Pork chop crash

There’s never a dull moment in the village. We were being lazy – hot pot of coffee, reading the news (on Facebook -not weekend papers) when we heard an almighty bang and then subsequent crashing metal noises. My initial thought was that the phantom tractor driver was back to destroy more cars parked in the lane.

My dearest, wearing only boxer shorts, rushed upstairs in search of combats while I considered wearing my spotty pyjamas with green wellies to face the scene; I decided to leave him to deal with the crisis.

He came to report that an old boy had crashed into a parked car and rolled his own over - creating a bit of a mess. By the time ‘the hero of my life’ arrived a few villagers were already standing and staring whilst the old boy sat stunned, airbag inflated and blood pouring from a gash in his head.

It took only a few moments to assess that no-one was actually doing anything so as usual, ever the interventionist, ‘Mr Fix-it’ got stuck in. This involved persuading the rather muddled motorist that it wasn’t going to be a good idea to drive home straightaway, especially without a windscreen, and that maybe a roll of loo paper might be applied to the side of his face.

By this time the Church Warden had started sweeping the road, his wife was calling for emergency services (which we all knew would take at least 15 mins to get through all the lanes) and Mr Garage man came down to generally join in the throng.

‘Mr Fix it – wonder man’ had turned off the engine, put the handbrake on, applied toilet roll and begun piecing together the story. The old boy had just come back from Pool Market with his weekly shop of meat and was worried:

“My wife will kill me,” he fretted. Thus began a pastoral conversation, a soothing chat that whilst wives may be bossy and possibly angry at their husband’s driving techniques it was ever likely she wouldn’t actually be cross but rather concerned.

Of course once the paramedics arrived, after a brief promise to pray for the old boy, my beloved returned to luke-warm coffee. It was a sad moment. We considered how this would most likely be the last drive for the old boy. I was reminded of my own mother’s scrapes with parked wing-mirrors and sides of cars before she finally got so lost around a roundabout that she admitted defeat.

He has probably been pottering about the lanes of Cornwall all his life, and will now have to rely on the pitiful provision of public transport. It was then I considered his weekly shop. “Hadn’t we better put it in our freezer?” I suggested.

“Good idea”, Mr Fix-it said bounding out again.

He thinks the police-officer was rather amused. But for those that are familiar with Pool Market meat wagon – it is hardly Waitrose and probably supplies most pensioners and benefit recipients in West Cornwall.The boot was opened to reveal the largest bag of Pork chops imaginable. After some deliberation it was decided that Mrs Garage owner should look after the butcher’s bounty.

“You are officially the keeper of the Pork chops,” she was told as they were handed over.

Maybe it will be last time this elderly couple will manage to gather their own produce for a Sunday roast. I am slightly comforted by the knowledge that we have one of the last, surviving ‘meals on wheels’ in the country (run by village volunteers) but even so there is a poignancy in witnessing another’s youthful vigour pass into frailty.

Power surge

I’ve succumbed to old-fogey paraphernalia. It started with reading glasses (ugly pair by the bed, sophisticated pair by the patchwork) and has progressed to garden kneeler and finally a ‘hidden extra’ on the bicycle.

In my defence it is discreet; from a distance I look like an old-fashioned midwife. The Somerset-levels wicker is already ensconced on the front and the frame is of classic design. However, sneaking behind the central ‘thingy’ (the bit that the saddle sits on) is this rather super-duper power surging battery. Oh, the freedom!

It is almost like being on a horse but not. I simply power up the hills, arrive sweat-free and don’t pass out in hedges – it is marvellous.  Obviously I am very road aware, but despite this, I have noticed a few admiring glances from traffic queues, as I power up the hills – dressed in my becoming 1980s trackies, found on the beach shades, safety helmet and bright green mac’. They obviously think I’m  a very fit plump lady.

For those familiar with the territory – I nearly made it up to the top of Maenporth hill. It feels like a ‘big daddy’ is pushing you along – he obviously conked-out in Cornwall.

So I shall be venturing out on my new wizzy gadget – ringing my bell and generally whiffing those country smells as I go. I must try hard to avoid swallowing a bee, which I did whilst haring down that mammoth hill at Lacock  (with Sam Godfrey and Claire Lillystone for my Sheldon readers) aged 16.

I am slightly troubled by the fact it is similar, in principle, to one of those power scooters and I am painfully aware that I don’t look like one of those frog-like, lycra-clad Sunday road congestors  - but at least I am as happy as the day I first rode without stabilizers  - which is all that matters.

