Queer Beer in the Mendips

Because we had decided not to visit our house in Spain this spring we decided to take a few trips out in the motor caravan to enjoy our own lovely country. The first was in May Day week and we decided on a trip to the Mendip hills - an area that I have often passed through, but never explored.

The first objective was the interestingly named village of Chew Magna (they like their Chews in the Mendips), but the place was clearly motor caravan averse so we squeezed through it and drove to the only other objective of the trip: the nearby Chew Valley Lake. This was perfect. The map showed a picnic site beside the lake and it was great: spacious and not too busy, it overlooked the extensive lake and the only charge was £2 per day for parking. It also had a restaurant, a take-away and toilets – a motor homer’s dream.

Having found a good spot for the motor caravan I set out on a walk alone and entered the lakeside area ignoring the ‘fishermen only’ sign. I followed the collapsing grassed embankment and soon came to two fishermen. Would they object to my presence? Not a jot. They were local good old boys with an accent that I warm to because I grew up surrounded by it (like coming home) and we talked and laughed for some time. They were very different characters. The first I met wasn’t fishing, his rod lay on the bank so we were soon talking about the lake and such. We could see most of it from this location though an island opposite hid some of the shore. Together they told me about its origins, where to go for birding, and where to get a permit. The first claimed there was a drowned church in the lake; the second that there was a farm and that he had met the farmer who wasn’t at all resentful of the flooding which took place in 1953 to form the lake/reservoir to keep Bristol throats quenched and baths full. I asked them about the local pub but on that they were evasive, saying only that it did not keep normal hours.

That evening Margaret and I walked into the village and soon found the local pub with its fading sign. That fading was a sign in itself – the place was pretty rough inside and out. As soon as I entered the public bar a scruffy old chap hunched over a table demanded, “Where you from an’ what you doing ‘ere?” Perhaps surprisingly I found this amusing and non-threatening.

I was delighted to see three hand pumps on the bar and that one of them dispensed Butcombe’s Rarebreed , a great favourite beer of mine which I ordered without a pretest. It was decidedly odd. There were tastes present that I had never detected in Butcombe’s beer or any other. It was not off, just queer. By this time Margaret was peering around with disgust at the peeling paintwork and the advanced neglect of the place. Meanwhile the old chap (actually younger than us) gave me a long diatribe about his country upbringing enlivened with many spirited bouts of swearing. Nonetheless I found his experiences interesting especially the part about having his own cow at the age of seven and making butter from her twice-daily milkings. There were also tales of shotgun incidents where he sometimes shot multiple birds with just one cartridge.

After a while we retreated to the lounge bar where I ordered a different beer, yet it too had this queer mixed-up taste. While I supped I watched Margaret observing the barmaid at work, her eyes growing wider as she watched. She suddenly turned to me and said, “I know why your beer tastes odd”.

“Should I continue to drink it?” I asked, concerned.

She said yes, but doubtfully. Afterwards she told me that the barmaid tipped the spillage tray from the other pumps into the pint she was pouring! We were all drinking beer cocktails!

Next day we moved to a small car park near a bird hide that looked across the lake. The view from the hide was splendid, but the variety of waterbirds was not that exciting. We saw tufted duck, coots, mallards, swans, Canada geese and great crested grebe. Of these the latter were the most interesting as a pair perfored their oddly charming mating dance. And we did hear a cuckoo. It’s a long time since I had heard that lonely, lovely cry. Coincidentally, I also found some cuckoo flowers (identified by Margaret) on a meadow near the lake.

That night we walked to a very different sort of pub which did serve Butcombe’s beer in perfect condition and there met another local who told us of his life as a leather worker and ardent motorcyclist (probably got the order wrong there). This place was more of an eatery than a pub, but both beer and food were excellent.

Our final night was spent at Lacock, a picturesque village in Wiltshire much used for filming. Despite its dedication to tourism it was a pleasurable place to stroll around and the dominant building, the Abbey, was absolutely beautiful. However, the pubs were not so much fun so I, uncharacteristically, used my phone to search for another one nearby. I drove there with the intention of sleeping in its car park, but great plans can go astray: there was a notice on its front gate saying that ‘Closed for Filming’. Unbelievable. Fortunately I had passed another as we drove there and hastened back to it. Called the Bell, it did not look much of a place from the roadside, but inside a warm welcome awaited. As I eyed the line of beer pumps and the notice celebrating its choice as the local CAMRA pub of the year, I asked the landlord if we could sleep in his car park. “Of course you can,” he replied affably, “and thanks for asking”. Nice end to a nice trip. Freedom.

Spring in England

My hands hurt. In the past I have complained about this because I was working with stone in Spain, but this year we are staying in England for spring and my hands hurt because I have been working with stone in England.

