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Cotswolds

War Stories

Posted on May 6, 2009

Friday night we went to see Saving Private Ryan at the local country house hotel cinema. I had not seen it before and watched mesmerized throughout. It was not the only war story we heard over the weekend. The second one came on Saturday night at the wine bar, as these things do, from a local who moved into the converted chapel a few years ago. On his first night in residence he stopped in the wine bar where he was introduced to town elder Harold. Harold promptly recounted how a German plane was shot down over our town during World War II and the bodies of the pilots were laid out in the chapel until they could be buried some days later in the main churchyard. The new resident didn’t get much sleep on his first night thinking about his ghostly roommates.

Our new acquaintance also provided the best line of the evening when, after listening to husband and I bicker for some minutes, he enquired if we were “a Will and Grace thing.” This was followed by laughter, a whispered explanation in his ear, a beat, then “oh my god, they’re married.” Clearly this is a man who’s easily spooked.

Cotswolds

Divorce by Argentine Tango

Posted on May 2, 2009

Husband and I spent six hours last Saturday attempting to master the basics of Argentine tango at the Aldsworth Village Hall. This sounded like a good idea when first proposed some weeks before at the wine bar. Then again, that was the same night that husband announced he was gay with a large penis and very good at lovemaking. The event organizer did follow up with an email a week or so later which I forwarded on to husband asking, “do you really want to go to this?” He responded promptly, too promptly really, with a “sure.” I should have realized that the sheer volume of email in modern life had deadened husband to the implications of this innocent seeming email. In hindsight, my next move should have been to extract a solemn pledge not to hold me accountable for any consequences of our attempts to learn to tango on a precious Saturday, especially if the weather was good.

Much to my relief the Met Office predicted rain for the intended Saturday. We awoke to a beautiful day. I went outside to investigate, hoping the clouds would look ominous. They hung low like thin white rows of breakwater on an ocean of blue. There was nothing the least bit threatening about them.

“WHAT are we doing in a village hall all day when we could be outside?” husband bellowed accusingly on cue. I paused, considering my options, then told him I’d meet him in the car.

We arrived at the Aldsworth Village Hall five minutes late. Our instructors, Klaus and Lydia, were waiting along with five other unwitting couples. To start our teachers performed a demonstration of octopus-like complexity, giving me time to take in the splendor of their attire. Like all hobbies tango dancing has its own special wardrobe that only makes sense when everyone else is wearing something equally as ridiculous. Klaus was wearing gold hoop earrings that matched the gold stud buttons in his black shirt, pin striped trousers, and black and white spats. The slender, middle-aged Lydia wore a black mini dress with red wrap sweater, knee-length black lace tights, and black high heeled dancing shoes with red piping, a tarted up version of my teenage tap shoes. Against a backdrop of suede loafered and denim attired attendees, Klaus and Lydia stood out. I myself had made an effort, donning my fantasy of what Ginger Rogers may have worn to film rehearsals: a stretchy black turtleneck and pants with ballet flats. Despite my ambitions, the overall effect was less lithe and more Liza in recent years.

We started with some stretching, then a lesson in posture before moving on to the basic six. The basic six is a sort of box step of tango that would form the core of our moves for the rest of the day. We practiced separately from our partners, boys and girls split into groups on opposite sides of the room. This, I thought, was going okay.

I should have known we were in for hard work when Lydia changed her shoes before the second lesson. The black strappy heels were replaced with glittery sliver sandals with a low, stacked heel. There was something disarming about her new look, tango on top and grandma at a wedding on the bottom, the grandma effect heightened by orthopedic looking, flesh coloured peds enveloping the balls of her feet. The hard work bit was that we would now have to execute the basic six with our partner. Husband and I started bickering immediately. Without warning he decided to add in a beat between steps, and he took my allegiance to accuracy as a refusal to let him to lead. He was, he claimed, improvising in the true spirit of tango. My objection was not to being led. My objection was that he was doing it wrong.