You can never tell

They’re digging up the road in the village. I am assuming the ‘they’ is someone official and not some random group of road vandals. The process inevitably involves lots of ‘tractory noise’ and juddering just outside my open windows. Part of the spectacle involved a rounded foreman type, wearing the standard bright green tabard, who sat the entire lunch hour, in the drizzle, on the war memorial. This is about as exciting as it gets in Mawnan Smith.

The village notice board has a few other excitements advertised. Not least is our attempt to celebrate the Royal Wedding with hog roast and beer (no matter the weather). The WI is still going strong, as is the rival ‘Mawnan Wives’ group – goodness only knows what culinary rift precipitated such a public divide.

There is one notice telling me I can go to Pilates on Tuesdays but I have to decide whether I am needing a gentle or for the ‘slightly fit’ class. I will of course be mortified if all the elderly are hyper in the front row and I pass out at the back.

Thinking of being mortified I made the biggest blunder this week. A very important managery sort of person, in a suit and painful high heels, flew down from Newcastle and then hired a car to visit me in my little room for those who hate school. I was able to offer her a canteen sandwich, made by a very cross, red-faced canteen lady who quite frankly terrified me into choosing a smelly egg sandwich. Anyway, after our ‘working lunch’ my motherly nature kicked in and I felt sorry for the poor love as she was apparently six months pregnant, had been up at 5am to catch the plane and was heading ‘up North’ imminently.

My little room not only has Classic FM on most of the time, but I have three comfy chairs (mostly for drug counselling) but I also use them for those 11 and 12 year olds who have started smoking in their break-time and come over all queasy and need to ‘gather themselves’. They lie down and I talk of poison and how a 20 a day habit cost £2,500 a year. They of course don’t listen because they prefer Classic FM and nick all their tobacco anyway. I digress. The dear lady from up North was looking post-lunch sleepy and I, being imaginative, visualise some medical emergency in the clouds above Birmingham. So I said, “I expect you are really tired, I really don’t mind you having a rest for 20 minutes if you need to, being pregnant……”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said!

This is the moment when I wish I was a heartless, cold, not caring a bit about anything person. Of course I grovelled and apologised and said something like,

“Who am I to talk being ‘Mrs Porky’”. My colleague, later, reassured me by saying, “at least you didn’t say, ‘are you sure?’”

I have never seen anyone look so six months that isn’t six months. Oh well you live and learn. At least she didn’t look as pregnant as the road-digger man sat on the village green this lunchtime.

Do you have any strong thoughts on the following?

Today I went for a walk along the Helford Passage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helford_Passage as it is a fantastic place to reflect and gain some peace and clarity.

It would be easy to assume that Cornwall is a place of constant idyll, where the only terrible thing to happen is a hard frost or the fox getting into the hen house.

However, this last week or so I have been feeling a little disturbed. I am months behind time, primarily because I don’t read the Daily Mail or Mirror and somehow missed the saga in the West Briton.

Only recently I discovered that an old school colleague of mine, in his 50s, left the school I was teaching at about the same time. He then went on to have a relationship with a 16-year-old pupil (despite being married for the third time already). Apparently they were just within the law because she was 16 and he was no-longer a teacher.

I’m not sure why this has had such a profound effect on me, but I feel like I have seen a very nasty road traffic accident and every so often have flashbacks.

I suppose the difference in the country, as opposed to the city, is this kind of scandal effects so many people as we all know him - or his family or her estranged distraught parents or her cousin’s cousin. I used to sit and watch him eat his sandwiches in the staff room and think someone who loved him very much must have made them, as they looked sumptuous (perhaps he loved himself just a little too much).

I suppose I empathise with the girl’s mother, unable to bring her home, because of the Children’s Act: her will reigns supreme. It is a similar situation as when a young adult become infatuated with a guru and joins a cult. I have two daughters who are young women and I would have been horrified if they had gone to live with a man 30 odd years older.

Believe me I l have nothing against 50 something men, I have many friends who are and much older. I appreciate schoolgirl crushes and the Police’s “Don’t Stand Too Close To Me” was an ‘80s fave. Jane Eyre is my favourite book and the age gap in her eventual marriage was considerable.

I think what distresses me most is that the girl had no opportunity to reflect away from the situation. Let’s face it if a young woman is told repeatedly that she is beautiful, loved, unique bla, bla she will succumb to the intoxication of being adored, especially if she doesn’t hear that kind of affirmation from any other place. She would be vulnerable and susceptible to persuasion.

