Life in town is eased by local heroes… Like Mark, this Kettering butcher.
That’s not Mark. Here he is (same pinny}:
He doesn’t display a mission statement, which is a relief, but if he did it would be about nourishing and innovating and educating — all of which he does and more, quietly in Hawthorn Road.
He’s corrected my pork crackling so that it crunches without risking our teeth. He’s taught me the secret of slow cooked beef ribs that melt in the mouth — add dental health to his mission! He saves the tails of fillet steak for our pensioner’s Beef Stroganoff! He has genuine Brixworth pate, smokes his own chicken breasts and has the best parmigiano reggiano in the eastern counties.
He provides employment and opportunity for a whole gang of skilled and experienced ladies to exercise their alchemy. To create pies and quiches and magical scotch eggs, cooked, ready (still warm, crisp on outside and moist and delicious on the inside) to collect on my way home from swimming.
There’s my reflection, drooling, clutching my rucksack of precious traditional Cumberland Scotch Eggs!
Literary Note:
Mark also, like any good butcher, swaps books and shares recipes and novels. Good taste across many arts. I’ve been reading Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels about crime and food, humble but ethereal, in Sicily — which brings me back to the just-cooked Scotch Egg! Italians don’t have a monopoly on ambrosia.
It’s the young ones that breakdown. The heirlooms, like my mother’s first and only microwave oven, circa 1975, still plods on in my kitchen, rotating the porridge, making stranger and stranger noises — four times the size of a modern one and ten times the weight!
The newer, double-hob-cooker went on working but the doors fell off.
Progress: Birmingham skyline
Every time something needs replacing it gets more and more complicated — that’s progress! The hole is the wrong size, it needs replacement nozzles for bottled gas and they’ll only send them to a certified gas fitter, so we wait and Granny’s microwave holds the fort until new nozzles cross the sea and the certified young men appear (the old man couldn’t fix the doors any more). Young men look strong but are prohibited from carrying away the old cooker so, huffily, I start to unscrew everything I can and I take away it’s drawers, not to humiliate it but to reduce the weight and, with the use of a sack barrow, Bill (joining in reluctantly because he knows I’m being manipulative) helps me struggle to shove, slide and lever the skeleton cooker towards the french windows and the back of our old truck, which still works. We grunt a lot and I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand and the young men say,”Oh bugger it, we’ll lift it into the back of the truck for you.”
We drive it to the last remaining scrap yard in rural Wales which is un-reformed, un-improved, unapologetic and not in public ownership or subject to regulation or an appointment system. We back up to the scrap metal pile, open the back of the truck and pull the meter-wide stove to the edge. We heave, we jump clear and it crashes to the ground. The hydraulic grab working further up the hill doesn’t seem to notice but the old horse in the tumble-down stable looks over with an acknowledging nod and a snort as if to say,”There was a time I’d have collected that.”
The local purveyor of cookers is an honest man, “I only sell this model to people I don’t like!”
Tough! It’s the only one that fits!
With it’s lovely new nozzles correctly fitted it cooks much better than the posh one ever did with the wrong nozzles adjusted by an uncertified person.
There will be a time when we won’t be able to do this anymore — one way or another.
We were recently in Cornwall and my daughters toaster burst into flames — it was very dramatic and my fault — I had not prepared her for adult life, never shown her the little drawer that you pull out to reveal the 20 years of crumbs accumulating since she left home. It was unplugged and carried like a child having a paddy, into the garden to burn out and cool off.
Later that day it was repatriated — it’s little drawer was revealed, emptied and it was plugged in and worked perfectly well for the rest of our stay — it probably had belonged to her Granny.
On Boxing Day Bill’s fridge-freezer conked out, perhaps due to the weight of left-overs eager to go off. Or perhaps, more likely, because on Christmas Eve, persuaded of the need for a little more space for bottles, he had introduces a slimmer, younger model into the kitchen to help over Christmas.
As the puddle on the floor extends, I am full of trepidation.
As Russia attacks Poland and Israel bombs Qatar, Bill goes to clean his teeth and shouts “there’s no water!”
