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Cotswolds

Cotswolds

Sunday Lunch

Posted on February 2, 2009

Yesterday we participated in that quintessential English institution, Sunday lunch. This one was a belated birthday celebration for M., our resident raconteur, barman, writer, painter, and gallery owner. It was hosted by his ex-wife and, like all good parties, took place largely around the table in her farmhouse kitchen. After pheasant pie and potatoes dauphinoise but before almond cake and coffee, snowflakes started dancing outside the kitchen window which was already framing a picture perfect, winter white landscape. I was pretty sure Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson were about to walk through the door and join us for the cheese course.

An entire cast of Richard Curtis characters wouldn’t have been more interesting than the assembled company. In addition to the charms of M. and his lovely ex-, we were joined by a another couple. The husband is a journalist whose work I know from my favourite paper, The Weekend FT. This fact alone would have been enough to sustain me for the entire afternoon, but he turned out to be only too happy to further oblige my stereotype of an idiosyncratic former Fleet Street journalist. He looked like Paul Bunyan in a tan leather, safari style waistcoat, and, while the rest of the table drank Rioja, he steadily drained the bottle of The Famous Grouse and a small pitcher of water that had been set out at his place. (Unaware this arrangement was intended solely for his consumption and being American and in need of hydration — British people consume an alarmingly small quantity of water — I helped out with the pitcher of water. Husband only pointed out my faux pas after the lunch.) Between courses he smoked hand rolled cigarettes and told me stories about his early years in Los Angeles with his old friend, Robin Leach, and New York as a correspondent for The Times.

Neither did his wife disappoint. She was dressed in what I call Toff “I don’t give a shit” – a ripped hot pink cashmere v-neck, jeans, and leopard print loafers. I think it was my compliment of her ring (Fabergé) that sparked the conversation in which I learned her father had been a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who, while stationed in the A.P.’s Moscow bureau during the Stalin era, eloped with her mother, a ballerina in The Bolshoi. Have you ever wondered who would play you in the movie of your life? Well, Clark Gable played her father in the film version of her parents’ romance.

I ended up feeling a little sorry for her. How on earth are you ever supposed to live up to parents like that? It’s enough to make me grateful for my own parents’ mediocrity. Just last week on a phone call with my dad I had to explain to him what Cava was. He seemed downright fascinated to learn about this economically priced, Spanish sparkling wine. “How do you know about things like that?” he asked, his voice filled with genuine wonder.

England

Burns Night

Posted on January 26, 2009

Saturday we celebrated Burns Night, this year being the 250th anniversary of the Scottish poet’s birth. It’s the first time I’ve done so during my tenure in the UK, so I consider it another rite of passage in my journey to becoming a British citizen, which is now scheduled for the 22nd of February. I am, as they say, chuffed to bits to be a part of a country that turns out in full bagpipe and family tartan regalia to celebrate a poet each year. Husband points out that the British will use any excuse for a piss up. Still I think it’s a nice idea. Perhaps the US could come up with it’s own annual drunken celebration of a poet—Bukowski day seems fitting.

We attended our Burns Night supper accompanied by R. and R., the only gays in the village. We haven’t been out with them since last spring and I was worried something horrible had happened like they had split up or been driven out of the Cotswolds by right wing locals brandishing torches made out of the Telegraph. Thankfully this was not the case and they were available to join us at the pub in the next village over. The choice of pub was a tactical decision based on the availability of a “vegetarian” haggis option, a requirement for husband.

Haggis, sheep stomach lining stuffed with bits of offal, is a central feature of Burns Night. The meal starts with the recitation of a poem, during which the slick, frisbee sized disc of haggis—easily mistaken for a grey jello mold—is sliced open with great pomp and circumstance. There are real bagpipes if you’re lucky, we had a cd of—groan now—The Red Hot Chili Pipers. Unlike cowardly husband, the gays and I went for the real thing, which arrived following our cockaleekie (chicken and leek) soup and was accompanied by neeps and tatties (parsnips and mashed potatoes). In case you’re wondering, it was worthy of school cafeteria mystery meat status yet delicious. It tasted like a spicy veggie burger, and everyone in the immediate vicinity who had eaten haggis before claimed it was the best they’d ever had, with a surprisingly pleasant firmness to it. It disturbed me that we had lapsed into discussing our meal in the language of bowel movements, but a wee dram helped distract me.
In case you want to try your own haggis at home, here’s a link to the proper poetic accompaniment. Clue to translating the Scottish dialect: slice in stanza three. I am far from being an expert in Scottish dialect, i.e., I needed the subtitles in Trainspotting and I had to concentrate really hard while reading Marabou Stork Nightmares, but this is as vivid a cue as one is ever likely to get:

Trenching your gushing entrails bright
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Cotswolds

Fat Boys

Posted on December 14, 2008

Friday was the Fat Boys lunch, an event husband had been invited to by M. and for which I had been enlisted as a chauffeur. Husband was titillated by his inclusion and spent the morning weighing his clothing options aloud like a teenage girl anguishing over her prom dress. Coral coloured cashmere sweater vest or tweed blazer? Was his sheepskin coat too “urban”?

