Posted on October 23, 2008

Last night I was reminded of my theory that all the interesting people live in the country. At the very least there is a disproportionate population of raconteurs who drink at our local wine bar. The evening’s anecdotes ranged from political opinions from the wife of a former ambassador to Israel to winding up a German surgeon who’s recently relocated from Berlin to the Cotswolds and has taken up duck hunting, replete with bad jokes about Germans chasing Englishman around the countryside.

I have a diary entry from last year that shows that, by wine bar standards, last night was nothing special. On that particular evening I first met a former covert ops man who told me about his latest manoeuvre: a rescue operation for his Notting Hill banker son. Said son had a live-in Scandinavian girlfriend with snakes for pets who “took advantage” and had to be forcibly removed in the early morning hours, along with her mooching friends and the snakes and the decomposing bodies of once-frozen mice. I suppose that’s where having a former covert ops man for a dad comes in handy, although it does strike me that a former covert ops man is the least likely person to tell you he is former covert ops.

Next was a fat Blackpudlian with a little dog. His daughter was going to work at the Guggenheim Palazzo in Venice, next door to Casa Artom where I once lived.

Last were a couple who own the inn down the road. He’s a Michael Caine look alike, and she’s a be-pearled, pashmina-ed lady from Fulham who told us how her mother would roll in her grave if she knew her daughter had married a publican. We all laughed and talked about how the BBC has gone to the dogs but the NHS is still brilliant. When in Rome…