“****!” says the householder, “the well must be dry!” Our well has never dried up but, I think to myself as I struggle into my waterproofs, it might have dropped below the outflow pipe.
“It is pouring with rain — it’s rained heavily all night.” says the man brandishing a dry toothbrush. “Surely it must be filling up fast.
“Airlock!” I shout, over my shoulder. Bill is busy filling buckets from the rainwater butts to flush the loos.
As I stride up the hill I think how low the reservoir was when we passed it yesterday. Here’s the track to our well, we cleared it in June but things grow rapidly here. In June, despite weeks of drought, the water was within 9 inches of the top.
Now I’m not even confident that I can find it — it has gone missing before. I flail my way through the bracken and brambles and here it is… and I have remembered to bring a screw driver to open the cover.
The level is a good 7 feet, 2 meters, down, but the outflow pipe is submerged, can you see it at the bottom of the loop of pipe? The rain is now torrential, I slide back down the steep slope to fetch the kit to clear the area so that I can find the pipe we put in to wash out the dastardly air that has been sucked into the pipe to break the siphon.
Some hours later… Soaked again
A couple of hours of hacking and chopping and the stop-cock and the priming pipe are revealed and their relationship to the well which I photograph to help find them next time. In fact, this whole narrative is about recording events for our successor or, to be truthful, as an aide memoir for ourselves. The stop-cock is down a dark deep hole, longer than my arm, I decide not to mess with it, even if that means all the water goes straight back into the well.
Back to the house for dry clothes and some toast and coffee. “The next phase should be easier as nowadays we can communicate using the mobile phones.” I say. Bill points out that we don’t actually have to open and shut taps to preserve water as we try to fill the half mile of butyl pipe between the well and the house, “it will fill the lavatory cisterns then stop.”
“Oh, I suppose it will.” I say, not convinced, “Still, I’ll take the phone anyway.
Now all that is required is a bucket on a long rope, a funnel and a shepherd’s crook to push the bucket under the water while not falling head first into the orange abyss. I switch on the phone to contact the controller in the house. Rain spots the screen, I wipe it, it goes off — I do this several times before realising that the battery is flat and that my pockets are filling up with water. I tie up the phone in a rubber glove.
Faced with another wet hike back to the house I decide to give it a try anyway. Buckets of water are hauled up, like pussy in the well, and poured into the funnel balanced in the open blue pipe without allowing further ingress of air, this involves nifty thumb work. After 3 buckets full, the funnel stops emptying and the pipe appears to be primed, I screw the cap on, without crossing the thread, difficult with my fingers crossed, and make haste, carefully, to the house, it is important not to break a hip while doing these things.
“The pipes have been gurgling,” says Bill.
Holding our breath, we turn on the kitchen tap… It splutters, it flows!
Have you noticed? There is a lot of illicit exercise going on in the United Kingdom.
If you venture out when the streets are supposed to be empty, just after dawn you will be baffled if not run over by track-suited parents in trainers, jogging up and down, getting out before the kids are up — mustering their endorphins to face the day! Elderly gentlemen in shorts and cricket hats flash past you as you try to photograph a timid warbler. Ladies on bikes, dragging reluctant dogs, get tied up in leads and bump into post boxes to the alarm of the knitted figures sitting on top. Bicyclists shoot across in front of you as you wonder if you can make it through the lights on amber.
I guess it all started during Covid and has been exacerbated by the Olympics– it must be a good thing.
But what’s this? Lady in a wet suit in a park in St Neots — a long way from the sea.
Hang on — here are some more, bobbing around in the river.
Someone blows a whistle and they are off!
Suddenly, all thrashing about — like spawning fish in an upland pool, but they are whizzing along — after about 400 yards they all turn round and come back again. Only when they reach the shore can I categorize them — mainly young men, well young to me, but some young women and one man with a long white beard struggling as he runs along, to reach a string swinging down his back to unzip his wet-suit.
There is someone I know, in transition — nothing to worry about — just changing into her bicycling gear.