The arrangement was to meet at the wine bar at noon. At 12:30PM husband was just wrapping up a call so I was dispatched to the wine bar on my own to stall for him. I used the time to enquire about the etymology of the lunch’s name since the attendees, while not in danger of anorexia, were neither overtly fat nor boys. A., a local writer who resembled Paul Bunyan in his leather waistcoat, attempted to explain as he poured me half a glass of champagne (I was the driver after all). The account was delivered in an authoritative and confident voice that tricked me into believing it was a coherent response, a common characteristic of the posh spoken. There was something about Oxford and self-employment and a loose association with the arts, but it took some prodding before I was finally able to work out that the most important qualification was that you didn’t have to go back to the office afterward. As A. commented in a moment of unusual lucidity, “I’ve always thought if you don’t have it done by Friday lunchtime, you’re unlikely to get it done by the end of the day anyway.”

Overall the explanation had a bit of machismo, chest beating pride on behalf of the assembled guests, who included a magazine editor, the publisher of a local newspaper, writers, and a former military man turned vintner. Husband in fact is in the employ of someone else who might reasonably expect to be able to reach him on Friday afternoon, but seemed to qualify on the basis of his employer’s association with the the-uh-tah and possibly because I drive a station wagon which M. suspected he could persuade me to chauffeur. But all these men shared at least the illusion of being in charge of their own destiny for this particular afternoon, and they were going to spend it drinking copious amounts.

Husband materialised (having chosen coral cashmere) and, after a case of wine was loaded into the trunk of the car, we were off. The brief journey to the pub was no cause for a respite in gossip. A story about how the ex-wife of one of the Fat Boys had a lover in common with Princess Di (presumably the reason she is now an ex) was my reward before depositing my charges at the door of the pub.

The call to retrieve them came five hours later. When I arrived they were on whiskey and cognac and there was no sign of the case of wine. One suede loafered man was wondering around with a half empty bottle of port, and the ex-army officer turned winemaker was telling me how he was shocked to learn over lunch that I stripped my way through college to pay the bills. After an aborted attempt to find someone from Suffolk presumed to still be in the pub, I managed to herd them into my car and back to the wine bar where the man from Suffolk had already made his way.

The scene that followed was much as you might expect after a dozen men have spent five hours drinking champagne, beer, red wine, port and whiskey. M. kept falling into a coat rack. His ex-wife did not look amused, and was not her same warm, friendly self towards me. I imagined she was rather horrified husband seemed to have fallen in with this crew and assumed our marriage was headed for the same eventual destiny as her own. Husband mistook a request for his last name from a fellow fat boy attendee as some kind of insult, then insisted his response was meant to be “a joke.” The man from Suffolk kept telling me his life was a mess — just back after ten years in Japan, freshly divorced and with two kids — all of which seemed incongruent since he reminded me of the gay, lecherous Uncle Monty from Withnail and I from the moment I first saw him.

It seemed best to dissociate myself from the fat boys, so I mingled. The most amusing of my new acquaintances was a portly man of about sixty who was a good six inches shorter than me with thick, black-rimmed glasses on a cord, horrible teeth, and a very posh accent. When I asked him what he did he said, “My dear, I own Farmington,” which is the village up the hill from us. Twice he told me I had a very red nose, which is true, and twice that he’d just as soon comment on my body as my nose but he couldn’t see it underneath my coat. Despite his behaviour which I suppose could be construed as piggish, I found him entertaining and was half tempted to drop the coat and strike a pose. All the better that I didn’t seeing that his wife was losing her patience at his refusal to leave the wine bar and go to dinner. His defense was that he wasn’t leaving with a bloody half bottle of wine left. She barked orders at him like he was a naughty dog, which I suspect was deserved, and finally he made his exit. Husband had apparently had his fill of being a man in charge of his own destiny and offered no resistance when I told him it was time to go, using the age old lure of sausage, chips and curry from the Chinese takeaway across the square.

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

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

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.