The wine at lunch brought some temporary relief as well as, I thought, a certain verve to the new movement we were learning called ochos. But from here things spiralled. While I was perfecting my pivots, husband started to stew. Our miserable attempts at the basic six had reminded him of how little we have in common. Now ochos were in the mix, and he was convinced our marriage was a sham. In his words he was creative, emotional, expressive, sensual. I was rigid, black and white, stubborn, robotic. We were fundamentally incompatible, and the tango proved it. That the tango is loaded with gender stereotypes — like the move where the woman feels up the side of the man’s shin with her foot to assess if he has any money in his sock — didn’t help things. For one, I know husband doesn’t have any money in his sock. Most days, especially days when he knows I’ll be with him, he can’t even remember to carry his wallet. But somehow in husband’s head my less than enthusiastic mauling of his lower leg was yet another reminder of my refusal to play the womanly role. In tango as in life I was trying too hard to wear the pants.

By the end of the third lesson husband was refusing to dance with me despite gentle attempts at persuasion from a now startled looking Lydia. Thus we found ourselves reduced to taking turns with Klaus for the treachery of backward ochos and gaunchos. It was something to see husband entwine lower legs and execute a backwards flick kick with a German dressed as an extra in a gangster film, but at this point I risked death if I attempted to capture it on my camera phone. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Our tango-induced standoff lasted through the evening, refusing to yield even to our usual mutual delight in American Idol. But by our morning jog our imminent divorce seemed less imminent. Spring is here and it’s hard to stay mad in the face of countryside in bloom on a sunny day. We stopped to admire a pair of yellowhammers canoodling in a hedgerow and silently decided we must have something in common after all. For good measure, I even let him run ahead.

Cotswolds Walking

Walk for a Spring Day: Snowshill and Stanton

Posted on April 22, 2009

A reader of this blog could be forgiven for thinking my sole source of physical exertion in the Cotswolds is lifting a wine glass to my lips. But husband and I do make use of our bicycles or hiking boots most weekends, and so I thought I’d add the occasional entry covering a particularly good ramble or cycle route, starting with our figure of eight walk last Sunday from Snowshill to Stanton and back.

Distance: 8 miles (approximately)
Duration: If you are walking with your partner, allow half a day for this ramble. If your walking group consists of only women, you can slice off an hour thanks to your intuitive sense of and ability to ask for directions. If your walking group is all male, best not to make any plans for the rest of the day and do remember to bring a GPS enabled mobile phone.
Difficulty: Moderate with some steep sections, especially if you accidentally veer off the path

Snowshill is that rare thing in the Cotswolds, a village with a name that sounds as picturesque as it really is. Other Cotswolds villages are laden with less charming names. Upper and Lower Slaughter come to mind, as do Northleach, Eastleach, and Lechlade which together form a triumvirate evocative of leeches and lecherousness. And then there’s my favorite: Cold Slad. (I wonder how often the final “d” on the sign to Cold Slad has been spray painted into a “g” over the years, misleading countless men with a fetish for heartless sluts.)

1. We start where we intend to finish: the pub. After fortifying ourselves with a ploughman’s lunch at the Snowshill Arms, we headed left out of the pub and walked along the road past Snowshill Manor, now a National Trust property. I have not been inside yet but apparently the former owner was a compulsive shopper/collector and the Trust has preserved his hoarded assortment of bikes, clocks, costumes, toys, art, and other objects that struck his fancy as he left it. If you’ve started to fight with your partner over directions at this point in the walk, it may be best to cut your losses and just pay a visit to the Manor or the lavender farm further up the road.

2. Beyond the parking lot there is a stile and signpost for a public path on the left hand side of the road. Follow it through the sheep field and down into the valley. If it is spring, this is an excellent chance to coo about just how cute lambs are and just how thick and skittish they grow up to be. Cross the stream and follow the path up the other side of the valley until you reach a dirt road running parallel to the woods. From here you can look back across the valley and admire Snowshill and the Manor and, in the other direction, the top of Broadway Tower. Take a right along the dirt road, which will be the last time that day your partner and you agree on the route, and follow it along the woods until it starts to curve around to the left.

