not a sticky wick­et in sight

If I told you I had a pound of unsalt­ed but­ter on my desk, would you believe me? I just had to look up whether or not this dairy, who I encoun­tered at the farmer’s mar­ket this morn­ing, had a web­site, and they do! Or at least, you can find their details there should you be in the neigh­bor­hood. You can­not get any fresh­er, sweet­er or more charm­ing than the lit­tle elf-like girl behind the table, or the but­ter itself. So if you find your­self in need of a lit­tle dairy com­fort, you buy some farm­house but­ter from E F J Gould at, lis­ten to this per­fect address, Batch Farm, East Pen­nard, Shep­ton Mal­let, Som­er­set, Eng­land. It just has to taste bet­ter than oth­er butter.

It was tru­ly a glo­ri­ous day at the mar­ket, with bright blue skies after tor­ren­tial rains and gale-force winds in the night and ear­ly morn­ing. I think all the stal­l­keep­ers were punchy with relief at the pass­ing of the awful weath­er (which, like the spoiled brat I am, I slept through), so sto­ries were run­ning amok. At my favorite butch­er, Food Fore Thought, the florid-faced chap behind the counter was pos­i­tive­ly unstop­pable in his flow of chat. “Nine­ty-five mile-an-hour winds we had last night over the farm. Dad phoned me up this morn­ing to com­plain, say­ing the pig pen had been blown over, tak­en clean away. ‘What bleed­in’ inter­est do I have in the pigs,’ I says, ‘I’m bleed­in’ turn­ing to ice here in the mar­ket!’ And he says, ‘You’d bet­ter take an inter­est because they’ve got into the neigh­bors’ rose gar­den.” Then as a lit­tle aside, he added, “City gent we got, takes a lit­tle bit of land in the mid­dle of our farm, and then can’t seem to get along with the locals. Local pigs, that is. So I says to him, you can either learn to live with my pigs, or I can cut off all your water and your elec­tric. What do you think of that?” This all as untold num­bers of cus­tomers wished I would just pay for my fil­let of beef and my can­nons of lamb, and go. But I could­n’t stem the flow! And in any case, I felt like I was in the mid­dle of mar­ket day in a James Her­riott sto­ry, so I just let him tell me all about it.

Then he offered to make me a cado­gan for my Christ­mas Wish List, and I’m sore­ly tempt­ed. I’ve heard it called Christ­mas Pie, but I had nev­er heard of “cado­gan.” Do you fan­cy a pigeon inside a capon inside a chick­en inside a goose inside a turkey? I kind of do. Just to say I’ve had it. All boned and stuffed in one anoth­er. I can’t even find the word in Wikipedia, and that’s going some. I think my vis­it­ing friends might die of hor­ror, though, so prob­a­bly will stick with the tried and true. Still, I get points for even being interested.

Then, over at my beloved oys­ter stand, was a scene of utter charm: as I wait­ed for my three rock oys­ters to be shucked, exchang­ing my oys­ter stew recipe for the shuck­er man’s tem­pu­ra deep fried idea, a tiny girl of per­haps five strode pur­pose­ful­ly up to the stand and said, “Two please,” her bright red hair glint­ing in the sun, big seri­ous blue eyes turned up apprais­ing­ly to the man. “Do you like oys­ters, then? That sur­pris­es me, they’re kind of bold,” I said to her. “Oooh, they’re love­ly. With a bit of lemon juice and some of that-” she point­ed to the shal­lots in vine­gar, “they’re so nice.” And sure enough, down they went. I wished and wished for my cam­era. As I did a minute lat­er at the French onion and shal­lot bicy­cle! He rides in on an ancient bicy­cle, strung entire­ly about with what he described as “sweet pink onions” on long jute slen­der ropes, and a bas­ket of gar­lic tied to his han­dle­bars. What a sight. I hope the onions are good, as I am slight­ly miss­ing the good old Amer­i­can vidalia. Actu­al­ly who knows if it’s American.

By this time I was near­ly frozen sol­id, and felt sin­cere­ly for the mar­keters who had been first wet through, and then frozen sol­id. What a change from last week when there was a gen­tle driz­zle, entire­ly appro­pri­ate for the film­ing on loca­tion of the new Miss Marple series! Although I was thrilled at this prox­im­i­ty to any­thing asso­ci­at­ed with one of my favorite pro­grammes, the mar­ket stal­l­keep­ers were less so. “Who is this Mrs Marple, any­way?” grum­bled one man sell­ing beet­root, and ignor­ing entire­ly per­haps the most salient iden­ti­fy­ing fea­ture of “Miss” Marple. “A lot of idling engines and tak­ing up our space, that’s what it is.”

So John came bundling along in Emmy and picked me up and we dashed out to Ham­mer­smith to have Sun­day lunch, that won­der­ful Eng­lish insti­tu­tion, with Avery’s school chum Coco’s fam­i­ly, how incred­i­bly nice of them to invite us. It is one of those invi­ta­tions that I feel is not to be tak­en light­ly, because it involves sev­er­al com­plex social deci­sions all at once. For one thing, the hosts have decid­ed that they like you enough to risk spend­ing sev­er­al hours with you. For anoth­er, you are Eng­lish-friend­ly enough to under­stand the insti­tu­tion and the impor­tance of the invi­ta­tion. Still anoth­er, they will very pos­si­bly invite oth­er peo­ple, often peo­ple of whom they are quite fond, and so to include you indi­cates that they feel it unlike­ly you will utter­ly dis­grace your­selves in front of their friends. And so it feels good to be invit­ed! Not to men­tion the antic­i­pa­tion of food some­one else has cooked for me, some­thing I always look for­ward to.