For me spring begins on the 21^st March. That’s potato planting day for those of us who plant potatoes. Years ago, when we had our little farm, I’d couple up the potato planter to the old Grey Ferguson tractor, empty a load of seed potatoes into the hopper, sit a child on each side to put the seed potatoes one-by-one into the chutes and tow the jolly lot along a newly ploughed bed. Nowadays I do it by hand, alone. In those old days I always planted loads of that old favourite Desiree: this year I put in just three short rows of Casablanca, an early variety which is new to me. I also planted carrot seed together with onions, leeks, parsnips and broad beans. The process of germination which I have now set in train for the umpteenth year still fascinates me, as does the complex workings of photosynthesis which will power the seedlings (hopefully) into productivity. For now my job there is done. I left it to the brilliant sunshine and the moisture in the soil to awaken the dry, seemingly inert, seeds.

I then moved on to the real challenge of my week: rebuilding a section of collapsed dry stone wall at the road end of our field in Stow on the Wold. Most people love to see Cotswold stone walls deliniatiating the landscape, but for me they evince mixed feeling.  From a distance I too think that they are lovely, but close up I view them more critically: do they have the right taper, what sort of stone was used in their making, was ungiving and untraditional mortar used to set the headers, were faults introduced between the layers? It’s not that I am an expert, far from it, but I know enough to be aware of the things that I do incorrectly.

Almost done

Don’t be inclined to romanticise the role of that lone and lonely stone laying man working away at the roadside (yet to see a woman doing it so far, but why not). It may seem like a work of art, but it is actually mind bendingly boring and frustrating work. The idea is never to cut a stone to shape. In Spain during the years I spent building my little caseta I spent some time searching for the right stone to fit the next space followed by quite a lot of cutting to shape. In the Cotswolds I do much more searching and rarely any shaping. Remember, these stones are not like bricks that fit neatly together, they are of random shapes and sizes and all surfaces have to link into the wall itself: yes, a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces quite fit. The best part of dry stone walling for me is to finish the job, then to walk far enough away from it so that I can view the overall effect without being distracted by the flaws.

As I paid for a pint at the Stocks on the night of the day that my task was completed, Pete the barman looked quizzically at my finger tips bound with fraying microporous tape.

“Been dry stone walling,” I answered the unasked question.

“You should ha’ worn gloves,” he said unsympathetically.

I smiled, whilst in my head I shouted, “I did, otherwise your bar would now be covered in streaks of blood, as would that twenty pound note I just gave you”.

So, back to Oxford where this blog was typed in pain whilst viewing daffodils nodding in the sun-warmed breeze through the spreading branches of a vast cherry tree with its first green leaves unfurling to expose red flower buds that will soon burst into a gloriously pink announcement of spring in the city. So very welcome.

Words from the Wise?

Just finished the draft of yet another novel and am holding my breath while I await initial comments from my two indefatigable first readers.

But there’s always something to do in Oxford. Recently, I crammed two lectures on very different topics into a single evening. One was on particle accelerators – don’t worry, I’m not going to faze you with the details. The speaker, Suzie Sheeny, was an attractive young woman from Australia and paraded her stuff in a lively presentational style that I found riveting. I have always been concerned about the Hadron Collider in Geneva: it cost so much to build and operate ($13.25 billion) and was so overly hyped that any result short of time travel was almost bound to be a disappointment to the general populace. Oh yes they did find this thing called the Higg’s Boson just where it was supposed to be. Was that it? Apparently so, and life goes on as before.

But Suzie convinced me that there was more. There are thousands and thousands of particle accelerators in the world nowadays and their existence and development do benefit from the work on the Collider. Most of these are used in medicine and they are, of course, much smaller, but they do have significant benefits in, for example, scanning and the treatment of cancer. Suzie’s work is in the development of accelerators that can be used in developing nations where the electricity supply is unstable and maintenance near non-existent. Great stuff.

Then, a rapid pedal from Trinity College to Corpus Christi. Though too late for the pre-lecture drinks, I did manage to get a decent seat at the back where I settled down to listen to Chris Patten’s take on the world. He is predominantly a politician, but also the Chancellor of Oxford University, the last Governor Hong Kong, etc, etc, etc. In deep contrast to Suzie the accelerator scientist, Patten’s main characteristic is gravitas, as befits his wide experience. He is just three years older than myself, but looks more. 

The scope of his lecture was grand – covering much of the last and current century. There were many interesting asides including a book reference which I have followed up, but the nub of his talk was a fairly depressing overview of the present state of the West. He touched on three major points: the 2008 economic crisis caused by excess borrowing and financial deregulation, growing inequality, and the “hollowing out” of political parties. On the latter he attacked his old organization in the UK, the Conservative Party, particularly its falling membership and, he claimed, its consequent move to extremism. A member of the audience, who sounded a lot like me, asked him why the Labour Party demonstrated the opposite effect – more members, more extreme.