3. Here you will have some choices, the clearest of which would be to join the well delineated Cotswold Way just off to your right. You may find, however, that your partner would rather argue about whether or not it is necessary to cross a field of bulls in order to progress to Stanton, throwing his or her Ordnance Survey map to the ground and accusing you of being antagonistic in the process (not that I know anyone who has done this). Best just to smile calmly in the face of this sort of behaviour and wait for the tantrum to pass before starting to make slow but firm progress in the direction of the Cotswold Way (which yes, I know, is where you suggested you head all along). You’ll have a good stretch of tense silence along The Cotswolds Way, punctuated by the occasional outburst that causes other fellow ramblers to hang well back. This is ok as asking them for directions at this point would be perceived as further proof of your “antagonism.”

4. After a while you’ll reach a crossroads where, if you’re lucky, a pink nosed, fluffy lamb will have broken loose from the adjoining pasture. This will give your partner a chance to “rescue” it before it succeeds in strangling itself by headbutting the wire fencing in its futile attempts to get back to mama ewe. Your partner’s ensuing feelings of heroism will help disseminate any lingering resentment towards you for having a good sense of direction. Pointing out that any old fool could see where to go just by using Broadway Tower as a landmark is not advised at this juncture, as it would jeopardize your credibility when it came to influencing the decision to go right and continue on the Cotswold Way into Stanton.

5. This is a lovely leg of the journey, where near-tame, chocolate coloured cows and their calves swirl around you on the path. Careful though. In your state of bucolic bliss you may impulsively suggest a shortcut that takes you off the Cotswold Way, through some woods, and down a muddy, precipitous decline into Stanton. Don’t be alarmed when you end up by a house called Shenberrow, a name that happens to appear at a different place on the map, a place you are pretty sure you passed about ten minutes ago. The Ordnance Survey people throw these kind of red herrings in from time to time just to make sure you’re paying attention. You’ll soon know you’re in Stanton when you arrive at a little of triangle of a green with a ceremonial coach light hanging from a wooden post. The church is to the left, and the pub is to the right. Naturally, you should head right.

6. The Mount Inn does what it says on the tin and delivers panoramic views from its two patio areas. We had long been planning a visit as the landlords are transplants from an excellent inn, The Plough in Cold Aston, nearer to us. Sure enough, Pippa the so-friendly-and-enthusiastic-she’s-practically-American hostess, was there. It was evident from the familiar, cream-laden dishes spelled out in curlicue writing on the chalk board that her partner, the chef, was also there. We drank Diet Cokes on the shady back patio before heading up and out on the path just behind and to the left of the pub.

7. The route out is more efficient than the improvised route in, and within twenty minutes you’ll be back to the site of Operation Lamb Rescue. This will stir up good memories in your partner so that he or she is susceptible to your final route alteration (my, you’re brave) which takes you off the Cotswold Way via some National Trust signposted woods. Soon you’ll be in another sheep field, then head right on the road all the way back into Snowshill. The pub may yet to be reopened for evening service but check around back and the barmaid may just serve you a pint of SBA and a ginger beer to enjoy in the garden, as she did for us.

Cotswolds

Husbands Say the Darndest Things

Posted on April 14, 2009

A sure sign you are considered a Cotswold local is when you become the recipient of the index finger wave. This greeting, exchanged amongst neighbors giving way to one and other on the narrow country lanes, consists of a quick flick of an index finger whilst both hands remain otherwise attached to the steering wheel. It may or may not be accompanied by a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod or ascent of the eyebrows.

Friday night on our way to the cinema we crossed paths with M. the barman, with whom we are on firm index finger waving terms. To our surprise M. stopped the car, got out, and walked over to have a chat. He couldn’t pass up the gleeful opportunity to remind husband that the previous evening in the wine bar he had made the following announcement to no one in particular and at considerable volume:

“I am very gay, my penis is very large, and I am very good at lovemaking.”