Coco and her par­ents, Ali­son (the jew­el­er I wrote about recent­ly) and Christo­pher (although he is always called Hug­gs), live in a sim­ply stun­ning house of kind of doll-like pro­por­tions, every cor­ner of every room inhab­it­ed by an object, whether a paint­ing, a pho­to­graph, a gor­geous book or a porce­lain box, each object impor­tant to the fam­i­ly and adding immense charm to the atmos­phere. It made me real­ize how tran­sient we are! To rent, and to bring only part of what you love (name­ly my leav­ing all my art books behind in a fit of pique, although where on EARTH would we put them?), means your home is not your whole home. Of course so much of what we love is in Con­necti­cut. But my point is, Coco’s home was an impec­ca­bly Eng­lish, ele­gant, warm place to spend a Sun­day after­noon. I walked in like that episode of “Cheers” where Shel­ley Long gets off the motor­cy­cle she’s been reluc­tant­ly rid­ing and says, “Par­don me while I remove the bugs from my teeth,” fresh as it were from Emmy with her top down. I hate to think what my hair looked like. But Ali­son took one look at me and said, “Right, a nice warm­ing whiskey is what you want,” and I found myself with a glo­ri­ous glass of Dal­whin­nie in my hand! Now that’s a hostess.

Also guests at lunch were Coco’s god­moth­er Jane and her boyfriend Mar­tin, love­ly peo­ple. We all sat down to Hug­gs’s feast of tra­di­tion­al roast chick­en, roast pota­toes, steamed aspara­gus, hari­cots verts and peas, as well as chest­nut and sausage stuff­ing, sausages, bacon, gravy and that curi­ous con­coc­tion about which I’ve always read but I’ve nev­er tast­ed, bread sauce. It real­ly is, as are so many Eng­lish dish­es, “just what it says on the tin.” Sauce made of bread, and milk, and a tiny bit of sea­son­ing (cloves?), very sim­ple. I have always read in my nov­els about hus­bands who walk into their Eng­lish kitchens, lift up a saucepan lid, sniff, say, “Bread sauce. Roast chick­en?” And the wife, stir­ring up some­thing like a tri­fle, says, “Of course.” I am the com­pleat Anglophile, as you know.

Oh, we had fun. Hug­gs is an avid crick­et fan and play­er, and I have been feel­ing guilty at my absolute igno­rance of the sport now that the Ash­es are on. My prob­lem is that I’m too healthy to watch tele­vi­sion very much! Dur­ing the World Cup I was ill in bed and was able to devote a prop­er amount of atten­tion to learn­ing the shib­bo­leths of a for­eign sport. So today I buck­led down and real­ly paid atten­tion, not that I am much the wis­er. “There are ties, and there are draws, but they’re not the same thing. And there are two bats­men, each of whom is try­ing to score a run. Only they walk…” On and on! Not that it was­n’t inter­est­ing, it real­ly was. At one point Coco ran away and came back with a num­ber of hol­i­day can­dles in the shapes of snow­men and fir trees, which she pro­ceed­ed to place in the posi­tions of bats­men, bowlers and field­ers, and then screamed, “It’s just like ‘The Lady Van­ish­es’!” Where­upon the rest of her con­ver­sa­tion with me was a fevered acc­count­ing of the incom­pre­hen­si­ble plot of the film!

Any­way, Hug­gs tried his best. I think I need more help. But final­ly Ali­son put her foot down and said, “Hug­gs, enough. If I let you go on, you’ll be telling us who won the Test Match­es all the way back to 1954.” Short silence. Then Hug­gs said defi­ant­ly, “Actu­al­ly there was­n’t a Test Match in 1954. But there was in 1953.”

After a gor­geous bowl of mixed berries, a tour of the house with Coco (“I either sleep in here, or in here. If it’s real­ly BOIL­ING I’ll sleep in here, and if it’s cold as any­thing, I’ll sleep in here. And here’s my pri­vate ter­race.”), and a nice Eng­lish cheese­board, we had to take our leave to pick Avery up at the sta­ble. What fun.

Now there is an aura of slight may­hem in my house. Amidst all the half-unpacked Christ­mas orna­ments and the can­vas bags from the farmer’s mar­ket and din­ner prepa­ra­tion, we have added The Tai­lor. Yes, John has tak­en on board our sar­to­ri­al­ly splen­did friend Vin­cen­t’s tai­lor, and he is here now help­ing John become a More Ele­gant Him. Or He, or what­ev­er. Then, too, Avery must be doing her home­work, so of course the instant I am need­ed to decide, cru­cial­ly, between two fab­rics (pssst: they all look alike), I must also come up with a proverb, or the French word for step­moth­er. Nev­er a dull moment.