Sunday 25 July 2010

Harvest

Heat has turned the fields of sharp green to biscuit brown.  The sweet air smells like a bowl of Shredded Wheat.  Driving near Bayfield we saw the first combine harvester this year.  A rabbit was running across its path, living dangerously. No need for a demonic dwarf to spin straw to gold, the sun glinting off the sliced stalks made gleaming treasure of the dry grass.

In the field with two trees and the one behind the red brick cottage, they are harvesting the wheat tonight.  I love the noise and the dust.  It's a live performance of Mad Max.  The brutal power of the machines is exhilarating and disturbing.

We live in the building that used to be the barn for these fields.  I stood and watched the relentless combines go back and forth across the horizon.  Once at this time of year the field would have been full of people.  These empty acres were alive with humour and hard graft.  The whole village would have been out there, bringing home the harvest.  Who were they, my ghost neighbours, the people whose barn we live in now, as cattle did once?  I imagine them, strong hands, rough jokes, dreadful skin, singing to keep the monotonous work in time.  Women and children too.  Schooling gave way to rural rhythms, picking stones, reaping corn.

The wildwoods in Norfolk began to be cleared for farming 11,000 years ago.  For all that time people here were fed by the land they lived on.  But even in cities the call of the season was heard.  Victorian men tramped out of the London to follow seasonal work.  Off-duty soliders helped in the fields.  My family were Eastenders.  In the 1920s Nan went hop-picking in Kent every autumn.  Train-loads of Eastenders did it.  It wasn't mechanised until the 1960s.  In May people cycled 'out to Chingford' and down Bethnal Green Road on spring evenings they came back with their baskets full of bluebells.  Waiting on the pavement, Mum had her happy evidence of the season beyond the streets.

Mum was evacuated to Suffolk from Bethnal Green.  She told me about the landgirls scything round the edge of the field and the horsedrawn binders coming to gather the corn.  That rabbit would have run from its shrinking patch of uncut field to shouting boys waiting with sticks and dogs.  Not long ago this time was the pinnacle of the rural year.  Not long ago, when my parents were young.  Rituals with roots deep in medieval times were woven through their lives.  Pagan Celts dancing at Lughnasa bonfires, the Saxons baking Lammas loaves and blessing the harvest (it means loaf-mass) in churches decked with apples and corn.  The seed and the fruit, symbols of life and death, promise and fulfillment.

Now the people to whom this harvest will matter, who still rely on this field, are not here.  They don't measure their year in rain and sun and the ripening of grass.  The communities that shared ancient knowledge and carried the meaning of the land in their hearts and under their nails, are fractured and gone.  When this wheat is eaten, in a quick sandwich at a desk or a bowl of pasta in front of the telly, who will imagine how, when it was growing in waves rippling like the sea, it gladdened the heart of a woman in Norfolk?

Progress is understood as the improvement of the human condition.  I understand about growing populations and efficient food production.  And I also know that we don't live by bread alone, that there are needs of the spirit as well as the flesh.  These fields still feed the flesh but the rituals of welcome and farewell, regret and resolution are lost.  Apart from the roaring engines, with invisible drivers, these are empty fields.  Tonight I watched the harvest alone, just me and the swallows diving for evening insects.  This crop will feed people I'll never see.  Tonight they are bringing the harvest home.  But there is no laughter, no triumphant song in the air.  Nothing but dust.

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Up the spout

We have had a difficult conversation with the plumber.  His invoice was over twice his quote and despite constant requests for a financial status report, this bill is the first we heard of the overspend.  The project is hardly a Grand Design.  We bought a house with a cartshed that the previous owners had converted into B&B rooms.  Romantic French style with a swag of netting over the beds.  The B&B was a big success - we have the visitor book and visitors LOVED it.  Fresh flowers, home-made chocolate brownies, who wouldn't love it?  Two guests got engaged here, perhaps whilst reclining on the brownie crumbs under the bridal netting, but I hope at dawn on a beach with a luminous horizon.

The previous owner made enormous breakfasts.  I have seen pictures.  Bacon, sausages, eggs, pancakes, waffles, huge vats of fruit salad.  We have a neighbour who used to help with the clearing up. 'To much, too much.  Let's just say those pigs were very well fed.'  She was referring to the late livestock I believe, not the guests.  A pig is a great recycler.  The guests who'd hadn't cleared their plates had their left-overs donated to the trough.  Those who rebooked for the following year were effectively served the stuff they'd left last year, transformed into bacon.  A win double, as my brother-in-law says.  My other brother-in-law is a vegetarian.

We had a lot of debate about whether to continue the B&B or turn it into a self-catering place.  We never intended to buy a commercial property, just a home.  But a little business all ready to run...foolish not to.  The argument against is that my husband is sometimes away in London. Sometimes I am.  We have three small children, a school run for two of them and merry dance with the third.  I am not a morning person unless I am still up from the night before.  It boiled down to eggs.  I don't give a rat's arse how people want their eggs done.