What is remarkable about this statement is that I didn’t even notice it. I too was in the wine bar Thursday night, by husband’s side for the entire evening. My lapse cannot be accounted for by my own drunkenness, enforcing as I have a two (ok, three that night) glass maximum following my recent health scare. It’s just that ludicrous remarks like these are such an old staple of husband’s banter repertoire that they don’t even register with me anymore. They, like much husband says, are filtered away by the hyper efficient mechanism my brain has engineered after nearly eight years of marriage. Apparently, however, such remarks do register with other people who are less accustomed to his verbal quirks.

Husband’s “gayness” has long made me the envy of my women friends. It amounts to a bit of sartorial flair, an eye for interior design, and a willingness, nay enthusiasm, for seeing “girlie” movies at the theater. Mention Richard Curtis or Merchant Ivory and husband will not only be first one in line but also the first one to cry. In retrospect, husband’s outburst may have been in the context of discussing his latest man crush on a chap named “Boot” (I swear) who had been in the wine bar earlier on. Mrs. R., with whom we were discussing the concept of the heterosexual man crush, also recognized the syndrome in her ex-husband.

Whatever prompted the proclamation, it is hardly the kind of thing I would expect out of the mouth of a man stricken by self-consciousness around his beloved toffy friends who frequent the wine bar like it was another room in their house. This is, after all, a man who has threatened to divorce me if I mention he is from Liverpool, land of track suits and petty crime. He can technically claim to be from the neighboring and more genteel Lancashire, having been born in a hospital in Ormskirk, and he has taken great care to cultivate his wine bar reputation as a Lancashire lad. I have long enjoyed chiding him for this fib, urging him to be true to where he’s from and who he is. I suppose I should be pleased; it seems he’s finally taken my advice.

Cotswolds

Why I Love My Town

Posted on April 8, 2009

…because it’s the kind of place where if, like last night, you happen to be eating dinner out at the local inn and at 9pm realise you have no milk at home for coffee in the morning and the shop is shut and nothing will be open before you have to leave for work tomorrow, the waitress brings you a little ceramic jug of milk sealed with cling film and tell you to just bring the jug back whenever you have time because she’s not bothered and she doesn’t charge you anything for it.

The End

Cotswolds

Marmite Whirls and Farm Shops

Posted on April 3, 2009

Just when I think there is nothing new under the sun I get a surprise. The Cotswolds are like that. Any day now I am sure I will wake up and find the barren trees and hedges lining the lanes are overgrown with greenery and cottony May blossom. But already this week I have made two new discoveries.

The first was that I like Marmite. Or at least I found a foodstuff that contains Marmite that I like. The first time I tried Marmite was years ago, at breakfast with some Australian friends in Singapore where I was encouraged to spread it on my toast. This was followed promptly by an extended period of silent pleading with my gag reflex not to vomit on the dining table of these very nice people whose house I enjoyed staying at very much. In retrospect this might have been a bit of a harsh way to introduce me to Marmite, like giving someone their first taste of gin in a straight up martini rather than nestled in the loving arms of some Indian tonic with a slice of lime. This time the Marmite delivery was a bit more gin and tonic, spread as it was onto the buttery sides of some puff pastry and rolled up into a warm, savory pinwheel. For the first three or so I popped in my mouth I assumed I was eating some kind of cheese flavoured snack. A more observant person may have noted that the presumed cheese product was brown, but I had to be told I was eating a “Marmite whirl.” Imagine my surprise. First The Archers, now Marmite. I’ll be saying “blimey” in no time.

