Memorable tastes

Posted on 15th June 2020 by Ian

The dairy was where the milking equipment was washed and stored. A concrete floor and whitewashed walls, it had a surgical atmosphere, an impression heightened by the smell of the liquid used to sterilize the milking clusters and buckets. Before the advent of the bulk tank, the milk was poured into ten gallon aluminium churns that were collected by the lorry from the Milk Marketing Board each morning. In warm weather, they would be placed in tin baths filled with water in an attempt to keep the milk cool. The end of the churns and the arrival of bulk collection meant the tank was electronically chilled and agitated, but also that there was no longer the opportunity to skim thick fresh milk from the surface.

In memory, the dairy is associated with the taste of warm cream and cold water. On hot days, there was a delight in turning on the tap and ducking down to drink water that was chillingly cold and fresh; no water since has compared with that which we drank from the farm well.

It wasn’t just water and milk that had an intensity of taste that seemed to disappear, ordinary food was different.

On Saturdays, the plain rectangular loaf delivered each day by the baker was supplemented by a “cottage” loaf, thick crusty bread which would be spread thickly with butter. The idea that one would have such a thin layer of butter that one could not see the marks of one’s teeth, when one bit through it, would have seemed strange in times when the current health concerns lay in a distant future. Cheese, which in Somerset was almost invariably Cheddar, was eaten in large chunks, with pickled onions that had been home bottled. Eggs were large, free range, irregular in size, and strong in taste. Tomatoes had a sweetness comparable with that of apples.

Certainly, the memory plays tricks, but taste, like smell, is a sense that lingers. Perhaps the tastes were more intense because the processing and additives now considered necessary were absent, perhaps the tastes are more intense in the memory because the tastes were fewer. Food was plentiful, but was plain. Even in a cafe, if one bought a sandwich, it was a cheese sandwich, or a ham sandwich, or an egg sandwich. Meals were meat, potatoes and vegetables. The tastes that linger are those that were plain but strong.

Perhaps summertime tastes linger most because the days allowed time for the taste to linger. Even time seemed more intense in those days.

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Taking a stand

Posted on 14th June 2020 by Ian

The two young men walked towards the city centre, each with an arm around the shoulder of the other. Middle class in dress and accent, they were enthusiastic about their topic of discussion. “You’ve got to take a stand, man.”

There was a temptation to turn back and to ask them what stand the young man should take. Perhaps the grounds on what he stood would have been unimportant to him, perhaps it was the act of taking a stand that mattered.

Growing up in Somerset of the 1960s, there were people taking a stand. The issue sometimes seemed almost incidental.

The war in Vietnam was a remote conflict in which there was no involvement by anyone in our community, yet it was issue which aroused great passion. The United States government and President Nixon were not people who would have taken cognizance of what people in a small English county would have thought, but that did not mean people were reticent in expressing their opinions.

If there was a social revolution taking place, then there were people around us who were not going to be left behind, they were determined that they would be part of whatever was happening.

The staging of the first Pilton Pop, Blues and Folk Festival in 1970, the festival that was to subsequently become known as Glastonbury, was a gathering of 1,500 hippies at Worthy Farm at Pilton. The capacity to stage such a gathering in an obscure corner of rural England is an indication of there already being a community of people who stood against social convention.

In 1970, the tickets for the festival were £1. The following year, when the lineup included Hawkwind, Traffic, Melanie, David Bowie, Joan Baez and Fairport Convention, and there were 12,000 people present, the festival was free. The 1971 festival was paid for by individuals who believed in the ideal of a free festival, who believed they were taking a stand against commercialisation.

Whatever the issue, taking a stand says that people will not simply accept what governments say, that they are not prepared just to accept what the mass media tell them.

There is a sense of delight now in recalling how newspapers like the Daily Mail expressed indignation at people like hippies, and at anyone who did not conform. Incurring the editorial displeasure of such newspapers always seemed to suggest that people had something to say.

I hope the two young men take a stand – and that in fifty years’ time they look back with contentment.

 

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A gentleman of the road

Posted on 13th June 2020 by Ian

He walked at a steady pace, staring straight ahead. Skin weathered like leather, clothes worn but clean, a black canvas bag over one shoulder. He was a sight I hadn’t seen for many years – a gentleman of the road.

Before seeing the man this week, it must be forty years since I saw someone like him. It was on Telegraph Hill, a steep road between Exeter and Plymouth. To walk the road at Telegraph Hill now would be to put your life in immediate danger from the lanes of traffic moving at 70 mph. It must have been a regular route for the old gentleman, for even in the 1970s the traffic was busy.

When I was young, we didn’t call them “gentlemen of the road,” we called them tramps. It did not have a pejorative meaning. A tramp was simply someone who tramped along, dressed in old and sometimes ragged clothes and carrying his few possessions in a bag or bundle.

Gentlemen used regularly to call at my grandfather’s farm at Huish Episcopi. He said they left a mark on the wall outside to show that the next gentleman would receive a welcome. They were given bread and cheese and tea and milk and would sleep in a stone barn.