Only 25 kilometers — not even enough time for me to get a cup of coffee. Lots of riders struggle to get their feet attached to the pedals while riding as fast as they can up hill, one man in splendid electric blue shoes falls into a bed of nettles — that will sooth the pain in his joints.
After a 5 kilometre run Fran is triumphant!
In remarkable shape on the hottest day of the year, best times ever, and looking forward to the next sprint-triathlon! I feel fitter just from watching!
Yesterday Hefin came and fixed our roof. A squirrel had found a hole in the soffit(the timber under the eves) and had moved into the roof space above the bathroom for the winter months. It was disturbing Bill as he cleaned his teeth, by moving its furniture around in its garret, reorganizing the insulation and planning to rewire the electricity. Something had to be done —
— while squirrel was busy stealing the bird’s peanuts, Hefin sealed up the hole!
Invisible mend!
Today I was sitting in the bathroom contemplating the infinite when I was disturbed by the sound of someone dragging a concrete block across the roof. I rushed downstairs adjusting my clothes and burst out of the front door, ran around the house in time to see it. Evicted squirrel was perched on the roof above the mended soffit grasping the edge of the corner most roof-slate with both his little hands and heaving with all his might. I screamed. He paused and looked down at me enquiringly without releasing his grip on the slate. I yelled, I picked up a stick and beat the side of the house. He made a snap decision, stopped his attempted incursion and leapt the 8 feet into the nearest tree. Aha! So that is how he gets up!
Who? Me?
So here we are again in the land of imperatives. Not for us a good read or a spot of light editing with out feet up. We spent the morning up the slithery bank mindful of all the historical figures who have fallen to their death from trees. Wielding Great-granny’s Edwardian long-tom and our state-of-the-art long handled clippers and pruning saw, we have removed the treacherous elder that was allowing squirrel to leap across onto our roof.
Job done!
Transporting the brushwood to the heap we notice that the rickety sheep fence where it crosses the stream has, in our recent absence been busy turning itself into a dam by weaving sticks and leaves into itself and catching lots of silt. The whole construction now being frozen solid and ready to stand up to the force of the water when next in flood until inevitably it will collapse allowing the water to flow down the valley and the sheep to flow up into our precious re-wilding habitat.
Beaver technology
Another imperative! To stand up to my reconditioned knees in freezing water and demolish the half built dam.
Putting on my glasses while leaving the bedroom I noticed a spec on the lens, thus distracted, I walked into the low beam which floored me, moaning and clutching my forehead.
I struggled downstairs clutching my re-booted head which remembered that I had not checked the freezer since I had switched it on several days ago in such bright sunshine that I could not see the little indicator lights. Never mind, I had thought, loading it with frozen fish, scallops, squid and prawns — I’ll check it when it gets dark! It has been dark on and off several times since but today it is bright again so, ever adaptable, I open the door to feel how cold it is. I am knocked back a second time this morning , this time by the disgusting smell of corruption — of rotting flesh — wasted seafood — green slime drips out onto the floor. I pause and experience a wave of sympathy for the poor fishermen whose produce rotted in Calais because of the wrong paperwork, then start lobbing out my lovely fish as Bill retires gagging.
Back to basics, I pull out the freezer and trace the wire to a plug that I had forgotten in a cupboard I don’t use and switch it on — all the little lights sparkle into life — well at least the freezer works but there is another whiff. In that cupboard with the disused wedding presents from the one before last there are signs of mice — that distinctive musty smell (Mus musculus) and tell-tail chocolate sprinkles — really disappointing, as I had thought we were rid of them.
So I set to — washing out the freezer, the cupboard and the floor — I set the mouse traps by the likely looking hole, a job I hate, then I rise with a sense of completion and crack my head on the overhanging work-surface, sending me reeling a second time and wondering what new horrors will be jarred to the forefront of my mind.
When everything you know seems under threat you start to realize what really matters. Here’s a tribute to our local baker.
They make bread in the old fashioned way from simple ingredients — just flour, water, yeast and salt. Here’s some dough proving, slowly — waiting to be put into crocks…
and baked into delicious, crispy wheat or rye sourdough bread. There are wholemeal wheat, rye and spelt loaves and “Llanidloes specials” with the magic cheesy crust. There are olive ciabatte, Chelsea buns and almond croissants.
