“How big are your marrows, how long are your runner beans?” This was the question a BBC Radio 4 announcer asked me on the Monday morning commute back to London from the Cotswolds. It’s been a bumper year for large veg growers, good news sandwiched between war in Georgia and certain recession by year end.
The bumper year was on display Saturday at the annual Boylestone Village Show, the fourth consecutive one I’ve attended. The church committee has now taken to calling it the International Boylestone Show thanks to my qualifying presence (nevermind I live in England, my American accent counts) and another visitor hailing from Halifax this year. The bounty though was strictly local, with homemade elderberry and hawthorn wines, beetroot and cherry chutney, lemon curd, tomatoes, leeks with more white bit than 5 supermarket types combined, and enormous baby’s head sized white onions. My proudest loot from the auction was a £4 mixed vegetable box with petite radishes, spuds, courgettes, fresh kidney beans in their wine coloured pods and baby carrots. I also made a successful bid on a homemade bakewell tart.
But like the headlines on Radio 4, our weekend came with bad news. The daughter-in-law of our hosts, B. and R., had been in the hospital all week back in L.A. with as yet undiagnosed abdominal pain. Her mother died young of cancer and the C word hung thick in the air. This on top of the fact that we are approaching the four year anniversary of her husband’s death—our hosts’ son and husband’s best friend—at age 39 on the eve of the last presidential election. News of her illness struck fear in us all for her and her two teenage children, and the timing coinciding with Obama’s running mate announcement stirred unpleasant memories.
Still B. and R. are of the “get on with it” generation of Brits and never would’ve dreamed of telling us not to come up for the show, where the flowers are always the last thing to be auctioned. R., her friend, and I bought great bunches of dahlias and gladioli. For about £1 between us we covered with brilliant colour the place in the garden where she keeps a flame burning for her son.