One cold night, my grandfather took pity on a passing gentleman and allowed him to sleep on the settee in the living room, where there was the warmth of a log fire. On discovery at there being an unexpected house guest, my grandmother flew at my grandfather, did he not realize that they could have been killed in their beds, or had all their valuables stolen? The story became a matter of pride for my grandfather.

One gentleman used to call each year with a chapel family in Henley. Strongly evangelical Christians, they attended worship each Sunday and expected visitors to join them.

One summer Saturday, my other, a hairdresser by profession, received a call. The gentleman had arrived with the family and he had been given a bath and clean clothes and they would be grateful if my mother would give him a haircut. My mother explained that she did not generally work on Saturdays, but was prepared to make an exception. The gentleman went to chapel the next morning looking altogether different from the appearance he usually presented.

My mother’s recall of the gentleman is of a man who was educated and cultured, a man who had seen much in his lifetime. The gentlemen were always enigmatic figures, no-one was ever sure from where they had come or where they were going. What had caused them to take to the road? What family or friends had they left behind?

The gentlemen of former times may have been veterans of the world wars, but what about the man I saw last week? What had sent him out onto the road?

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Everybody needs a summer holiday . . .

Posted on 12th June 2020 by Ian

Of course, they don’t.  Summer holidays are not a necessity. Most of the world’s population could never to aspire to going away for a week or two. Holidays are a first world experience and a lack of an opportunity to go on holiday is a first world complaint.

Anyone who has lived in a farming community or worked among self-employed or small business people will know that even in affluent times there are many people who never take a holiday.Nevertheless, holidays have a firm place in our national psyche. As Sir Cliff sang, “no more working for a week or two.”

Watching the M5 motorway on a Friday evening in June, it is odd to see only lorries rolling southward toward Devon. By this point in the year, there should be three lanes filled with cars, caravans and campers passing Junction 23, making their slow way to destinations at seaside resorts and rural retreats. Stand on a motorway bridge now, and the holiday makers can only be imagined.

The absence of visitors will deprive many people of their entire year’s income. Anyone who has visited inland areas of Cornwall will know how poor much of the county is, how much it lacks industry and employment opportunities. The missing millions of tourists will take  hundred of millions of pounds out of the local economy. The Devon economy may be stronger, but the seaside towns are all places that have seen better times, and without the crowds along the beaches and promenades the places will become more desolate in appearance.

What cannot be measured in cash terms is the effect on people’s emotional health of there being no opportunity to spend their week or fortnight away. It may be a time spent in traffic jams. It may be time spending money on overpriced accommodation and poor food. It may be time spent shuffling around places no-one in the family really wanted to go, but there was a need felt to go somewhere on a wet day. No matter how many negative points there may be, the following year, people will want to return. Holidays are important, were they not, people would not spend so much money on them.

People count down to the day of their departure. They save up for the meals and the drinks and the attractions. The annual holiday gives purpose and meaning to those of us who live ordinary lives in ordinary times. In extraordinary times, the chance to go away seems even more important.

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Why be a farmer?

Posted on 11th June 2020 by Ian

Perhaps there was good fortune in being the son of a farmer’s daughter. There was never an expectation that I would ever be involved in the life of the farm. I am unlike my uncles’ sons and grandsons who have continued the generations’ long family tradition, raising livestock and growing crops, and working far harder than I have ever done.

When I was young, I often wondered why people became farmers. It was a constantly demanding life: long days, hard work, all weathers, little money. What was it that kept people on the land?

Perhaps the explanation provided by one of my uncles for the family tradition of farming  is applicable to many other farming families, “just enough money to hold on, never enough to move on.”

Perhaps farming was a matter of necessity. Perhaps there were times when it was the least worst option. Perhaps those raised to farm were never given the opportunity to train for any other occupation. Perhaps the expectation from parents and the wider family was such that people felt that becoming a farmer was the only way in which they could fulfil what they believed to be their duty. Perhaps many farmers never thought about it, farming was what they did, so they just got on with it.

Perhaps the list of reasons I have imagined for being a farmer are negative because I am not a farmer.

A friend who farms in Ireland talks about the magic of moments during the farming year. He talks of frosty winter nights during the lambing season and looking up at the star-filled sky at 5am, when daylight is still hours away and when there is silence across the landscape. He talks of the delight in watching the spring season unfold, day by day. Perhaps it is in seeing farming life through eyes such as his that the decision to become a farmer seems more comprehensible. Perhaps there is a beauty and a range of sensory experiences that can only be appreciated by those living them in a cyclical seasonal way.

Perhaps there is something else, though, something that is hard to articulate. It is about being connected to the land and being connected with one’s forebears and descendants. Farming is the only life that provides such an absolute sense of continuity and tactile, tangible sense of connection. It means being able to stand at a gate, “This is my land. My people made this land as it is. This is my legacy to my children and their legacy to their children.”

Being a farmer means leaving something that endures long after everything else has faded away.

It also means standing in a tradition that creates a sense of place for those who, like me, never ever get their hands dirty.

 

 

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