Chapter 6
Nature reigns

Email To: Barb
From: Leslie Ann
Date: 7 January
Subject: I’m too tired to type

Dear Barb,

Guess what I did today? Unpacked all day. Same as I did yesterday and the same as I will do tomorrow and the day after. I feel like singing the ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ song with the words, ‘700 boxes of stuff in the hall, 700 boxes of stuff, open one now, pass it around, 699 boxes of stuff in the hall.’

Today I found an old bra size 34B. Do I save it as a memory or burn it? And my belts are now headbands! This is too depressing. We have fifteen pages of inventory labelled ‘packed by owner’ —contents not listed. What were we thinking when we filled them? When are you coming over? I need another pair of hands.

Last night we had gale-force winds and today trees are down everywhere. I can hear gunfire all the time so there must be a lot of killing going on out there. We have to keep the shutters closed to keep warm and the sun never shines. At least London had street lights that came on at 4 pm. My complexion is turning sallow. Hurry!

Love,
Leslie Ann

Bill and I had designed a strategy for our first year in the Hall. It was twofold. First, we acknowledged that the burden of guilt, which invariably surfaces when living in chaos, had to be lifted from our shoulders. We allocated twelve months, a sufficient if not luxurious amount of time, to sort through the paraphernalia of our life. Second, we needed to eat, which meant Bill had to get back on the commuter treadmill.

Although we lived in the bricks and clicks world of the home office, broadband and Blackberrys, Bill maintained there was nothing yet created, including conference calling, to replace eyeball to eyeball contact with colleagues and clients. Putting on a pinstripe suit to have a business lunch near Lloyds of London, the cornerstone of Bill’s professional career, was scarcely a hardship. In fact, his trips to the City came as a welcome relief to both of us. Without knowing it we had slipped into the unfamiliar world of semi-retirement, eating three meals a day together, fighting over the mail, and scrambling to see which one of us could answer the telephone on the first ring. We found ourselves competing for territory and dominance like meerkats.

Like millions of people around the world who live within spitting distance of a great city, we were convinced that the commute time to London would be manageable and affordable. We had even boasted to our friends about the speedy fifty-minute train journey but in reality we were in a state of denial. Door to door travel was seldom less than two hours when driving time to the station, London Underground transfers and British Transport delays were taken into account. A compromise had to be found that would alleviate the daily commute—a regional office was the obvious solution. From there Bill could maintain his national and international insurance clients as well as develop local business, but more importantly he would have a base of operations outside our home. Life could finally return to a normal tempo.

The countryside was also returning to a normal pace as people began to emerge from their homes after two weeks of hibernation over Christmas and New Year. Grey was the dominant colour of each day, and grim as it was in January there were discreet signs of life surfacing to indicate snowdrops were not far off. Sunshine and warmth, however, were out of the question. The hedgerow was the best gauge as it is nature’s nerve centre during the long winter months. Mistakenly, I thought this network of twisted branches, which parallel most country roads and crisscross fields, was simply there to alert the farmer not to accidentally plough up his neighbour’s patch, or to keep sheep from wandering off to the market before the mint jelly was made. I also thought it provided privacy for landowners, manor houses and lovers. These wonderful trellis-like tangles of twigs play a much more important role. They not only act as condominiums for visiting winter birds en route to warmer holiday homes; they provide shelter and fodder to foxes, field mice, owls, badgers and hedgehogs, as well as to nesting birds in summer. Man-made ecosystems, however, are not to be taken for granted. They can quickly fall to ruin if not maintained, leaving untidy gaps and mud holes where a healthy green hedge once stood. Most owners take pride in their fields and pay constant attention to replanting hawthorns and blackthorns in order to keep their biologically diverse corridors intact.

Towards the end of January the brownish-black bark takes on a purple cast, indicating a change of season is waiting in the wings. On bright sunny mornings you can often see a classic colour wheel combination of pale yellows and tawny oranges set off against an indigo sky. I only know this as a friend pointed it out to me while on my first woodland walk. Impatient for any sign of spring, I needed reassurance that Mother Nature could find me in Rutland.

An unfamiliar sound, one to which we soon became accustomed, was that of gunshot coming across the fields. Although we instinctively knew protein of all variety was on the prowl, we had to rely on local knowledge to determine exactly what was so plentiful as to entice someone to go out into the cold looking for food while the local grocery store, a few miles away, could satisfy most needs. The answer of course was an abundance of pheasants. October to the end of January is open season on these guileless creatures. Some days it appeared that more motorists than hunters had bagged their quota of these aimless birds, as feathers and telltale remains littered almost every country lane. It was a case of murder most fowl.