He also touched on immigration from a European perspective and in so doing helped to develop my own thoughts when he contrasted the empathy evoked by drownings in the Mediterranean with facts concerning the African country of Niger where women start having children at 15 years and give birth, on average, to 7 children.

There was an elephant in the tiered theater of Oxford’s smallest college that evening, but the chairman drew back the curtains with a last question, the Brexit question. At this Lord Patten cast away his mask of philosophical equanimity and stepped in front of the dais to get closer to the audience and speak of madness and delusion. Phew, and this on the very day that Donald Tusk used the fast famous phrase, ‘special place in hell’. Fortunately, there was a little wine left to calm the frayed Brexit nerves after the show and this fuelled my cycle journey home through the rain to discuss this, and more, with my neighbour Carlos.

Oxford and The Barber of Lebanon

After much dithering I had a hair cut yesterday and entered a new world: the Mancave.

Close your eyes and think of Oxford. If nothing turns up then this particular blog probably isn’t for you, but please come back later. Most people drag up images about the university: dreaming spires, icononic buildings such as the Sheldonian Theatre or the Radcliffe Camera, students in their gowns, dons on their bikes, particularly beautiful colleges that they may have visited, famous figures whose minds were moulded there,  or perhaps floppy haired students punting, partying, debating, drinking or pontificating. And yet the city is not just about the university. The population of Oxford is about 154K and the combined figure of staff and students at the University of Oxford is 38K, though how many of the students register as residents of the city is unclear. Added to that we also have another university, Brookes which has a combined staff and student figure of over 21K. That’s a lot of university people by any stretch, but what does the rest of the population do? Serve them all beer, food and entertainment of course. Well, not exactly, there are something like 10 million visitors to the city each year, and they have to be accommodated, transported, fed, watered and, of course, guided (I do my best). And there are jobs outwith the service industry including the Mini factory, Oxfam and many start up companies some of which have been spun out of the universities.

Socially Oxford can, coarsely, be divided up by the points of the compass. I live in the northern quadrant where all the rich and famous people reside (I wish), but used to live to the west in paradise. Yes really, my address was 18 Paradise Square which lies on the edge of what is now a huge new shopping centre (with a John Lewis store for the shoppers amongst you). South Oxford is mostly given over to low to medium level residential, bisected by the River Thames, which just leaves the east. Overall the city is very diverse: it’s reckoned to have the third highest ethnic minority population in south-east England and 28% of its residents were born outside of the UK. It is East Oxford that’s the main contributor to this diversity, and so back to my haircut.

Though I have few restraints on spending regarding the essentials - beer, wine and travel - I can be parsimonious about other expenses such as food, clothing and haircuts. That is how I came across a barber shop intriguingly called the Mancave. On the phone I was given an attractive price and the information that there were only two people waiting. I cycled quickly down to East Oxford where the Mancave is located only to find that there were five people in the cave: three waiting, one in mid cut and the barber. He told me that I would have to wait for about an hour. Later, I noticed that he gave everyone that same estimate. I shrugged and sat down in the window seat, just beneath the dart board! I looked around. On a big screen coupled to a graffiti covered laptop I watched computer-game-like characters repeatedly killing each other to a background of repetitive computer-game-like music. The wall on my left was papered with old newspapers featuring blaring headlines such as The bomb that has changed the world, and on the wall beyond the barber’s chair there was display of maybe fifty vinyl LPs, all of which I’m sure contained better music than that playing in the cave. There were other things lying around that I did not really understand – or want to. So this was someone’s idea of a mancave!

The barber was a thin-faced man wearing a cap. He had a slim, agile body that wove around his current client like a snake deciding when to attack. Part way through my hour long wait, he asked me if I would like a beer. I made my usual reply that “I did not drink in moderation”, but I was touched by the gesture.

I found later that the young men waiting for a cut were from Colombia and Ecuador, though I am ashamed to say I understood nothing of their Spanish so we did not get to discuss their troubled neighbouring country. However, I did talk to the man who came in after me. He was from Italy and told me that he was a post-grad at Brookes Uni which is just up the road from where we sat. He told me that he was taking a masters in motorsport management. Now they don’t do that Oxford University do they? And yet it seemed such a suitable subject for discussion in the Mancave.

Finally, I was called to the chair. And yes, I found that my barber was from Lebanon, that his father had owned a house there, but was displaced from it because the place sat on Roman remains, that he had been ill for the last few days – hence the queue, and that he wore a cap because he was bald and potential customers might doubt the competence of a barber without hair. What a diverse haircut. I will definitely have to go to the Mancave again.

Reading this through I thought maybe, to some, it might seem sexist. But then I reasoned that there are plenty of Womancaves. However, they have more attractive names, have greatly refined decor, and are very much more expensive.