g
Browsing Tag

Cotswolds

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

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…

Cotswolds

Doppelgänger

Posted on October 12, 2008

Tonight we met our doppelgänger, exiles from London who’ve been living here almost a year. I don’t know how we’ve missed them given the size of our Cotswold town. They’re a couple that are roughly our age, no kids, professionals, and, notably, full-timers despite the need to commute into London regularly.

Right now I am in need of encouragement about trying out rural life full-time, and I welcome the living, breathing proof that residence in the Cotswolds can be achieved without quitting one’s job and becoming a sheep farmer. It’s also a bit of a relief to talk to someone and not feel like I am on an anthropological expedition where conversation is the equivalent of picking up a stick and poking around. We speak the same language, notably lacking in references to shooting, hunting, stalking, tweed, lords or ladies of any kind.

Random

The Good Life

Posted on October 11, 2008

The proverbial home grown, organically reared carrot is dangling in front of me. This week I got a job offer that’s a “commutable” distance from our Cotswold town. Despite all my big talk (and some action) about opening a wedding planning business, it’s not that kind of job. It’s a proper, grown-up, corporate job that materialised on the back of some looking around I started many months ago when my current company was going through lay-offs.

All my talk about a life in the country is about to be tested. And fast.

So like any big decision I am making a list of pros and cons. Here’s what I have so far:

Pros:

  • I got a job offer in the midst of one of the largest global economic meltdowns in history. I say this not to gloat but to remind myself not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
  • I could live in the Cotswolds full-time.
  • The music industry (my current job) is dying and still has no strategy. Potential new company has strategy. They even talked a lot about it during my interviews. Hurrah! How very novel.
  • Potential new boss seems like the kind of guy I could get along with.

Cons:

  • Husband and I would live apart two nights per week. Or is this a pro? Still trying to work this one out. Husband is so obsessed with work right now that most nights in London are spent zoned out in front of the TV when he finally does arrive home sometime after 8PM. Is this any different than being apart?
  • Gas costs – would have to drive to new job – something about a petrol card in contract – must investigate. Oh yes and must get driver’s license!
  • Commute. Have never had a commute, even when I lived in L.A. Am trying to think about bright side. Could download KCRW podcasts for the ride and pretend like am now a Southern California commuter.
  • Cotswold house is a postage stamp intended for weekending. Then again London flat is a postage stamp. Need somewhere to hang all my clothes in the Cotswolds. Damn England and it’s lack of built-in closets.

Four all for now.

Uncategorized

Fall Hots Up

Posted on October 4, 2008

The Cotswolds are in the first throes of autumn. Red and gold are edging in on a landscape flush with apples and blackberries. The air is crisp and log fire scented. Friday we lit our stove for the first time using the dregs from last season’s wood pile. The warmth lulled husband into abandoning plans to attend the charity barn striptease in favor of another mistress: the debut of Little Britain in America, the new HBO series.

Despite this false start, the autumn social calendar is filling up. It kicks off this afternoon with a harvest church service and tea in G.P. We’ll be back there later in the month for a Friday night bingo extravaganza. Next week our local inn re-opens after a scandalous closure several weeks back that saw the tenants abandoning the place at 4am. It’s been taken over by a chef with a well regarded pub in the “big city” of Cheltenham, so expectations are high. Later in October the manager from the wine bar’s wholesale business is hosting a wine tasting in the village hall, and the hotel further down the road restarts their Sunday night old movie series in their pink sofa-ed private cinema. And the butcher has promised to source a Thanksgiving turkey for me.

Even London holds some promise. Husband’s new job is starting to pay dividends in the form of theater tickets. But the jury’s still out on whether or not the West End will hold up against bingo.

Cotswolds Cycling

Post Mistress Envy

Posted on September 15, 2008

Nothing has come of the talk of an Indian Summer, but it was dry on Saturday so husband and I set off on a favorite bike route. Like many of our “healthy” activities, this involves several stops for refreshments, the first of which is a pot of coffee at the post office in the village of G.P. The post office closures that caused outrage up and down Britain when announced in the spring have finally caught up with postmistress Chris. Her service has been scaled back to twice a week and she is trying to compensate with an increased emphasis on the shop. She’s even become an agent of a rural dry cleaner.

While we were drinking our coffee an older local lady came in and introduced her also mature friend to Chris. This friend had become something of a local hero for putting up a fight that saved her own village post office. Tall and stick-straight, she had an unruly yet regal shock of white hair. She was dressed in sensible country attire of the corduroy and v-neck jumper variety that’s not particularly age or gender specific. She was also quite hard of hearing and greeted congratulations from Chris with a harsh “what?” as if it was Chris at fault for not speaking up. I could imagine why local officials backed down from her. I too wanted to congratulate her, having been enamoured with the concept of the post mistress ever since I watched the BBC production of Lark Rise to Candleford over the winter. It follows 19th century life in two rural villages in nearby Oxfordshire with a feisty postmistress, Dorcas, as protagonist. It’s a British version of Little House on the Prairie and I can’t wait for the second series.

After G.P., it’s a short but hilly ride to the next village over, which happens to have a good pub. There I rediscovered the culinary delight that is a pickled egg nestled in a bed of ready salted crisps as we surfed the weekend papers. This combination of vinegar and salt / soft and crisp achieves the same balance of flavour as the breakfast food that previously inspired me to poetic ends in this blog: fried bread and marmalade (which I proudly compared, in verse, to fruit compote and foie gras terrine).

One more steep hill and across a ridge before we ate our packed lunch of coronation chicken sandwiches in the tourist village of Lower Slaughter. There I also hit Christmas gift gold. Yes, I know it’s only September but one has to take advantage of these things when one comes across them. So as not to completely give the surprise away I will just say it involves naked British farmers and a charitable cause.

The last leg is the hardest. First it’s down through Bourton-on-the-Water, which has excellent public toilets but other than that is notable only for more teeming hordes of tourists. Then it’s up for a long time. There’s a nice bench on the ridge to catch your breath before the hills start to roll again. The Cotswolds Ice Cream Company (see Saturday’s blog) is conveniently placed at the end of the route for motivation.