The four bedrooms are now two apartments.  Which sounds too urban.  The builder calls them 'units' which sounds like an Australian town planning department.  They aren't exactly cottages but 'shed conversion' isn't right either.  Any ideas?  Anyway, they're not finished.  Stopping work feels like halting a radical haircut half way through because you realise you've forgotten your purse.  But we can't finish them yet.  One, however, is nearly ready.  We wanted to let the plumber know he needs to communicate more efficiently.  'I kept starting things out of sequence,' he said, 'and it just all sort of snowballed.'  We have agreed a schedule of payments to melt the snowball and he's going to finish the first place in time for its first guests - already booked for August.

The plumber's work is excellent.  He has always come to deal with our several emergencies, from the deluge through the ceiling to the freezing bath water.  He's a nice guy.  Also, this is a small community.  Everyone knows of everyone else.  We don't want to be 'The Bad Debtors'. And his wife is our dental nurse.  'We need to be diplomatic' I said, 'remember what happens in Marathon Man.'  He hasn't shafted us, he's just didn't tell us what was going on until too late.  Mr P handled it all very well.  I was impressed.  The plumber asked our kids to his son's birthday party.  We had a beer.  We put the oil of cloves back in the cupboard.

'In future', Mr P said, 'we need you to be more upfront earlier, so we can plan what to do.'

'Planning's always difficult,' said the plumber. 'Especially for the future.'

Friday 2 July 2010

Pleasant Valley Funday

Last week was Family Fun Day at the school.  There was a World Cup theme, each task completed won a country's flag.  Hook the Duck represented Argentina.  I was on duty.  It was raining.

A freckly boy came up and grabbed a duck out of the water.  'Hey! Put that back.  You have to use the hook.  Look mate, do it properly or you don't get a sticker.'

'I quit' he said.

'Don't be a quitter' I said, like the Marlboro cowboy.  'This sticker is the Argentinian flag.'

'So?'

'Argentina has cool stuff in it,' I told him.  He looked up.  'Like beef. And really long grass.'

'I don't want a sticker' said Freckles and went to Splat a Rat.

There was a Horticultural Show with thousands of categories.  Our six-year old was keen to enter all of them.   Teacher mum said 'Oh God, let them do it all this year and they'll with luck they'll have grown out of it by next time.'   But another advised 'Make the most of it, my kids aren't interested any more.'   Luckily mine have a mother who still hasn't grown out of it, so for two days the kitchen was a jolly landfill of useful junk.  My mum always had a huge cardboard box under the dresser called The Useful Box, full of old tat.  We have a bag.  From the junk (known now as recycling) they made a Monster Truck and a Fairy Creator with instructions: 'mix 6 drops of rain with the spirits of fairies that have died...'  Roll over, Tinkerbell.

The label for the monster truck was accidentally entered in the drawing competition.   It won first prize.  My son won first prize for all his categories, including cake decorating - red glitter and three sugar lions - and making a Lego church with a congregation of robots and trolls.  My daughter also won prizes, with a well deserved first for the Fairy Creator.  When disbelieving children everywhere are killing off fairies  and Richard Dawkins always on their case asking to see the paperwork, she's taking action.  I never think of Peter shouting 'Do you believe in fairies?  Clap your hands if you believe!' without my eyes full of tears for the ending of childhood.  The applause is growing fainter every day. 

Our new friend the Cartographer said he'd given up on the scarecrow building section. Last year he missed first prize despite spending weeks creating an enormous paper mache head.  The winning scarecrow was made by someone related to the judge.  Or it might have been that the judge was related to the scarecrow.

But he reconsidered.  'I dunno, I might make a tiny Wayne Rooney out of driftwood.'  He and his daughter have already hung a very convincing driftwood Peter Crouch on their sitting room wall.  Wayne Rooney was my inspiration for the 'decorate a potato' section.  Minimal embellishment required.  But I forgot to buy potatoes.

I heard that at a village show last year there was only one entry in the cake section, but the judges didn't think it was good enough to win so they gave it second prize.  'There was a massive outcry.  It was in all the papers.'  Must have been dropped from Newsnight at the last minute. 

The Best in Show was a display of hedgerow treasures found by the school twins.  On a wooden tray they tucked lacey cow mumble, elderflowers and pink herb robert into tiny bottles the colour of sea glass.  Broken egg shells, blue and white shards of pots and 'an unknown feather'.  I was enchanted and so pleased it won.  Our recent hedgerow find was a pigeon, shot and impaled on a blackthorn hedge and a dead mole with blood leaking from its mouth.  Soft little velvet chap with strong shovel hands.  Wildlife, wild-death.

It rained, we drank tea, it rained, children ran around laughing, it rained, people made the best of it.  A scurry of Rat Splatterers and Duck Hookers rushing for cover as rain hisses down is a particularly English sight.  So is the same crowd emerging into a drizzle. 'It's easing off now.  Look there's a patch of blue over there.  It's not too bad.'  And getting back to having fun.