The sheer stupidity of these colourful little peckers seems to defy logic. The initial reaction of any driver who encounters these birds on the road is to lean on the horn in order to give them every opportunity to get out of the way. The fact is even a car with a rooftop-mounted howitzer would most likely not disturb their jaunty crossings. These birds are seriously dim. Apparently ten million years of breeding have failed to pass on the knowledge from parent to young that playing chicken with a large moving object is a deadly affair. Intellectually challenged, they detect most danger or movement through sensors in their feet. Sadly for them, their range is often too limited to ensure survival. Although not natural aviators, pheasants attempt to flee by first panicking then launching themselves straight into the air only to land, almost immediately and frequently, in the path of another oncoming vehicle. It is a war of wits they often lose. The appearance of the countryside does benefit enormously, however, from these colourful Oriental game birds with their exotic plumage and graceful tail feathers. A pair in a field, on a hedge or, if you are lucky, on your plate will always bring a smile to your face and a ‘thank you’ to your lips.

The pursuit of a good meal is no less important in the countryside than in the city. Fast food chains and casual dining establishments are certainly not as commonplace, so it was necessary for us to plan ahead. With nothing but endless days of unpacking, our lives had become mind-numbingly boring. Hours would pass unnoticed until our tummies rumbled like freight trains, reminding us we had nothing in the house for dinner. Worse still, we were usually too late for the shops.

During those dark months of winter, a bowl of piping hot farmhouse soup would make at least a weekly appearance on our dining table. Simple accompaniments of a crispy French baguette, a pot of creamy butter and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône could put us in bed contented well before the 10 pm news came on television.

Thankfully, we learned that our entire grocery list of ingredients could be purchased without setting one foot inside a supermarket. The shopping experience was intense, personal, economical and always accompanied by a kiss. We had stumbled upon a little gem, an ‘OAH’ or open-all-hours hidey-hole owned by William of Careby. This local gentleman created a home business importing fruit, nuts, vegetables and fresh-cut flowers from Lincolnshire, a county to the east of Rutland. Those of us in the know patronized his establishment, which comprised two rather tatty, cold and rickety sheds and one tired dog. Any car in the driveway, no matter what the hour, could bring William out of his modest, semi-detached house coughing and spluttering from too much cigarette smoke and too little fresh air. To my knowledge he has only one outfit: a pair of mud-stained trousers tucked inside well-worn, knee-high, rubber boots and a nubby sweater pulled over a casual plaid shirt that has seen more washings than I have seen years.

The real pleasure of each visit came from the heart as he offered his modest selection of seasonal vegetables: crisp heads of dark green broccoli, leeks pulled straight from the soil and always Brussels sprouts, perfectly formed with outer leaves as smooth as a baby’s bottom. He seldom weighed the merchandise, making instead a rough guesstimate in his mind of what to charge. A peck on the cheek for me and a solid and appreciative handshake for Bill always punctuated the transaction. The touch of his rough, callused hands and the knowledge that our little contributions helped provide him with pocket money and a sense of independence for that ever-so-necessary daily visit to the local pub kept bringing us back. This is the circle of giving and receiving, seldom acknowledged but always honoured, in the countryside.

My food diaries, saved over many years, provide me with a dependable source of information when planning my dinner menus. Looking over the scratchings, I can see a clear demarcation between what I prepared in California and the dishes that go on our dining table at home today. Salads and grilled fish or chicken always featured in one form or another in Palm Springs, as did fresh fruit for dessert, often picked straight from our trees. Possibly because of the cooler temperatures in England food needs to be more comforting, more substantial. Game and fowl are frequently served, as are root vegetables such as fennel, sprouts and parsnips. Desserts, which the English call puddings, are often rich, butterscotchey concoctions that can mug your gut and send you screaming to a food counsellor for redemption.

Without doubt the hardest part of food preparation for me is the constant need to refer to my conversion cheat sheets when reading a recipe. In America oven temperatures are quoted in Fahrenheit while in England they are interchangeably quoted in Celsius or gas mark numbers. Weights are in pints, cups, tablespoons and teaspoons not grams and litres. There is no rule, however, for a stick of butter. Too many long-distant panic phone calls have been made to friends in the States to sort out these dilemmas, usually just before our guests arrive. Worse still, doing complicated last-minute maths for a large dinner party can put a damper on my preferred style of cooking. I’ve long been a devoted follower of Julia Child’s culinary technique: a spoon in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. With a little more practise, I am sure I could have created the Christmas Happy Cake recipe!