My second discovery of the week was the Abbey Home Farm Shop. I must have driven by it a million times, but Wednesday, stir-crazy from being indoors recuperating for the past week and a half (other than my Marmite eating Sunday lunch outing), I decided to stop in. The shop and café are at the end of a long narrow drive and it looked like someone dropped it whole from Topanga Canyon into the middle of a farm in the Cotswolds, from the Fair Trade coffee to the Indian print table cloths to the middle-aged, smiley waitress in pig tails and overalls. There is even a menu featuring multiple vegetarian dishes, which is quite a radical concept for this part of the world. In my delicate state I found it all very comforting and ordered up a banana milkshake with a broccoli and leek bake that I ate sitting outside on the wrap-around patio overlooking one of the farm’s fields. I was so taken I’ve booked us in for Easter Sunday lunch, for which I am afraid I will have to forsake the vegetarian options for the lamb roast they will be serving straight from their farm.

Cotswolds

Easter Comes Early

Posted on March 12, 2009

I was sure Saturday evening’s expedition to Toffdom’s Rural Headquarters, the Hunt Ball, was going to spoon feed me material for my next blog post. Surely it would be chock-a-block with eccentrics and their accompanying outlandish behavior, which I’ve grown to know and love in my year in the Cotswolds. I was wrong. The most outrageous thing I witnessed all night was a drunken nineteen year old who sucked face with her paramour on the dance floor for three consecutive songs. As husband is fond of saying, youth are so boring. We were home in bed by 1:30AM.

Well rested and hangover free, we made it to church the next morning for the first time this year. We were greeted by the usual suspects, six elderly ladies and one fifty-something man who surely attends in part out of civic duty to the golden girls of his village. The upside of a measly church population is everyone gets a job. Jean says Mattins, the lady who drives her Nissan Micra like a bat out of hell for the one block between her cottage and the church reads the Old Testament verse, the lady with the Danish accent the New Testament, the gent takes the offering and rings the bells, and Dorothy, in her orange pea coat, recites the Collect. This last one is my favourite. Dorothy’s prayer reads like an uber letter to Santa Claus, her requests ranging from a pony (“good health for the Queen”) to a trip to the moon (“peace on earth in our time, Lord”). I say this not to poke fun at her earnest and child-like approach, but rather in humble admiration of a person who has managed to retain these qualities after eighty years.

I on the other hand am totally godless. That’s the only way I can explain why Jean’s Lenten sermon made me think of the saga of our local Chinese takeaway, Dynasty. Jean was preaching about when Jesus had to prepare the disciples for the fact he was going to die. They responded with the textbook five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — not unlike my fellow villagers and I when faced with the recent shuttering of Dynasty. But then, last Thursday night, we had a bit of an early Easter miracle here in the Cotswolds. Husband, playing the unlikely herald, burst through the backdoor of the cottage asking if I wanted to hear some “fantastic news.” He was so jubilant I was sure that Inspector Closseau, his workplace nemesis, had been fired. But no, he brought good tidings that that the Dynasty woks are firing once again like a phoenix risen from the ashes. Just like that, Kung Pao Chicken Friday nights are back! I suspect Jean would fail to appreciate my loose interpretation of Easter theology, but it is nearly spring and I’ll take my themes of rebirth and renewal where I can find them.

Cotswolds

High Society

Posted on March 7, 2009

I woke up humming tunes from High Society, which husband and I went to see last night at the cinema in our local country house hotel. I’ve decided it edges out Love Actually as the best rom com ever, what with Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Grace Kelly (in the best Grecian toga bathingsuit cover up EVER), not to mention the totally awesome mid-century patio furniture that features in most scenes except the ones in the library where a bar magically appears when you tug on a tome of Darwin. The movie is unfettered by political correctness allowing Grace Kelly’s character, Tracy Lord, to get plastered the night before her doomed wedding and snog both her ex-husband, played by Bing, and the paparazzi man, played by Frank. (As a trivia bonus I now also suspect I know where the porn star, Traci Lords, took inspiration for her name.)