Baked each day and delivered to local shops. No plastic wrappers, tiny carbon footprint, no waste — they sell out every day but nothing for the birds as the humans fight for every last crumb!
Today we wanted an adventure so we set off to test the roads and our new off-road tyres.
So far so good!
Up the cwm and into town — the Co-op shelves were almost empty — their lorry was missing, presumed lost — come to think of it we saw a lorry stuck on the hill. We got our pills and enough ginger wine to last until spring and sped homeward.
We thought we’d avoid our dangerously steep cwm with its sheer drop one side and all the inconveniently placed oak trees, unyielding in a slippery situation.
We went the other way — we were trying to be responsible.
It was odd that there were no tyre marks into our turning — just beautiful virgin snow (powder, if you are a skier) about a foot deep. We chose this route as it has steep banks (quite a lot of roads here are narrow tarmac strips suspended between precipice and ditch) — we could see which way the road went. As we drove higher we could see the drifting — ridges of white dunes crossed our path from bank to bank — deeper and deeper as we got higher and higher. Now we remembered seeing the drifting starting two days ago, before the 20cm of last night’s dump. There are no houses up here and no lights — just white drifting snow and wind.
‘Shall we go back?’
‘Not yet!’
The technique was — drive as hard as you can until the drift stops you, then reverse and do it again. Each time we got a little further using our makeshift bulldozer — back and forth — higher and higher — deeper and deeper!
Amazingly we reached the crest and it became slightly easier as we descended into the dip — into the unknown. We turned at the bottom and could see the tracks where a quad bike, coming the other way, had given up, and turned for home. That cheered me up. I was being very quiet and brave! We followed in it’s tracks.
Now we had about half a mile of a straight, steep rise which Alan took at speed (relatively) drifting and sliding, sometimes almost travelling sideways but keeping going, then suddenly we had crested the hill and could feel the road, solid again , under our wheels.
Downhill for a couple of miles, and we could see where our young neighbour had come out of his track and headed down our way –‘hope to God we don’t meet him coming back!’ We did not.
It’s going to be minus 15’C tonight and maybe snow some more — where shall we go tomorrow?
‘We’ll do that in the Summer!’ we say, ‘In the long balmy days, free of water-proofs and wellies; when the sheep look after themselves and we can enjoy all the things that drew us to this place.’
Summer
‘We’ll do it after shearing, and after we’ve wormed the ewes and caught all the lambs and sprayed them against “fly strike” and after we’ve immunised them all (it’s too hot to tag their ears yet), and after we’ve sprayed the nettles and cut the thistles (and Alan’s mended the rough cutter — and by the way, the dish-washer’s broken), meanwhile we’ll spray ourselves with midge repellent and cut the thistles by hand — will you sharpen the sickle and the bill hook.
Digger rests, engulfed by Summer
And while our rough cutter waits for Alan and the digger with its poorly track awaits attention from the mechanic, all around us grass grows, you can almost hear it, and men work through the long days into the nights to cut silage and bale it all before the thunder storms come. The mechanic rushes from farm to farm to keep the wheels turning.
The bracken, which should have been cut by now, stretches to the sky and spreads to shade the sheep, who far from being relieved by the removal from each of a couple of kilograms of organic insulation and carpet fibre, are now bothered by the sun.
Seeking shade in summer pasture
Sheep shadow
They use their bodies to mark out the exact outlines of trees on the hillsides — sheep shadows, and they pant and look at me accusingly as we might ask the Almighty why we have to suffer so at the hand of cruel destiny.
We sheared them on the day before the heat wave struck and as I walked into the first hot summer sun where they had been lying the buzz was deafening so that we looked about for a cause (continuing the biblical) — a plague of flies had hatched that day and roared in anticipation.
That day we lead them through the woodland to our upper field where the orchids grow and where there is hardly a fly in this shady pasture — like us, they don’t know how fortunate they are.
dianaashworth 