28 March

This blog is about good and bad. I feel in the mood to make severe moral judgements, none of this prizes-for-all political correctness from me today. Yesterday the countryside was pouring forth sweetness and light; cerulean blue skies, sparkling hedgerows, everything washed by that colour peculiar to the time of year that is neither yellow nor green. I felt the energy around me, the sap rising, but I got myself all worked up over the injustices of the world. Nothing on too big a scale, mind you, I wasn’t on a one-woman mission to end global poverty or imprisonment without trial. It just annoys me, for want of a better word at the moment, that even our tiny community, off the scale in terms of even local importance, can have its fair share of winners and losers, and that it should be quite so unjust. I know that even the smallest group of people will contain the usual stereotypes; the gossip, the control freak, the pedant, and that it will also contain those who try to work for the common good, and those only concerned for themselves.
Take Richard, a local small farmer who lives down a tiny lane quite close to me. His parents farmed the same land before him, his grandparents before that. He and his family are permanently poised on the brink of catastrophe, fearing each month for the news that will tip them over the edge. I walk past their farmhouse regularly as one of our favourite walks crosses by their land. It always makes me think of “a little crooked house with a little crooked stile” – it’s small and dilapidated and uneven, looking as if it’s slowly sinking back into the rich earth. The scene reminds me of a child’s drawing; chickens clucking in the yard, ducks on the pond, green fields which are all managed by one man. It’s no longer a sustainable life, although Richard and his wife have diversified. She is artistic and crafty, like so many of you talented souls on this site, and sells what she makes when she can. They have also started an organic vegetable box scheme, that bastion of middle-class rural life. We took his boxes, and as well as the treat of the vegetables, satisfyingly earthy and misshapen, I looked forward to the weekly ritual of the chats I had with Richard or Helen. They always seemed to bring a breath of peace with them, as we stood chatting in the porch, something timeless and relaxing. Such, quiet, gentle, people, old hippies, you might think, if you saw them in the pub one night, not knowing how hard they worked, how the effort to keep afloat is weighing them down. Not that they could afford a pint in the pub, anyway, less still the pottering, artisan life they look as though they might lead, all baggy jumpers and slightly unkempt hair. They play such an active role in the village life; their daughter has left the village school now, but they’re still always there with fundraising ideas, popping in on the elderly, concerned and attentive.

There was a huge problem for me though; their veg wasn’t really up to much. It was reasonably priced, as far as organic boxes go, but there was never anything we wanted to cook with. I know the idea is that you make do with what is in season, and I understand that, and tried hard, but there is a limit to my creativity as a cook. Given that we have young children, our favourite meals tend to be those staples of family cooking, for which I need endless amounts of onions, garlic, carrots, broccoli and leeks, with a couple of interesting additions, according to the season. We would get week after week of turnips and sprouts. We did talk to them about this, but there wasn’t much improvement. A few weeks ago, mindful of our need to economize at the moment, we decided we couldn’t continue. There’s a greengrocer in a neighbouring large village who supplies good quality organic veg and is cheaper. I felt terrible, but the words stumbled out in the end. Richard seemed even more insubstantial than ever, is if he were fading around the edges. I nearly cried. (We were reminded of a time in London, when R used to buy his morning capuccino from a tiny family run Italian café, outside the tube station closest to his work. Unfortunately a Costa coffee opened up even closer to the tube, and he started going in there, as they were quicker. One day he was walking down the road, Costa cup in hand, to see the Italian man coming towards him. “It’s all over, Sir, it’s all over, I’m closing down, not enough business”, he said, pumping R’s hand in grateful thanks for his custom. R has never been able to drink Costa’s coffee since).

The ‘bad’ man in this tale is another neighbour, a man who made his pile of money and came to live the good life in the country. Nothing wrong with that; we’re all buying into the dream, after all, and I’m an incomer too. He bought a large house with a huge garden that adjoins the school field. It’s a tiny school of around eighty pupils, aged 4-9; as a parent I think the behaviour is exemplary. As soon as he moved in, the letters started. Fired off in all directions, they usually included complaints about the ‘students’ littering the paths and being noisy. He complained about noise from the village hall, opposite his house. Large notices appeared on all his boundaries asking for his privacy to be respected (?). Our pre-school (part-time play sessions for two-and-a-half to four year olds) was housed for a while in the village hall while we raised funds to finance purpose-built accommodation on the school site. This was a huge community effort for a small village and we raised all the funds ourselves. This nearly sent him into apoplexy. He held up the planning proposals at every available stage, objecting to the potentially unruly behaviour, and the likelihood of ‘bottles being left lying around’. Bottles of what - milk? His objections were all thrown out, and building is currently underway, hurrah. His house went straight on the market.

What has all this got to do with yesterday? Well ,yesterday I heard he’s moving out, to somewhere more ‘congenial’, with electric gates. It may have its own police force to arrest unruly toddlers for all I know. And Richard? Well, it’s back to the recipe books for me. I popped round yesterday evening and told him I wanted the boxes again. It’ll cost us a bit more, but economics was never my forte; my conscience will be salved.