Tonite is the Cotswold Hunt Ball and I fully expect, nay demand, all kinds of equally unpolitically correct and fabulous behaviour to be on display. I’ve procured a long evening dress with relative ease following my panic last weekend, thanks to a sale at Ghost. Undergarments have been trickier. Despite bragging about my Trinny and Susannah Miracle Pants in my last post, the truth is I bought an imitation “slimming pant” that was half the price. I tried on my dress yesterday and found to my horror that said girdle, while very effective at squashing in the right places, created just the merest hint of, gasp, back cleavage. As if the indignity of needing to purchase a “slimming pant” wasn’t enough. I was never very good at physics but I vaguely remember something about mass displacement—it’s got to go somewhere—so I guess the formation of a small ass on my upper back stands to reason. Looks like today’s agenda will feature a mad dash to the lingerie department at House of Fraser. That elegant pencil Grace Kelly never dealt with the challenges of back cleavage, but then again, she probably never went to the Hunt Ball either.

Cotswolds

Spring Is in the Air

Posted on March 1, 2009

Saturday the weather was mild enough to coax us on to our bikes for our inaugural ride of 2009. Snow drops are blooming and the daffodils are threatening to burst forth by next weekend. The hunt was out which would have been nice if we had seen it, but our timing was off and so it just meant lots more horse shit and cars on the road toting the binocular and camera slinging masses.

It’s a good thing we made the effort because unbeknownst to us it was Chris’s last day at the post office in G.P., which was our first stop on the bike ride. Chris runs a little cafe in the corner of the shop, and Saturday morning coffee and a paper there are a long standing Cotswold tradition for us. It was on her brown leather couch that looks out across the village green where, leafing through The Guardian, I found husband his current job, a fact I don’t mention given his disgruntled state over the continuing presence of Inspector Clouseau. Chris tried to soften the blow of her decision to leave — she said it had been on the cards ever since the post office hours were cut last year — with promises of bacon sandwiches from the new owner, but we were crushed. At least we got to say goodbye. And we’re bound to see her one Saturday enjoying a bacon sandwich since she still lives in the village.

At the end of our bike ride we stopped into the wine bar for a coffee where M. the barman enquired if we’d like to attend his hunt’s auction that evening, a last minute replacement for a couple who’d fallen ill. We didn’t know until we arrived at the town hall later that evening that entrepreneurial E. the bird plucker was his considerably younger date. I couldn’t help thinking this was bound to end in tears, but I was too distracted by the assembled company to let my judgements get the best of me. This included an Austrian count who is tall and pointy, as an Austrian count should be, and seemed to have donated every other lot in the auction. There was also a ginger haired man of indeterminate age who specialised in horse breeding data. He was like a Wall Street analyst of the horsey set, equines instead of equities.

When it came time to bid, husband came close on a lot for a day’s gate shutting, which I assume is a useful service when you ride horses across the vast plot of land that makes up your family’s estate and you don’t want to get off your horse continually to close gates. The lot didn’t specify where said gate shutting was to take place, and husband and M. thought it would be hilarious to have the donating family come up to London and spend the day closing front gates up and down our road. Husband bailed at £200 which left him with precisely that amount to purchase a life coaching session, exactly the kind of namby pamby, L.A. thing to ruin one’s reputation at an event like this, and the taint by association heaped on our host was exactly what husband was going for. It was very poor value indeed considering a week at a villa that sleeps fifteen in the Dordogne went for under a grand.

The true value of the evening came from E., who provided the information heretofore unknown to me that the hunt ball next Saturday was a floor length dress required kind of event. This sent me into a mad rush on Sunday during which I momentarily considered having my mother FedEx me an old bridesmaid dress, the only long dress I own, never mind the chiffon and rhinestone scattered flutter sleeves. Presented with this plan my mother, who just happened to be bruised and ace bandaged from her most recent bout of plastic surgery (neck and eyes touch up to her now nearing a decade old face lift), shrieked that said dress “looks like a sack” on me. Unlike my mother the only thing that will be giving me any kind of lift with my evening gown are my Trinny and Susannah Miracle Pants, the British equivalent of Spanx.