My opinion for what it is worth is that she should have been taken to a place of safety, away from all influences so she could have some intensive therapy and be totally aware of the life choices she was making. There should be a clause in the Children’s Act to allow a multi-agency decision to be made concerning the well-being of a schoolgirl prior to her taking exams and still in full-time education. Obviously the law, as it stands, didn’t allow any caring adult to step in and protect her from what could be a catastrophic life choice

Now, two years on and she is in a marriage that apparently is totally ‘fulfilling’. Having many married friends and from personal experience I know married life is a battle – ‘for better for worse’. Without the love and support of family this couple are going to walk a rocky road.

I had assumed that in other cultures that this kind of situation might be commonplace, but having carried out a bit of research 18 is the average age for marriage in nearly all countries worldwide. Yet shacking up with someone is perfectly law-abiding as this case shows.

Looking at recent photos of the couple they appear to be in that euphoric first phase of most relationships and they have presented a normalised front to what is extraordinary.

My hope is that the young woman has someone she can turn to in the future when she will inevitably face tough times. Work stress, sickness, money worries hound every marriage.

I know the village she comes from well. I used to horse ride weekly around its lanes and fields. It is the kind of seaside village where everyone greets you – everyone. It just goes to show that the forces in a man’s heart and mind are just as at work in a picturesque rural place as anywhere else.

Old fashioned remedies

I have been ill for several weeks now, which is very boring. It started with the flu and progressed to a chest infection. Now, as I come out of my ‘fug’, I feel as if my ribs have been punched by someone with very sharp knuckles.

I have of course tried a range of remedies, but have discovered that Baileys is the best. I think that the Irish cream marketing team should stop trying to sell it as a sophisticated after dinner treat (as we all know it is the Babycham of liqueurs) and place it on shelves next to cough mixture. I’m convinced they would make lots more money. It should have a similar advert to Calpol but with adults sleeping instead of babies and then running around feeling much better afterwards. The voice-over could say: “Mrs T, a proper rural wife, recommends Baileys for those nasty chesty coughs.”

During my remedy seeking time I recalled some of my late Granny’s. She was born at the turn of the 1900s, came from a family of 12 siblings and was the first married woman teacher in Cheshire (she only had one child herself!)

Apparently if you had an earache then her mother would boil an onion and put it in a sock for one to hold against their head. She washed her teeth with bicarbonate of soda, used lavender for headaches and considered a warm vest to be essential.

“Eeeh, you’ll get crompus on the mar,” she’d say if she caught you without one in winter.

“Feed a cold and starve a fever”, she’d say.

Every morning she ate porridge, every evening she had a bottle of stout (for iron). For those times when she had a ‘funny turn’ she would take a sip from a flask of brandy in her handbag. The handbag was the size of a small suitcase and made long car journeys more pleasurable for me as I was allowed to tidy it. Inside there were:

Hairnets, hair pins, a plastic rain bonnet in a plastic pot, eau-de-cologne, bright red lipstick, face powder in a compact case with mirror, white cotton hankies, diary, leather purse, Parker pen, toffees, silk headscarf , sewing kit, silver brandy flask, horn-rimmed sunglasses and her crochet.

I was allowed to watch her get dressed in the morning, which involved a lot of huffing and puffing. She wore an amazing bra that had about half a dozen hooks at the back and was built like armour. Her thermal vest went over the top. Her French knickers were made out of a similar fabric to airtex and on top she wore a girdle. Attached to this, with metal clips, were her suspenders, which held up support stockings. They simply don’t make underwear like it anymore.

Then came a full-length petticoat and then finally a smart easy-care dress or a two-piece suit, leather brogues and then her jewellery (gold watch and necklace).

Finally, a top tip for those who are on a tight budget after Christmas, she would exfoliate by using a rough towel.

My dearest has a really bad topical remedy for acne – turmeric. It is effective, but stains the skin for a few days and has unfortunately been tried out on one of daughters!!

My favourite remedy of all (for every kind of illness) is a pair of baggy pyjamas along with a duvet, hot Ribenna and the kind of book that you would never tell anyone you had read for fear they would think you half illiterate (these can be found in most supermarkets). I have read the most naff books imaginable over the last few weeks. My granny would be dismayed, no doubt. I have her collection of Dickens and Thomas Hardy but somehow they aren’t quite the balsam for a fevered brain.