The last time I faced this kind of formal wear emergency imposed by the regulations of British society was two years ago when, two days shy of Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot, I happened to hear mention of the fact that a lady’s hat had to cover her entire head to enter the Royal Enclosure. The reasonably priced number I had settled on weeks ago, somewhere between a “fascinator” and a beret in scalp coverage, was on the cusp of unacceptable. On a frenzied death march stopping in every milliner within a mile radius of Oxford Street I parted ways with a considerable sum of money for what can only be described as a hot pink, highly feathered pimp hat. May my evening gown for the hunt ball be as fabulous.

Cotswolds

R.I.P.: The Day the Chinese Food Died

Posted on February 17, 2009

It was a Sunday night in early January when I called Dynasty Cantonese Cuisine, the Chinese takeaway housed in a little freestanding stone building in our market square. The phone rang and rang. No answer. They must be too busy to pick up. I persuaded husband to bundle up and accompany me on the block long walk to place our order in person. This is when we first noticed the sign:

We are closed until further notice. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
–the Management

How disappointing. There was no food — well no food we wanted to eat — in the fridge, which led to the usual range of accusations from husband about my deficiencies as a wife, including my lack of ambition in the domestic art of grocery shopping. We retreated into the comforts of a new season of American Idol and cheese toast, my trusty standby dinner.

Another week passed and the sign remained. Theories abounded. “They’re just on holiday. They went away last year this time for a few weeks. They’ll be back.” Or, “Probably just some trouble with Immigration. They’ll be back.” Every theory ended with “They’ll be back.” I was skeptical. If the owners were going on vacation why not just say so? Vacations end on a date, not “until further notice.” The sign was ominous.

January came to a close and the Chinese failed to open. Panic started to spread in the village. People who had been known to snobbishly refer to Dynasty as “Die Nasty” looked thin and stricken. Toff and townie alike mourned the loss of barbequed spare ribs and chips on demand (French fries being a legitimate rice substitute in England).

There was a brief period last year when I swore off the Chinese. I found that a bottle of Gamay finished off with a 10PM meal of prawn toast, veggie chow mein, and Kung Pao chicken invariably resulted in me waking with a start at 2am, eyes wide and heart pounding, fuelled by the sugar and sodium bomb my body was attempting to digest. But by and large the Chinese holds a special place in my heart. It’s been with us since the beginning of our Cotswold adventure when we used to stop off in the village on Friday nights en route to our rented cottage in G.P. We’d natter over a glass in the wine bar with R. the barman while waiting for our takeaway feast to be readied. And it’s rescued us on occasion over the past year when guests have come to visit and somehow the dinner reservation was missed because another bottle of Prosecco at the wine bar seemed like a good idea. It’s even been the epicentre of village intrigue and scandal, including the tale of the local aristocrat who attempted to get a meal gratis and a rumored drug bust.

The charm of Dynasty was its anti-charm. It was a brusque, efficient, cash-only kind of place manned by a steely faced, thirty-something, presumably married Malaysian couple. The wife, a slight woman forever in an oversized t-shirt and baseball cap, ran front of house from behind a tall counter. Decoration was sparse, consisting of some peeling wall paper dotted with gold Chinese characters, an oversized calendar, and a shelf displaying soda cans on offer. Was there also a large waving ceramic cat on the counter or am I imagining that? Her husband fired the food in the kitchen behind, which was separated by a doorway that was hung with a plastic shower curtain liner cut in half. That day’s Sun newspaper was always on the front counter to provide entertainment while waiting for your food, which was just as well since conversation with the woman was hard work. Once, feeling chatty after a few glasses of wine, I thought I’d managed to forge a bond by coaxing out of her that she was from Kuala Lumpur, a city where I had also briefly lived years ago. After that I was convinced she had started to give me free prawn crackers until I realized everyone who spent £15 or more got them.

Now February is drawing to a close, the ominous sign remains affixed to the window, and the door locked. Around the village the mourning process is moving from denial to acceptance. Goodbye Dynasty. You fed us well. You will be missed.