So having beaten the bug with Baileys, I am going to attempt my first braising walk in the morning and in memory of my granny I shall wear a vest.

Wellies and slippers

At this time of year, living in the country, my feet are either in wellies or slippers. I am fully aware that some people rarely wear either, which I find hard to comprehend; they must only walk on clean pavements and have very warm houses.

My slippers are especially stupendous being the pink ‘Bo’ pair from http://www.moshulu.co.uk/ladies/slippers They were last year’s Christmas present from my beloved and have survived the washing machine twice. What makes them especially useful is that because they have rubber soles, I can wear them on the vegetable patch when I need to dash out to pull a leek or do a spot of driving and dropping off of teenage daughter.

I realise that neither of these items of footwear are remotely cool or sophisticated, although my eldest daughter has a photo of Kate Moss, at Glastonbury, looking both in her wellies (she was looking particularly naffed-off with my daughter incidentally), but I am psychologically and emotionally attached to both pairs. Wearing them is quite ‘self nuturing’. Wellies enable me to go anywhere (along the coastpath, through snow drifts, muddy fields and streams) and slippers mean once they are on my feet I am truly home. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact I have been wearing wellies and slippers since toddlerhood (woolly tights and cardigans have a similar effect on me). Wilf is delighted by both pairs; wellies mean walks and slippers either smell wonderful or he just enjoys seeing my searching for the one he has stolen.

When I used to read the News for Bath FM, I often had to do a Saturday shift on my own (well with the DJ too). Slippers on my feet meant that the 6am bulletin was slightly more bearable and I could almost convince myself that it was a day off.  Similarly, the fact I always had wellies in the boot of my car meant I was able to clamber across field gates and get to the scene of a farm fire and interview the fire-officers way before the BBC got there!

 I am fully aware that women all over the British Isles love shoes; they collect them. They all look impossible to walk in and desperately painful but I am in awe of their grace as they totter about. The last time I wore anything remotely glamorous was to a party, however this was in a marquee in a field. Before I could greet my hosts I was wiping my heels with tufts of grass and looking longingly at someone else dancing in a shift dress with wellies.

This reminds me, you can now buy white wellies for brides, for when they go stomping across the grass or beach for photoshoots. I think that is quite a positive indication of a bride’s character – it means she is prepared for better and worse.

I am intrigued if anyone else has similar attachments to items of clothing?

Something and nothing

For those who have been eager to know the outcome of the abandoned car in the village, it was a bit of 'something and nothing' I'm afraid. I am reliably informed that the driver was spotted driving away, but we don't know who they were as the eye-witness, behind the post office counter, was serving a customer at the time.  They weren't 'local' (which was said with a slight sniff) and all that was seen was a mysterious shoulder.

It rather reminds me of another 'something and nothing' time when the burglar alarm in the post office went off in the early hours of the morning. I jumped out of bed in order to spy on the dastardly culprits from behind a crack in the curtain (I could see myself being quoted on Crimewatch) only to watch a completely deserted lane and then the alarm stopped. Apparently, it was a large spider that triggered the alarm off!

The whole village is turning out for  bit of 'something and nothing' tomorrow evening. We all gather for the Christmas tree lights to be turned on. The sea scouts are selling hotdogs, the hardware store offers free sausage rolls and mince pies (next to the bird food and pet food) someone heats up the mulled wine and we sort of warble a few carols along with the brass band. The smithy fires up his furnace and the potter and printmaker open their doors. The main excitement is that Cornwall's very own Father Christmas lives in the village (in a bungalow). He looks and sounds exactly like Captain Birdseye and each year grooms his super white beard and does the whole 'ho, ho' act.

I am just a little sad that this is the first year that I have no children (grown-up ones even) to share in general lighting-up jollity. The pull of a free ticket to see Pixie Lott in Plymouth is rather stronger than Father Christmas. Oh well, we have our twinkle lights ready on the tree outside the cottage and the Parish Church has set up the stable scene on the green next to us (Wilf will have to wee somewhere else for a month). I daresay we will squeeze into the Red Lion and strike up a chat and join in the banter.

My Christmas tree this year is a branch from Sancreed (from my three weeks on the moor). A farmer was cutting down a dangerous overhang, in the wind, so I stuffed a bit into the Landrover. It has lots of lovely lichen on it and with some lights and creative sparkly things will satisfy my 'child within'. If it was in an art gallery I would entitle it a 'bit of something and nothing'.